I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.
Robert HassThe first book that really knocked me out was the 'Brothers Karamazov.' I read it when I was a senior in high school.
Robert HassMy suspicion is that once you have literacy in place, the readership has not changed very much.
Robert HassOne thing we do know is that mass literacy is a product of the 19th century, at least in English-speaking cultures - Ireland, England, Scotland, Canada, and the U. S.
Robert HassImages are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.
Robert HassI think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with access to medicine and clean water and education." But I don't think poets have any special insight on how to get there. And the 20th century is a pretty good record of that because so many of the great poets were Stalinists: Vallejo, Neruda, Eluard, Aragon, etc. They wrote their odes to Lenin and Stalin. They glorified some of the most violent and grotesque dictatorships of the 20th century. And a lot of the ones who were not Stalinists were fascists or fascist sympathizers.
Robert Hass