that's
just one of the many tricks because I really do
think you do have to--and I found I have to trick
myself, trick my mind--ultimately write the poem
despite myself.
B: Exactly. I hear
what you're saying.
G: Despite my
knowledge, despite my intention, despite my
emotions. you've got to somehow--this is really
something I guess I learned and inherited form
Spicer--how to get somehow all of that stuff out of
the way even if what comes through the finished
poem does use a lot of personal stuff...
B: Going to the
dictionary would break up ... well, there's nothing
worse for the poem and writing than when you have
that self conscious feeling--"I'm writing a
poem."
G: Ya right. It's
like living a life--it gets to that level of
generality. Many years ago I would have said, "oh
I'm writing a poem! I'm being creative!" But now I
would no longer say that anymore than I would
reflect upon "I'm living a life." What else is
new?
B: Ya, right
[laughter]
(pause)
B: Bob Creeley is
such a clear light.
G: Creeley I think
is the one American poet; of course Creeley is
great--no question about it. Creeley is among all
of us. I think he and Al Purdy perhaps are the--I
want to say the men, but the one poet to me that is
most important is John Ashbery. Al Purdy has the
common touch. Al Purdy is the one poet, and the
other one is the late Alden Nowlan. You can read a
poem of theirs to anyone who has never heard a poem
before or perhaps dislikes poetry or thinks that he
or she dislikes poetry and they'll immediately
react. I don't know what it is--there's very very
few poets like that. Those are the only 2 I can
think of . I can't think of any American poets like
that. It's not true of Creeley. I don't think it
would be true of Olson or Duncan. It's only true of
those 2 men: Alden Nowlan and Al Purdy. It's the
common touch.
B: Their ability to
tell a story, the timing of the humour.
G: A kind of having
the same receptitivity as the reader--being like
the reader. Purdy and Nowlan can get across to
insensitive people.
B: When you think of
Nowlan's poem about the moose--there is no
mistaking the horror and cruelty of the experience
he describes. Who else but the poet can capture
that ?
G: Yes, Nowlan has a
great sense of human meanness and cruelty in some
of his poems.
B: I hope poetry
doesn't lose that sense of human experience and
emotion in its progress toward wherever it is
going.
G: Well, again, the
variety and individuality of poetry I guess for 2
reasons: 1) is that as one gets older one has a
more complex view of the world, and then 2) is that
the world is becoming more complex because the
activity of poetry is not set apart from other
things as it used to be--so it all gets lost and so
where it's going immediately my answer to that
would be who do I know? What young poets do I know
and I find it very hard to think of very many poets
younger than myself. I don't know whether--maybe
it's changing into something else. I have no idea
what's happening with poets... the young people are
doing
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