Απαντώντας σε ερώτηση, ανέφερε τους αγαπημένους του ποιητές
Dear Astrid and Katie,
I have always read a lot of poetry. It’s part of my job as a songwriter. I try to read, at the very least, a half-hour of poetry a day, before I begin to do my own writing. It jimmies open the imagination, making the mind more receptive to metaphor and abstraction and serves as a bridge from the reasoned mind to a stranger state of alertness, in case that precious idea decides to drop by.
Sometimes the reading is something of a chore and there are many “great” poets I find boring, inscrutable, long-winded and painful to read. They can be bad news for the imaginative process.
However, I have a few poets that, purely on a personal level, always delight and are a simple pleasure to read. There are enough surprises within their writing to keep the mind light and alive. This is by no means a definitive list and in no particular order. I’m just sitting here at my desk looking at my bookshelf, in fact. They are poets whose company I consistently enjoy.
Stevie Smith
Frederick Seidel
William Blake
Sherwood Anderson
Rae Armantrout
Langston Hughes
E. E. Cummings
W. B. Yeats
John Berryman
Sylvia Plath
Thomas Hardy
Philip Larkin
Emily Dickinson
Sharon Olds
W. H. Auden
Just to say, my list, in this instance, is of poets writing in the English language, for no other reason than to make the list more manageable.
Beyond this list, there are various poetry anthologies which are always an education and an immense pleasure to dive into, most notably those put together by the great Jerome Rothenberg – among them Barbaric, Vast and Wild, Shaking the Pumpkin, A Big Jewish Book, America a Prophesy and Technicians of the Sacred. (See Red Hand File #5).
Much love, Nick
Αν πιστεύεις ότι αξίζουμε την συνεισφορά σου, και έχεις την δυνατότητα, είναι εύκολο να το κάνεις. Με αποκλειστικές ενημερώσεις θα είσαι 'πιο κοντά στην μουσική'
