going to hold it together. So the way I layered
impressions, images, the observations, is key to
covert, unspoken narrative, but it was there
inevitably. At least I hope it was there, holding
it together, because something has to. You can’t
just put it in a box and say, ‘‘There’s a structure.’’
That’s what the New Formalists try to do. The
Old Formalists built that box, you know?
There’s a big difference. So I was trying to
build my own box in a different way. That’s
why I have this juxtapositional way of putting
things together. That works in poems; it would
be disastrous in prose. And it is, which is why I
don’t seem able to do essays or that sort of thing,
because my mind just doesn’t work in those
terms. I can get a thought from A to B, but I go
circuitously. I can’t go straight to it. I think I’m
going straight to it—I’m trying to—and the
storyline gets you there, but as I say, it’s always
hidden. Like a punji stick underneath the trail.
Sometimes you stumble on it, sometimes you
don’t. All I can say in answer to that question
is that I perceived in my poetic makeup a huge
deficit and deficiency, and I’ve tried to make
something out of that void.
And others are embarked on similar projects.
What sets your work apart for me—and David
Young points this out—is your sense of humor. It
seems when you’re up against the most serious
matters in your poems, you’re at your most self-
effacing. It’s not looking directly into the face of
the divine....
It’s checking out the belt buckle. As I should.
That’s true. It would be foolish to take one’s self
as seriously as one’s subject matter. I’m really
glad that David Young recognized this, because
everybody is always saying, ‘‘This guy is so mor-
bid, so somber,’’ and I never thought of it that
way. I thought I was talking about serious things,
but never in a way that would be ponderous or
turgid. In one’s secret self, one comes up against
these things; you have to face them, but you also
have to realize that you’re just a song-and-dance
man. So you had better sing as best you can and
shuffle off to Buffalo. And that’s it. But you don’t
want to not go in and do it.
I don’t know. It’s hard to talk about that.
It’s all so much larger than all of us. You have to
be careful how ponderous you can start to
sound, or no one is going to take you seriously.
You can’t sound like Ecclesiastes all the time.
In Appalachia, the poem ‘‘Star Turn II’’
opens with the description of the night sky. There
are a few comparisons, but after it’s compared to a
sequined dress, there’s this drop line: ‘‘—hubba,
hubba—.’’
My favorite line in my entire works. I knew
it from the second I wrote it.
But it’s not the sort of interjection we expect
to find in contemporary poems, especially not
those tackling the sorts of issues you’re taking on.
Yes. The seriousness you’re trying to
describe is there, but there is also a little levity
to make it easier to take. I think ‘‘hubba hubba’’
is witty—actually, I think it’s funny. Most of my
stuff tries to be witty. For instance, there’s the
line ‘‘Sainthood the bottomless pity’ someone
said.’’ Well, I said that, because I thought it
was sort of witty and it had to do with what I
was getting ready to say. It’s a serious thought,
but it’s also humorous. I’m not as funny as Jim
Tate, for instance, who is amazingly and contin-
uously funny. As Woody Allen once put it, ‘‘Too
much seriousity is a bad thing.’’ So I try not to
have too much seriousity.
You’ve spent twenty-seven years creating
your poetics and writing this trilogy of trilogies.
What are you going to do with next twenty-seven
years?
I really don’t know. Obviously, I’m going to
keep writing poems. This spring has been kind of
crazy, but I hope everything will settle down and
I can get back to work. I obviously will not have
this same path or trajectory in mind, so... it’s
hard, it’s impossible to change what you’re
thinking, but I’ve got to come at it in a different
way from the journey this project seems to have
been on—from the early poems in Country
Musicto the last poems ofBlack Zodiacand
Appalachia. At least I see a definite arc—a move-
ment with different weaves to it—but the arc is
always the same: from the past to the impossible
or possible, the improbable or probable future.
And that’s good. I did that. Now I’ve got to
figure out how to be interesting to myself with
the accouterments that I have accrued over the
years. And not write the same poems. We’ve all
got maybe four or five ideas in our heads our
whole lives. We know that, and we all write
basic variations of the same handful of poems,
because those are what our interests are. If you
don’t write what your interests are, it will be a
piece of fluff—or worse, a piece of something
else. And so I have my concerns and my inter-
ests, and I’ll have to figure out a way to reshuffle
them and keep on writing poems. I can’tWords Are the Diminution of All Things