Portal:Poetry/Quotes archive/February 2007

"Without question, British poets are far more at home in their long poetic tradition than North American poets are and can ever be. For that reason, their use of language is more self-conscious, more varied, and more hedonistic. The great British and Irish poets are voluptuaries of words, and North Americans rarely are."

Charles Simic, American poet (from his Preface to New British Poetry, 2004)