What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
Carl Phillips taught me in a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop several summers ago – a defining moment in terms of how I approach writing. Chiefly, he taught me how to read poetry as a writer of poems, fostering an eye for what I might borrow from others for my own work. But I also think he gave me a lot of permissions, if you will: permission to trust my impulses, permission to have fun with poetry, permission to share my poetry.
I’ve read too many poets whose writing changed how I think about writing to list here. That said, I read Michael Ondaatje’s The Cinnamon Peeler at 16 and felt overwhelmed by both its beauty and sense of play and fun. That inspired my early attempts at poetry, beyond those from childhood. And after I stumbled away from writing poetry for a few years in my early twenties, the work of John Ashbery drew me back. I often return to his poem “How to continue.”
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