what poets changed the way you think about poetry?
the first poetry i remember really devouring was margaret atwood and lucille clifton. that’s probably not typical. i got over atwood, but clifton is still my first hero. i didn’t realize for almost twenty years that my poems look like hers on the page—no punctuation and no uppercase. she’s always been in my blood. when i was ten i was challenged by a teacher to memorize ‘the raven,’ and did it in a week. that same week i memorized ‘the bells,’ ‘annabel lee,’ and a few others. and i read all the stories, really. i outgrew poe, too, but supplementally.
i found an anthology when i was eleven or twelve, of the yale younger poets. so ashbery was there, and a dozen other i love, but the best and the one i obsessed over was joan murray. especially her ‘lullaby.’
when i was thirteen, there was a statewide poetry recitation competition in the gym at la cueva high school, in albuquerque. i recited stevie smith’s ‘distractions and the human crowd,’ donald justice’s ‘there is a golden light in certain old paintings’ (which is an orpheus poem), and ‘nothing gold can stay.’ i remember a lot of other kids doing ‘the love song,’ and the parents and teachers were impressed, but i could have read that by heart, too. i got a bronze medal. i guess the point is, that i was learning from them and wanted to be them someday. i was in love then with edna st. vincent millay, cummings, hayden, and almost everyone in our schoolbooks.
i was sixteen or seventeen when i first read derek walcott, ‘the schooner flight,’ and convinced one of my teachers to let me give a lesson on the poem myself. so i assigned the reading to the whole class, and i thought i could teach it like the novels we were reading then, like ‘catcher in the rye’ or ‘a separate piece.’ but everyone swore that walcott didn’t make any sense. that was my first inkling that i was painting myself into a corner. i listened to walcott on the radio when he read in santa fe at the lannan theater that summer. my older brother was going to the college of santa fe, then, and i really hoped he would give me a ride up. but, anyway, i listened on the radio in my bedroom. the next year, i read philip levine. i was asked to teach one of his poems in english class my senior year, and i did ‘rain downriver.’ that whole year i was obsessed with workers’ poems. carl sandburg, james wright. i was reading ‘civilization and its discontents,’ too. and i thought of myself as a worker.
it’s hard to explain, but easy for me to wrap my brain around, this sort of development. my parents split up when i was ten, and when we were thirteeen my mom moved us up into the sandias to work for room and board on a horse stables. it was that or live on the streets at that point. we would wake up before sunrise to water and feed the horses, and muck the stalls, and load the tractor with hay. on weekends we would take out trail rides or clean brush or clean the arena where they did english riding. i worked every waking hour, and i would go to school with shit six inches up my sleeves. i got teased, but by then i was already proud. when the socialist poets, and the workers’ poets, finally found their way to me, i was totally prepared to fall in love. i was waiting tables at a diner through high school, graveyard shifts on the weekends, and reading, and writing, and sometimes making it to class. i can’t imagine how they graduated me cum laude with a scholarship, with so many missed days. but i managed. so i brag.
the voice that is great within us changed my life, too, when i was in high school
those are a few of the first poets that mattered. the list could go on.
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