Someone in Ireland asked me how many Republican poets there were in the U.S., and I thought maybe two. Maybe there are… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
“August is dust here. Drought stuns the road, but juice gathers in the berries.” — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
The problem with describing poets as legislators is that at that level of politics - politics as political invention - poets have… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
I teach a lecture course on American poetry to as many as 150 students. For a lot of them, it's their only… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
I think that poets can say, "What we want is for everybody on earth to wake up free from fear and with… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
Do poets have any insight into what's the right ratio? I doubt it, but I think that they can be awake to… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists. — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
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… — Robert Hass Copy Share
All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking — Robert Hass Copy Share
Poetry, when it takes sides, when it proposes solutions, isn't any smarter than anybody else. — Robert Hass Copy Share
When I was in college, I lost my scholarship one year. I had enough money for tuition, but not room and board. So I… — Robert Hass Copy Share
After Pope, in the beginning of Romanticism, people developed the idea that imagination rather than reason was a special form of knowledge and its… — Robert Hass Copy Share
They are the kinds of things that make us a community: attachment to place, attachment to local arts traditions, the ability to read literature,… — Robert Hass Copy Share
I think that were I in the middle of an obsession to write about, say, sudden oak death in California or my grandchildren or… — Robert Hass Copy Share
I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment… — Robert Hass Copy Share
If you were making poetry out of convictions - trying to convince other people - you were in the territory of rhetoric, and that… — Robert Hass Copy Share
Milton was the first person who really experimented with putting politics into sonnets. — Robert Hass Copy Share
When I came into the job, funding for the humanities at the federal level was being drastically cut. This was the high tide of… — Robert Hass Copy Share
One may prefer spring and summer to autumn and winter, but preference is hardly to the point. The earth turns, and we live in… — Robert Hass Copy Share
“ A Faint Music by Robert Hass Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead… — Robert Hass Copy Share
“When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine… — Robert Hass Copy Share
