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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.
I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.
I've never seen a worse situation than that of young writers in the United States. The publishing business in North America is so commercialized.
American poetry is this country's greatest patrimony. It takes a stranger to see some things clearly. This is one of them, and I am that stranger.
There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.
American poetry to me is a sort of relentless, nonstop sermon on human autonomy.
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.
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.
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.