Now, although it has come to seem in our time that we are deluged by communications, by the sounds—better, the noise—of voices pouring words out over the planet and making one contemplate an imaginary project like building a soundproof Noah's Ark that could float above the confused, tumultuous waves of babble that are drowning the world, I think it better to recall from time to time that reading poetry, listening to poetry, is something utterly different from attending to the communications of journalism and mass literature and entertainment that permeate our waking and even our sleeping lives.