Most of the more celebrated names among African-American authors, poets, and artists are known to the world because of their association with specific cultural arts movements.
Poets are born, not paid.
There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends.
I was offered 'Pretty Woman.' I was offered 'Big' and 'Dead Poets Society.' But what was important to me in those years was to make movies, to make these Albert Brooks movies.
Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.
In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old.
Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels.
Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.
If you read the poets of the 19th century in Latin America, you would see that Havana or Mexico City or Buenos Aires are incredibly modern and global cities that they were not. And eventually they became real, and they became real because people read these books and tried to live in a better world.
A lot of young poets today, from what I've heard and experienced, can't get their heads past George W. Bush, and I've heard so many poems about this democracy and this era of politics that I'm kind of bored by it.
