As An Artist, You Have The Job

The Professionalization Of Poetry, Or The Balkanization, Has Come Out Of The Fact That When You Apply To Most Creative Writing Programs, You Have To Choose Your Genre.

I Got Interested In The Question Of Literacy Because Writers Are Always Moaning About Why More People Don't Read Books. They Long For The Good Old Days When People Read Serious Novels.

I Am Talking About Poetry. It's Like That Line From [john] Yeats: I Go Back To "where All The Ladders Start/ In The Foul Rag And Bone Shop Of The Heart."

It'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.

There Are Instances: [henry David] Thoreau Read [john] Wordsworth, [john] Muir Read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt Read Muir, And You Got National Parks. It Took A Century For This To Happen, For Artistic Values To Percolate Down To Where Honoring The Relation Of People's Imagination To The Land, Or Beauty, Or To Wild Things, Was Issued In Legislation.