“. . .criticism is to poetry as air is to a noise: it allows it to be heard; and even if we can't see it or feel it, it is there, shaping how we hear.”

“the next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern.”

“Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.”

“After all, what is lyric but the seamless fusion of formal control and passionate conviction, in the service of the expression of personal experience?”

“We received our coloring from Norsemen. Hairy savages who hacked their gods to pieces and hung the flesh from trees. We are the ones who sacked Rome. Fear only feeble old age and death in bed. Don't forget who you are.”

“The people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. They were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air.”

“I once tried hawking my own book around the pubs in the hope that, like the Salvation Army, I too could sell to the cerebrally relaxed. It was a disaster. I had beer thrown over me for being a) a nuisance, b) not as good as Wordsworth and c) a nancy for writing poetry in the first place.”