What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
All great poets in their way change us in some way, but I can name a few who stick out. Change takes a long time, so these aren’t “new” writers (of whom several might change my thoughts.)
As a young person, Emily Dickinson changed all my ideas about what writing does and is; I return to her often, she still feels radical. I recited one of her poems (Much Madness is Divinest Sense) at my mother’s funeral (from memory.)
I’ve had a lifelong love affair with Wallace Stevens who writes about philosophy with great nuance. I was so infatuated with “Sunday Morning” that I wrote it out by hand, in a letter to a good friend before emails were de rigeur— it’s such a deep dive into thorny issues, and yet still lyrical (and in blank verse!)
Frank O’Hara’s sophisticated informal voice, and his ability to write about the visual arts and classical music, wow— Lunch Poems was one of the first books I bought for myself. He’s a city poet, and I am a city person— nature poetry, while beautiful, rarely moves me. He’s also one of the writers whose “happy love” poems never feel corny.
Philip Larkin’s acerbic mix of high and low, vulgar and lyrical, gave me a window into how writing can be alienated, and yet moving. His “Whitsun Weddings” remains one of my favorite poems, that ending gets me every time: “A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.”
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