Where Politics Is Concerned, I Think Poets

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.

The Ideal Of Universal Literacy, In The West Anyway, Was First Of All A Protestant Idea - That Everybody Had To Be Able To Read To Save Their Soul. That Idea Got Transposed Into An Idea Of The Importance Of Literacy For Democratic Citizenship.

The Record Of Poetry In The 20th Century Isn't All That Great Anyway. Most Of The Poets Who Weren't Fascists Were Stalinists.

A Word Is Elegy To What It Signifies.

One Thing We Do Know Is That Mass Literacy Is A Product Of The 19th Century, At Least In English-speaking Cultures - Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, And The U. S.