I’ve been enjoying the responses so far to our twenty questions. A number of respondents have managed to score a belly laugh or two from me, and I hope you, too, will enjoy — have been enjoying — them.
But today’s entry is about what I am learning from the responses. Take William Thompson’s response, for example. I had never even heard the name Armine Iknadossian, but Bill is right that hers is an exciting new voice. I found a few poems of hers on the web, and know now to watch for her first book to appear.
Here is a link to a poem of hers: http://groong.usc.edu/tlg/tlg-20071222.html
William Thompson also sent me back to a Rilke poem I’m sure I’d read at some point, but it wasn’t one I remembered. I should have remembered, though, the lines “She was moving far behind // the others, absorbed, like someone who will soon / have to sing before a large assembly.” Here is a link: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/going-blind/
Moira Egan’s reply also put me on to poets whose work I didn’t know before. Michele Kotler, for one, who clearly understands poetry as an integral part of our lives — all our lives, not only the lives of those of us from economically or educationally privileged backgrounds. She founded the Community-Word Project, which describes itself in this way: “The Community-Word Project (CWP) is a New York City based arts-in-education organization that inspires children in underserved communities to read, interpret and respond to their world and to become active citizens through collaborative arts residencies and teacher training programs.” Here is its website: http://www.communitywordproject.org/
And here is a link to one of Michele Kotler’s poems: http://www.louderarts.com/poets/kotler/
But that wasn’t all from Moira Egan’s reply. There’s a whole list of non-American poets, at least some of them Italian (Moira is living in Italy now). I haven’t found work by all of them yet, but looking for work by the first one Moira named led to a marvelous website, with a lot of (mostly European) poets listed, with samples of their work in various languages. The site is lyrikline: http://www.lyrikline.org/
And here is the poet Moira mentioned, Antonella Anedda: http://www.lyrikline.org/index.php?id=60&L=1&author=aa05&cHash=e7e77f1dac
James Longenbach’s answers have had me thinking and thinking since I sent them. Take for instance his reply to the “love triangle” question. The question, of course, is a set-up for spoof, but he took a different turn with it. His reply (“Shakespeare — Milton — Keats. It happened.”) makes one return to the phrase “love triangle” and reconstrue it, reminding oneself of love as a condition of poetry and a precondition for internalizing it.
Not to mention Longenbach’s rejection of flippancy in the Obama questions. His responses to both recall Socrates’ reminders in the Apology and elsewhere that the ship captain’s expertise at captaining a ship don’t imply expertise in governing a city or shoeing horses.
And Longenbach also mentions Galassi’s translations of Leopardi. I tried to find a site online that would give us a taste, but we’ll all have to go straight to the buy-the-book stage. I’m off to the bookstore tonight.
The other response from James Longenbach that still has me reflecting is his reason for choosing Marianne Moore over Elizabeth Bishop. I’ve always been a Bishop person myself, but it will be a long time before I forget Longenbach’s sentence about Moore: “She altered the discourse of poetry permanently, subtly, and with no self-congratulation.”