As far as the busi­ness of rea­ding – edu­ca­tion – I think that unfor­tu­na­te­ly the uni­ver­si­ties hin­der it rather than help it usual­ly because they make rea­ding and edu­ca­tion a chore rather than some­thing that you enjoy doing. But cer­tain­ly I think that any poet who is going to write decent poe­try in this modern age where we don’t have the bal­lad tra­di­tion any­more, where you could get by with prac­ti­cal­ly no fur­ni­ture, and let’s squat on the floor, ma’am, and that sort of thing – I do think that just the ave­rage young poet ought to read as many books as he can and they ought to not be in paper­back. They ought to be books that nobody’s read and that aren’t fashio­nable, and things which are about ani­mal hus­ban­dry or what saline solu­tions are like with octo­puses or some­thing like that. It doesn’t real­ly mat­ter too much. But he cer­tain­ly ought to have more stock in his mind than he has.