Poetry Is A Fireplace In Summer Or

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.

I Think It's True To Say That In 1973 I Could Read Every Book Of Poems That Was Published In A Year, And I Did.

In California We Froze Property Taxes, School Size Increased, Test Scores Declined, And There Was A Massive Middle-class White Flight To Private Schools. We're Turning Into Victorian England At A Very Rapid Rate.

As Poet Laureate, I Was Asked To Be A Spokesman For Literature. Then What I Decided Is I Am A Spokesman For This Other Imagination Of Community - Not The One Showing Up In The Market. Nobody Was Tending To The Way We're Imaginatively Connected To Each Other.

I Got Interested In The Question Of Literacy Because Writers Are Always Moaning About Why More People Don't Read Books. They Long For The Good Old Days When People Read Serious Novels.