In the seventies, a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money, no market, and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happene...
Money is a tremendous advantage in just about everything, but in terms of reproduction, if you're a poor woman and you are infertile, it's like too bad, so sad. And if you are a wealthy woman, you can kind of buy whatever you want.
The world, when you look at it, it just can't be random. I mean, it's so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we've seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the preci...
Because we can't escape our ancient hunger to live close to nature, we encircle the house with lawns and gardens, install picture windows, adopt pets and Boston ferns, and scent everything that touches our lives.
I grew up in Belle Harbor, which is in New York City, but it has the most powerful sense of nature and seasons. It wasn't even the beach and the water. I just dreamt about everything that had to do with nature. I read about Thoreau.
Between the ages of 24 and 27, I read Freud's complete works, everything that had been translated into English. It was very stimulating intellectually. But I did not accept his view of neurosis or of human nature.
I am 73 years old. I've seen everything. I've met the kings, the queens, the presidents, I've been around the world. I have one thing that I would like to do: to try to reach peace.
Rwanda was considered a second-class operation; because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they'd accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be ...
I've always romanticized the late '40s and '50s - the cars, jazz, the open roads and lack of pollution. Now there are more vehicles, less hitchhikers, more billboards and power lines and stuff. People wrote wonderful long letters that took months to ...
The power of affinity lies in its mystery: the way it stands outside everything logical; you step into a crowded room and see a stranger, and somehow you feel you know her better than you know the friends you came with.
The wrong people will do everything in their power to guarantee that the wrong political climate will continue. It seems, then, that the wrong people ensure the wrong political climate and the wrong political climate ensures the wrong people. How the...
While also, importantly, not wanting to dumb it down or pretend the days of 'difficult' poetry are over, because we live in a pluralist culture and there's room for 'difficult' poetry alongside rap and everything else. And poetry won't be for everyon...
If you put a real leaf and a silk leaf side by side, you'll see something of the difference between Homer's poetry and anyone else's. There seem to be real leaves still alive in the 'Iliad,' real animals, real people, real light attending everything.
Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.
Arthur Conan Doyle was entranced by the notion of a brilliant detective who can deduce everything a stranger has been up to from the merest clue, and yet can't have a trusting relationship with his closest friend.
People that spend time in a foxhole - they're never going to find that relationship anywhere else again... Everything else pales next to that. When you think about the Second World War vets - more than even the Vietnam vets - there's a brotherhood.
If an artist knows you have respect for their talent - which I have to feel to my core, to sign them - they know that you're in their corner. That doesn't mean you have to be 'mum' on everything; it doesn't mean you can't raise your voice.
Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.
I don't think that science is complete at all. We don't understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don't understand.
In 'Cosmicomics,' I came close to science fiction - I was inspired by cosmological subjects and the workings of the universe and invented a character who was a sort of witness to everything that was happening inside the solar system.
I am generally a very happy and easygoing person. I also believe it's always better to meet people with a smile rather than looking cold, especially when you first meet. It changes everything.
