Jack Gilbert
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Max Ritvo: Mentors & Masters (Part II)
In "Letters from Max", Sarah Ruhl refers to Virginia Woolf’s idea of “the voice answering the voice” and applies it to Max: “For most poets, the voice answering the voice is an internal dialogue. Max had the gift of an internal voice, and also the gift of answering back to so many other poets.” As I was one of the poets lucky enough to be answered by Max, I wanted to compile and share a playlist of ten of the poems I most answer to from "Four Reincarnations" and "The Final Voicemails" (in Part I, previously). I also wanted to include an accompanying playlist of poems Max answered to—the poems of his mentors and masters—as these were not only the poems that colored his voice but also the poems he offered me and many of his poet-peers for inspiration or solace, challenge or solidarity. This second list directly and indirectly shapes the first. Among the voices that influenced Max: the gnomes of Dickinson, the love poems of Jack Gilbert, the playful F-U music of Franz Wright, the blur of allusion and personal narrative in his teacher (and the editor of TFV) Louise Gluck’s Meadowlands, the idea of “the first draft of humanity” in Nathaniel Mackey’s Splay Anthem, the go-for-broke rhythm of Wallace Stevens’ thinking, Timothy Donnelly’s zesty intelligence in a sip of anything, the scrimshawed suffering of Lucie Brock-Broido’s animals, Dottie’s primordial drive for the all-colors of survival, the wicked self-analysis of Berryman’s Dream Songs.
View playlistIn Search Of Joy
2018 was the worst year of my life. I say this not knowing how it will end, but I dare-say I was not happy. Maybe this is because happiness so often is reliant upon circumstance, and as someone with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder- the odds are rarely in my favor. Yet, here I am writing this. Because of joy. Because in the dark spaces I chased it, until my life was sore, until I was dancing cheek to cheek with that yellow grace. Joy, in its purest form is reliant on nothing but awe and openness to something other than our perception of our present selves. While similar, it is far from happiness, and thankfully neither is fully invested in the other’s presence—they exist, with or without each other. In the dark places, you must store joy where it is accessible for when it is necessary. This is where I found myself—in the dark. Driving way too fast on a highway past sun-down, my friend Emily in the passenger seat, together screaming the lyrics to Augustana’s "Boston"… and I woke back into my life, out of the nightmare, out of the vast plain of dark—I was alive again, and the stars… they were everywhere.
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