What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
George Oppen’s work—reading him felt like an outstretched hand. His presence & very humanistic perceiving has really informed how I cast my own experiencing into the act of writing.
Aimé Césaire absolutely shattered all tentative obligations I might have felt to keep believing / caring about the people who had told me for so long what the function and tradition of poetry might be. It was hugely important to be able to read him, and important to still be reading him.
Lisa Robertson, as a different way to approach and grapple with the lyric in poetry. The same with Bernadette Mayer, Alice Notley, the early work of Joseph Ceravolo.
Dictée by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, essential. Paul Celan (of course).
Really, a great majority of the writers who have vitally affected my relationship to writing haven’t been poets.
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