Find Your Peeps

You want to become a better writer? Exposure to many different styles of writing is crucial. And hey, try to branch out from the textbook names while you’re at it. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and every elementary and junior high teacher I had went through the same exact list of classic poets each and every year — all solid choices — but when my ears were turned on to A.A. Milne and Frank O’Hara and William Carlos Williams and Mary Oilver and Brian Andreas, I knew I had found “my people.” So, go out and find your people. And just because the poetry of Robert Frost doesn’t resound with you doesn’t mean you don’t like or can’t understand poetry. It just means you haven’t found “your people” yet. The poets out there, living and dead, are as varied as the wardrobe styles at the JFK airport.