Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jum...p, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next--life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was--a whisper. What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink- blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents' window long ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot... Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Old men who never cheated, never doubted, Communicated monthly, sit and stare... At the new suburb stretched beyond the run-way Where a young man lands hatless from the air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I press not to the quire, nor dare I greet The holy place with my unhallowed feet;... My unwashed Muse pollutes not things divine, Nor mingles her profaner notes with thine; Here humbly at the porch she listening stays, And with glad ears sucks in thy sacred lays.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Flee from the press and dwell with soothfastness; Suffice unto thy good though it be small,... For hoard hath hate and climbing ticklishness, Press hath envy and weal blent overall;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am no Poet here; my pen 's the spout, Where the rain water of my eyes run out,... In pity of that name, whose fate wee see Thus copied out in griefs Hydrography: The Muses are not Mer-maids, though upon His death the Ocean might turn HeliconLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I would have these good people to recollect, that the laws of this country hold out to foreigners an offer of all that liberty of ...the press which Americans enjoy, and that, if this liberty be abridged, by whatever means it may be done, the laws and the constitution, and all together, is a mere cheat; a snare to catch the credulous and enthusiastic of every other nation; a downright imposition on the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »