In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it is in prose where you find things being put together well, where there is great ambition, and equal talent. Poets have gotten so careless, it is a disgrace. You can’t pick up a page. All the words slide off.
William H. Gassit is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.
William H. GassThe speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.
William H. GassI do have a very conscious desire not to be academic. I'm antiacademic. I hate jargon. I hate that sort of pretension. I am a person who [commits] breaches of decorum - not in private life, but in my work. They are part of my mode of operation. That kind of playfulness is part of my nature in general. The paradox that, in a way, to take something very seriously, you can't always be serious about it.
William H. Gass