I’ll get to Alexandra Teague in a moment.
One of the pitfalls of how our culture is moving into disparate niches is that we’re reading work that’s different from our fellow poet. More often than not, I’ll ask another poet what they’re reading and find out that they’re not reading anything I’m reading.
If it’s bad, it’s bad because we have no common ground. It’s bad because we don’t have books informing our culture.
If it’s good, it’s good because we have no common ground. It’s good because we don’t have books informing our culture.
Today, I thought about how I might adore the work of a poet and no one else would be reading or talking about that person. One of these people is Alexandra Teague. I had the pleasure of reading her recent poems in The Missouri Review. I invite you to read some of her work on the web, and to look below for an excerpt. Click to read the rest.
When I look at my abdomen, I see a scar turning
back to lighter skin from where a surgeon cut
five inches across, and just before this, I remember
trying to stop screaming as my intestine ruptured
by reciting names-first middle and last-
of everyone I could think of, though I do not know
for sure if I got all the middle names right,
or if I have ever known yours.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for sharing these. She has a great poem (“Adjectives of Order”) in Best New Poets 2008, too.
In my MFA program, it feels like whenever anybody names what they’re reading, I don’t recognize about half the poets they name. As reader it feels discouraging, like being “well read” is an increasingly impossible goal; on the other hand, as a writer, it’s encouraging to think that there’s a way to be read and appreciated without being a Billy Collins-style smash-hit poet.
Thinking of finding common ground (which, as you point out, might not even be desirable) the hardest writers for me to read are those poets who fall somewhere between those who everybody reads, like Keats & Eliot, and brand-new, young, of the moment poets.
Writers in between those poles seem to fall between the cracks for me–poets like the recent poet laureates (Rita Dove, Mark Strand, Charles Simic), mid-century poets who are less popular than O’Hara & Berryman but seem just as influential (Kenneth Koch, Ron Padgett), or contemporary poets whose names I’ve just heard for a long time but have never read (Anthony Hecht, Dean Young, Les Murray). There are so many… !
What a twist in that last line!
I definitely agree that it’s great to hear what other writers are reading. Thanks for sharing this!
Luke,
I almost quoted from that poem. Thanks for letting everyone know about it.
Deborah
Lucy,
It’s easy to get overwhelmed. I’ve often felt like I’ve not read enough. The next step is to define “enough” for you. If we don’t do that, we won’t feel satisfied.
Thanks for commenting!
Deborah
Thanks for introducing Teague to us. I like the poems.