Karl Shapiro Quote

Words like spokesman and touchstone took me completely by surprise. For very real reasons. Not only had I been out of the country when my first two books were published, but I have always been out of the country in the sense that I never had what ordinarily is thought of as a literary life, or been part of a literary group. What psychiatrists nowadays call a support system. I never had any of that and still don't.

Paris Review interview (1986)