I first came across 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' in college, with other anthologized poems by Yeats.
I am an anthologist, you see. I sort of make anthologies for people.
I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans.
Well, I like to write poetry. I'm a published poet.
Now, to read poetry at all is to have an ideal anthology of one's own, and in that possession to be incapable of content with the anthologies of all the world besides.
I have been writing poetry since 1975. My first poetry book was published in 1986.
The historical legacy of 'The Best American Poetry' is they've had very few editors who were not white. They've had very few instances where they've selected poems by non-white poets.
And at some point I would like to talk my publisher into doing an anthology of my poetry alongside some teen readers' poetry. It would be fun, and really wonderful to get their stuff out there.
Last year I was a judge for a prize in England, the T.S. Eliot Prize, so I read everything that was published in England last year.
John Updike's first published book was a collection of poems.
My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.
I grew up in New York City. In elementary school, I was a charter member of the Scribble Scrabble Club, and in high school, my poems were published in an anthology of student poetry.
So now I have a collection of poetry by Aaron Neville and I give it to people I want to share it with. I'd like to publish it someday.
The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service.
One of the most treasured books that I own is Donald Allen's 'The New American Poetry, 1945-1960.' It was a totem of great importance and potency to my group of writer friends in college from 1960 to 1964.
I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on.
I published, privately, a collection of my serious poetry I had written over the years. I only published 50 copies, which I gave to friends, in a special deluxe edition. It was ridiculously expensive but I'm glad that I did it.
I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems.
