11 quotes
We use books like mirrors, gazing into them only to discover ourselves.
Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.
I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said, "You are what you eat," but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote.
Now, for so many poets, critics, editors, small-press publishers, creative-writing programs, the chief thing seems to be keeping the patient alive.
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)
Even socialists, Marxists, and revolutionaries seem to have lost their belief in the future; the old shibboleths come rolling off their lips, but it is as if they cannot keep the scales from dropping from their eyes.
The reason "closure" is a cliché is that it is used too often, too imprecisely, and doesn't in any case reflect reality. In reality, such closure in broken friendships, and much else in life, is rarely achieved; only death brings closure, and then not always for those still living.
So much like a great deal of contemporary poetry: slightly political, heavily preening, and not distinguished enough in language or subtlety of thought to be memorable.
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)
Where did all that elegant, potent, lovely language go; or, more precisely, where went the power to create such language? Perhaps, like W. B. Yeats in Auden's poem, it "disappeared in the dead of winter."
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)
The main modernist poets had written with assurance in their bones, as if they knew their worth and knew that posterity would one day know it, too. But the poets who came after them were less sure; they knew something had gone wrong.
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)
Doubtless the most famous poet in America is Allen Ginsberg, but poetry isn't really what he is famous for: politics and homosexuality and a talent for the outrageous and a small genius for publicity are the four cornerstones on which his fame rests.
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)
Contemporary poetry, in the cumbersome new usage of the academic literary criticism of the moment, has been "privileged" — that is, in our day it has been given a special dispensation, set apart, released from the burden of undergoing tough criticism.
Who Killed Poetry? (1988)