Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
Yes, I would say it’s changed completely. I started out reading T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens and listening to a lot of 80s new wave music like the Smiths and R.E.M.—watching movies—a typical Gen X’er with a strong Modernist/Romantic inflection. I felt so inspired by the beauty of what I saw that I thought great art should be beautiful and inspiring. To me, Eliot’s Four Quartets was just about the apex of beauty. Since then, I’ve been dragged through a pretty depressing life, experienced a lot of hurt, hurt other people, and seen about 1,000 poetry readings. I just want to turn it all off sometimes. Now I believe good poetry is something new that wakes you up, not something intoxicating that makes you moony.
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