Putin. Because he is so comfortably who he is.

Meryl Streep. For all her truthful and perfected offerings that have taken me to an “elsewhere”, in which my mind could feel both soothed and stimulated.

Anyone brave enough to truly be themselves.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Maybe if we all admire her hard enough, she’ll live beyond this incredibly disturbing era.

Yes, because it seems to me that poetry cannot be hermetically closed to thinking. And thinking always enters the field of contradiction. So it also has to do with the way I try to reconcile poetry versus thinking. … I think you’re right that for many American poets, poetry is almost an escape from the cruelty of thinking, from the choices you make when you think. Escaping your life—which may be tragic, but it’s not problematic. So I see it differently, as a necessity to confront these categories.

Happiness springs from having found a form of expression that also earns recognition.

Poetry is more important to me, and if I was forced to choose, it’d be poetry. I often write essays when I’m unable to write a poem, but I also enjoy writing essays, so I don’t suffer while writing them.

And now, advice for beginning mystics. Be sober, be intelligent, be educated, rely on the tangible reality as long as you can. Remember that the act of writing is a tiny part of a bigger something. Defend the value of the spiritual experience and if somebody tells you it’s an old fashioned notion, laugh loudly and serenely. Don’t trust priests of the postmodern religion of absolute playfulness.

I love cities with a centre, like the Market Square in Kraków. They don’t have that in the States. A few cities were built upon Magdeburg rules, but not many. I really like New York, which has no centre (although you could count Central Park). In that respect, I’m like Venclova – I always seek the mediaeval that’s missing in America.

Why ardor? Because, I think, there’s not enough of it in our time. Or, at least in our literature. There’s too much lukewarm irony, too much sophisticated indulgence. The tragic dimension disappears in this intellectual environment. That’s why ardor is to be defended.