"I loved his openness to receive influences. He was not a poet who said, "I'm an American poet, I'm going to be peculiar, and I'm going to have my own voice which is going to be different from anybody's voice." He was a poet who said, "I'm going to take in everything." He had a kind of multifaceted imagination; he was not embarrassed to admit that he was influenced even in his middle-age by William Carlos Williams, or by François Villon, or by Boris Pasternak, all at the same time. That was wonderful."
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Derek Walcott interview with The Paris Review (1985)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Lowell
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Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell, IV (March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet.
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