| 1) Anne Sexton: poems come from the abyss, | | | | many did back then; I was at the end of that era. |
| painfully, and a life obviously as scornful; literary | | | | He used his techniques correctly, for who he is |
| they could use some substance other than | | | | (or was): sharp, clear and detached poetry. |
| nakedness. | | | | Commentary on Poetry: "Blessing of the Poem": |
| 2) Howard Nemerov: good lyricism, one of the | | | | There is nothing on earth that can equal the hard |
| poets I ran after in my early days in college to | | | | scraping profound labor and stirring of ones blood, |
| read and try to understand. He writes well, yet I | | | | and sense of sanctification that a good poem can |
| find there is usually something missing, perhaps | | | | offer. |
| they need to march to the end of the road (His | | | | That new promising poem, felt in the middle of |
| poems). | | | | silence, in the corner of the night, sticking to your |
| 3) Allen Ginsberg: when he was in his 20s, he | | | | mind and ribs until it finds its way out of your box |
| wrote his best works, thereafter, he lost it to | | | | and into the literature world; faint at first, then like |
| good taste, and good sense, which he had none | | | | the radiation of an atomic bomb. |
| of, and traded it for pleasure, and a warped mind, | | | | The question asked: "Why indeed do people write |
| God help the reader. | | | | poetry?" |
| 4) E.E. Commings: Cummings poetry is Cummings! | | | | A good question, and hard to answer, more |
| That is, more so than most poets; if you have | | | | subjective than otherwise, but let me give it a |
| read one of his poems, you've read most of | | | | try, how I see it: imagines (dreams, seeing in your |
| them; a good and genuine poet indeed, perhaps | | | | mind's eye, envisage), it is all under the same |
| uncompromising, but I get bored after a few of | | | | umbrella; such things come out of the |
| his poems, unfortunately. | | | | unconscious, the mind, convicted, until written, |
| 5) Gary Snyder: Academic poetry, but in the | | | | then emancipated (and never to be lost in the |
| middle (the beatnikism era): he hugs Zen as so | | | | vaults of humanity). |