"Poetry and Revolution"

"Poetry is certainly "counterrevolutionary" in the sense that it expresses compassion for all human beings, regardless of class or race.

Poetry may be taken as the type for all art, and to censor it or any other art is like censoring those functions of the body which purify the blood or give us our sense of balance. Revolution is to be accomplished by an act of will on the part of some, a paralysis of it overtaking others, but it cannot be assisted by censoring the truths of artists. Artists always have been and always will be individualists."

{Stephen Spender, "Poetry and Revolution," The 30s and After: Poetry, Politics, People 1930s-1970s, 1978}