The Stuff Of Poetry
May, 1971
Language is a casualty of the 20th Century. All-purpose obscenity and mindless slang have become the favorite forms of verbal communication among the young; the bland terminology of bureaucracies has worked itself into the style of their elders; and political rhetoric, Nixonese, has never been drearier. A favorite cliché of the times is "those are only words, they don't mean anything." The keepers of the language, the poets, seem to be in hiding. There are those who insist that poetry...
