Bianca V. Gonzalez : part two

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Allen Ginsberg helped me transform into a more serious, professional poet. After reading Ginsberg’s collection, I was no longer drawn to writing about juvenile heartbreak or mental illness, which is what my first book Pouring Poetry was about. Once I became an English major and was introduced to a new world of literature, I began to slowly shed my old style of writing. I wanted to cut deeper and write about the culture, space, toxic masculinity, and motherhood. Ginsberg’s work is generational because he offered what we were afraid to look at, and that is poetry as a potentially abstract, courageous form that can turn culture on its head. 

Another poet that has given me courage to write about things I normally wouldn’t is Diane Wakoski. I first read her poem “Filling the Boxes of Joseph Cornell”, and read it at least ten times before going to sleep… and another ten times upon waking the next day. I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, she really did it? For the first time at 21 years old, I was reading a female poet who spoke so intelligently about female anger and how it resonates in the most complex parts of women’s lives. Waksoki is unapologetically herself, and I believe that has gotten her to reach the success she has had. Her poem “I have had to learn to live with my face” is uncomfortable, strong, yet relentlessly beautiful. I tend to remember her when I am faced with a topic I wouldn’t normally tell my partner or family. Wakoski teaches me to write about things that are raw and off the edge. The same goes for Sylvia Plath, whose work I did not read until I entered the M.F.A. program at Texas State. I am so heavily influenced by Plath that I try not to read her too often while I write lest I lose my own voice!