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I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital t...more

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Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, accordi...more

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(Wallace) Stevens turns to the idea of the weather precisely as the religious idea turns to the idea of God.