“In the nineteenth century, poetry was a bestselling genre rather than the cultish phenomenon it is now.”

“Poetry that tames language into tight structures and yet manages to move us comes off as a feat, paralleling ballet or athletic talent in harnessing craft to beauty. When poetry is based on a less rigorous, more impressionistic definition of craft, its appeal depends more on whether one happens to be individually constituted to “get it” for various reasons. The audience narrows: poetry becomes more like tai chi than baseball.”

“For all but the sliver of poetry fans, over the past forty years popular song lyrics have been the nation’s poetry.”

“The late twentieth century has been the locus of a new lurch on English’s time line in America, where oratorical, poetic, and compositional craft of a rigorously exacting nature has been cast to the margins of the culture.”

“Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of what it is, and even our response to music and how we judge it.”

“We’re all Dennis Hopper now.”

“A person you excuse from any genuine challenge is a person you do not truly respect.”