When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?
Recently, I’ve spent most of my time working on fiction, so when I require renewal, I often return to the writers and books that impacted me deeply as a child first: Jack London, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. Then the more recent: The Prince of Tides, A Farewell to Arms, anything by Lauren Groff, Nina McConigley, Jeffrey Eugenides, Annie Proulx, Mariana Enríquez, or Diane Cook. When it comes to poetry though, I look first to some of the poets I’ve already mentioned, Sarah Suzor, Jill Mceldowney, Caroline Chavatel, Brooke Sahni, then to some old mainstays T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein (when I need something to drive me a little nuts), John Donne. I am in love with the Psalms as well. I think they are inspirational in their scope of heavy emotion, artistry, and imagery. Some new work I’ve deeply enjoyed though is Whereas by Layli Longsoldier, The Sublimation of Frederick Eckert by Travis Cebula, anything by Chelsea Dingman, and Druids by Tomaž Šalamun (Translated by Sonja Kravanja). I feel like this may have been more than what you bargained for, but reading has proved to be the most important part of my writing; it is at once informative and restorative: necessary.
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