One Of The Most Puzzling Things About

Whether They Write Poems Or Don't Write Poems, Poets Are Best.

More And More People Think Of The Critic As An Indispensable Middle Man Between Writer And Reader, And Would No More Read A Book Alone, If They Could Help It, Than Have A Baby Alone.

We Read Our Mail And Counted Up Our Missions In Bombers Named For Girls, We Burned The Cities We Had Learned About In School Till Our Lives Wore Out; Our Bodies Lay Among The People We Had Killed And Never Seen. When We Lasted Long Enough They Gave Us Medals; When We Died They Said, "our Casualties Were Low." They Said, "here Are The Maps"; We Burned The Cities.

The Best Of Causes Ruins As Quickly As The Worst; And The Road To Limbo Is Paved With Writers Who Have Done Everything I Am Being Sympathetic, Not Satiric For The Very Best Reasons.

If You Never Look Just Wrong To Your Contemporaries You Will Never Look Just Right To Posterity - Every Writer Has To Try To Be, To Some Extent, Sometimes, A Law Unto Himself.