By Emily Temple
On the obligations of the poet:
I don’t know that poetry itself has any
universal or unique obligations. It’s a great ongoing human activity of
making, over different times, under different circumstances. For a poet,
in this time we call “ours,” in this whirlpool of disinformation and
manufactured distraction? Not to fake it, not to practice a false
innocence, not pull the shades down on what’s happening next door or
across town. Not to settle for shallow formulas or lazy nihilism or
stifling self-reference.
Nothing “obliges” us to behave as
honorable human beings except each others’ possible examples of honesty
and generosity and courage and lucidity, suggesting a greater social
compact.
(From a 2011 interview with The Paris Review)
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