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The Poet, As Everyone Knows, Must Strike His Individual Note Sometime Between The Ages Of Fifteen And Twenty-five. He May Hold It A Long Time, Or A Short Time, But It Is Then That He Must Strike It Or Never. School And College Have Been Conducted With The Almost Express Purpose Of Keeping Him Busy With Something Else Till The Danger Of His Ever Creating Anything Is Past.

I Am A Writer Of Books In Retrospect. I Talk In Order To Understand; I Teach In Order To Learn.

Earth Would Soon Be Uninhabitable As The Moon. What For That Matter Had It Ever Been? Who Advised Man To Come And Live Therein?

The Armful For Every Parcel I Stoop Down To Seize I Lose Some Other Off My Arms And Knees, And The Whole Pile Is Slipping, Bottles, Buns, Extremes Too Hard To Comprehend At. Once Yet Nothing I Should Care To Leave Behind. With All I Have To Hold With Hand And Mind And Heart, If Need Be, I Will Do My Best. To Keep Their Building Balanced At My Breast. I Crouch Down To Prevent Them As They Fall; Then Sit Down In The Middle Of Them All. I Had To Drop The Armful In The Road And Try To Stack Them In A Better Load.

I Have Just Been To A City In The West, A City Full Of Poets, A City They Have Made Safe For Poets. The Whole City Is So Lovely That You Do Not Have To Write It Up To Make It Poetry; It Is Ready-made For You. But, I Don't Know - The Poetry Written In That City Might Not Seem Like Poetry If Read Outside Of The City. It Would Be Like The Jokes Made When You Were Drunk; You Have To Get Drunk Again To Appreciate Them.