B: Well I find that in your work, but at the same time I find what I call self--your ability to see yourself, but with a detachment. G: Ya, well that's the character of my poetry--that it is all about self and it's also the limitation of it, and when I feel good about what I say--well, after all, Montaigne wrote about nothing but himself but somehow I don't feel for me that that's a reflection of good faith and what I'm most happy about my poetry is when it gets out of self and it seems to me that so rarely does it get out of self--it does in the last part of a couple of new poems "The Berlin Wall " and of a poem called "For Prince George." B: Pony Express Riders, an earlier poem, has a "subject"--it's outside of the self. G: That's true--that poem is totally outside of the self. B: It might be kind of an unusual poem in terms of your collected works, I would think. I see much of your work characterized in lines like:"My heart is broken permanently /it works better that way." When I see that kind of surprise in a poem, it sends shivers up my spine. You could have written " my heart is broken"--a cliche--but you add "broken permanently." But then there's that ironic detachment and surprise: "it works better that way". Thenegative becomes a positive that contains a kind of energy of faith and I think your best poems do that, even when you might feel you have no faith ... G: Well, I think you have to. That's what we were talking about last night--the need to have faith starting with that line you had quoted from Coleridge, "the willing suspension of disbelief" and Spicer in one of his poems says a willing suspension of disbelief has as much chance as a snowball in hell [laughter] . I think that little poem, your heart is broken... I don't know to what extent we think of our poetry as lasting if you want some of your poems to last--but with the very best poets, not much of it lasts. It's not a question of it lasting after you're dead,it's a question of it having the character of a poem that you could imagine lasting, and very very little of my poetry, or I think from probably putting yourself in the consciousness of any poet, he or she would probably say, well, very little of my poetry has that character, but the fact that some of it does , a little bit of it does--there is something absolutely crucial, absolutely wonderful about that, unquestionable about that. B: I agree. Poetry is a gift and once it's out there, it's hard to say what will last. The irony is that what might last is the thing you wouldn't expect would last. G: [laughter] Gelett Burgess's purple cow. B: Ya, something like that. You have many lines that stick with me, lines like " going to the store/ for a pack of cigarettes, going to Prince George." G: The first poem in Mountains & Air--"Light up the world with your faith." B: I see those specific details that I really like in your poems, but you also manage to get lines that have meanings that are very important--meanings that lift out of all those details. G: Well that poem I really like. Mountains & Air is now 10 or 12 years back and that seems to me like we were talking about our greatest hits--that's one of my greatest hits. I go back and I still like that poem. I like the way it is just filled with all kinds of random stuff like Julia Child, or that pack of cigarettes, or the pictures of the graduating class of Prince Rupert Senior Secondary hanging on the wall or the other pack of cigarettes that the