Welcome to “Things Worth Remembering,” in which writers share a poem or a paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. This week, Joseph Massey—who we’ve dubbed the unofficial poet laureate of Trump’s America—reflects on the work of a man who helped make him the artist he is today.
Poetry is that
conversation we could not
otherwise have.—Cid Corman
I wrote to the poet Cid Corman when I was 19, after encountering his work in the University of Delaware library. I wasn’t a student there—I had dropped out of school in the ninth grade due to a complete lack of interest in whatever was being taught—but the library was open to the public, and I spent my days and evenings there pursuing a self-education in poetry.
I had found poetry in my early adolescence, after reading a biography about Jim Morrison titled No One Here Gets Out Alive. That book tipped me off to poets like Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake, who Morrison loved.
Poetry became my anchor in a world blurred-over and scrambled by frequent attacks of anxiety and depression—conditions I had known since I was a small child. The homes I grew up in, split between my mother and father who divorced when I was 3, were broken and abusive.