As long as poets belonged to a broader class of artists and intellectuals, they centered their lives in urban bohemias, where they maintained a distrustful independence from institutions. Once poets began moving into universities, they abandoned the working-class heterogeneity of Greenwich Village and North Beach for the professional homogeneity of academia.

Poets serious about making careers in institutions understand that the criteria for success are primarily quantitative. They must publish as much as possible a…

In social terms the identification of poet with teacher is now complete. The first question one poet now asks another upon being introduced is 'Where do you te…

Several dozen journals now exist that print only verse. They don't publish literary reviews, just page after page of freshly minted poems. The heart sinks to s…

Through the burgeoning university network, it was suddenly possible to think of oneself as a national poet, even if the nation turned out to consist entirely o…

Sundance is weird. The movies are weird - you actually have to think about them when you watch them.

If poetry is like an orgasm, an academic can be likened to someone who studies the passion-stains on the bedsheets.