Windbags Can Be Right. Aphorists Can Be

Saigon Was An Addicted City, And We Were The Drug: The Corruption Of Children, The Mutilation Of Young Men, The Prostitution Of Women, The Humiliation Of The Old, The Division Of The Family, The Division Of The Country-it Had All Been Done In Our Name. . . . The French City . . . Had Represented The Opium Stage Of The Addiction. With The Americans Had Begun The Heroin Phase.

For Poets Today Or In Any Age, The Choice Is Not Between Freedom On The One Hand And Abstruse French Forms On The Other. The Choice Is Between The Nullity And Vanity Of Our First Efforts, And The Developing Of A Sense Of Idiom, Form, Structure, Metre, Rhythm, Line - All The Fundamental Characteristics Of This Verbal Art.

Among Those Today Who Believe That Modern Poetry Must Do Without Rhyme Or Metre, There Is An Assumption That The Alternative To Free Verse Is A Crash Course In Villanelles, Sestinas And Other Such Fixed Forms. But Most... Are Rare In English Poetry. Few Poets Have Written A Villanelle Worth Reading, Or Indeed Regret Not Having Done So.

Generally Speaking, Rhyme Is The Marker For The End Of A Line. The First Rhyme-word Is Like A Challenge Thrown Down, Which The Poem Itself Has To Respond To.

Those Who Actually Set Out To See The Fall Of A City Or Those Who Choose To Go To A Front Line, Are Obviously Asking Themselves To What Extent They Are Cowards. But The Tests They Set Themselves - There Is A Dead Body, Can You Bear To Look At It? - Are Nothing In Comparison With The Tests That Are Sprung On Them. It Is Not The Obvious Tests That Matter (do You Go To Pieces In A Mortar Attack?) But The Unexpected Ones (here Is A Man On The Run, Seeking Your Help - Can You Face Him Honestly?).