To Be A Poet Did Not Occur

To Read In The Service Of Any Ideology Is Not, In My Judgment, To Read At All.

We Read Deeply For Varied Reasons, Most Of Them Familiar: That We Cannot Know Enough People Profoundly Enough; That We Need To Know Ourselves Better; That We Require Knowledge, Not Just Of Self And Others, But Of The Way Things Are. Yet The Strongest, Most Authentic Motive For Deep Reading…is The Search For A Difficult Pleasure.

All That A Critic, As Critic, Can Give Poets Is The Deadly Encouragement That Never Ceases To Remind Them Of How Heavy Their Inheritance Is.

The Idea Of Herman Melville In A Writing Class Is Always Distressing To Me.

I Am Naive Enough To Read Incessantly Because I Cannot, On My Own, Get To Know Enough People Profoundly Enough.