It's just that different emotions and perceptions demand different frequencies and intensities.

Art is so often better at theology than theology is.

I don't think that someone who does not speak the original language can ever expect to produce a real translation.

Sometimes God calls a person to unbelief in order that faith may take new forms.

Mandelstam is the sort of poet who comes along very, very rarely. Even the two Russian poets whose work is often linked with his - Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva - though their work is more "urgent" than most American poetry, seem to me to operate at a lesser charge than Mandelstam.

I can't think offhand of any American poets who have Mandelstam's urgency, but it's a different country and a different time, and I don't think it would make much sense to say that this is something that's "missing" from contemporary American poetry.

One of the ways in which I feel close to God is writing poetry.