Art and nature are imitations, not of each other, but of the same third thing both images of the real, the spectral and vivid reality that employs al… - Muriel Rukeyser

There are ways in which poetry reaches the people who, for one reason or another, are walled off from it. Arriving in diluted forms, serving to point up an episode, to give to a climax an intensity that will carry it without adding heaviness, to travel toward the meaning of a work of graphic art, nevertheless poetry does arrive. And in the socially accepted forms, we may see the response and the fear, expressed without reserve, since they are expressed during enjoyment which has all the sanctions of society. Close to song, poetry reaches us in the music we admit: the radio songs that flood our homes, the juke-boxes, places where we drink and eat, the songs of work for certain occupations, the stage-songs we hear as ticketed audience.

To be against war is not enough, it is hardly a beginning.

There are the questions of love and religion that have to enter, along with the social bonds between us, into everything we do.