"It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his..." — W. H. Auden

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.

A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.