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Quote by Robert Hass

“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.”

Quote by Robert Hass

Author

Robert Hass is an American poet known for his concise and profound poetry style. His works explore themes of nature, history, and the human condition, and have won numerous literary awards. more

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“One of the interesting things about the history of poetry in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries is that people who read liked getting their information in rhyme just as much as in prose. The genre that we would think of as nonfiction often was written in verse in forms like the Georgic when people thought that one of the tasks of poetry was conveying arguments and information in a pleasant way.”

People Thinking Way Form Interesting Written Century Information Argument Tasks Genre Pleasant Prose Nonfiction Verses Rhyme Interesting Things 18th Century Conveying

Author:Robert Hass

“After Pope, in the beginning of Romanticism, people developed the idea that imagination rather than reason was a special form of knowledge and its best expression is through poetry. Therefore, poetry should not try to do the stuff that mere prose does: convey information or make arguments about ideas.”

People Should Trying Doe Ideas Reason Form Stuff Imagination Special Information Expression Argument Mere Prose Pope Romanticism

Author:Robert Hass

“There are either poems about sex/love or God.”

Author:Robert Hass

“Milton was the first person who really experimented with putting politics into sonnets.”

Firsts Persons Sonnet First Person Milton

Author:Robert Hass

“Someone in Ireland asked me how many Republican poets there were in the U.S., and I thought maybe two. Maybe there are 10,000 poets, and maybe there are two Republicans among them.”

Two Poet Republican Ireland

Author:Robert Hass

“Poetry had in the hands of various people become a place for inconvenient knowledge insofar as it was a place for knowledge at all. But it was a place where you could talk about other kinds of experience than the official version.”

People Kind Hands Various Versions Officials Inconvenient

Author:Robert Hass

“Our history doesn't look at our own violence, the violence in our own past, and we go out and repeat it someplace else.”

Looks Past Violence Repeats

Author:Robert Hass

“We don't know our own story.”

Author:Robert Hass

“Pound described poetry as original research in language, and just as formal experiment in poetry has to try things and has to go too far, so does experiment with writing about politics in poetry and what the politics of poetry is.”

Writing Trying Doe Language Research Originals Experiments Pounds Poetry Is Formal

Author:Robert Hass

“I think that my responsibility to my art is to try to get it right or to push the boundaries of what I'm able to do in any way.”

Thinking Way Trying Art Able Responsibility Art Is Boundaries

Author:Robert Hass