When I began writing poems, it was in the late 60s and early 70s when the literary and cultural atmosphere was very much affected by what was going on in the world, which was, in succession, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and the women's movement in the 60s, 70s, and into the early 80s. And all of those things affected me and affected my thinking, particularly the Vietnam War.
Robert HassThe record of poetry in the 20th century isn't all that great anyway. Most of the poets who weren't fascists were Stalinists.
Robert HassWhere politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.
Robert HassIf you ask me if I have this or that principle, tell me what its consequences are, and then I'll tell you whether I have that principle or not.
Robert HassMy suspicion is that once you have literacy in place, the readership has not changed very much.
Robert HassWhen I applied to Stanford, I applied for graduate work in the PhD program, not to the creative writing program, mostly because though I had some vague ambition of becoming a writer and I was trying to write poems and essays and stories, I didn't feel like I was far enough along to submit work to some place and have it judged.
Robert Hass