"The idea that poetry should be devoid of politics is a modern heresy designed to diminish any slight power we might have, to render us irrelevant. It is a notion that poets before about 1940 would have found really weird. Shakespeare's plays are rife with politics; same with Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley, [[Byron, and that's only a few British poets. All the Irish poets had political ideas. Go back to the Romans. Find one without politics! Poets and novelists and memoirists and essayists are all citizens like your plumber or neighborhood cop or clergy. If you don't take an interest, politics may come down on your head, may take away your livelihood, pollute your air, give you cancer from the food you eat, teach your children garbage and false history, make you pay for wars you don't believe in and actually hate."
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Novelists from the United StatesSocial activists20th-century poets from the United StatesFeminists from the United StatesWomen activists from the United States
Original Language: English
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Marge Piercy
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