"Despite his dodgy politics, Yeats remains an inspiration for his genius and the simple fact that the older he got, the better he wrote. “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” and “Politics”, both written while he was in his seventies, are some of the most memorable poems in the language: Now that my ladder’s gone / I must lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. Top that, young bastards."

"If anyone ever asks if an artist should be primarily concerned with aesthetics or politics, answer with three words: “Yep” and “Grace Paley.” Her funny, fond, wild energy produced stunningly beautiful stories, poems, and essays, and a lifetime of passionate social engagement. Pair this with the lovely documentary (Grace Paley: Collected Shorts) by Lily Rivlin, for a sense of who Grace Paley was, and why it’s so important to keep her memory and work alive in our time."

"Niedecker lived most of her life in Blackhawk Island, a remote and marshy setting in Wisconsin, where she scrubbed hospital floors and cared for her deaf mother while writing some of the most quixotic, minimalist, moving poems of the 20th century. I know many by heart, like this one: “My friend tree / I sawed you down / but I must attend / an older friend / the sun,” but I still wouldn’t want to be without the hard copy."

"This collection of devotional songs (or poems) is a very moving and insightful read. Tagore makes you feel his own sense of wonder at the ways in which he feels connected to God and also his distance from him in very personal and original ways. Will Oldham and Mick Turner set some of these to music and I have been very inspired by their readings. Going back to the original works again and again over the years is very rewarding."

"Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were all constantly responding to, or writing back against, the Homeric poems. The Athenian tragedy that is maybe most deeply engaged with rewriting and recreating “The Odyssey,” is Euripides' “Helen”, a provocative, brainy, funny play about the myth that Helen never went to Troy in the first place—the same myth that is central to HD's brilliant sequence “Helen in Egypt.” I translated the Euripides “Helen,” for a collection of Greek tragedy translations, “The Greek Plays.”"