News at Eleven: "My poetry is not an exercise

in politics as such," says [Gerald] Stern. "It is politically active, to the left."

"I'm really more interested in beauty. I found politics and beauty to be similar."

In the preface to the 1855 edition of his "Leaves of Grass," Walt Whitman wrote: "The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it." This is certainly true of Stern.

from The Morning Call: Gerald Stern: Tough, hard-boiled, no-nonsense poet

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