“Milton was the first person who really experimented with putting politics into sonnets.” Quote by 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.” TwoPoetRepublicanIreland 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.” PeopleKindHandsVariousVersionsOfficialsInconvenient 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.” LooksPastViolenceRepeats 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.” WritingTryingDoeLanguageResearchOriginalsExperimentsPoundsPoetry IsFormal 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.” ThinkingWayTryingArtAbleResponsibilityArt IsBoundaries Author:Robert Hass
“I think that were I in the middle of an obsession to write about, say, sudden oak death in California or my grandchildren or time and memory and how they look when you get to be in your sixties, and I thought, "Well, yes but people are dying every day in Baghdad," I wouldn't feel guilty about not writing about Baghdad if I didn't have any good ideas about how to write about it.” PeopleIfsThinkingFeelsWritingWellsLooksIdeasMemoriesMiddleDyingObsessionGuiltyCaliforniaGood IdeasSixtyGrandchildrenOaksBaghdadMy Grandchildren Author:Robert Hass
“Sometimes you have to be less ashamed about writing a bad poem than you would be about being silent.” WritingSometimesWould BeSilentAshamed Author:Robert Hass
“Another problem about writing about politics in the "age of globalization" is that so much of the violence in the form of war and also in the forms of institutional violence - sweatshops, child labor, victimization of people economically - happens elsewhere and out of sight. And when we do know about it and need to witness it, it's always mediated by images of one kind or another, so you're kind of stuck trying to write about what it's like trying to be you living your life thinking about and experiencing this stuff in that way.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWayNeedsWritingTryingKindChildrenWarProblemHappensAgeFormStuffViolenceLaborSightStuckWitnessBe YouElsewhereLive Your LifeGlobalizationVictimizationChild LaborSweatshops Author:Robert Hass
“One way to escape the universe in which everything is a kind of media cartoon is to write about the part of your life that doesn't feel like a cartoon, and how the cartoon comes into it.” WayFeelsWritingKindUniverseMediaOne WayCartoon Author:Robert Hass