draft it occurred to him that he didn't need the first 7 pages, and that sort of thing will happen too in poetry . I remember sitting on the beach at Aquatic Park with Spicer and I was writing a poem in a notebook and I erased a line and put another line in its place. Spicer was watching me and Spicer said, "George always has to put another line in when he erases a line"--but of course, I've gotten beyond that. I'm willing right now to say I'm working on say a 3 page poem and say I don't need the last page or the first page, but I may not realize that till after 19 drafts of the poem. So it can come either way. It can come just unexpectedly--a wonderful poem--or you can spend6 months working on something that turns out not to be a poem at all, and finally with a great expression of relief--throw it all away. B: You were saying a couple of weeks ago it's not really work. Do you remember that conversation? G: No. I may have been referring to the use for example Hannah Arendt makes when she talks about the difference between labour and work, and action. She would have said that writing a poem would be more a form of action, and Olson would have said that too rather than work. Work would be something like workmanship--making a good piece of furniture. B: Were you saying you were feeling a bit guilty because it looks like work, it is work, but its not really... G: Well of course there is that bourgeois way of looking at 19th century paintings and the intention seems to be to make the viewers say, "oh how much work must have gone into that, how wonderful it is" and that's just the opposite, the opposite. The phrase is "ars celare artem"--the art is to conceal the work. B: I was going to ask you, since we're dealing with biography, about your initial connection with Canada. G: I went up to Vancouver in 1971 because Blaser and Persky had moved there in 1966. My father died in December 1970. My mother died in January 1968--about 3 years apart--and I just finished my M.A. See, I had gone back to university after being out for 11 years in the bohemian beatnik hippy worlds, B: At this time, you're still basically in San Francisco? G: Still basically San Francisco, except for 1 year in New York and I had my M.A., my parents had just both died, the 60's were over; it was time for a change. I just wanted to go somewhere.,I had no concept of Canada. I thought of Vancouver as being someplace like Denver. The fact that it was in Canada was less important than the fact that they both ended with the same syllable [laughter]--so I came up here and I got stuck here--that's basically what happened. I ran out of money. I spent the small amount of money I had. I went on a trip to Europe with Scott Watson and then I came back here and I started working for Duthies and then I started working for The Grapewhich was an underground newspaper, and then I worked on Opportunity for Youth (OFY) grants with New Star Books and and eventually I ran out of money, then I had to go to work loading trucks for CP transport. B: Out of that experience at CP you wrote the poem, "Donatello's David". G: "Donatello's David," ya. So the fact was, all during those years--the early 70's which I think were horrible years for everyone--the hangover after the 60's--and what we didn't