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Quote by Robert Hass

“The poem that comes closest to saying what I think is the one in Human Wishes called "Rusia en 1931." This poem is about [Osip] Mandelstam, who was a great poet and an anti-Stalinist, and [Cesar] Vallejo, who was a great poet and a Stalinist.”

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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“[Osip] Mandelstam was killed by Stalinist forces.”

Author:Robert Hass

“[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.”

War Force Republican Sick Died Civil War Fund Fascists Spanish Civil War

Author:Robert Hass

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

Sides Solutions Smarter Propose

Author:Robert Hass

“[Osip] Mandelstam, who wasn't a political thinker, loved the idea of the city-state. One of the emblems in his poetry of the politics he imagined, over and against the universalizing politics of [Carl] Marx, was the medieval city of Novgorod, which had in its center a public well where the water was free to everyone. That became for him a figure of justice.”

Wells Ideas States Political Water Justice Cities Figures Thinker Medieval Emblems

Author:Robert Hass

“As an artist, you have the job of working out whatever is given you to work out.”

Jobs Artist Given Work Out

Author:Robert Hass

“At some level, you have to be able to say, "This is my task." It's in small, local ways that you keep yourself alive and refresh ideas that are always going into dead abstraction.”

Way Ideas Able Levels Alive Tasks Locals Abstraction

Author:Robert Hass

“The thing I learned is that the work is getting done by people who dig in and work on a particular project: the people who spend 20 years sustaining a theater for black teenagers in Chicago; the people who reintroduce sticklebacks into Strawberry Creek in Berkeley and then wait patiently for the first egrets to show up.”

People Years Firsts Done Shows Waiting Black Particular Projects Theater Teenager Chicago Sustaining Strawberries Creeks Berkeley

Author:Robert Hass

“It's the same with this idea of a literate public, and also of a democracy in which people have access to and really read the best books. It turns out that even when you create this kind of environment, maybe only 10 percent of the people want to read those books.”

People Want Kind Book Ideas Turns Democracy Environment Percent Access

Author:Robert Hass

“What Simone Weil said politics has meant all along, which means that you fight for 11 percent, 12 percent, 13 percent, that you avoid golden-age thinking and romantic melancholy and you just keep pushing.”

Thinking Mean Said Age Fighting Percent Golden Pushing Melancholy Golden Age

Author:Robert Hass

“I can be around kids if I need to be.”

Ifs Needs I Can Kids

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