Why Readers Read
“We don’t reread King Lear simply because we can’t remember the story; we reread because we want to feel our familiar world becoming strange again.”
-James Longenbach (The Virtues of Poetry)
“We turn to Shakespeare’s sonnets to learn not about Shakespeare’s life but about our own.”
“No matter how carefully we read or how much attention we bring to bear, a good poem can never be completed entered, completely known.”
-Jane Hirshfield (Nine Gates)