You never miss what you've never had. I never had any other life. I didn't know any other life.
It would be nice if all the Republicans could put poetry in a little box and put the box under the bed and sit on it, but they can't.
The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.
Just as I wonder whether it's going to die, the orchid blossoms and I can't explain why it moves my heart, why such pleasure comes from one small bud on a long spindly stem, one blood red gold flower opening at mid-summer, tiny, perfect in its hour.
If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.
Poetry teaches us things that cannot be learned in prose, such as certain kinds of irony or the importance of the unsaid. The most important element of any poem is the part that is left unsaid. So the poetry frames the experience that lies beyond naming.
Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.
(The psuedoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success. )
And, partly, I had found that theory-structure was a superpower in helping one get what one wanted. As I had early discovered in school wherein I had excelled without labor, guided by theory, while many others, without mastery of theory failed despite monstrous effort. Better theory I thought had always worked for me and, if now available could make me acquire capital and independence faster and better assist everything I loved.
Why do you think there's so many thousands of Cuban doctors in Florida? Because they all had to leave Cuba. Because doctors were rich, and so the [Fidel] Castro government began confiscating all their property. Not much different from this plan to tax you at a higher rate if you and your family, you and your spouse make over $250,000. You're rich! So they must confiscate more your money.
The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.