Poetry Is A Fireplace In Summer Or

Poetry, When It Takes Sides, When It Proposes Solutions, Isn't Any Smarter Than Anybody Else.

The Problem With Describing Poets As Legislators Is That At That Level Of Politics - Politics As Political Invention - Poets Have No Special Skills And Are Not Apt To.

Someone In Ireland Asked Me How Many Republican Poets There Were In The U.s., And I Thought Maybe Two. Maybe There Are 10,000 Poets, And Maybe There Are Two Republicans Among Them.

If You Were Making Poetry Out Of Convictions - Trying To Convince Other People - You Were In The Territory Of Rhetoric, And That Wasn't The Territory Of Poetry. I Think That's Pretty Smart. I Think That It Doesn't Need To Be Altogether True, But That Was My Starting Place.

You Only Had Widespread Literacy And Books That People Could Afford In The Middle Of The 19th Century. Did More People Read Poetry At The Turn Of The 20th Century When There Were About Fifty Million People?