Poetry Is A Man Arguing

My Suspicion Is That Once You Have Literacy In Place, The Readership Has Not Changed Very Much.

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.

If You're Imaginatively Responsible To The Place You Live In, You Understand The Watershed.

Fiction Writers Have Their Own World, And Poets Have Their Own World, And Literary Criticism Has Sort Of Passed Over Into Cultural Studies In The University, And So On. They Seem More Disconnected From Each Other Than They Did When I First Began To Write.

Haiku Is An Art That Seems Dedicated To Making People Pay Attention To The Preciousness And Particularity Of Every Moment Of Existence. I Think That Poetry Can Do That.