In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets' nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.
Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.
If you rank me with the lyric poets, my exalted head shall strike the stars.
[Lat., Quod si me lyricis vatibus inseris,
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.]