Yesterday, while most people in my town were settling in for the beginning of the Bills-Broncos game, I listened to a radio airing of a reading I attended in June, here at Nichols School in Buffalo, of Pultizer Prize winning poet Carl Dennis (my judge, neighbor and acquaintance), and my own Terrible Angel (TM) Thomas Centolella.
Each read a poem about ancestry. Carl's was called "Basho" and noted the many influences on himself and others, writers and family and exposures of many kinds. Tonight I find myself counting mine off. Cummings, Wakoski, Merritt Malloy, Anne Sexton [she gave me blood and cup/like any good preistess/she has bones rattling in her poems]....I shall be unscrolling my list a long time.
Trolling about the web just now, I found this litttle morsel: Carl Dennis' teaching plan for a lecture at Warren Wilson MFA Program...
CARL DENNIS: Generosity (lecture)
My lecture is about the way in which generosity is displayed by the speaker of a poem, and why that virtue is important for the poem to be aesthetically convincing. No texts required.
And piece about the capitalization (or lack therof) of Edward Estin Cummings' name....
. . .
