Association in Poetry

Maybe I’ll quote Carl Phillips some more from this essay, but I think it is a fitting title for the process of reading, and how reading can open up new avenues for you. I was reading Carl Phillips’ Coin of the Realm and felt like every time he would mention a poet extensively, or just quote a poet and I liked the quote, I would wrote the name down in my reading journal (where I keep all the good quotes and thoughts on things….). Since the class I’m teaching @ NYU takes place in NYU’s main library, I rotate books through there pretty often. One of the writers that Phillips mentions is Linda Gregg. I picked up her book Too Bright To See, and while I am not sure how this book fits in terms of letting me know about her poetics, I have been enjoying it a bit. From what I can gather, she seems to be interested in the short lyric – something I would like to delve more into – and hardly any of her poems go over a page.

Aside: I used to be able to say that: that none of my poems are longer than a page, and then I realized my “page” meant a standard 8.5 x 11″ piece of paper, and that is not the standard size of an actual book.  That was the weirdest thing: seeing poems typed up in my book going over onto the second page, when I never imaged it being more than one page.

Anyways, in the back of the book, Linda Gregg’s bio is:

Linda Gregg’s other books of poetry include Things and Flesh, Chosen by the Lion and The Sacraments of Desire. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Award. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Kenyon Review, and the Atlantic Monthly, among other literary journals and anthologies. Gregg grew up in Marin County, California, and has traveled extensively, and has taught writing at numerous conferences, colleges, and universities.

Here’s to discovering this great poetry/poet/poem by utilizing a type of association in poetry reading. One thing leads to another leads to another.

Lessening

Without even looking in the album
I realized suddenly, two months later,
you had stolen the picture of me.
The one in color in the Greek waves.
After you had hurt me so much,
how could you also take the picture
from me of a time before I knew you?
When I was with Jack.
Steal the small proof that once
I lived well, was loved
and beautiful.

Doesn’t this poem make you go mmmph? (hits you in the gut a bit?)