Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.

I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry; all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly.

Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.

Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.

Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.