I Think It's True To Say That

A Movement Got Started For Common Schools, And By The End Of The 19th Century, 91 Percent Of Americans Could Read And Write.

The First Book That Really Knocked Me Out Was The 'brothers Karamazov.' I Read It When I Was A Senior In High School.

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 Onlooker And Reader Of Poetry, Poetry Felt Like It Was Part Of A Larger Literary World. I Mean, Even The Phrase "the Poetry World" Reflects A Sort Of Balkanization Of American Literary And Artistic Life That Has To Some Extent Happened Since Then.

[osip] Mandelstam, Who Wasn't A Political Thinker, Loved The Idea Of The City-state. One Of The Emblems In His Poetry Of The Politics He Imagined, Over And Against The Universalizing Politics Of [carl] Marx, Was The Medieval City Of Novgorod, Which Had In Its Center A Public Well Where The Water Was Free To Everyone. That Became For Him A Figure Of Justice.

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 Poetry Can Do That.