"Poetry makes nothing happen," said W. H. Auden, but there are those of us who disagree. Poetry can tear at the heart with its claws, make the neural… - Alicia Ostriker

all art is political. Either it is politicial or it is wallpaper. I like to say that poetry which takes no risk is like wallpaper. It makes a pleasant background...Homer is political. Dante is political. Shakespeare is political. Milton is political. But it is usually only the art that comes from dissenting or revolutionary movements that gets called political...Of course, art is not merely political-it is many other things too. That's what makes the difference between art and propaganda. Propaganda is good for the moment, but art stays good, stays fresh, when the moment has passed. Tsvetayeva is a beautiful example. So is Akhmatova.

The greatest writers in the world are always approaching genderlessness, because there is no nook or cranny of their natures, their experiences, their dream lives, that does not get swept into their art. They do not arrive at genderlessness. Virginia Woolf, who said Shakespeare did, was thinking wishfully. Even Whitman, though he is "of the female as well as the male," is discernably closer to being a gent than a lady. For men and women in the world are socially assigned such very different degrees of power, such very different behavior, and artists must hold a mirror to the world as well as their own souls. (Afterward)

I’d like to see new codes of morals that have less to do with respecting authority and berating sin, and more to do with human kindness and the celebration of both love and sexuality. I’d like to see the end of dualism. I’d like to forget about heaven and hell and concentrate on trying to improve life for everyone on this earth. I’d like everyone to recognize that worshiping a God in man’s image is idolatry. I would like every feminist to see herself as a midwife engaged in the task of re-birthing God the Mother who was swallowed by God the Father in pre-history.