By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal. Our evolutionary, linguistic beacon.

A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny.

In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.

Poetry is what is gained in translation.

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.

Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?