[Cesar] Vallejo was at least metaphorically killed by fascist forces, in the sense that he wore himself out raising funds for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and got sick and died.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

If you read three books a day you couldn't read all the poetry that's being published.

The poem that comes closest to saying what I think is the one in Human Wishes called "Rusia en 1931." This poem is about [Osip] Mandelstam, who was a great poet and an anti-Stalinist, and [Cesar] Vallejo, who was a great poet and a Stalinist.

I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, its their only elective, so this is their one shot. Theyll take the Russian Novel or American Poetry, so I want to give them the high points, the inescapable poets.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

The record of poetry in the 20th century isn't all that great anyway. Most of the poets who weren't fascists were Stalinists.