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Quote by Robert Hass

“You only had widespread literacy and books that people could afford in the middle of the 19th century. Did more people read poetry at the turn of the 20th century when there were about fifty million people?”

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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“When Emily Dickinson's poems were published in the 1890s, they were a best-seller; the first book of her poems went through eleven editions of a print run of about 400. So the first print run out of Boston for a first book of poems was 400 for a country that had fifty million people in it. Now a first print run for a first book is maybe 2,000? So that's a five-time increase in the expectation of readership. Probably the audience is almost exactly the same size as it was in 1900, if you just took that one example.”

People Ifs Firsts Book Country Running Millions Audience Five Example Expectations Increase Size Fifty Print Boston Eleven Emily Sellers Readership Best Sellers

Author:Robert Hass

“I think one percent of the population attended college when Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost and Gertrude Stein were at Harvard. Now I think forty percent of Americans have some college education. That's an astronomical change.”

Thinking College Percent Population Forty Harvard Frost College Education Gertrude

Author:Robert Hass

“In the beginning of the 19th century, maybe forty percent of women and fifty percent of men could produce a signature, which meant that they'd had at least three years of education because it was in third grade that people started penmanship in the 19th century. And of course black people could get killed if they got caught teaching themselves to read in some parts of the country.”

People Ifs Men Years Country Three Courses Black Teaching Century Produce Percent Thirds Caught Fifty Grades Forty Black People Three Years 19th Century Signatures Third Grade Penmanship

Author:Robert Hass

“Literature, the study of literature in English in the 19th century, did not belong to literary studies, which had to do with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but instead with elocution and public speaking. So when people read literature, it was to memorize and to recite it.”

People Literature Study Century Greek Latin Public Speaking 19th Century Hebrew Elocution

Author:Robert Hass

“My suspicion is that once you have literacy in place, the readership has not changed very much.”

Changed Suspicion Literacy Readership

Author:Robert Hass

“My first book was published when I was thirty-two, so I think it was basically finished when I was thirty or thirty-one. And so then you think, "Well, what have you failed to do?" And my answer to myself was almost everything.”

Thinking Firsts Wells Two Book Answers Finished Thirty

Author:Robert Hass

“Prose gets divided up into fiction and nonfiction and short fiction and long fiction and autobiographical nonfiction and so on. Poetry can do any of those things except with the added definition of intensified formal pressure.”

Long Can Do Fiction Pressure Definitions Prose Divided Nonfiction Formal Fiction And Nonfiction

Author:Robert Hass

“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.”

Thinking World Writing War Rights Movement Late Civil Rights Atmosphere Affected Vietnam Antiwar 80s Vietnam War Succession Civil Rights Movement Writing Poems

Author:Robert Hass

“Like everyone else, I was at least peripherally involved in the antiwar movement. You woke up every morning feeling tormented about what was going on in Vietnam. It seemed to a lot of us like a catastrophe from the very beginning, inflicting immense and needless suffering on not only the American soldiers but on a lot of innocent peasants who were caught in a Cold War proxy battle - two million Vietnamese died during those years, and you woke up every morning knowing that that was going on.”

“Poetry is a man arguing with himself; rhetoric is a man arguing with others.”

Men Arguing Poetry Is Rhetoric

Author:Robert Hass