At university, I had been obsessed with reading about the lives of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and I was steeped in the crazy poets, and I came to view my early subjects through that prism.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was really exposed to great old-time literature - the classics, the poetic realists like Strindberg and Ibsen and all those guys. I was really inspired by all those guys. That's when writing became a primary focus.
After attending the gymnasium between my eighth and seventeenth years, I studied classical philology at Berlin University for two years under Boeckh and Lachmann, and with the friendly support of Emanuel Geibel and Franz Kugler, I dabbled in all sorts of poetry.
A lot of people don't know that my background is completely classical. For a while there, I was all about Moliere and the Greeks and Brecht and Tennessee Williams.
I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits.
As a former English major, I have always been fascinated by the connections between literature and history.
Victorian literature was my subject at Harvard.
The poetic prose that most interests me is that of Henri Michaux.
I started out as a writer. Poetry and prose and also kind of satirical David Sedaris-esque stuff.
I liked painting and drawing, and I liked humanities mainly - poetry, literature - this speculative attitude toward life.
I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.