"I also got exposed to the poets that were being read at the colleges at that time. The only poetry I had remembered before that time were those horrible, long Longfellow-type things que nos hacían leer in high school [that they made us read in high school]. So I was turned off. But . . . one vato [guy] that I read was doing something that was exciting to me because he seemed to do it with a facility that I could relate to somehow . . . that was Walt Whitman. Me caiba su poesía [I dug his poetry] so I went with his trip for a long time. By then I was also starting to read T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and the Welshman Dylan Thomas. Y me fui prendiendo con esos vatos [and I got attached to those guys]. And the other vato that I really dug a lot around that same time was William Carlos Williams. I also thought he was getting away with something. And I thought all these guys were getting away with something I was being told not to do. Por eso los veía como rebels a ellos. [That's why I saw them as rebels.] How could they get away with it and I get put down for trying it."
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Poets from the United StatesPeople from CaliforniaArtists from the United StatesPeople from AlbuquerqueHispanic Americans
Original Language: English
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On his discovery of modern Anglo-American poetics (as quoted in Chapter 5: My Old Man's Ballad: José Montoya and the Power Beyond of the book Mexican Ballads, Chicano Poems)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Montoya
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José Montoya
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