BURT KIMMELMAN ON "CHAPTER ONE"

Burt Kimmelman continues Marsh Hawk Press' "Chapter One" series which features poets' memoirs on how they began as poets. Here's an excerpt:

"I suffer from a peculiar malady. My sense of what a poem is, how it should work, how it might feel (its aesthetics)—all of this, my understanding of a poem, was determined when I was an adolescent who came into contact with a number of Black Mountain poets. For all my life as a working poet, now more than fifty years, I have been unable to appreciate a poem outside of the framework imparted to me when I was learning what poetry could be—when I realized I was serious about the vocation of poet."

The "Chapter One Project: On Becoming a Poet" features original memoirs of outstanding poets from diverse backgrounds, published monthly. They recall the ways by which these writers got their starts. In 2019, we will publish 12 original memoirs by poets including D. Nurkse, Burt Kimmelman, Barbara Novack, Geoffrey O’Brien, Eileen R. Tabios, Dan Morris, Anne Waldman, Sandy McIntosh and four others. At link, you also can watch and listen to Denise Duhamel reading from her Chapter One memoir "Mr. Rogers and Me."