There’s something kitschy about forced new-ness, and something quiet and clean about a creative act that nods to others, directly or discreetly. A golden shovel, a cento, a found poem, an after-poem, an epigraph… inspiration in poetry has many forms.
Some of my favorite poets do this really well, and I think what makes their work so profound is the way it honors the vibrations of the original while building something that feels very new around or from it. Jamaica Baldwin is one of those poets - her debut collection Bone Language breathes in Pablo Neruda, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alejandra Pizarnik and breathes out originals like “a defense of girls” and “I heard // the ocean sleepwalking, followed it up the road.”
Natalie Diaz, the poet whose work invited me to fall in love with poetry when I was recommend When My Brother was an Aztec by a college friend, is another writer who draws deeply from the well of reality, synthesizing history and lived experience with overturned touchstones of social, political, spiritual, multi-lingual and pop culture context. Some of her poems are atmospherically heady, and others are an on-ramp for any reader.
“They Don’t Love You Like I Love You,” from her 2021 Pulitzer Prize winning collection Postcolonial Love Poem integrates a well known rock and roll song by the same name with a conversational exchange between herself and her mother.
The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs giving bloom to the question “What is the United States if not a clot // of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?” is just… poetry, man.
April is officially over, and with it National Poetry Writing Month. Being in creative company with poets throughout this month is a high I’ll be riding for some time, and I am f*cking THRILLED to report that I met and exceeded my goal of a poem a day, churning out a whopping 32 new pieces this month. Some are even, like, kinda good!
Here’s one I particularly like, written in response to this #NaPoWriMo prompt (would love to hear YOUR response to this one, friend!):
Write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music.
Don’t Stop Me Now Mercury is in retrograde and I am stardust. Each cell just some space trash launched a trillion miles a shooting star, leaping through the sky and falling into this zygote, that root, another mineral, finally a human woman on a couch whose vocally a tenor but can falsetto like Freddie if the Bowie is right. On my come up the world was blurred. Strip malls neon smears along the highway I’m traveling at the speed of light and staring down a herd of high-beams strapped nauseously in the way, way back of Dad’s station wagon on the Jersey Turnpike. Backwards is a matter of perspective. The first time I sang karaoke I chose Indigo Girls, ready to reload, like an atom bomb wobbled my way through a few pitchy choruses then hit the bar for a fourth g&t before taking on Olivia Rodrigo. I was dark the next day. I learn best through repetition, had half a whole life as a practicing addict before stop me now I grasped that I was who'd been had, and I still look cute as hell in a fake mustache gyrating, stone sober and truly having such a good time, I’m having a good time.
I love this, and you, so much!