Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.
From Joseph Brodsky
My idea is simply - is very simple - is that the books of poetry should be published in far greater volume and be distributed in far greater volume, in far more substantial manner. You can sell in supermarkets very cheaply. In paperbacks. You can sell in drugstores.
This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.
An ethical man doesn't need a consensus of his allies in order to act against something he finds reprehensible.
Prison is essentially a shortage of space made up for by a surplus of time; to an inmate, both are palpable.
Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.
No man-made system is perfect, and the system of oppression is no exception. It is subject to fatigue, to cracks, which you are the likelier to discover the longer your term.
I'm no parasite. I'm a poet who will bring honor and glory to his country.
I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is the richest in the world.
By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation: those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan... In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential.
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