glance at us, and clambered over the wire on the
other side and into the woods.
Well, I’ve always believed that this was
something that I actually saw. I’m sure that
there are other orders of being. I went on believ-
ing that even in my agnostic days. How that
relates to my calling, presently, I’m not sure.
Q: What poets have influenced you to write
from a faith context?
A:I’ve always loved George Herbert and
Gerard Manley Hopkins. Some of George Her-
bert I’ve known from childhood, like
I got me flowers to strew Thy way,
I got me boughs off many a tree;
But Thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee.
I was responding to the language, not the
meaning. Hopkins I came to a little later.
Q: What about your sense of calling relative
to someone like R. M. Rilke?
A:Well, what could Rilke have been but a
poet?
Q: Do you see a religious or spiritual dimen-
sion in Rilke? Do you have some sense of his
apprehension of different orders of being?
A:Well, I’m not sure. The strongest influ-
ence for me of Rilke really came from his letters;
not so much theLetters to a Young Poet, but the
later collections of letters. Rilke cannot be co-
opted as a Christian poet. I mean, you can, but
it’s too forced. He had assimilated Christian
cultural influence, and he wrote some marvelous
poems on Christian subjects; but he didn’t con-
sider himself a Christian.
Q: It sounds like what you were saying in
class about the poet’s work having to sustain the
meaning. You can try to find things in what he
said, but...
A:It’s putting an agenda on him which I
don’t think he held himself.
Q: I know some would interpret him in a
Christian fashion. But that’s the kind of distinc-
tion I like to hear you make. And Hopkins. I’ve
read some of your essays where you talk about
inscapeand the importance the concept had for
you. Your praise of Herbert, on the other hand, is
interesting. But I take it that that’s not something
you’d say informs your writing now?
A:I’ve always loved his work, and of course
I like some of the poets of that period, like
Traherne; but alsoThe Centuries of Meditation.
Have you read them? They’re a kind of prose.
They’re highly charged prose. You could almost
call them prose poems except no one can really
define what that term means. But they are so
wonderful in language and imagery.
Q: That sounds like a reason you’d like Julian
of Norwich.
A:Yes, it’s her images that drew me to her.
Q: Are there any other Christian writers who
provide inspiration?
A:Another poet is Henry Vaughan. Also I
like Cowley and Crashaw; all those Metaphysi-
cal poets of the seventeenth century do appeal to
me, and yet the extreme baroque style—it’s
almost what in Spanish literature is called Gon-
gorism—it’s fascinating, but it’s not my main
cup of tea. Vaughan and Traherne are my favor-
ites; their poems are much less dependent on
conceits; their images more concrete.
There’s a wonderful image in Vaughan. It’s
in his poem ‘‘Night,’’ and he speaks of ‘‘God’s
silent searching flight.’’ That image absolutely
had to have come from observing owls. Talk
about Incarnation! That’s such a wonderful
image if you’ve ever watched an owl—I mean,
a big white owl, a barn owl: ‘‘God’s silent,
searching flight,’’ and a few lines later, ‘‘his still,
soft call.’’ They fly so searchingly, and also so
silently. It’s an amazing thing to see these big
birds in flight in the moonlight. I know they’re
predators, but so is every creature, humans
included. I’m sure he [Vaughan] wasn’t that con-
scious of that aspect in writing this image. He
might have thought it was sort of blasphemous if
he had. But I am sure that the image came to him
through his direct observation of owls, of which
there must have been many more in England in
his day.
Q: Did your close acquaintance with owls
begin at Stanford, or since you’ve gotten to
Seattle?
A: I became reacquainted with them at
Stanford.
Q: Where was the first?
A:Oh, in England.
Q: Were your first twenty or so years in
England formative, then?
A:Oh, absolutely. Although culturally Iam
a mishmash, and always was, since my father
came from Russia and my mother came from
Wales; two religious backgrounds, although, asA Tree Telling of Orpheus