Voices that help us re-member...
...A very partial starter list of some of my personal influences ...
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Terry Tempest Williams (1955)
"My refuge exists in my capacity to love, and if I can learn to love death, then I can begin to take refuge in change." This quote from William's Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place is tattooed on my back (in the form of a heron rising/landing over water, long story...). Williams' writing was pivotal in my own waking up to the relationship between landscape and soulscape and what it truly means to inhabit the feminine body. Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and When Women Were Birds have each blown me open and brought me back home in distinct ways at different times in my life. Terry as a person is also full of grace and dignity. Despite a personal discomfort with public speaking, she lives a life that includes a great deal of pouring herself into her words in public for others' inspiration and in service of protecting wild places. For me she is one of the finest word-wielding earth-guarding bad-ass women alive today. If you can ever see her speak: GO. |
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Mary Oliver (1935-2019)
In a rare interview (with Maria Shriver), Oliver says "I like to think of myself as a praise poet - that I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world, and who-ever made all these things." When asked what she has done with her one wild precious life [referencing a famous line from The Summer Day], she says "I have learned to love and learned to be loved, and that didn't come easy." What I appreciate most about Mary's poetry is the simplicity of language combined with the complexity of the questions that arise from her listening to the world. Mary for me is a true nature poet - she listens to the world and speaks her part of the conversation in verse, so that we, too, might taste the magic of resting in mystery and wonder. To me, like Rilke and Rumi and the plain-spoken greats, she's sourcing on the real deal, and transmitting it as a gift in penetrable language. For me, that just never gets old.
(See also this tribute Cairns I compiled the day she passed for more of the magic of Mary.)
In a rare interview (with Maria Shriver), Oliver says "I like to think of myself as a praise poet - that I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world, and who-ever made all these things." When asked what she has done with her one wild precious life [referencing a famous line from The Summer Day], she says "I have learned to love and learned to be loved, and that didn't come easy." What I appreciate most about Mary's poetry is the simplicity of language combined with the complexity of the questions that arise from her listening to the world. Mary for me is a true nature poet - she listens to the world and speaks her part of the conversation in verse, so that we, too, might taste the magic of resting in mystery and wonder. To me, like Rilke and Rumi and the plain-spoken greats, she's sourcing on the real deal, and transmitting it as a gift in penetrable language. For me, that just never gets old.
(See also this tribute Cairns I compiled the day she passed for more of the magic of Mary.)
John Trudell (1946-2015)
I don't even know where to start to express how this man's early work touches me.The way he stood as a voice for native ways and spiritual sanity - a true poet in motion, drawing his wisdom from his culture and his first-hand experience rather than western education, he spoke truth to 'power' so clearly that the FBI had a fat file on him due to his 'dangerous eloquence'. His embodied and direct expression inspires the hell out of me, and I realized only after watching some of his early videos that he was a huge hidden figure in my own development - he carved pathways that many of my early influences followed. A few taster videos:
- Religious vs Spiritual Perceptions of Reality
- Modern Humans are Walking Dead
- On "Drunken Indians"
I don't even know where to start to express how this man's early work touches me.The way he stood as a voice for native ways and spiritual sanity - a true poet in motion, drawing his wisdom from his culture and his first-hand experience rather than western education, he spoke truth to 'power' so clearly that the FBI had a fat file on him due to his 'dangerous eloquence'. His embodied and direct expression inspires the hell out of me, and I realized only after watching some of his early videos that he was a huge hidden figure in my own development - he carved pathways that many of my early influences followed. A few taster videos:
- Religious vs Spiritual Perceptions of Reality
- Modern Humans are Walking Dead
- On "Drunken Indians"
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Ariel Gore (1970)
For me, there is writing before reading Ariel Gore, and the (much freer) writing after reading We Were Witches. This little experimental and personal book raises big questions about how our voices, spirits, and writing structures can be liberated or constrained by how we relate with forces like patriarchy, freedom, feminism, and the legacies of colonial culture. All done somehow through the medium of personal story. Gore's courageously raw style and feminist reflections along with her brilliant play with the boundaries between memoir and fantasy left me wowed and wondering and re-considering everything I had ever learned about what constitutes good writing. Through reading We Were Witches, my voice has been liberated in places I didn't even realize were bound, a new book was born, and my palette of the possible has expanded re: structure, form, style, and genre. So I take my witch hat off to Ariel Gore, and then I put it back on and keep writing... |
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Ross Gay (1974)
There is also writing before and after reading Ross Gay's Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. A poetry editor reviewing a collection of my poems had me read Gay's book, and I quickly realized the small mountain I've been climbing in developing my work was just the first peak in a vast mountain range of poetic potential. So I put that collection in a drawer, blessed it, and packed my bags for the long journey ahead. What so excites me about Gay's work is his way of cradling hard content within lyric and even ecstatic expression — his lines fall ever forward picking up earth and sorrows and symbols and weaving somehow in the falling: wings. His work and quality of being for me affirms the place for joy in modern poetry, without turning away from the brutalities of our world - no small feat. |
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