T.S. Eliot and Edna St. Vincent Millay have been haunting me for years, but there are plenty of others who come and go in the meantime -- or, rather, there are several individual poems that I can always find traces of in my work, though the poets aren't really present. "Sweetness" by Stephen Dunn is one of those, as is "A Leave-Taking" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
...I don't know how openly or clearly these people and poems influenced my writing, I mean, I can't go through and say, oh, I got that phrase from here, that theme from there, this aesthetic from wherever. It's more that these poets and poems have had an impact on the way that I think, for better or worse, and it's been reflected in most other aspects of my life, so I assume that that includes my writing.
...I don't know how openly or clearly these people and poems influenced my writing, I mean, I can't go through and say, oh, I got that phrase from here, that theme from there, this aesthetic from wherever. It's more that these poets and poems have had an impact on the way that I think, for better or worse, and it's been reflected in most other aspects of my life, so I assume that that includes my writing.
