The success of the poem is determined not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.
John CiardiNothing goes further toward a man's liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.
John CiardiWhat has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.
John Ciardi