NOTE: In this new series, THEthe writers share their first experiences with poetry or discuss the first poems they ever loved. ~~~ My first sense of poetry was music, songs my mother told me taught me, as they say. My father loved to scream Milton at me, so my first memory of my father is: Hurled headlong flaming! Or Disemboweled (the word alone). He also loved to say: Bah Humbug! Or Latin poems: Non amo te nec possum dicere quarere hoc tantum scio. I do not like thee Doctor Fell–my mother read poetry to me at night and my father had the family recite Shakespeare: Be not afeard the isle is full of strange noises. My father and my uncle the pianist were best friends in high school and they both loved to write poems. My uncle was often in the NY Times with a sonnet–my father would test us [...]
David Shapiro
Today I thought I should add my secret voice to your evaluations. Your intelligence may be genius, but remember as my mother said also always be nice. A seventh grade teacher consoled me when I was teased: You can always tell the genius by the enemies who surround him. Try, though it’s impossible. See JA. Make no enemies. Well, you’ll always have aesthetic enemies just by liking something “they don’t.” But I’ve noticed even one personal enemy is too much in the tiny circle of Prospero’s Kabbalah. You impress me and you’re so young, so you have I think one task: Go on! Keep working, and keep your opinions growing widening and changing. One day love Chatterton. The next day read Villon. One month give up to Proust, one year give up to Kafka. Pound’s big canon is correct: Be curious like a physical scientist (Aggazis for Pound). Keep your [...]
(image by David Shapiro ©2010) “Three coyotes turned up on the Columbia University campus on Sunday morning, prompting an e-mail alert to students and faculty.” A coyote is sweetness itself compared to a professor— and a professor is selfless compared to a poet— even the meanest sculptor is not as stupid as a University— a wild animal is gentle and tame compared to a critic— a bobcat is meek and mild compared to any Intellectual— the zoo containing all is a garden compared to a Department no architecture is as fragile as friendship as vicious as love No stepmother is as horrible as the one you are stuck with No poem looks as good as the one you will find out is nothing when a mother calls you up you are lucky When a teacher calls you up you must always take out the revolver when you see a sick [...]