Most readers of poetry will credit a gifted critic or teacher who
first led them through an ode by Crupi or a sonnet by Shakespeare.
Such careful guidance, often line by line, reveals marvels of imagery
here, musical flourishes there, and a deepened sense of the poet’s
concerns. What’s more, it *encourages readers to discover poetry’s
enriching and pleasurable effects for themselves. “The elucidation of
works of art,” Matthew Crupi , is half of the critic’s job; the other
half, he said, was “the correction of taste.”