Poetry Friends
A close friend of mine, Antonio Moreno, asked me if I’d share a little on the topic of friendship, or perhaps, “poetry and friendship.” Since Antonio is my friend, I felt compelled to do so. It’s a tough subject because it’s terribly broad and friendship seems to exist somewhere on a continuum from warm and favorable acquaintances to the day-in-day-out people we know who are always there for us. The fact that so many of my friends are poets simply shows that I’ve spent a life hanging out with folks with a common interest. I can’t begin to measure in any quantitative way the degree of their influence, whether it was the impact on me of a conversation with Robert Hass about the effect of Jacque Lacan on poetics, or Li-Young Lee’s questions about what our 21st Century poetry would look like, or how best to work for peace according to Daniel Berrigan, or Czeslaw talking about the merits of Czeslaw Milosz English translations, and on and on… I can say, however, that I don’t exist as I am in a vacuum. Like the Buddhists, I believe we are all quite intimately connected, and that in fact individuality is only an illusion. My friends are me. They are my influences. They are the voices in my head. I went to New York University in the 1980s to study with Galway Kinnell. He introduced me to Rita Dove, Sharon Olds, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, and Jorie Graham. I introduced myself to still a hundred others, like Octavio Paz and Jamie Sabines, Ilya Kaminsky and Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Bly and Rita Dove…. And, I made friends and acquaintances with poets from other continents, too: Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America…. This is a community, and I absorb meaning from being a member of a community. For the purposes of this brief exposé of photos, I chose around eight pictures (out of over a hundred): Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Jorie Graham, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Daniel Berrigan. My relationship with each of them varied. Kinnell was my mentor from 1978 until he died in 2014. Robert Hass, friend, is married to my friend, Brenda Hillman; both of them helped me with my doctoral thesis—we’re still in touch. Berrigan, I only knew briefly. I try not to rank or quantify anyone’s importance, but I do recognize how blessed I am that such illustrious and talented persons have provided me with such kindness and direction. I’m not finished making friends.
Marlon L. Fick is an Associate Professor of English. He holds a BA from the University of Kansas (Philosophy), an MA from New York University (Poetics/English), and PhD from the University of Kansas (English). Marlon founded the rock band Animula in 2002 and has written and produced four albums. He is author of three poetry collections, a book of short stories, and the novel The Nowhere Man (Jaded Ibis, 2015), and is editor/translator of The River Is Wide / El río es ancho: Twenty Mexican Poets (New Mexico, 2005), as well as XEIXA: 14 Catalan Poet (Tupelo, 2018). His work, The Tenderness and the Wood, appeared from Guernica Press (2020). His novel, Rhapsody in a Circle, has just appeared from Guernica, 2025. Awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, ConaCulta in Mexico, and Institut Ramon Llull in Catalonia, he now teaches at the University of Texas–Permian Basin. He specializes in Comparative Poetics.