Poetry either pulses with real life or it's just an aborted simulacra. There's no middle ground.

I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.

To be a political poet means simply to be a poet, and any poet worth their salt will be a political animal in their own peculiar way - they have no choice: politics is one of the many fragments we thread into the tapestry of the poem.

In a sense, I never got over Robert Lowell's History. A flawed, infinitely brilliant project I never tire of going back to. It's a modern Inferno, where Lowell plays both Dante and Virgil, guiding us through dozens of illuminating, bitter episodes from human history, all the while managing to hold a mirror to our confused hominid face as it squints at eternity and fails to grasp any of it.

Fear knows no borders, and the terminology of hate has seeped into every aspect of life.

The real question should be: what makes a good political poem? The possible answers to that question are both obvious and yet still a little too subjective for anyone to ever fully agree on. What do I most wish to see in a political poet? Sublimated rebellion.

The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness.