Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke pushed through the veil. His poetry is brilliantly emotional without the stickiness of sentimentality.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Millay is a cosmos. She was powerfully aware of the world, its people, her lovers, her purpose – and triumphed instead of forgotten like old rain.
Dante Alighieri
Dante is a godfather of epic poetry. As TS Eliot told someone at a dinner party who declared they’d read Dante once, “No, you’ve only begun to read Dante.”
Melissa Studdard
Studdard never wastes a word or uses her depth to drown her readers. You swim in her work and always come out better for it.
Robert Pinsky
No one alive writes poetry, teaches poetry, or supports other poets like Robert Pinsky. He is a wealth of genius, kindness, and inspiration.
Clifford Brooks (www.cliffbrooks.com) is a poet, founder of the Southern Collective Experience LLC (www.southerncollectiveexperience.com), and Editor-in-Chief of the Blue Mountain Review.
To date he’s responsible for three, traditionally-published, books of poetry: The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics, Exiles of Eden, and Athena Departs.
He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his girlfriend, Carolyn. They share a dog named Daisy.