The Government, The State, They're Just Objects

In America, A Metrical Poem Is Likely To Conjure Up The Idea Of The Sort Of Poet Who Wears Ties And Lunches At The Faculty Club. In Russia It Suggests The Moral Force Of An Art Practiced Against The Greatest Personal Odds, As A Discipline, Solitary And Intense.

Love Itself Is The Most Elitist Of Passions. It Acquires Its Stereoscopic Substance And Perspective Only In The Context Of Culture, For It Takes Up More Place In The Mind Than It Does In Bed. Outside Of That Setting It Falls Flat Into One-dimensional Fiction.

By Failing To Read Or Listen To Poets, Society Dooms Itself To Inferior Modes Of Articulation, Those Of The Politician, The Salesman, Or The Charlatan. In Other Words, It Forfeits Its Own Evolutionary Potential. For What Distinguishes Us From The Rest Of The Animal Kingdom Is Precisely The Gift Of Speech. Poetry Is Not A Form Of Entertainment And In A Certain Sense Not Even A Form Of Art, But It Is Our Anthropological, Genetic Goal. Our Evolutionary, Linguistic Beacon.

On The Whole, Love Comes With The Speed Of Light; Separation, With That Of Sound.

A Poet Is A Combination Of An Instrument And A Human Being In One Person, With The Former Gradually Taking Over The Latter. The Sensation Of This Takeover Is Responsible For Timbre; The Realization Of It, For Destiny.