I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.
“Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.”
“I ask you to stand by my side in the next five years. We shall live a good life in a Romania of all Romanians.”