Our new Poet Laureate

[yendi]

I had no idea that Billy Collins was no longer Poet Laureate, and that one of my favorite poets, Louise Glück, was now in that position. I've been a fan of hers since 1990, when I took Georgia Christopher's Poetry: The Generation 2000 class in my Freshman year. I discovered a number of poets there who soon became big, but Glück, along with Sharon Olds, quickly became one of my favorites (we read other notables like Simic, Hass, and Dove, too). I've got a signed copy of Meadowlands, which I still think is her best work (although she won the Pulitzer for Wild Iris). She's moved from writing individual post-Plath poems to writing collections that look at contemporary life through themes from classical mythology, and done so wonderfully.

Poetry gets almost no support in this day and age. There's lots of readable stuff out there, and you could do worse than picking up one of Louise's books.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I'll look.

The pre-previous laureate, Robert Pinsky, was my college English teacher. He's in the top 5 best teachers I've ever had.

[yendi]

He's also a damned fine poet. I'd have loved to have had someone like him in college.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

He's brilliant. I took him for almost everything he taught, just to have him as a teacher. I took a basic lower division poetry class from him. That's where I learned to memorize, and the value of memorization. (I don't have to carry a book with me now, I have poetry. :) ) He's also big on oral reading of poetry. The sounds are important.

Then I took "Shakespeare for Non-Majors" (I was a rhetoric major, not English) where he taught us that "amateur" was from Latin for "lover," and that he didn't want people there who were just trying to complete an English requirement for their engineering or history degrees, he wanted people there who loved Shakespeare, and wanted to study it in a university setting even if they had other majors.

Then, much to my surprise, I "auditioned" (by submitting one of my poems) for a 15-seat upper division poetry workshop he taught, and got in. I wasn't really a great poet, but I wanted to be in another of his classes.

I ended up flunking out of UC Berkeley for various reasons, but passed all three of his classes with a B or better.

[nomadmwe.livejournal.com]

I actually had to read 'Wild Iris' this past summer for class. Surprisingly, I liked it. Lots of good class conversations about it, too.

I agree, it's worth picking up. Poetry needs more support.

[thejunebug.livejournal.com]

You were a freshman in 1990? Freshman in high school... right?

I can't say I've ever read anythng by either poet, but then I've taken so many literature and writing courses that I probably have. I'm terrible at remembering names.

I don't know if it's because I prefer the storytelling aspect of epic poetry, but reading modern verse always makes me feel as if there's something... missing. Modern verse seems to be more about condensing life-moments rather than expanding and coloring them.

[yendi]

Freshman in college. :-)

And one of the things I like about Glück is that there is a sense of storytelling, and of expanding the moments. There are others -- Erica Jong comes immediately to mind -- who do so, too. I suspect that part of the problem is that there's no longer any control of poetry (so that there's no longer a way to do things "right," or a direct response to the status quo like Lyrical Ballads was), but unlike almost all other forms of literature, there's also not much publicity for it, so few know what's out there anymore.

[catalyxt.livejournal.com]

*nods* Agreed. And Glück is extremely talented.

[catalyxt.livejournal.com]

*nods* Agreed. And Glück is extremely talented.