History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.

A writer is not different from a reader, in that the common ragbag of orthodoxies and assumptions is what a poet has to work with as well.

The appointment [in Harvard] gave me economic safety, writerly support, and intellectual self-respectplus eight months to myself every year.

Part of my gradual education of myself has been to think that there is a deep relationship between the nature of the creature and the worth of the art.

In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.