Imagination Runs Through The Places Where We

I Think That The Job Of Poetry, Its Political Job, Is To Refresh The Idea Of Justice, Which Is Going Dead In Us All The Time.

In The Beginning Of The 19th Century, Maybe Forty Percent Of Women And Fifty Percent Of Men Could Produce A Signature, Which Meant That They'd Had At Least Three Years Of Education Because It Was In Third Grade That People Started Penmanship In The 19th Century. And Of Course Black People Could Get Killed If They Got Caught Teaching Themselves To Read In Some Parts Of The Country.

Writing Is An Incessant Process Of Discovery.

I Thought It Was Irrelevant To Talk About What A Wonderful Thing Poetry Was If You Didn't Teach People To Read.

At Some Level, You Have To Be Able To Say, "this Is My Task." It's In Small, Local Ways That You Keep Yourself Alive And Refresh Ideas That Are Always Going Into Dead Abstraction.