Statements of Faith

I once believed [Stéphane] Mallarmé's statement that within him was that which would count the buttons on a hangman's vest was a claim to cold-blooded objectivity. Now I believe it was an acceptance of a world where the trivial and definite can vie for attention with the emotionally overwhelming.

Is Mallarmé's nothing so much different from the man who, after surviving a terrible auto crash and with his wife lying bloody in the car, steps out and begins to pick up small bits of glass? Are words bits of glass? Buttons on a hangman's vest? On a lover's clothes?

Should you reject yourself because you count buttons and pick up glass when all civilization tells you: please, this is hardly the time?

An act of imagination is an act of self-acceptance.

The self as given is inadequate and will not do.

Every poem a poet writes is a slight advance of self and a slight modification of the mask, the one you want to be. Poem after poem the self grows more worthy of the mask, the mask comes closer to fitting the face. After enough poems, you are nearly the one you want to be, and the one you want to be closely resembles you. The happiness . . . cannot be observed by others because it is only a different way one has come to feel about oneself. "Nearly," and "closely," not "exactly" and "perfectly." Hope hard to fall always short of success.