In California In The Early Spring, There

As Poet Laureate, I Was Asked To Be A Spokesman For Literature. Then What I Decided Is I Am A Spokesman For This Other Imagination Of Community - Not The One Showing Up In The Market. Nobody Was Tending To The Way We're Imaginatively Connected To Each Other.

One Of The Interesting Things About The History Of Poetry In The 16th, 17th, And 18th Centuries Is That People Who Read Liked Getting Their Information In Rhyme Just As Much As In Prose. The Genre That We Would Think Of As Nonfiction Often Was Written In Verse In Forms Like The Georgic When People Thought That One Of The Tasks Of Poetry Was Conveying Arguments And Information In A Pleasant Way.

I Got Interested In The Question Of Literacy Because Writers Are Always Moaning About Why More People Don't Read Books. They Long For The Good Old Days When People Read Serious Novels.

The First Book That Really Knocked Me Out Was The 'brothers Karamazov.' I Read It When I Was A Senior In High School.

The Record Of Poetry In The 20th Century Isn't All That Great Anyway. Most Of The Poets Who Weren't Fascists Were Stalinists.