"In oral culture, there is no separation between the poet and the poem. The author is a performer who vocalizes the words. Creation and performance a… - Dana Gioia

Society has already told us that poetry is dead. Let's build a funeral pyre out of the desiccated conventions piled around us and watch the ancient, spangle-feathered, unkillable phoenix rise from the ashes.

What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility.

To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer’s identity.