What Sparks Poetry is a serialized feature that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our third series, The Poems of Others II, twenty-four poets pay homage to the poems that led them to write. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay. 
I love Russia; and Isadora and her dance.
When I put my arms around her, she’s like
Wheat that sways in the very midst of bloody battle,
—Un-hearkened-to, but piling up peace for the earth
(Though my self-war juggles no nimbus). Earthquake; shoulders
A-lit with birthdays of doves; piety of the unwashable
Creases in my mother’s gaze and hands. Isadora “becalmed”
Isadora the ray sky one tastes on the skin of justborn babies
(Remember, Isadora
When you took me to America
I went, as one visits a grave, to
The place where Bill Knott would be born 20 years in the future
I embraced the pastures, the abandoned quarry, where he would play
With children of your aura and my sapling eye
Where bees brought honey to dying flowers I sprinkled
Childhood upon the horizons, the cows
Who licked my heart like a block of salt) Isadora I write this poem
On my shroud, when my home-village walks out to harvest.
Bread weeps as you break it gently into years.
from the book I AM FLYING INTO MYSELF: SELECTED POEMS, 1960-2014 / Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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What Sparks Poetry:
John Cotter on Bill Knott’s
"(Sergey) (Yesenin) Speaking (Isadora) (Duncan)"

"I realized eventually the intensity of my hero worship was too unwieldy, though only about six or seven months after my friends did. I also knew I’d never find my own voice if I kept imitating Bill’s. I pushed off toward other mentors—no one I interacted with personally, just voices in books—but it was never the same. Poetry was too lonely without Bill in my head." 
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Black-and-white photograph of Lisel Mueller relaxing in an armchair
Lisel Mueller: In Memoriam

Chicago poet Lisel Mueller arrived in the Midwest in 1939, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and died this week, aged 96.  "A teacher, lecturer, critic and author of six books of poetry, Ms. Mueller earned the Pulitzer in 1997 for Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Her writing expressed the losses of the immigrant and history, and the beauty of the natural world, domestic life, love and grief."
 
viaCHICAGO SUN-TIMES
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