Top Ten

Major Jackson

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Up early again today and needing to straighten out an error in the Writers in the School's anthology. I've emailed the teacher and hope to get the problem straightened out by the end of the day. Not happy about it.

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Hoping to hear about a job within the month. Needing to hear about a job soon.

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Still reading Ashbery, still reading Maceo Montoya, but I'm almost finished and will write the review soon. I really like John Ashbery; he's currently one of my favorites, yet none of the poems I've read so far have bumped anyone of my top ten list of favorites, which isn't really a concrete list. Surprisingly, a few Wallace Stevens poems make the cut every time. I say surprisingly because I write nothing like Stevens or Ashbery, but I do feel they are an influence. Elizabeth Bishop is a bigger influence, so does this make one a modernist, or non-innovative when it comes to writing poems? Of course not. Especially since a Bishop fave of mine is "The Man-Moth". That said, I suspect an Ashbery poem may enter the mix. These are in no particular order.

Today's top 10:

Wallace Stevens' "The Idea of Order at Key West"
Wallace Stevens' "Sunday Morning"
Elizabeth Bishop's "The Man-Moth"
W.B. Yeat's "The Second Coming"
Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck"
Rainer Maria Rilke's "Duino Elegies"
James Galvin's "Practice"
Theodore Roethke's "The Dance"
Theodore Roethke's "The Waking"
Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night"