The Complete Poems – Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore handled the strangeness and beauty of science with an eye for imagery that is still unmatched in my mind. Knowing that I could send a poem into the world, but keep forming it as my mind changes is something that changed the way I write. I owe this knowledge to Marianne Moore.
Roots and Branches – Robert Duncan
This is a near-spiritual text to me—prophetic and complex. Strange, referential, thickly mythical and stunningly heartbreaking.
The Granite Pail – Lorine Niedecker
This book does everything I would like to as a writer. It is both complex and simple—expresses rural life and the natural world in a manner that is reverential, and personal. It’s a gorgeous, fine balance that exists in very few works of art. Our
Andromeda – Brenda Shaughnessy
Read this book for heartbreaking honesty—for an infusion of life, and to find your own magic in the intricacies of interconnectedness.
Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
This book will bring you back to love if you have lost it. Be sure you are brave enough for love before reading it.
Kari A. Flickinger was a 2019 nominee for Best of the Net and the Rhysling Award. Her work appears in Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, Moonchild Magazine, Neon Mariposa, and The Ekphrastic Review, among others. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley. When she is not writing, she can be found playing her glorious Gibson Hummingbird, and singing to her unreasonably large Highlander cat, Bear. Find her: kariflickinger.com legendcitycollective.wordpress.com @kariflickinger