When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
Seamus Heaney’s North (1975) was probably the first poetry book I got really excited about in my early university days (late 1990s). Something about those “bog” poems, the idea of “digging” down into the past (personal, historical, geological). And then I didn’t think much about it for a couple decades—until 2021, when, one fall evening, I picked up North again and (admittedly under the slight influence of a fermented grape) found it stirring up a lot of ideas. It’s since led to a chapbook-sized project.
Lately, the authors that get the creative juices going (and I’m sure this will change next year) include Stuart Ross, James Tate, John Ashbery, Charles Simic, and Alice Burdick (and probably Spicer). Okay, that’s more than one “particular author.” If I was forced at gunpoint to pick a single author? Mr. Simic (around Christmas/early new year, I read his New and Selected Poems, 1962-2012).
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