John Doe of Band X Recalls his Time Studying Under Grace Cavalieri at Antioch
The punk-rocker, like so many others, discovered poetry through Grace Cavalieri. She offers some sound advice for aspiring readers.
John Doe, California punk-rocker of the band X shares a common trait with so many Maryland and D.C. poets: he discovered poetry through Grace Cavalieri. While Grace has introduced countless readers to poetry through her original work, it was in Grace's class at Antioch that Doe discovered the "current" poets whose vernacular was similar to his own. In an article from The Tampa Bay Times, Doe describes her method:
What she did was tell me, "Don't read anything that was written earlier than 1945 so you can be inspired by current poets that were alive and had a similar kind of vernacular, a similar way of talking in life." So when you do this, you don't have the hurdles, perhaps, of Shakespeare or Tennyson.
In his new book Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk, Doe goes into more detail about his time studying under Grace and her influence on him and his music.
Grace's own poetic history can be found in the selected work Other Voices, Other Lives. OVOL features poetry both new and old, as well as selections from a number of Grace's plays, and even transcripts of her interviews with poets like Rita Dove. More about OVOL here.
Other Voices, Other Lives: A Grace Cavalieri Collection is a selection of poems, plays, and interviews drawn from over forty years of work by one of America’s most beloved and influential women of letters. The author of 23 books of poetry and 26 produced plays, and the founder of the legendary radio interview program, The Poet and the Poem, Grace Cavalieri has won multiple national awards for her writing and her service to literature. She currently resides in Annapolis, Maryland.
Featured Audio: “Letter from Sligo Creek” a poem by Rose Solari
Like the cover photo, the poems in Difficult Weather are timeless and—unlike the poems in many first books—extraordinarily mature. Although the narrative voice is generally that of a young woman in her late twenties and early thirties whose subject matter sometimes ranges back to early childhood, these are poems of adulthood: the discovery and endlessly painful rediscovery of human frailty, sexual and emotional betrayal, bad love in all its familial and romantic varieties, memory, and elegy…
Listen to Grace Cavalieri Interview fmr. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky
Grace Cavalieri is known widely for her stirring and empathic poetry, collected in her Legacy work Other Voices, Other Lives, but did you know that she is also an impressive interviewer? On her NPR show, The Poet and The Poem, she interviews significant poets from the US and around the world, with an aim of interpreting their lives through their poetry. In her tenure on the program, she has interviewed 9 US Poets Laureate (you can find a list with these archived interviews HERE), including the incomparable Robert Pinsky.
Featured Poetry: “Toytown” by Grace Cavalieri
The name Other Voices, Other Lives, is not purely poetical, in fact, for Grace Cavalieri it is a mission statement. In her Legacy Book of the same name there are several sections in 3rd person omnipotent which aim to breathe the same air as famous women who have suffered adversity. Tragic figure Anna Nicole Smith, feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, Cora from William Carlos William’s Kora in Hell. All in all they are an admix of Grace Cavalieri’s poetic life, all brought together in one beautiful volume; so, perhaps, we might figure that Anna Nicole Smith converses with Mary Wollstonecraft for the very first time in the pages of Other Voices, Other Lives.
Today, from the Anna section we have the heart-rending “Toytown”