Event calls together poets to create social change
BY BEN FULTON
The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Sep 13 2011 05:51PM
Updated 4 hours ago
Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote that poets were the “legislators, or prophets” of the world. Decades later, poet W.H. Auden disagreed. “Poetry,” he wrote in his famous ode to Irish poet W.B Yeats, “makes nothing happen.”
Michael Rothenberg, a 60-year-old poet and publisher who lives near Santa Rosa, Calif., admits that he leans more toward Shelley’s assessment. And if the international response to Rothenberg’s invitation last March for poets to gather in communities worldwide for social, environmental and political change is any measure, Auden has a lot to answer for.
Read full article here.