Influences

[bogusagain]

I suppose this is somewhat related to Tzara's thread about inspiration. It can be difficult at times to be aware of which writers are influencing oneself and often easy or at least easier to see writers who have influenced someone elses work. So I'm wondering who do you think influences you and can you see the influences in your work?

What made me think about this was while reading through the new poems, I thought I saw two influences in letterman's poem To Her Girls. I think I see the influences of Frederick Seidel and Marvin Bell. Maybe I'm wrong and he hasn't read these two poets and I'm just seeing ghosts.

Anyway, I suppose I should give a shot as to who I think influences me the most. In my more outlandish and longer poems, I'll leave out TS Eliot's The Wasteland which I do read several times a year and know its a big influence on me at times but pop for Adrian Mitchell and Adrian Henri. Mitchell was a very political poet, firmly on the left and became famous in 1965 at a large poetry gathering in 1965. Henri was the original pop poet in Britain. He was also a visual artist and approached poetry in the same way pop artists approached pop art, appropriation of the familiar and popular, introducing irony, political and cultural jokes and unashamed sex. He created a band for his poetry called The Liverpool Scene. This group is still a legend in my appartment.

So who do you think influences you?

 

[greenmountaineer]

While I don't care for all of his poems, Ezra Pound's influence on modern poetry is impressive to me. When I get into trouble, which I sometimes do with writing, I read the following by Pound:

"A Retrospect"

Good topic. I'm curious to read what others have to say about it.

 

[Angeline]

Hmmmm lessee:

Forough Farrokzhad, an Iranian poet

Music I love, both words and rhythm

WB Yeats

The Beats and the New York poets, especially Frank O'Hara and Ted Berrigan

Laura Nyro's lyrics--I love the combination of jazz and 1960s girl groups and Tin Pan Alley. I think all that echoes in my poems, at least to me.

This is the sort of list that evolves though, eh?

 

[Tzara]

For me, the influence is usually more at the individual poem level (e.g., Shelley's "Ozymandias," rather than Shelley in general), but here's a sampling of poets whose work I have especially liked, in no particular order:

• Kenneth Koch, for his sense of humor.
• W. B. Yeats, especially for his moony approach to writing love poems.
• Kim Addonizio because her poems just rock.
• Alan Dugan for his satiric anger.
• William Carlos Williams for teaching me more about line breaks than anybody else.

All kinds of others, too, of course: Li Po, Eliot, Cummings, Auden, etc., as well as quite a number of poets who are or have been here at Lit.

If I could be one poet, I think it might be middle period James Wright.