"The worst thing about such rhetorical devices, about any of the mechanisms and patented insights that make up so much of a style, is that they are habit-forming, something the style demands in ever-increasing quantities. The poet learns subtle variations or extensions he once would have thought unlikely or impossible; but he permits himself excesses, both quantitative and qualitative, that once would have appalled him. This is how styles and more than styles degenerate. Our victories are temporary victories; and nothing makes us more susceptible to a vice than the knowledge that we have already overcome it. (The fact that one once used an argument somehow seems to give one the right to ignore it.)"— Randall Jarrell, Randall Jarrell on W.H. Auden, 50
