“Men canreturn to where they have done evil deeds,but men do not return to where they’ve beenabased. On this point God’s design and ourown feeling of abasement coincideso absolutely that we quit: the night,the rotting beast, the exultant mobs, our homes,our hearthfires, Bacchus in a vacant lotembracing Ariadne in the dark.”

“The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.”

“American poetry to me is a sort of relentless, nonstop sermon on human autonomy.”

“I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.”

“The more one reads poetry, the less tolerant one becomes of any sort of verbosity, be that in political or philosophical discourse, be that in history, social studies or the art of fiction.”

“To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.”

“Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.”

“Poetry is not an art or a branch of art: it's something more.”

“My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.”

“American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and I am that stranger.”

“Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.”