Longing, We Say, Because Desire

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.

Another Problem About Writing About Politics In The "age Of Globalization" Is That So Much Of The Violence In The Form Of War And Also In The Forms Of Institutional Violence - Sweatshops, Child Labor, Victimization Of People Economically - Happens Elsewhere And Out Of Sight. And When We Do Know About It And Need To Witness It, It's Always Mediated By Images Of One Kind Or Another, So You're Kind Of Stuck Trying To Write About What It's Like Trying To Be You Living Your Life Thinking About And Experiencing This Stuff In That Way.

Fiction Writers Have Their Own World, And Poets Have Their Own World, And Literary Criticism Has Sort Of Passed Over Into Cultural Studies In The University, And So On. They Seem More Disconnected From Each Other Than They Did When I First Began To Write.

Nostalgia Locates Desire In The Past Where It Suffers No Active Conflict And Can Be Yearned Toward Pleasantly.

Sometimes You Have To Be Less Ashamed About Writing A Bad Poem Than You Would Be About Being Silent.