David Orr has a fascinating essay in tomorrow's NYT Book Review on "The Great(ness) Game":

A list of "great" poets will look quite a bit different from a list of "perfect" poets, which may have almost no overlap with a list of "spectacular" poets, which in turn may be completely different from a list of "sublime" poets. When we talk about poetic greatness, we're talking about style and persona, even when (or maybe, especially when) we think we aren't.

And in a book review from Wednesday's paper, there's this quote from Dan Baum's Nine Lives, a novel about New Orleans:

A sermon should be like a woman's dress. Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.

[I have been engrossed in drafting a sex scene all morning, and now I must return to hammering out tomorrow's homily. At the moment, the damn hemline's all over creation.]