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I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers.

Poetry is a lousy form of activism; it doesn't really change much. And maybe we can point to one or two historical times when a poem has started a revolution or a rebellion or an uprising, but it doesn't happen that often, and if you put the number of poems next to the number of political acts, it would be pretty slim.

Poetry can tell us about what's going on in our lives - not only our personal but our social and political lives.

A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously approvable by mutually disapproving groups.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.