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eohippus all contents copyright 2007 max carmichael | why eohippus? bio contact | |
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arts portfolio: visual arts music writing events design | |
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writing: poetry | back next | |
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Context & Inspiration My Mamaw wrote poems about her family and home, as I was growing up, and there were always illustrated magazines of vernacular poetry on her table which I devoured. I was especially drawn to the tragic work of Edgar Allen Poe. Then my high school English teacher, Mrs. Perrin, often invited favorite students to her house in the evening for poetry readings, drawing on the work of Frost, Dickinson, Pound, e e cummings, and so forth. I started writing poems myself, and some were published. I got a book called "The Poetry of Rock", which introduced me to the lyrics of Leonard Cohen. Then I went heavy into the neo-classical, neo-romantic nostalgia of Edwin Arlington Robinson, a post-World War I American who wrote Shakespearian epics about King Arthur's court. My girlfriend, Kathryn Kennedy, was a poet, too, and for the longest time our courtship was conducted through poetry. But my biggest production of poetry occured right after the explosion of punk culture in San Francisco. This has continued sporadically into the present, sometimes by email, as an outlet for fleeting but intense feelings. The spare modern folk lyrics of Young Marble Giants were an early inspiration. Of course, the origin of poetry is in the tradition of song and chant, and as I became more and more frustrated with the artificiality of writing, I focused more on speech and singing as the best context for making poetry. I loved the sound of King Sunny Ade's juju songs, in the Yoruba language, without understanding the lyrics, and I struggled for years to make English sound that musical! |
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