I’m fascinated by the rather small group of poets that seem to influence many photographers. In essence, it comes down to four names: T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, W.H. Auden, and Richard Hugo. I can understand why the first three names come up so often, given how famous they are. But I’m a bit puzzled by Richard Hugo. And overall, I’m concerned enough at the puddle-size of this poetic pool to launch a series of suggestions of poets which photographers and other artists might want to add to their shelves.
My background is poetry. I was a creative writing major as an undergrad and attended the New College of California Graduate Program in Poetics in San Francisco in the early 80s. For around 15 years I was seriously writing poetry and publishing in various literary journals, before abandoning art for career in order to support my family. Later, aghast at having ignored my muse, I committed to photography as my art form, which has been deeply informed by my engagement with poetry.
I’lll try to focus each post on one poet, and keep it short and concise—just enough to point you in a poet’s direction and give you some links to their poetry. The great thing is, should you decide to buy one of these poet’s books, such books are positively cheap compared to photobooks and art books. So your investment, even in a decent-sized library of poetry, will be relatively small.
For those of you who will be shopping for these books online and who might be looking for used copies or alternatives to Amazon, you should know about AddAll.com, a great collection of offerings by a multitude of book dealers. https://www.addall.com/used is the url. For rarer out-of-proint poetry you might want to check out my friend David Abel’s lovely offerings at Passages Bookshop: https://www.passagesbookshop.com.
I think I’ll launch this series, which will occur in no particular order, with the next post focusing on Wallace Stevens.