Poetry Is A Fireplace In Summer Or

One Thing We Do Know Is That Mass Literacy Is A Product Of The 19th Century, At Least In English-speaking Cultures - Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, And The U. S.

In The Beginning Of The 19th Century, Maybe Forty Percent Of Women And Fifty Percent Of Men Could Produce A Signature, Which Meant That They'd Had At Least Three Years Of Education Because It Was In Third Grade That People Started Penmanship In The 19th Century. And Of Course Black People Could Get Killed If They Got Caught Teaching Themselves To Read In Some Parts Of The Country.

Like Everyone Else, I Was At Least Peripherally Involved In The Antiwar Movement. You Woke Up Every Morning Feeling Tormented About What Was Going On In Vietnam. It Seemed To A Lot Of Us Like A Catastrophe From The Very Beginning, Inflicting Immense And Needless Suffering On Not Only The American Soldiers But On A Lot Of Innocent Peasants Who Were Caught In A Cold War Proxy Battle - Two Million Vietnamese Died During Those Years, And You Woke Up Every Morning Knowing That That Was Going On.

I Think That Were I In The Middle Of An Obsession To Write About, Say, Sudden Oak Death In California Or My Grandchildren Or Time And Memory And How They Look When You Get To Be In Your Sixties, And I Thought, "well, Yes But People Are Dying Every Day In Baghdad," I Wouldn't Feel Guilty About Not Writing About Baghdad If I Didn't Have Any Good Ideas About How To Write About It.

Nostalgia Locates Desire In The Past Where It Suffers No Active Conflict And Can Be Yearned Toward Pleasantly.