How much confidence should I have in my own powers of discernment? I have rarely been wrong, but of course I am judging my own taste tautologically. As Charles Barkely puts it in the title of his recent book: "I may be wrong, but I doubt it."

The question of reading in foreign language. I could tell good poetry in Spanish from bad before I actually understood Spanish completely. Same with French and Catalan, which I still don't understand. Did I ever fall for a poet I know consider less than great? Cummings when I was very young. Roethke? Scalapino? (But the portion of her work I like actually is quite good).

They used to say "de gustibus non disputandum est." Yet what else can you really argue about as productively? It's like that other Latin tag: "de mortibus nihil nisi bonum dicendum est." I do have the urge to speak ill of the dead at times!