What poets changed the way you thought about writing?
So many. The first poem I ever adored, in part because it was familiar and yet also mysterious to me, was Muriel Rukeyser’s “Effort at Speech Between Two People.” Then I got into e.e. cummings. This was in high school, when I first started writing terrible abstract poetry (at least I was writing). Contemporary and Modern poetry blew my mind when I discovered it in college. Some of the poets who opened that world for me include Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, and of course William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. Later, I began to love Robert Hass, Mark Halliday, Charles Wright, Anne Carson, Li Young Lee…I could go on forever. I have shelves upon shelves of poetry books. Looking back, it’s notable how few poets of color I read in the beginning. Luckily, that’s changed.
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