My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are … - John Ashbery

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I do not pretend to write much of a letter. You know under what circumstances I am writing.

John Ashbery

My feeling is that most political poetry is preaching to the choir, and that the people who are going to make the political changes in our lives are not the people who read poetry, unfortunately. Poetry not specifically aimed at political revolution, though, is beneficial in moving people toward that kind of action, as well as other kinds of action. A good poem makes me want to be active on as many fronts as possible.

Action, Kind, Lives, Moving, People, Political Revolution

Same Author Quotes

Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It's sort of the way dreams come to us and the way that we get knowledge from them, through television, old movies, which I watch a lot of. Lines of dialogue suddenly seem to be part of a poem.

Dream, Dreams, Mind, Old Movie, Watch

The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.

Attention, Life, Secret, Small, Soul

I always thought that writing poetry was in itself a political act.

Act, Poetry, Political, Writing, Writing Poetry

And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.

Art, Country, Meanwhile, People, Powerful

I feel that poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.

Feels, Healing, Poetry, Stream, Streams, Time