I've been asked whether I only study poetry. "That's all you do?" My feeling is that there are plenty of people who study the novel. The novel doesn't really need me: it will sink or fall on its own. It outnumbers poetry by a huge margin. Poetry, however, does need me. I can make an actual difference here, even if on a very modest scale.

I read Catch-22, Robert P. Warren's The Cave, and The Lord of the Rings over and over again as a kid. I've read thousands of pages of Galdós. I have my prose loves too, like Forgetting Elena or At Swim-Two-Birds or Visions of Gerard. I've paid my prose dues. Show me the prose specialist who's read as much poetry as I've read prose, and then we'll talk.