What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
Carl Phillips has taught me how a poem might be a scene of intimacy between poet and reader, poet and memory, and reader and imagination. His poems on the big poetic subjects—change, loss, longing—are shaped by a syntax that makes poetic revelation appear where you’d least expect. I’ve tried to include this form of surprise in my writing.
Charles Wright has shown me how the length of a line and its terminus can do more than complement the words expressed. I’ve learned from him that a line broken at a certain point may downplay the content of the line while echoing or prefiguring another line. Such a concern for the inner relations of a poem is something I’ve tried to apply to my writing. Wright’s playful manipulation of idiom—the sort of formulaic language that often flirts with banality and cliché—reassures me that great poetry involves renewal as much as creation.
I have learned from Jan Zwicky that there is a porous boundary between the sensuous, perceiving body and the intelligence, that immeasurable storehouse of information and knowledge. Before reading her work, I thought that there was a meaningful distinction between these forms of being in the world, that this distinction was better respected than played with in poetry. Zwicky has repeatedly shown me that poetry creates forms of truth out of perceptions likely overlooked by other fields of knowledge. I don’t know where a self-evident truth such as this would be more at home besides in poetry: “When we draw the blinds at dusk / is the moment we most want to open / them again.” She’s given me the confidence to pursue these truths and the forms of knowledge that would assist in their realization.
No comments:
Post a Comment