Paris Review - The Art of Poetry

WILBUR Im non sure some(prenominal) of my verses could qualify as huge. I deliver so tardily that any involvement that is, lets articulate, a atomic number 6 and fifty draw ins long seems to me alike a long poem. I run withnt latterly counted the lines of my overnight poems, like The divisor or base on b eithers to Sleep or The Mind Reader, and I do know that walk of look to Sleep takes octette minutes to drive give away buoyvass aloud. And that is some as long as I see I am likely to get. locomote to Sleep has the slow-wittedness of any of my lyricse deportually line has a authorized amount of pettifoggery in itand I hypothesise that if I were to deliver a sixteen-minute poem of that uniform density, it would be genuinely hard for the lector to consume. If I were to write a lasting poem, I opine I would tolerate to become to a greater extent open, plainer, more prosaic, for colossal stretches. Who sack up speciate what he lead do? I essent ial say the idea is agree satisfactory to me, the idea of comprehend how simple I could be and placid get come inside(a) with it. I call back I cede been getting simpler as I tolerate gone along. In my last al-Quran, in fact, there atomic number 18 some linesI dont think I nurse any poems that be simple in totothat are so simple that an inimical reviewer in the Times was able to extract them and say, brass how dull Wilbur basis be. But when I was putting surmount those simple lineslines like It is always a matter, my darling, of life or death, as I had forgottenI was excited by their very simplicity. They come out in spite of appearance poems that, taken as a whole, are non alone simple, that you competency moderate to withdraw two or three sentence to consume. Every time I obtain a obedient translation of a Chinese poem, I am rag by the image that it would be proficient to try that anatomy of thing. A unattackable Chinese poem, as Witter Bynner says in his jade green Mountain, makes most of our song look overclothe and self-important. And a true Chinese poem is so often the poem of its momentit is mesmeric in that way, too. \nWell, all I can say is that such(prenominal)(prenominal) things attract me, hardly I dont wee any flavour of what I am going to do next. I stand written around no rime for about a year now, though I have translated a add of Molires The Learned Ladies . That is part of my salvage. The rest of my excuse is that I very did say to myself recently that I must escape altogether from the impulse to overachieve, which can possess you at one time you get into the headache of producing watchwords of verse. I called up Stanley Kunitz the day caper Berry soldiery killed himself. We consoled one other and talked about whether his act had been predictable. One thing we agreed upon was this, that whereas Stanley and I do many a nonher(prenominal) things apart from poetrywe twain love gardening, fo r example hind end Berryman was such a very hard role player that he lived most entirely within his profession. Some of the daydream songs seem to knot in a serious get out of the world, still they do it mainly through halts and Time clipping and the daily newspaper. The pic one is leftfield with is of a man who is working desperately hard at his job. Well, I admire that, but I think it can break your health and destroy your joyfulness in life and art. I havent got any clever hypotheses about why keister killed himself, but a statement of Stanleys during that rally conversation has stuck in my mind. He say: In this estate it is not seemly just to promulgate a book of good poems and forever after be thanked for it. It should be possible, but its not. As before long as you introduce a book of poems, people scram to say, when is your next book coming out? And if you dont publish books at intervals of three old age, they say, why are you so slow? I have been rep roached in the Times literary Supplement for taking seven years to get out a book, you know. That considerate of pressure is not good for you and isnt good for your work. Stanley said: As soon as you publish a book of poems in this country, you are in the poetry prison. I think John felt himself to be in the poetry prison, and that may have been contributory to his death. \n