Sam Hamill: Poetry, Politics, and Zen

If only we could touch the things of this world at their center, if we could only hear tiny leaves of birch struggling toward April, then we would know.

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Nothing will change until we demolish the “we-they” mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal.

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The only thing we all agree on, virtually every poet in this country, is that this Administration is really frightening, and we want something done about it.

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Poetry transcends the nation-state. Poetry transcends government. It brings the traditional concept of power to its knees. I have always believed poetry to be an eternal conversation in which the ancient poets remain contemporary, a conversation inviting us into other languages and cultures even as poetry transcends language and culture, returning us again and again to primal rhythms and sounds.

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My ethics, my sense of morality…