Ko Un Is A Crucial Poet For

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.

Poetry Is A Fireplace In Summer Or A Fan In Winter.

The Problem With Describing Poets As Legislators Is That At That Level Of Politics - Politics As Political Invention - Poets Have No Special Skills And Are Not Apt To.

When I Was In High School In The '50s You Were Supposed To Be An Elvis Presley, A James Dean, A Marlon Brando Or A Kingston Trio Type In A Button-down Shirt Headed For The Fraternities At Stanford Or Cal.

Fiction Writers Have Their Own World, And Poets Have Their Own World, And Literary Criticism Has Sort Of Passed Over Into Cultural Studies In The University, And So On. They Seem More Disconnected From Each Other Than They Did When I First Began To Write.