Viet Thanh Nguyen, Arundhati Roy, Yaa Gyasi, Aida Edemariam, Joseph O’Connor, Helene Cooper, Chris Hedges and Elizabeth Gilbert are a few I think of!

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

That though captured while in Africa, Africans became slaves only during the long crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, when they were treated so horrifically that those who could manage it jumped into the sea. They had no place in their psyches to fathom their abuse: Subjected to every kind of depravity and horror, during the passage and after, they arrived to be forced onto platforms and bid on, a process that could drag on and on, as plantation owners rejected those for whom they had no use. Africans were “broken in” physically, and broken down spiritually, to such an extent they became what they had not been in their homelands or halfway through the voyage: slaves. This treatment, deliberately calibrated to destroy their inner sovereignty, was called “seasoning.” In Daniel Black’s extraordinary book “The Coming,” we have an unprecedented opportunity to be with ancestors who probably never dreamed a scribe would one day appear to make their descendants not only imagine their plight but also, by being brought to tears by the narrative, gain access to an emotion that makes us one with them. Shamanic work.

What moves you most in a book?

The witnessing of a great soul. A magnificent spirit in action. A warrior whose mental weapons seem to come equally from heart and air, and whose soul is nourished by solitude and dreams. In other words, the writer’s courage.

Did you read poetry as a child?

We owned two or three thick volumes of English literature called “Prose and Poetry.” I wish I knew where they are now! They were the foundation of the family’s literacy and love of literature. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.…” The refrain was: “You’ll be a man, my son.” But I ignored the “man” part. I knew I was being spoken directly to, and this has turned out to be true. I have gone my own way, because of that early impression that it is right to do so. Poetry is that kind of gift.

I was also strengthened by the love the people in my community had for poetry. They appreciated my first poem: “Easter lilies pure and white, blossom in the morning light.” Their praise, when I was 3 or 4, gave me permission to be a poet, with all the intrigue and adventure that would later involve. Well, if only they knew!

Was there a book of poems or a poet in particular that inspired you to write?

I loved Emily Dickinson. Robert Frost. T. S. Eliot. Paul Laurence Dunbar. Langston Hughes. Margaret Walker’s “For My People” moved me deeply. Also her poems “October Journeys” and “We Have Been Believers.” But no, I think sorrow more than poets inspired me to write. That and the most rapt love of nature all around me, that seemed to require something creative from me to attempt to match — a gold and crimson leaf, perhaps, or the way a turtle’s shell fits perfectly, or the notion that horses, though heavy, could swim! The wonder of it. I felt from a very young age that somehow we had, as humans, emerged into a magical world, a true wonderland, for which my deepest sadness was no match.

Which poets continue to inspire you?

Taoist poets. “The Activist’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for a Modern Revolution,” by William Martin, is a recent inspiration. Rumi, always. Among modern poets, I like Mary Oliver.