Breathing Poetry

			Breathing Poetry

Breathing Poetry

by Dan Masterson

The fine poet, William Stafford, once wrote that he inhaled others’ poetry and felt that he should therefore exhale some of his own. He was a voracious reader and writer. Amazingly, very few young poets follow his lead. They tend to turn away from the vast archive of poetry available to them.

One reason seems to be that they fear they’ll be influenced by reading the poetry of others. Another reason is laziness. History shows that artists in all genres discover their own voice by studying the masters. Painters, dancers, singers, and yes, writers of all sorts. Even poets!

It’s a good idea to do something physical before settling in at your writing desk. Go jogging or punch a boxing bag for a few rounds. Anything that gets the blood moving and the muscles tingling. Read after you’ve finished writing for the day. That way, you won’t need to worry about sounding like anyone else.

Some morning soon, jog down to your local library or bookstore and come away with books by the following Modern poets. Walt Whitman, William Butler Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Robinson Jeffers, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Theodore Roethke.

The next time you jog to town, bring home books by the following Contemporary poets: James Dickey, Li-Young Lee, Galway Kinnell, John Allman, Anne Sexton, James Wright, Richard Wilbur, and Gary Snyder.

Then, to help flesh it all out, trot on back to Main Street and collect books by Miller Williams, Anthony Hecht, Lucille Clifton, William Heyen, Dylan Thomas, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop,

Amiri Baraka, Mark Strand, Sylvia Plath, Russell Edson, Paul Zimmer, W. D. Snodgrass, Ai, Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Donald Hall, Ted Hughes, Derek Walcott, and Anthony Hecht.

Following this article, you’ll find a longer list of poets you should read when you’re not punching something or running somewhere or writing or revising. I’m betting that every poem you read will help you realize something about your own work.

Whitman, W. C. Williams, Gary Snyder, Collins, Brooks, Frost, and Mark Strand will help you relax the language and its syntax. Hecht, Eliot, and Wilbur will show you how to rhyme without allowing it to dominate your work. Kinnell, Allman, Lee, Roethke, and James Wright will clothe you in their characters’ skin and allow you to observe the world as they do, and James Dickey, Yeats, and Jeffers will tell you stories you’ll wear a long time.

Thomas, Heyen, Hughes, Berryman, Bishop, Eliot, Auden, Walcott, and Miller Williams will teach you to dance through imagery, while Plath, Sexton, Olds, Snodgrass, Baraka, and Ai will take you for a jog on the darker side, only to meet up with Clifton, Zimmer, and Edson who’ll get you laughing at yourself and the rest of us.

Remember what Stafford said up top: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. I think you’ll discover that it works just fine. Let me know what you think: prdan@optonline.net And if you’re curious about my stuff, you can read my first two books online at http://capa.conncoll.edu Write on!

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