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| VOLUME 18 | MIPOESIAS MAGAZINE ~ THE NEW ENGLAND EDITION ~ SEPTEMBER 2004 ~ ISSN 1543-6063 | |
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FEATURED ARTIST
INTERVIEW
POETRY
The First Annual
Jack Reviews
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Your last book was If I Were Writing This (New Directions, September 2003). What are you working on now? Nothing in particular, which is to say, I am not at work on anything like a novel or some defining sequence of poems as was, years ago, Pieces. But that book, in fact, is good instance of the way I do work and have worked in the past – a sequence made of primarily spontaneous works, whether prose (as Presences) or else poetry, such as Pieces. Even when I wrote the one usual novel I ever managed, The Island, I first blocked it out as a ratio of numbers, 4s and 5s – four sections, five chapters in each, with five single-spaced typed pages in each chapter. I was worried about how long a “novel” had to be and this format reassured me it would be long enough. I usually got 500 words to a page, which, times 5, was 2,500, times 5 chapters a section, was 12,500, times 4 sections, was 60,000 words. Then I began to write – from page one straight through to the end, a chapter a day. I think I had one false start but otherwise it was written in the twenty days calculated, using the trajectory of what had been the previous day’s work and moving from there. The only narrative I had at all in mind was the general outline of the story of a failed marriage and the final “scene” I thought might well make an apt ending. Which it did, the one situation prescribed, as it were. What is the trigger that makes you sit down to write a poem – is it an emotion, idea, or image? How much of the writing process for you is spontaneous? I was thinking a bit earlier in the day about Yeats’ reply to that question. He says something like, “I get a sort of tune in my head.” It could involve all of those possibilities you note. For me there is no simple “one thing,” even when I am working in some sense “to order,” e.g., a sequence of poems for Clemente’s images. I was not able to write them as I might pick up my workroom or answer letters. Most usually it’s just some impulse, some tag of words coming to mind, or their interplay, rhythm, that starts things off – like feeling like going for a walk, as Robert Duncan put it. If one read his “The Truth and Life of Myth,” the instance of all this he provides is very useful. What advice would you give to a young poet who was having trouble deciding between working on their own or applying for MFA programs? I think there is no general advice possible. If one lives without company, call it, then an MFA program might be an excellent opportunity to take oneself and one’s writing seriously. On the other hand, there can be a lot of distractions and useless “instruction” offered. The company is what’s decisive always. I’d certainly go take a good look at what it was one was getting into. How else know if it will work for oneself? Too, it’s hard to think finally of a poet working on “his (or her) own,” given how much text surrounds us all. That’s the insistent measure and a poet who isolates him or herself from such material is really not going to be helped by an MFA program or anything at all. I guess I question the necessarily formal address of a usual MFA program. It’s got to say it has some end in mind, so as to work in the academic frame. That’s always a problem for a writer beginning to recognize his or her own possibilities. At least I know it very much was so for me. Has a poem ever come to you in a dream, or have you ever used symbols from dreams in your poems? I have used the material from dreams in poems from time to time, not as “symbols” but as literal fact. The poem I think of immediately is called “Dreams,” and the story of the people eating a kind of potluck meal with some seemingly never getting enough is straight from dream – as is the one following about staying with the kids while the men went off hunting and so on. I felt it told me “I was to be child forever” as the poem has it. Friends as Duncan, Olson and Denise Levertov all worked with dream material. I had curiously almost no ability to remember dreams – and so dreamed seemingly very little. When I did get them, they really had powerful effect. The internet is a phenomenal new way for writers to connect and meet instantly. There are hundreds of free interactive internet poetry workshops where writers of all ages, levels of experience, cultures and educational backgrounds meet, share poems and offer critique every day. This is how I started writing. My first poem was posted on an internet workshop and within five minutes someone had commented on the poem (not to say the comment was positive). How do you feel an “instant” audience can help the young poet? How can it also hurt the young poet? I can’t but feel it’s good news. You may know an early poem of mine, “The Conspiracy,” which begins, “You send me your poems,/ I’ll send you mine.” Allen Ginsberg told me that was the poem of mine that really made him feel I was ok. I’m a bit wary of “critique” as such, i.e., that’s all too familiar from the possibly generalizing function of criticism in usual workshops. Ginsberg’s “a few golden minds” are what one’s after. I don’t think an active poem will likely be one that’s the result of endless “critiquing,” however heartfelt. It’s not like one’s learning to assemble televisions. There are tens of thousands of users on the internet poetry boards. In busy workshops there can be hundreds of “hits” or reads on a single poem over a matter of days. Frequent users of internet poetry boards probably have their work read more often than poets who publish in paper journals. The internet challenges the limitations of a paper page by having programs such as HTML that can create moving text, incorporate photos, produce sound effects and the internet medium provides an instant audience. How far do you think the internet will take poetry away from the traditional book format? Anything that facilitates getting one’s work out there, anyone’s work, is good news in my mind. Books took poetry away from what was the oral practice preceding. Both books and the internet are formats, which have obvious and significant effect on whatever it is we call poetry itself. But that “made thing,” whatever, will seemingly continue to be there, just that it seems so much the fact and effect of “humanness” itself. I know at Brown, where I am now teaching, hypertext is a wonderful potential and is taken very seriously indeed. In your book Pieces one saw texts separated by a characteristic asterisk. This technique, use of the *, is now being seen among internet poets struggling to reconcile the lack of a bottom of the page in the format of an internet poetry board post. How did you come up with the *? As I mentioned earlier, this work was my attempt to have a poem keep going, be in that sense “serial,” so I wanted some typographical device which could indicate that a poem or text was part of a continuing day’s work, not therefore isolated from the rest. So I used a large dot (not an asterisk!) to separate the texts of a day’s writing as they occurred, and then separated these from a new day beginning by using three dots. The effect is simple to see in the initial Scribner’s edition but a good deal harder to get in the Collected Poems, alas. Clearly this problem and how to solve it has pertinence for the internet as well. Along the same lines, Jack Kerouac once remarked that the reason his poems looked like brief tall rectangles was because that was the shape of the pages of his pocket notebook he wrote them on. For internet writers, the shape is indefinitely amorphous. Any thoughts on this? Thinking now of the monitor screen I’m looking at while typing this, that fact of “shape” is still very present. Characteristically I am using a 100% “view” of Times New Roman 12 point – and there’s the fold at the end of lines, etc., etc. It’s more like half a page, but I’ve grown accustomed to the feel of a 8 ½ X 11 page translated to this context. I can go up and look with “Print Preview” if I need a more graphic instance. I am using a laptop PC with Word etc. What’s so great is that this machine, weighing less than two pounds, can hold all my works several times over plus music files plus images plus god knows what – and when I get home I can put it in its dock and use it like an extra hard drive! On the floor beside me I’ve got my old Olympia typewriter in its case, which I love with all my heart but will very probably never type another word on. So be it. With the exponential growth of media, publishing, the internet, there is a sense that there is too much good writing to know, yet also still a sense that good poetry is rare. You have lived through generations of poets. How much of what is good is saved? I think poetry like music is probably its own reward – like dancing, like life itself. It’s making poetry that’s the pleasure, as it’s the same with making music. The judgment as to whether or not it’s good is something else – and certainly saving it is, when one’s doing it. In short, I am not an archivist nor a critic – and if I have saved anything over the years, it’s for the simple reason Pound then noted: “What thou lovest well shall not be reft from thee…” Hank Williams would tell you the same thing. On Amazon.com the computer tells us that those who buy your books also buy Jack Kerouac, Ezra Pound, Lorine Niedecker, David Lehman, and Lyn Hejinian. Do you have any speculations on the interconnections? I could probably identify some of the connections – David and I were connected through the Best American Poetry business a few years ago. I have written several prefaces and/or introductions for books by Jack Kerouac. Lyn Hejinian is certainly a fellow poet of my great respect. Pound and Lorine Niedecker are very significant elders for me along with others. Well, what do you think? I guess that’s the real and final question.
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