How did you first engage with poetry?
The first engagement had to be through song. As a toddler my parents would spin the Beatles and the Stones. I would sing along knowing most of the lyrics by heart, but not fully realizing the layers built into them, the time period in which they grew out of.
Later, in high school I became obsessed with Bob Dylan at the height of the Grunge era. I would deconstruct his songs, make my friends listen continuously to “Desolation Row,” “Jokerman,” all of Blood on the Tracks, when they were all pining for some Pearl Jam. It’s funny to think about now realizing this sort of obsessive Dylan time period had, I think, a lot to do with a desire to play with language, and to be immersed in a world of discovery and invention. At that time, I didn’t really know anything about poetry or that poets were actual people walking up and down the sidewalks of our world.
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