"One chance, One life. Make it or screw it up, it's your choice. Don't wait to long or your time will be up."
"Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate."
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Source: Stephen Burt (2009). “Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry”, Graywolf Press
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"Some poets marry a language; some have affairs with it; some treat it as a parent, some as a child, some as an equal, or as a friend."
"In the arts, in places where you're not going to save lives or save species, I think there's no reason to play ball. I can't imagine a serious poet who would want to write or perform for most recent inauguration. I'd be very surprised if there were an inaugural poem, and I can't really imagine what that would be."
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"To do a poem justice, explain what makes it unique; to get a poem noticed, explain what makes it typical."