When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
Larry Levis is definitely one such author. At one point I actually had to take a year-long break from reading Levis’s poetry, because it was overtly influencing the direction of my work. If I ever feel like my writing is at a standstill, I’ll read all the way through his bibliography. It’s refreshing to see how different his poems are from collection to collection. And it’s relieving to recognize similar themes and obsessions from the beginning of his career to the end. It makes me less self-conscious about retreading my primary subjects of interest.
Carl Philips’s work operates for me in much the same way. I am constantly astounded by the syntax of Philip’s poems, as well as the way meditation begets scene and scene begets meditation. I am eagerly awaiting my copy of Then the War. In addition to being a book of selected poems, Then the War also contains an entirely new collection, and a chapbook I’ve never read. It’s a rare occasion that I come away from Phillip’s books without some spark of a new poem draft. His work always seems to fire up whatever neural pathways are required for me to write poems.
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