I was aware that a quarter of the children in the country are born in poverty, and that the condition of public schools in California was disastrous.
Robert HassIt's clear that there has to be some play between the vitality of invention in economic life and some regulation of it, and in some ways the great ideological wars of the 20th century that cost so many lives had to do with whether to have managed economies directed by government or economies directed by the free movement of capital, which is only partially subject to government regulation.
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 HassYou only had widespread literacy and books that people could afford in the middle of the 19th century. Did more people read poetry at the turn of the 20th century when there were about fifty million people?
Robert Hass