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.

When I first heard Wallace Stevens voice, it was by chance: a friend wanted to listen to the recording he had made for the Harvard Vocarium Series.

I liked teaching Henry James. When you look down at a Henry James novel from a helicopter height, you find an intricate spider web that all clings together.

A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.

One could say that artists are people who think naturally in highly patterned ways.

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

You don’t read or overhear the voice in the poem, you are the voice in the poem.