Karl Shapiro

"Words like “spokesman” and “touchstone” took me completely by surprise. For very real reasons. Not only had I been out of the country when my first two books were published, but I have always been “ou…"

"I was at Notre Dame just a few years ago, and one of the professors there said to me, “You don’t know what effect In Defense of Ignorance had. It ripped the whole academic community in half!” I’m glad…"

"I feel that after working a long time, I’ve really learned how to do what I do. I enjoy it. I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than turning out a good stanza or a good piece of prose. And …"

"The public has an unusual relationship to the poet: It doesn't even know that he is there."

"As a third generation American I grew up with the obsessive idea of personal liberty which engrosses all Americans except the oldest and richest families."

"I had never met a poet in my life before winning the Pulitzer in 1945. Well, that’s not strictly true; when I went to Johns Hopkins in 1939, W. H. Auden gave a private reading to a group of special li…"

"Whitman to me is the most fascinating of American poets. Whitman started to write the great poetry from scratch after he had written all that junk for newspapers, the sentimental lyrical poems. All of…"

"I always had this feeling — I’ve heard other Jews say — that when you can’t find any other explanation for Jews, you say, “Well, they are poets.” There are a great many similarities. This is a theme r…"