Alexandre Ferrere : part four

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book you return to? A particular author?

There is a poem, perhaps the one which haunts me the most, by Robert Creeley entitled “I Know a Man”. I often come back to this poem, and especially to his own rendition of it, recorded for the Library of Congress.  There is an aura of mystery as well as an urgency in this wonderful recording that always transports me to an unknown place, in which I am nothing but thoughts. I also have on my nightstand an incredible (and famous) book by Hugh Kenner, “The Pound Era” which I am often returning to, and it never fails to inspire me. I also like to dive into anthologies, like Alan Kaufman’s The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry in which I have discovered d.a. levy, or, into the well-known Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry 1945-1960. Among novelists and short-stories writers, I often reread books or passages by Jack Kerouac or John Fante.