Opus Posthumous

To see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. It is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. It is simply that they came to nothing.

To have nothing to say and to say it in a tragic manner is not the same thing as having something to say.

A poem should be a part of one's sense of life.

Poetry is a search for the inexplicable.

Let wise men piece the world together with wisdom

Or poets with holy magic.

Hey-di-ho.

God is in me or else is not at all (does not exist).

A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect but, most likely, of the opposite.

All poetry is experimental poetry.

The imagination is one of the forces of nature.

Style is not something applied. It is something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man. It is not a dress.

Man is an eternal sophomore.

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.

The poet makes silk dresses out of worms.

Poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death. It is a present perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life.

The poet is a god, or, the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp.

Sentimentality is a failure of feeling.

A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.

All history is modern history.

To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.

The world is a force, not a presence.