I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.
The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too - Robert Hass
The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too
- Robert Hass
I don't know that I had a sense that there was such a thing as "the poetry world" in the 1960s and early 70s. Maybe poets did, but for me as an onloo… - Robert Hass
I don't know that I had a sense that there was such a thing as "the poetry world" in the 1960s and early 70s. Maybe poets did, but for me as an onloo…
The Earth forgives the previous year every year. - Robert Hass
The Earth forgives the previous year every year.
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 … - Robert Hass
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 …
Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free. - Robert Hass
Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.
Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day. - Robert Hass
Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.
I thought it was irrelevant to talk about what a wonderful thing poetry was if you didn't teach people to read. - Robert Hass
I thought it was irrelevant to talk about what a wonderful thing poetry was if you didn't teach people to read.
I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment than en… - Robert Hass
I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment than en…
A word is elegy to what it signifies. - Robert Hass
A word is elegy to what it signifies.
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