The very first time we met, during an "orientation" class break, you recommended Tony Hoagland to me and I believe I almost immediately went forth to acquire a volume of his poems (or maybe you loaned me a copy?). I do know that I tried to write a review of "Donkey Gospel" for Rettberg's "Books-in-Chains" website (in which I declared Hoagland's first book, "Sweet Ruin" as "the best book of poems I'd read in 1995"). The review was a solipsistic mess, unfortunately, and Rettberg wisely decided not to use it. Prompted by your little memoir, I've been trying to identify my Hoagland, the poet and / or poem that "invited" me to the world of poetry, and, embarrassingly enough, I'm failing. Or rather, some of the candidates I've considered would be too embarrassing for me to claim as being the source of my current involvement with poetry, either too awful for me to admit having been influenced by, or too lofty to be believable as an inaugural touchstone. I will ponder this matter further.
After writing several hundred words purportedly revealing my "invitation in," I casually ran my hand across my trackpad and the whole page disappeared, apparently to some irretrievable zone. I'm too old and too disgusted to rebuild that exotic edifice. So, here's the short version: 3 possible candidates, or rather, 3 likely entry points, each entry taking one further into the mansion. 1) Richard Brautigan's poems, haiku-adjacent epigrams drowning in hippie sauce, often clever, frequently delightful; 2) <and believe me, I admit this only because I can hardly believe it myself> Rod McKuen's "Listen to the Warm"--Rod's syrupy, sentimental, nearly-epic sequence of poems celebrating his cat "Sloopy" was simultaneously astounding ("You can write poems like this? About this?") and the most ridiculous piece of dreck imaginable ("You can write poems like this? Are you kidding?"). Both Brautigan and McKuen wrote poems that declared: "See, poetry isn't that hard. If I can do it, why not you? It's a cinch! You know, just break up sentences into lines, here and there: voila! a poem!" --- and my resistance to those notions that poems were just tight little, cute little word trinkets, simple to write, simple to understand, led to ---- 3) T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." No joke. That's really the poem that clinched the deal for me, and I've been obsessed with that poem ever since. I could write more about all three of these poets and their poems, and how and why they're important to me, but time is short and I don't want to be . . . that guy . . . the one who doesn't know when to give it a rest, already.
You are the second person to mention "The Waste Land," and...I totally agree! That poem had me hooked from the start ("Prufrock" even more so). There are specific lines that I can still remember just hanging with me, even though I had no idea what was going on.
The very first time we met, during an "orientation" class break, you recommended Tony Hoagland to me and I believe I almost immediately went forth to acquire a volume of his poems (or maybe you loaned me a copy?). I do know that I tried to write a review of "Donkey Gospel" for Rettberg's "Books-in-Chains" website (in which I declared Hoagland's first book, "Sweet Ruin" as "the best book of poems I'd read in 1995"). The review was a solipsistic mess, unfortunately, and Rettberg wisely decided not to use it. Prompted by your little memoir, I've been trying to identify my Hoagland, the poet and / or poem that "invited" me to the world of poetry, and, embarrassingly enough, I'm failing. Or rather, some of the candidates I've considered would be too embarrassing for me to claim as being the source of my current involvement with poetry, either too awful for me to admit having been influenced by, or too lofty to be believable as an inaugural touchstone. I will ponder this matter further.
I still want to know who your invitation in was.
After writing several hundred words purportedly revealing my "invitation in," I casually ran my hand across my trackpad and the whole page disappeared, apparently to some irretrievable zone. I'm too old and too disgusted to rebuild that exotic edifice. So, here's the short version: 3 possible candidates, or rather, 3 likely entry points, each entry taking one further into the mansion. 1) Richard Brautigan's poems, haiku-adjacent epigrams drowning in hippie sauce, often clever, frequently delightful; 2) <and believe me, I admit this only because I can hardly believe it myself> Rod McKuen's "Listen to the Warm"--Rod's syrupy, sentimental, nearly-epic sequence of poems celebrating his cat "Sloopy" was simultaneously astounding ("You can write poems like this? About this?") and the most ridiculous piece of dreck imaginable ("You can write poems like this? Are you kidding?"). Both Brautigan and McKuen wrote poems that declared: "See, poetry isn't that hard. If I can do it, why not you? It's a cinch! You know, just break up sentences into lines, here and there: voila! a poem!" --- and my resistance to those notions that poems were just tight little, cute little word trinkets, simple to write, simple to understand, led to ---- 3) T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." No joke. That's really the poem that clinched the deal for me, and I've been obsessed with that poem ever since. I could write more about all three of these poets and their poems, and how and why they're important to me, but time is short and I don't want to be . . . that guy . . . the one who doesn't know when to give it a rest, already.
You are the second person to mention "The Waste Land," and...I totally agree! That poem had me hooked from the start ("Prufrock" even more so). There are specific lines that I can still remember just hanging with me, even though I had no idea what was going on.