The People Who Live In

Anyone Who Has Read Yeats's Wonderful Autobiography Will Remember His Sligo Shabby, Shadowed, Half Country And Half Sea, Full Of Confused Romance, Superstition, Poverty, Eccentricity, Unrecognized Anachronism, Passion And Ignorance And The Little Boy's Misery. Yeats Was Treated Well But Was Bitterly Unhappy; He Prayed That He Would Die, And Used Often To Say To Himself: "when You Are Grown Up, Never Talk As Grown-up People Do Of The Happiness Of Childhood.

A Poet Is A Man Who Manages, In A Lifetime Of Standing Out In Thunderstorms, To Be Struck By Lightning Five Or Six Times.

Early In His Life Mr. [ezra] Pound Met With Strong, Continued, And Unintelligent Opposition. If People Keep Opposing You When You Are Right, You Think Them Fools; And After A Time, Right Or Wrong, You Think Them Fools Simply Because They Oppose You. Similarly, You Write True Things Or Good Things, And End By Thinking Things True Or Good Simply Because You Write Them

We Died Like Aunts Of Pets Or Foreigners.

Christina Stead Has A Chinese Say, "our Old Age Is Perhaps Life's Decision About Us" Or, Worse, The Decision We Have Made About Ourselves Without Ever Realizing We Were Making It.