What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
When I first began reading poetry, the things I was reading were beautiful, but they were extremely lyrical, with topics which were palatable for any audience. As I grew older, I had this period where I was writing horrible poem after horrible poem because I didn’t know how to write on the topics I needed to. When I first heard “What Did I Love?” by Ellen Bass, there was a chunk of ice in my chest that melted down through each toe. The poem is about a chicken butchering day on a small farm, but Bass makes it ceremonial and loving while simultaneously making it neither of those things. It’s truly just a masterpiece of a work. I’m not a spiritual or religious person, but the religiousness felt toward the cycle of life in that poem just did something for me. Hearing it was a revolutionary moment for my writing. I grew up on a dying farm, and was surrounded by that culture, and I didn’t know that feeling of belonging in a moment so often argued as innately immoral could be expressed. It made everything that I needed to say feel so much more approachable.
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