It may; but it’s characteristic of poetry as a
whole. Poetry tries to connect with the sacred
past. It tries to find in the present the sacred
which the prose glance can’t see any longer.
[Hilgers:] As you walk around your kitchen,
as you walk around the campus, do you see poetic
possibilities? Do you ask about what you see, does
this thing go beyond itself?
No. I think, as I said earlier, that it’s when
writing is the last thing in your mind that you
tend to start writing. If you begin to think, what
use can this kettle of boiling water that I’m mak-
ing my coffee with this morning have for my
poems?, you might write a poem, but it might
be a self-conscious exercise. If you’re thoroughly
absorbed in the boiling of water, on the other
hand, that might set you off to write a poem that
comes forth more spontaneously.
What is the relationship of your everyday
existence to what you write? I know that you
don’t talk a lot about your private life. But does
it come through in your poetry?
Well, yes. At one time I would recast expe-
rience and make it quite impersonal; I did that
often in my earlier poetry. Now, for better or
worse, I write more directly about my own expe-
riences. When I feel like writing about my chil-
dren I don’t try to imagine a fictitious family,
and write about that; I just write about my own
family and my own children. Some readers are
upset that there should be, in my poems, the
actual names of my children and my wife, and
my own name. They find that close a connection
to life inappropriate for poetry. But that’s just
the way I happen to be writing at this time.
On what grounds is that inappropriate?
Some readers want poetry to be more objec-
tive, cast in a more universal mold and not tied to
a particular family and a particular place—to
have everything be a type rather than another
particular.
I’d like to talk a little about other American
poets. Recently, when I was talking with Marvin
Bell, he mentioned you and the late James Wright,
Sylvia Plath, and Ann Sexton as part of the still
dominant generation in American poetry. He
spoke of himself as part of the next generation
which is still trying to make itself heard. Would
you make a distinction along generational lines
when you describe the American poetry world?
There are a few of the very old poets still
thriving, most notably Robert Penn Warren.
And then there are a number of people who
turned out to be poets who were born in 1926,
1927, and 1928. I don’t know why. It may have
had something to do with the Depression. That
we spent our childhoods in poverty and social
dislocation may have given us some longing for
a transfigured life. And poetry is an avenue to a
transfigured life. Then there is Marvin’s gener-
ation, which has fewer poets who stand out, I
think. Maybe the generation younger than that
has even fewer, but it’s too early to tell.
Are there any differences beyond the chrono-
logical which determine these generations?
It’s hard for us to say. A critic in the twenty-
first century will see much we hold in common.
But what has a poet like Creeley got in common
with a poet like Ginsberg? It’s hard for us to see
through all the obvious differences.
[Molloy:] You used the word transfigured
when you talked about these people who were
raised during the Depression. They seemed to
have a need for a transfigured world. Could you
elaborate on that?
I just mean that growing up in grim sur-
roundings, as I think most of us did, produced
some kind of intense desire for a world that was
better, for a recovery of beauty. Poetry seemed
the way to find it. My speculation, based on my
memories of my own desires, is that I wanted in
poetry to find a purity of existence which I
didn’t find in the world around me. Now it’s
possible that in a later generation, for whom
life was easier, there was no longer that inten-
sity of desire to transfigure the world. In fact,
one characteristic of the poetry of the young
seems to be a kind of contentment with the
world—the daily experiences of average life
seem to be regarded as adequate. That’s
unlikely to be the case in the poetry of my
generation.
[Hilgers:] Do you sense in your own life more
of a contentment coming through? It seems to me
that certain poems in Mortal Acts, Mortal Words
reflect some sort of contentment.
It’s hard to make such judgments about
one’s own work. I think thatMortal Acts, Mor-
tal Wordscontains many poems that are easy-
going; some of them are basically humorous.
Other poems, though, deal with things that are
difficult—the deaths of my parents, my relation-
ship to my brother, things of that kind. It’s not
exactly a peaceful book, but there is no attemptBlackberry Eating