Meg Waite Clayton

New York Times Bestselling Author

By

Nabokov on Reading Poetry

In part because a character in my new novel is a poet – which I am not – I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately. It’s amazingly inspiring. And I just came across this quote by Vladimir Nabokov which I find myself heartily agreeing with: “You have to saturate yourself with English poetry in order to compose English prose.”
One of the books through which I have been saturating myself lately is John Felstiner’s Can Poetry Save the Earth. I heard John read from this not long ago; if you ever have the chance to hear him read, I highly recommend it! He reads poetry the way it ought to be read. You can hear him read “The Well Rising” by William E. Stafford on this interview on NPR. – Meg

Share:

Meg Waite Clayton

Meg Waite Clayton is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of THE LAST TRAIN TO LONDON, a Jewish Book Award finalist based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe—and one brave woman who helped them escape. Her six prior novels include the Langum-Prize honored The Race for Paris and The Wednesday Sisters, one of Entertainment Weekly's 25 Essential Best Friend Novels of all time. A graduate of the University of Michigan and its law school, she has also written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes, Runners World, and public radio, often on the subject of the particular challenges women face. megwaiteclayton.com