Poetry, Far More Than Fiction,

Don’t Ask A Writer What He’s Working On. It’s Like Asking Someone With Cancer On The Progress Of His Disease.

My Heart Is Tuned To Sorrow, And The Strings Vibrate Most Readily To Minor Chords, Searching And Sad; My Mind Is Stuffed With Words Which Voice The Passion And The Ache Of Things: Illusions Beating With Their Baffled Wings Against The Walls Of Circumstance.

A Black Cat Among Roses, Phlox, Lilac-misted Under A Quarter Moon, The Sweet Smells Of Heliotrope And Night-scented Stock. The Garden Is Very Still. It Is Dazed With Moonlight, Contented With Perfume.

Only Those Of Our Poets Who Kept Solidly To The Shakespearean Tradition Achieved Any Measure Of Success. But Keats Was The Last Great Exponent Of That Tradition, And We All Know How Thin, How Lacking In Charm, The Copies Of Keats Have Become.

Can You See Through The Night, Woman, That You Stare So Upon It? Man, What Sparks Do Your Eyes Follow In The Smouldering Darkness?