What Sparks Poetry

In “Envoy,” mythology becomes a stand-in for the abiding narratives of this world, which are placed in opposition to the mutable, ever-changing narratives of the state (what today we might call alternative facts).

It was not the first poem I loved but it was one which reshaped the foundations of what I thought poetry could be—abstract elliptical essay, sensuous discourse on aesthetic form, history, and a strange kind of oblique confession all woven together into a sprawling imagistic song.

Kinnell’s poem may be an exploration of what happens after having been a long time alone, but every time I read it, I feel in great human company.

That was all I needed. Yes—I did feel as if the top of my head had been taken off. I was desperately goth at the time, and those lines were the gothiest thing I had ever heard. And hearing them re-configured my ideas about what a poem could be. No roses! No violets! That day, I wrote eight poems.

The poem “the rites for Cousin Vit” is a dynamic and innovative Italian sonnet that beats against its formal cage, as an elegy with punk-rock spirit and as a love poem written by a woman to another woman in a celebration of friendship.