of the vogue for François Villon, but very quickly transformed into something more topical and anarchic. Take these lines from "Ballade of a Stoic": "My mother's favourite chapel is in flames;/My father's best cashier is going blind;/My niece is mad; my nephew's name is James;/My aunt is murdered--and I do not mind." WS Gilbert is a strong influence here, but there's also Lewis Carroll. from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Collected Poetry, Part II
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Written from the 1960s through to the 90s, [Larissa] Miller's poems are remarkable for their directness and apparent simplicity: "Everything happened that could/and which it was impossible to believe". And, at times, her extraordinary lyrics seem to conjure the experience of a whole generation--"They waited days, they waited years/for the right weather, for freedom,/they waited, believing in miracles"--the poem building to its bleak finale: "and while we were waiting for heaven/the damp earth awaited us".
from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Guests of Eternity
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[John Giorno's] poetry in the 1960s interwove to great effect extracts from adverts, newspaper articles, gay pornography and reports from the Vietnam war. In "Freaked", for example, a description of a soldier dying from phosphorous burns--"'Somebody shoot me!' he yelled uncontrollably"--is interspersed with extracts from a geometry textbook and with language drawn from the most trivial sources: "May we have/your name/for our mailing list?"
from Charles Bainbridge: The Guardian: Subduing Demons in America
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