In America it's a particular problem. The artist, particularly the poet, is just unacknowledged; if I can use that dumb word. Maybe it has always been that way. Maybe the only way he or she can be acknowledged is to be connected with some movement, be it religious or political.

Gerald Stern

Categorized in : America Religious Artist

All of a sudden I understand why I like Aliki Barnstones poems so much. They remind me of the one she has studied most - shall we call her her master - Emily Dickinson. Not in the forms, not, as such, in the music, and not in the references; but in that weird intimacy, that eerie closeness, that absolute confession of soul.... In Barnstone, too, the two worlds are intensely present, and the voice moves back and forth between them. She has the rare art of distance and closeness. It gives her her fine music, her wisdom, her form. She is a fine poet.

Gerald Stern

distance art moving

I will look at the footprints going in and out of the water and dream up a small blue good to talk to.

Gerald Stern

hiking journey dream

Bruce Smith is a tender master of music, and beautiful lines, and complex thoughts, and fascinating wild personal and cultural references.

Gerald Stern

lines masters beautiful

Sometimes a person thinks he's attached to one thing and he's really attached to something else.

Gerald Stern

persons sometimes thinking

You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.

Gerald Stern

notebook flower home

I feel that my job, as an artist, is to disturb the peace. And to disturb it intellectually, linguistically, politically and literally.

Gerald Stern

artist feels jobs

There are hundreds of prisons - sexual, political, cultural. But being a prisoner also gives you impetus.

Gerald Stern

political prison giving

The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don't seem to have a subject. I don't totally understand that.

Gerald Stern

poet artist looks

Tolstoy is one of the greatest artists in history, but he finally became infused with the idea of the uselessness of art. He gave himself to his own kind of religion.

Gerald Stern

kind ideas art

I've spent hundreds of hours working over words, and part of me, a large part of me, has a desire to do something else.

Gerald Stern

hours desire

I've been active in a minor way compared to professional activists. I was a labor leader. I led two labor strikes. I've manipulated boards. I've led marches. I've done many things.

Gerald Stern

boards leader two

I've been trying to come to terms with what I am and what I do and what I believe in. And I see that I'm not happy with - well, it's almost as if being a poet is not enough for me. It's too late for me to do more now. I did what I could in a small way. I did it as theater, too, to be honest.

Gerald Stern

too-late trying believe

I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.

Gerald Stern

political writing believe

It's just that very few poets disturb the peace to any degree.

Gerald Stern

degrees poet

I floundered in my twenties. Though I wore a long scarf. And when I got to be thirty I got a job at Temple University in Philadelphia. I worked there for seven years, and I finally got fired, mostly for political reasons.

Gerald Stern

philadelphia jobs years

Political means so many things. We are political willy-nilly. Political poetry is an easy invitation to disaster. But then so is love poetry. But we are a little more patient with bad love poetry.

Gerald Stern

political littles mean

Humor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.

Gerald Stern

tragedy views silly

Oppressed persons, oppressed cultures, tend to be more political, obviously, as are those with a rage for justice, or the crazy messianic desire.

Gerald Stern

political crazy justice

Oppressed cultures often envy those which are not, or oppressed individuals do, and sometimes those which - and who - are not envy those which - who - are.

Gerald Stern

envy sometimes culture

If you don't have a bed, or a dresser or a wall, or a book or a toy you are oppressed. An African American in a white world. A Jew in a Christian world. A gypsy. A Native American. A Chinese American. Let's say, you were born deprived.

Gerald Stern

wall christian book