The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace.

Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.

The art of utterance persuades initially by its music and its rhythm, before semiotic or personal characteristics come into play.

For the critic, criticism is a form of natural self-expression, as poetry is to the poet. So, for a critic, criticism is a true thing. Criticism isn’t written for poets, it’s written for other readers. One hopes it is true for other readers if it’s true for oneself.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

I do not give the honorific name of 'poetry' to the primitive and the unaccomplished.

I was unnerved to learn in my twenties that the poems of Emily Dickinson that I had memorized as a girl were not the poems as she had written them.