"I was never really much of an avid poetry reader, but for whatever reason Olds really connected with me. I remember reading these poems as a teenager and thinking, ‘Oh, she’s so fucking cool—this is a poem about the Pope’s penis.’ For someone in a very conservative Catholic country, that felt so punk."

"Okay, yeah, I did play Birdy in the film directed by the always amazing Sir Alan Parker. If you saw the movie, you should read the book. The hypnotic magic of Wharton’s prose is pure poetry. After you read the book, watch, or re-watch the film and see how right we actually got it."

"Until she writes another book of poetry, this collection, “Mercury,” for me is the apotheosis of Reines’s output and voice. You can read it like it’s a novel, turning pages until you get to the end, building a sense in your mind of the funny, gorgeous, odd, dirty, gnostic visions of one female gaze."

"This book brought me to poetry; I could never read it enough. Celan’s poems are a radiant reminder of the most desolate events that can attend humankind (i.e. the Holocaust, suicidal despair) and its most resplendent features (the near mystical possibilities of poetic language, of intimacy). “Single counter- / swimmer, you / count them, touch them / all.’”"

"I’ve read all of Poe’s poetry as well as Lord Byron’s and Oscar Wilde’s. He is deep and brooding – you can make many songs from his poems. I like Byron for the same reason – his characters are dark and intense like Lindsey. Oscar Wilde’s work is more flamboyant, but he was a really good storyteller."