Meet Your New Favorite Poet

James Thomson (1700–1748)

I like to tell poetry students about pleasures that are “on reserve” for them—meaning pleasures they’re too little to have now, but which they will have, someday, if they just stick with it. Good example of this: owning other poets.

How can you own a poet? Simple. You have to find a poet whom no one has read in a long time, a poet with no living fans. Then you have to sincerely love that poet’s work. That’s the hard part. But if you love the poet’s poems, and no one else has even read them, there’s your opportunity to plant your flag. That poet is now your private property. Your interpretation of that poet’s work is by definition correct. Your right to be there is indisputable.

And why can’t beginners have this pleasure? That’s easy. ’Cuz they cannot bring themselves to read material that’s “not gonna be on the test.” And even if they do somehow read such material,