Smaller and smaller

"I think I mentioned this in another interview, but I can't remember if I said it or whether I read it somewhere. And this is not so much showing your poems to people as talking about the writers who have influenced you as you're sort of growing up. These writers are like people standing on a shore waving at you as you're on a boat pulling away from the shore. They keep getting smaller and smaller and waving and smiling in the distance."

John Ashbery