“The most brilliant example [of good editing] in our time
. . . was Ezra Pound’s editing of The Waste Land, which made the poem infinitely better.”

On the New York theater audience: “I have a fine play in mind I’ll write for them someday. The curtain slides up on a stage bare except for a machine gun facing the audience, then the actor walks upstage, adjusts the machine gun, and blasts them.”

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.