We could easily have evolved eyelids thick enough to keep out the light, but we still need to see the shadows fall across them. We're not yet safe.

We could easily have evolved eyelids thick enough to keep out the light, but we still need to see the shadows fall across them. We're not yet safe.

So we start with an oversignifying reader. Those texts that appear to reward this reader for this additional investment - text that we find exceptionally suggestive, apposite, or musical - are usually adjudged to be 'poetic'. ... The work of the poet is to contribute a text that will firstly invite such a reading; and secondly reward such a reading.

We turn from the light to see.

Mediocre art is far worse than bad art. Bad art does not waste our time.

Inconveniently, books are all the pages in them, not just the ones you choose to read.

The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act.