There are not many poets whose fame rests on a single work.

There are not many poets whose fame rests on a single work.

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

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

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

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.

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.