The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.

Men expect too much, do too little.

Death's long anabasis.

Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically; even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.

Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.