Poetry, when it takes sides, when it proposes solutions, isn't any smarter than anybody else.

[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.

Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.

Reading is a gymnasium for the imagination where people can work out, get ready for the shocks of existence. [...] For me, the intimate teachers have not only taught me how to make things, they have represented some qualities of mind and mindfulness that I would like to have.

You 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?

There's very little solid research on readership, yet people make pronouncements about it all the time.

I think it's true to say that in 1973 I could read every book of poems that was published in a year, and I did.