My first encounter with the divine William Blake, however, I owe to Mad magazine, where the lyrics satirizing a baseball team (“Tigers, Tigers, burning bright, / in the ballparks of the night, / your pitching’s good, your field adroit, / so why no pennants for Detroit?”) pricked my curiosity enough to send me looking for the poem it was based on. I would sample poems from the Untermeyer anthology like dipping into a box of chocolates - let the book fall open, try on my tongue whatever offered itself.
![play dante play dante](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KCKzBX36ZTI/hqdefault.jpg)
Before high school, reading poetry was my very private habit. Not a specific poet or book, but the sheer variety of possibilities for singing with language fired my synapses - from Shakespeare to Mad magazine, listening to Bessie Smith or a Corelli flute sonata, collecting the fortunes on Salada tea bags. Was there a book of poems or a poet in particular that inspired you to write? Whom do you consider the best writers - novelists, essayists, critics, memoirists, poets - working today? Who is your favorite novelist of all time?ĭoes Shakespeare count? His plays are like novels, especially the tragedies! Otherwise, it’s a tossup between the TMs: Thomas Mann and Toni Morrison. My husband is used to turning off the lamp and gently pulling pen and puzzle book out of my hands before turning off his own light. So I usually snuggle into the pillows and solve a crossword puzzle or two.
![play dante play dante](https://i.redd.it/g70aoqoer3i51.jpg)
If I read poetry or anything remotely “literary,” a terrific image or eloquent turn of phrase may stun me into wakefulness since I’m also one of the judges for the Anisfield-Wolf Awards, it can feel like work. The former poet laureate Rita Dove, whose new collection is “Playlist for the Apocalypse,” loves the Icelandic saga “Grettir the Strong”: “Bleak, modernist stuff! And yet revisiting that litany of betrayals and cruelties never fails to stir my spirits.”Īh, there’s the rub - usually none! Or if there is one, then it’s the guilty-pleasure kind that won’t get in the way of falling asleep by stimulating my writer’s instincts - something like detective fiction, in paperback I’ve never gotten used to reading on electronic devices.