More Nancy Spero here.<\/a><\/p>\n Click to see larage Francesca Woodman<\/a> <> <> <> He did read the prominent poets Ben Johnson, William Yeats, and Ezra Pound, but added that “the real question is not by whom I was influenced, but how.” To Miller, Carruth’s early grounding in traditional poetic forms prepared him to “improvise” later on, much like the way jazz musicians often study classical music early in their training: “The discipline must precede the rejection of discipline.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n At Seventy-Five: Rereading An Old Book<\/p>\n My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.mutanteggplant.com\/vitro-nasu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/1Nancy-Spero-in-her-New-Yo-0073.jpg\" "\\"1Nancy-Spero-in-her-New-Yo-007\\"")
<\/a>
\n(Nancy Spero at her studio)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n(via<\/a>)
\nApril 3, 1958 \u2013 January 19, 1981<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nLucille Clifton and Hayden Carruth<\/a> <\/p>\n
\nI’m alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
\nIf I’d quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
\nTruly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
\nThe suffering. Who would have thought that petty
\nEndurance could achieve so much?
\nAnd prayers —
\nWere they prayers? Always I was adamant
\nIn my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
\nYet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
\nA matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
\nA movement of the natural human mind
\nBereft of its place among the animals, the other
\nAnimals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
\nSome of the words I said, which are these poems.<\/p>\n