The Writing Of A Poem

My Sonnet Asserts That The Sonnet Still Lives. My Epic, Should Such Fortune Befall Me, Asserts That The Heroic Narrative Is Not Lost - That It Is Born Again.

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.

Writing For The Page Is Only One Form Of Writing For The Eye. Wherever Solemn Inscriptions Are Put Up In Public Places, There Is A Sense That The Site And The Occasion Demand A Form Of Writing Which Goes Beyond Plain Informative Prose. Each Word Is So Valued That The Letters Forming It Are Seen As Objects Of Solemn Beauty.

A Cabaret Song Has Got To Be Written - For The Middle Voice, Ideally - Because You've Got To Hear The Wit Of The Words. And A Cabaret Song Gives The Singer Room To Act, More Even Than An Opera Singer.

A Poem With Grandly Conceived And Executed Stanzas, Such As One Of Keats's Odes, Should Be Like An Enfilade Of Rooms In A Palace: One Proceeds, With Eager Anticipation, From Room To Room.