Throughout John Ciardi’s work on poetry, here as elsewhere, we encounter the measured language of his formal challenges to poets, teachers, and students, as in these statements from the pages of Ciardi Himself:
The craft of poetry is not easy. It is better than easy. It is joyously difficult.
Language haunts the writer. Words, sentences, rhythms are nor things to the writer; they are presences.
The bad writer is easily self-persuaded to take the power of the starting emotion as a measure of the writing.
I would rather be confused by Shakespeare than clarified by my broker.