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 of English departments.

A deadly streak of passivity of a kind that sometimes goes with perfectionism.

The one kind of society that the Church cannot adjust to is no society at all, i.e., a setup where community has become so fragmented that a communal religion …

Off she'd go to the hospital, a place I believe she secretly liked because they treat you like a child there.

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…

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

I hate bainting, and boetry too! Neither the one nor the other ever did any good.