Truth be told - I lived with a household of poets at Oberlin.
I'd get home at the end of along day in the electronic music studio and practicing to be "Papageno" to:
- hold on, hold on, listen to this: "Graph to me the breast you cut off to fire better with........"
or
- "inside the valley that lies between a shrug"
or
"I wrote under a pen name
One day I shook the pen trying to make the name come out
But no it's
Like me prefers clinging to the inner calypso
So I tossed the pen to my pet the
Wastebasket to eat
It'll vomit back the name
Names aren't fit
For unhuman consumption
But no again
It stayed down
I don't use a pen-name anymore
I don't use a pen anymore
I don't write anymore
I just sit looking at the wastebasket
With this alert intelligent look on my face"
I then asked these dudes "who wrote that?" [1]
And they said "Bill Knott" [2]
So I created an electronic music piece using a recording of one of his poetry readings. I also did a piece (twice) based upon sections from "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".
And when I was commutting to Trieste, Italy - I got into being a serious James Joyce fanatic.
Anyway - it seems that my entire life has had 'poets' in it.
Links:
[1] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=iO3&q=%22bill+knott%22&btnG=Search
[2] http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-to-poetry/