Peter Everwine Recommends...

“‘If you don’t stir your soul with a stick every day, you’ll freeze solid.’ Rutger Kopland, the Dutch poet, uses this sentence from Gerrit Krol as an epigraph to one of his books. I often read poems as my chosen stick in preparing to write: usually poems from earlier generations,

or poems in translation or from other languages and historical periods. I want quiet voices and the perspective of distance, avoiding the flash-bang of current poetics and contending fashions. I open the books of poets I love and honor: the Tang poets; the Spaniards Machado and Jimenez; Italy’s Sinisgalli and Pavese; Rolf Jacobsen; yes, Kopland and so many others who have written with such hard-won clarity and intimate simplicity. It’s a stick I need. Not a wand. Not a divining rod. Not a baton. Not a tool for whipping. A simple unadorned stick; one can be found almost anywhere, even underfoot.”
—Peter Everwine, author of Listening Long and Late (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013)

Please log in to continue.
LOG IN
Don’t yet have an account?
Register for a free account.