I Suppose I Did Feel A Certain

Then As The Years Went On And My Listening Became More Deliberate, I Would Climb Up On An Arm Of Our Big Sofa To Get My Ear Closer To The Wireless Speaker.

Poetry Cannot Afford To Lose Its Fundamentally Self-delighting Inventiveness, Its Joy In Being A Process Of Language As Well As A Representation Of Things In The World.

My Teaching Was Animated By What I Was Reading And Being Excited By As A Poet.

Debate Doesn’t Really Change Things. It Gets You Bogged In Deeper. If You Can Address Or Reopen The Subject With Something New, Something From A Different Angle, Then There Is Some Hope. ... People Are Suddenly Gazing At Something Else And Pausing For A Moment. And For The Duration Of That Gaze And Pause, They Are Like Reflectors Of The Totality Of Their Own Knowledge And/or Ignorance. That’s Something Poetry Can Do For You, It Can Entrance You For A Moment Above The Pool Of Your Own Consciousness And Your Own Possibilities.

Even Though Helen Vendler Wasn't On The Harvard Faculty When I Came First In 1979, She Was A Guardian Spirit; Robert Fitzgerald Gave Me The Use Of His Study In Pusey Library. Monroe And Brenda Engel Kept Open House, Bob And Jana Kiely Made Me At Home In Adams House. Then, Too, In 1979, Frank Bidart, Whom Id Met In Dublin After The Death Of Robert Lowell He Was Over Seeing Caroline Blackwood Frank Brought Me Into His Circle Of Friends, Including Robert Pinsky And Alan Williamson.