My Lost Poets Quotes

“Poetry is like truth: on one level it simply is, and as such it is available to anyone. Anyone, that is, who will spend himself or herself to receive it, for no one has an inherent right to truth. One must earn it, and one earns the truth by honoring it, by treasuring it in a thousand daily acts, by shaping one’s life to both give it and receive it. The emperors have their treasures, and we have ours. [Larry] Levis said it perfectly when he spoke in the voice of Whitman, which is the voice of American poetry; ‘To find me now will cost you everything.”
― Philip Levine, My Lost Poets: A Life in Poetry