I’ve Been Reading Poetry

Historically, I was captured into 19th century poetry by my mother, who forced me to memorize all of Longfellow’s poem Evangeline.  (Btw, I will be one of several readers of that poem in an event at the chapel at Mount Auburn Cemetery on February 24, so let me know if you can attend please).

In New York during the late fifties and early sixties I was weaned from that century (holding onto Whitman of course) and got deep into beat poetry and the works of Robert Creeley (I remain a big fan of the latter).

Of late, I have been reading, by reason of interest as well as part of my “job” at the New England Poetry Club, more modern poets and also anthologies touching on specific sources of poetry. Below are my favorites, bearing in mind that poetry is fiercely personal, there are tons of works I have not read, and there are very few instances of a poem being “bad”– if someone is motivated to speak through poetry, there are people out there who share the need to hear that thought.

I was gifted the massive book of poetry by Bob Dylan.  It is hard to get his nasal drumbeat of a voice out of my head so  that I am able to read the words as words, but the collection is monumental.  He is in a class by himself for engaging in the current world with a hard eye for its pathos, and is my inspiration for poetry that reads like someone talking to you about bad shit on some street corner.  He gets this first shout-out.

I am not alone in loving another singer’s poetry: Leonard Cohen/any title. Related to Cohen in a certain way are “Jazz Poems” and “Blues Poems,” both of which  are  volumes in the collection of  Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets.  In the latter volume, dip with lust into Bad Mother Blues (“When you were arrested, child, and I had to take your pocketknife … It had blood on it from where you’d tried to take your life….”).

Add my name to the fans of Terrance Hayes, a recent winner of the National Book Award; I particularly liked  American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin.  Some of that raw energy and anger often also can be found(in wholly different formats) in the monthly magazine Poetry, which is a challenge but if you want to know what is happening today near the edge of things it is an essential although sometimes painful subscription.

Another National Book Award winner is the prolific Mary Oliver, why is a great poet who keeps a sharp edge and is lyrical without being sentimental. Best take for me is volume one of New and Selected Poems– a backwards trip in time.

Finally, I recommend you join the New England Poetry Club because you will get plugged into new books and readings of poems from an energetic population of New England poets of all genres and persuasions.  No better way than to stay current; it is one of my sources of inspiration.  I particularly enjoy the poetry of certain other board members, which frankly is quite different in texture and often subject matter from my writing.  I do not wish to implicitly slight anyone by naming only a single person, but I must say that one Club member, who read at a program I hosted in downtown Boston last Spring, has a particular voice I personally love, not to mention that he can write the hardest of poems, a great poem of three lines (I tend to ramble).  Try anything by Charles Coe.

This is personal and wholly anecdotal; and, my personal favorites do change by season, mood and mere sequence of reading.   But thought I would share, as the stuff above is really good in my judgment.