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.

There are dangers for an artist in any academic environment. Academia rewards people who know their own minds and have developed an ironclad confidence in speaking them. That kind of assurance is death for an artist.

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

I think of translations as passing some scholarly smell test: you can read the words of the translation and be reasonably sure of what the words are in the original.

We should be suspicious when God's call conforms so neatly to our own inclinations.

Wonder is the precondition for all wisdom.

Human imagination is not simply our means of reaching out to God but God's means of manifesting himself to us.