“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
“Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its own language-group.”
“The language of sword is less powerful than the language of word, but most ofthe people understand the language of sword with greater power than thelanguage of word.”
“Poetry is life distilled.”
“Most people ignore most poetry because poetry ignores most people.”
“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”