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,… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
The Vietnam War and the Iraq war, in different ways, both made me feel like I could not not address them. I'm very doubtful about the usefulness of poetry to do that. — 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
