{"id":20586,"date":"2018-11-14T09:38:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T14:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=20586"},"modified":"2018-11-14T09:38:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T14:38:15","slug":"anxieties-of-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=20586","title":{"rendered":"anxieties of influence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emerson, Lowell, cummings, and Plath,
\nStevens, Roethke, Frost, MacLeish, and Hall,
\nAshbery, Bishop, Eliot and Rich–<\/p>\n

I write them down in verse, shuffling their names
\nTo fill my lines, making them my material,
\nThey who took all the words I want to use.<\/p>\n

(Longfellow, his house a federal shrine,
\nIs too \u201chistoric\u201d to trouble me much.
\nPhyllis Wheatley, too, but all honor to her;
\nAnd grey Amherst is a world apart.)<\/p>\n

My adopted city is still more theirs than mine,
\nThough they have settled into matte darkness
\nWhile I still walk the prosaic blocks,
\nNarrow sidewalks, double-decker homes,
\nGingerbread, brutalism, and maple leaves,
\nAnd belligerent drunks who own their spots
\nUntil the streetlights dim and the town stirs.<\/p>\n

\n

— Cambridge, MA, November 2018<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emerson, Lowell, cummings, and Plath, Stevens, Roethke, Frost, MacLeish, and Hall, Ashbery, Bishop, Eliot and Rich– I write them down in verse, shuffling their names To fill my lines, making them my material, They who took all the words I want to use. (Longfellow, his house a federal shrine, Is too \u201chistoric\u201d to trouble me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20586"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20604,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20586\/revisions\/20604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}