Essential Question: How can I express the last four years of my life through poetry?

Every once in a while I will get a question about influence. It’s a difficult question to answer because I can list my favorite poets very easily, but it’s difficult for me to trace the effect Gwendoyln Brooks has had on my poetry, as opposed to someone like Ted Hughes. Inversely, many people look at my poetry and think of e.e. cummings, but after reading one small anthology of his I cannot say his poetry is in my thoughts often. I wouldn’t want to say that I am entirely original, but still, beyond endlessly praising every word T.S. Eliot ever wrote, my answer isn’t very clear. 

A week ago, I began reading a career-spanning anthology by Charles Wright, named Oblivion Banjo. What strikes me most about it is how much he sounds like me: or more embarrassingly, a much more skilled version of my poetry. This has happened to me before; I used to receive multiple comments about my stories comparing me to Marquez, despite to this day having never read a single one of his stories. So can influence even be controlled? I can say, having actually read Charles Wright, I think of his poems as I am writing. I am thinking of his freedom as he writes, and his fluidity. In this way, it would seem I am influenced by Charles Wright. 

But what of the multitude of rivers, or stars? What of the constantly rising sun? Can I have been influenced by this man’s poems without ever reading them? Is influence merely the meeting of similar minds, across time? Are all my poems predetermined, therefore, by the legions of poets before me? Sometimes I ask so many questions I feel like a rabbit running in a circle. They are the simple part: the spring to the winter.