From “A Thought on Poetry and Universities”
“A Thought on Poetry and Universities” is a three-page typescript, dating to 1971, which was in a folder with a number of other typescripts, all labeled “Unpublished Material: Inactive.” From now on, it will also be known as Folder 16 of Series 1.D.
The last paragraph reads:
Orientation to the future, which is not the same as futurism or even future shock, is at present an essential of human experience and apparently will be an essential from now on through history. Perhaps, surprisingly, it is not easy for poets, as I have attempted [to] show elsewhere, to be future-oriented in depth. For this, not only poets but humanists generally need to be more at home with diversified fields of knowledge, not only with our vastly expanded humanities but also with the sciences and technology, than most of us are. Humanists are often too fearful of science and technology, which are human creations if they are anything. We need a poetry that can include them and the rest of our growng awarenesses, not just carpingly but also critically, because understandingly.