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In 2018, I gave a lecture
at the Library of Congress

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called Staying Human: Poetry
in the age of Technology,

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and it was a talk that had to do
with the effects of technology,

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the vocabulary of
technology, the habits

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and the shift in attention that
our phones and social media

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were fostering.

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And in many ways, it was an
homage to George Orwell's

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wonderful essay Politics
and the English Language

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in which he argues that the
downward cycle of dead language,

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false misleading language,
inaccurate language

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has an effect upon our thought
process, which also spirals

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or cycles downward, but that
the reverse is also true.

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And I was encouraged to think
about writing, expanding

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that lecture into a book
a couple of years later.

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And then it finally came time
for me to sit down and try

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and write that book.

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And I realized our
relationship to technology

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is so much farther along than
it was just seven years ago.

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And I was no longer
willing, honestly,

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to research a book
like that, or to submit

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to writing one that
grapples with arguing

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against the value of
centering such patterns,

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but I thought that
technology is but

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one delivery system of a larger
set of values priorities.

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And I wanted to
think about poetry

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as an intervention or a
response to those things.

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And so that's what
this book becomes.

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And I also had a wonderful
time in the laureateship,

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traveling to small
communities and meeting

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with people, many
of whom said to me,

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I don't know anything
about poetry.

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I don't know if I like poetry.

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I'm afraid of it.

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And yet, who would sit
in rooms like these

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and read poems with me by
other living American poets

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and then answer the one question
that I would only ever ask,

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which was what do you notice.

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Because I really wanted to
assure people that you already

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have what it takes to have a
fruitful encounter with a poem,

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simply by listening
and allowing yourself

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to become aware of what
the poem calls to mind,

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what it activates in
your body in your memory,

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and what questions and even
sometimes wishes poems activate.

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And this book kind
of emerges out

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of that realization that we have
so much to say to one another,

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even across the
distance or difference

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that we're often persuaded
to imagine or unbridgeable

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And so it's also a
way of saying poetry

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might have a really
wonderful effect

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on our understanding
of our participation

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in this vulnerable democracy.