SOURCE: "Rat-Rhymers, Shit-Burners, Transformation, and Grandpa Dave," in The Kenyon Review, Vol. XI, No. 2, Spring, 1989, pp. 140-45.

Libby is an American educator and critic. In the following excerpt from a review in which he examines Pinsky's Poetry and the World and Terrence Des Pres's Praises and Dispraises, Politics and Poetry, the 20th Century (1988), he discusses the ways in which Pinsky addresses political matters in the reviews and essays collected in the volume.

There is evidence of a measure of [American poetic] self-censorship in the cyclical uproar about the question of the relationship between poetry and politics, which wouldn't even be taken seriously in any other country.

      Carolyn Forché, American Poetry Review Interview, (November/December 1988)

If poets are really the unacknowledged legislators of the world, they have a lot to answer for. In America we would rather believe, with Auden, that poetry makes nothing happen. Even when we write...