I don’t read fiction for the story; I read it for the acts of language, for the feelingful feats of syntax, and if I don’t find any, I’ll move on. The fiction that interests me, the fiction that does me in, isn’t the kind that reports the world or embellishes it, but the kind that usurps the world entirely.
“If my praise her grace effaces,
Then ’tis not my heart that showeth,
But the skilless tongue that soweth
Words unworthy of her graces.
Tongue, that hath me so betrayed,
Were my heart but here displayed,
Then were sung her fitting praises.”
Ezra Pound | “Canzon: To Be Sung Beneath a Window”