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

I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute.

All good poets of the past, almost without exception, were at least bilingual if not trilingual.

For the mind and the imagination, bookstores aren't enough, college courses aren't enough, the Internet isn't enough. Those resources are all governed by the tastes and needs of the moment. Only libraries take the long view, quietly shelving the unused with the used, knowing that one of these days the two categories will be reversed by a student's discovery of those hitherto undisturbed volumes whose contents will unsettle the learned world.

Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity.

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

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.