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.