Oh Let Us Not Be

Poetry Carries Its History Within It, And It Is Oral In Origin. Its Transmission Was Oral.

Hearing That The Same Men Who Brought Us 'south Park' Were Mounting A Musical To Be Called 'the Book Of Mormon,' We Were Tempted To Turn Away, As From An Inevitable Massacre.

I Prefer Writing In The Mornings, So To That Extent I Have A Routine. I Do Reading And Other Things In The Afternoon.

Lyric Poetry Is, Of Course, Musical In Origin. I Do Know That What Happened To Poetry In The Twentieth Century Was That It Began To Be Written For The Page. When It's A Question Of Typography, Why Not? Poets Have Done Beautiful Things With Typography - Apollinaire's 'calligrammes,' That Sort Of Thing.

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?).