Quotes from Joseph Stroud

I've been thinking of a poet who is dying in New York, how these days she reads her beloved Dante, perhaps looking for something to frame what is happening to her. And whom, I wonder, do I turn to? Whom in this century do I read as if my life depended upon it?

There are some who believe the poem can be a guide, a Virgil, can be a window into a way of being. Do I believe this? Does anyone believe this anymore?