When critics are waiting to pounce upon poetic style on exactly the same grounds as if it were prose, the poets tremble.

He can develop sense and style, in the manner of distinguished modern prose, in which event he may be sure that the result will not fall into any objective form.

But we moderns are impatient and destructive.

It is out of fashion in these days to look backward rather than forward. About the only American given to it is some unreconstructed Southerner, who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living.

Too much is demanded by the critic, attempted by the poet.

It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.

The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?