What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
How I think about writing is a constant evolution. We all get a good one off every now and then, but in general, if your earlier work doesn’t horrify you, that’s a sign you’ve stopped growing, as an artist. That’s not entirely true, and I’ve gotten to a place in my life where, for the past five years anyway, I am pleased with the increasing number of what I consider to be good poems. This kind of evolution stems from the poets who engendered one’s jumping-off point. In some ways I’m a reflection of my courses in college and in graduate school. In terms of who changed my writing, how is that different from poets who inspired you? I think change is a constant, as one is a product of all one is reading and writing. In terms of germinating texts, I do go to Dickinson the most. And I have to credit Alice Fulton’s essay on Dickinson, in her collection of essays Feeling as a Foreign Language with starting me on my latest full rereading of Dickinson (my third). Here is someone, Dickinson, who thought, actively, about scansion and the musicality of language. Dickinson’s work, and my work with her kinds of structures, most specifically ballad measure, has continued to inform my own explorations with rhythm, meter, and music in poetry. It gives one an awareness of the letter-by-letter presence of one’s language on the page and in the ear. So, the more I progress in this art, the more I feel the distance between poets who are primarily narrative, and those whose ears are evolving, such as A.E. Stallings, Anna Maria Hong, and Amy Beeder, to name just a few. Those poets have my enduring respect for the breadth of their knowledge and their tremendous sensitivity to sound and meter.
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