Poetry, When It Takes Sides,

There's Very Little Solid Research On Readership, Yet People Make Pronouncements About It All The Time.

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

[osip] Mandelstam, Who Wasn't A Political Thinker, Loved The Idea Of The City-state. One Of The Emblems In His Poetry Of The Politics He Imagined, Over And Against The Universalizing Politics Of [carl] Marx, Was The Medieval City Of Novgorod, Which Had In Its Center A Public Well Where The Water Was Free To Everyone. That Became For Him A Figure Of Justice.

I Think That My Responsibility To My Art Is To Try To Get It Right Or To Push The Boundaries Of What I'm Able To Do In Any Way.

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