The reviewers of fifty years ago knew that their primary loyalty must lie not with their fellow poets or publishers but with the reader. Consequently they reported their reactions with scrupulous honesty even when their opinions might lose them literary allies and writing assignments. In discussing new poetry they addressed a wide community of educated readers. Without talking down to their audience, they cultivated a public idiom. Prizing clarity and accessibility they avoided specialist jargon and pedantic displays of scholarship. They also tried, as serious intellectuals should but specialists often do not, to relate what was happening in poetry to social, political, and artistic trends. They charged modern poetry with cultural importance and made it the focal point of their intellectual discourse.

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…

Poetry is the art of using words charged with their utmost meaning. A society whose intellectual leaders lose the skill to shape, appreciate, and understand th…

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 ind…

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be 'damned if you do, and damned if you don't.'

You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.

Not long ago the head of what should be a strictly scientific department in one of the major universities commented on the odd (and ominous) phenomenon that pe…