☀ "What Sparks Poetry:" Heather Green on Marilyn Chin

"After a long hiatus from school, I was working on a Master’s in literature, and just beginning to write poems of my own, when I first read Marilyn Chin’s Rhapsody in Plain Yellow. This book, with its densely allusive fabric, hyper-vivid imagery, and wild formal range, opened up my idea of what poetry can do. “Horse Horse Hyphen Hyphen,” which I wrote about extensively in my thesis, is one of the central loci for all the concerns of the book..."

A half century ago, Archibald MacLeish, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, playwright and lawyer, served as a literary interpreter of events beyond the imagination of most observers. "It seemed to me that the question to reflect about was what this great event was, this world-shaking event that held everyone’s attention," MacLeish recalled. "Was this simply a triumph of technology, the latest best piece of hardware, or was it something more?"