Ko Un Is A Crucial Poet For

The Earth Forgives The Previous Year Every Year.

When I Came Into The Job, Funding For The Humanities At The Federal Level Was Being Drastically Cut. This Was The High Tide Of The New Republican Congress.

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.

[osip] Mandelstam Was Killed By Stalinist Forces.

If You Were Making Poetry Out Of Convictions - Trying To Convince Other People - You Were In The Territory Of Rhetoric, And That Wasn't The Territory Of Poetry. I Think That's Pretty Smart. I Think That It Doesn't Need To Be Altogether True, But That Was My Starting Place.