A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept - the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.

But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.

When you look into a mirror it is not yourself you see, but a kind of apish error posed in fearful symmetry kool uoy nehW rorrim a otni ton si ti ˛ees uoy flesruoy dnik a tub rorre hsipa fo lufraef ni desop yrtemmys

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

The New England spirit does not seek solutions in a crowd; raw light and solitariness are less dreaded than welcomed as enhancers of our essential selves.