How did you first engage with poetry?
I took my first poetry workshop as a student at Indiana University in the 80s. Those were the days of the Confessionalists and Deep Imagists – Sylvia Plath and James Wright are two of the poets I first loved. Both poets inspired imitators who responded to the pathos and brilliant imagery of their work, but weren’t always as technically gifted—or interested in craft. Without my knowing it, in a sense, the strong formal music in Plath and Wright’s poems attracted me. By which I mean, they used form so well that it didn’t feel like form.
No comments:
Post a Comment