If he is a worth a damn, any poet teaching poetry writing constantly and often without knowing it is saying to the student, “Write the way I do. That’s the best sound you can make.” The student who shakes this, who goes on to his auditory obsessions and who writes the way the teacher never told him, may become a poet.

– from the chapter “Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching” in The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo