omnidawn:As a kid growing up in New England, in West Acton...

omnidawn:

As a kid growing up in New England, in West Acton particularly, literally, this poet was primary and close. Her ways of feeling the world were extraordinary but also remarkably familiar. And I think the first time I can remember specifically was the time when we were asked in the high school class to memorize some poem. I must have been using a general anthology. I remember I chose a poem of hers that has the classic line “Inebriate of air am I” and because I wasn’t that sure as yet I remember I got the poem correctly except for that line which I had translated to read, “I am an inebriate of air.” And in some peculiar way it begins then: not only the engagement with ways she was feeling and thinking the world or that the fact of her feeling was such an information of her thinking and vice versa so that there was virtually no separation, but that kinds of subtlety of hearing began to be insistent and began to be specific from my habits as well as those so obviously hers.

Robert Creeley on Emily Dickinson, from OmniVerse 39

Just back from Odessa, TX, the oilfield town where Creeley died and where I grew up. My uncle was telling me about his own time in Mallorca in the seventies and I kept thinking what a strange and desolate exit Odessa must have been. Looking forward to the big selected letters, just out from UCP.