Sometimes You Have To Be

When I Began Writing Poems, It Was In The Late 60s And Early 70s When The Literary And Cultural Atmosphere Was Very Much Affected By What Was Going On In The World, Which Was, In Succession, The Civil Rights Movement, The Antiwar Movement, And The Women's Movement In The 60s, 70s, And Into The Early 80s. And All Of Those Things Affected Me And Affected My Thinking, Particularly The Vietnam War.

[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.

Where Politics Is Concerned, I Think Poets Have To Be Pragmatists, Philosophical Pragmatists.

[cesar] Vallejo Was At Least Metaphorically Killed By Fascist Forces, In The Sense That He Wore Himself Out Raising Funds For The Republicans In The Spanish Civil War And Got Sick And Died.

I Think That What Art Can Do Is Refresh Our Sense Of Justice, Wake Us Up To What We've Taken For Granted In The Political Realm, As In The Other Realms.