“The notion that poetry is only about itself is as appalling to me as the notion that poetry is directly ‘about’ life—that it is a kind of emotional journalism, trivially true to a kind of natural history of feelings. In their misunderstanding of true poetry, the journalist, and the totalitarian sceptic who affirms that nothing is about anything, deserve each other’s company in a no-exit hell. Meanwhile, poetry, which has itself invented the punishments of such a hell, will go on talking to and with itself, about everything else, and the highest human attention will continue to overhear and to learn. Let that be understood.” —John Hollander, “Poems that Talk to Themselves: Some Figurations of Modes of Discourse”