People who buy 'The National Enquirer' would buy poetry. They should be given a choice. I'm absolutely serious.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.
Literary readings aren't going to shake their reputation as the added-fibre of our entertainment diet until the people who organize and participate in them snap out of this mentality.
The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
I'm not sure about prizes. I don't know how far you can seriously raise public consciousness about poetry. Having a 'National Poetry Day,' like a 'No Smoking Day,' is just shelving the problem. Things which should by rights be every day are not best served by these things.
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.
I don't think anybody reads a book of poetry front to back. Editors and reviewers only. I don't think anybody else does.
Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a 'read,' commits an anthropological crime, in the first place against himself.
I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.
People want poetry. They need poetry. They get it. They don't want fancy work.
For whatever reason, people, including very well-educated people or people otherwise interested in reading, do not read poetry.