At any rate I have always found the writing of poetry, which I began before I attempted prose, an enormous relief from the constant playacting of fiction. I never pick up a book of poems without thinking that it will have one advantage over most novels: I shall know the writer better at the end of it. I do not have to hope this is true of what follows. I know it is true—and know also how slender a justification mere personal truth is for writing. I mean my line of Martial preceding this foreword.