Claudia Rankine Quotes

I've often said that all poetry is political. This is because real poems deal with a human response to reality and politics is part of reality, history in the making. Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done.

In all the poems I've written I've not really engaged in politics, and when I've found myself moving in that direction I've always stopped myself.

There is a long-standing tradition in America of scoffing at poets, especially if they show any interest in politics.

I've always been interested in socially political, or overtly political, comedy. And I guess I've always liked to channel some kind of personal element to that.

As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry.

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.

Most poetry in the modern age has retreated to the private sphere, turning its back on the political realm.

All literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature...

At twenty, I implicitly dissociated poetry from politics.

It's not just music. To me, it's songwriting more than anything. A lot of people say it's expression, but to me, it's more than that.

Songwriting is just like any other kind of writing - it's either fiction or nonfiction. You can even get into philosophy and politics, which I've done on occasion.

It is clear from Salman Rushdie's writing that politics and literature cannot be separated. Everything is political.

Pound described poetry as original research in language, and just as formal experiment in poetry has to try things and has to go too far, so does experiment with writing about politics in poetry and what the politics of poetry is.

Poets are political, they have to be reflections of their times [because] they're living in their times... Poetry is political in that it's standing in opposition to fascism. Good poetry asks a bunch of questions and asks the audience to interact with themselves or see themselves in it; maybe you like it or you don't like it. But the fascist sort of stuff plays on your fears and tells you to jump on the party line and gives some simple excuses - blame this person.

Milton was the first person who really experimented with putting politics into sonnets.

Even if a poet writes about sitting in a glass house drinking tea, it reflects politics.

Sometimes music isn't the way to talk politics, you know?

The views I have, the books I write, are read as political, or even as manifestos.

It's hard not to be political.

A lot of people say my songs are political, but that's not by plan. It's because I never found a place where everything is OK, so I just write about what my reality is, follow my instinct.

I've always been political but I don't like to bring it into my work any more because I think it limits me.

We have quite a few political songs: 'Channel Z,' let's 'Keep This Party Going' on. Our lyrics aren't too hit-you-over-the-head, but they have political undertones. We're active politically.

If people are coming to 'Hamilton' to leave their politics behind, you came to the wrong show.

All good art should be political, I think, and inevitably it all becomes political really, in one way or another.