I was present at an incredible poetry reading years ago in NYC, at which Octavio Paz, Joseph Brodsky, Czelav Milosz, and Derrick Walcot read.
Rita Dove was the Clinton-appointed Poet Laureate at that time. She stood up and favored us with some words (not to be confused with poetry) about her vagina.
From an interview:
DB: You mentioned last night about the heavy impact of reading Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind. Why do you think that during a period like the Sixties (which was very political), the book did not really get any attention?
Merwin: I simply don't know. I think that the only theory that I have about it is that Milosz was so critical of the Communist world and there was a great deal of leftist sympathy in the Sixties. For example, the SDS-oriented people felt that Milosz was right-wing just as many Marxists felt about Camus and The Rebel. I've always felt that this was wrong, I mean in the sense of being incorrect. There's a kind of outlawry that I have been drawn to all my life which is not doctrinaire, which is neither right nor left. In fact, it's opposed to them both. Every time I come back toward a political stance, I never stay in one very long because every time I move toward one I tend to partake of that anarchy, a suspicion of all their houses. That's the only explanation I can think of as to why Milosz was not accepted more widely and was not read more widely in the Sixties. I don't remember when The Captive Mind was published, 1958, 1959, somewhere along in there. I know some of my friends read it and were excited about it at the time and it just seemed to disappear. I think it went out of print, too. It's been out of print for a long time because I've tried to get copies of it for my friends and couldn't find it.