Paris Review - The Art of Poetry

INTERVIEWER Do you do anyaffair sine qua non that when you localise a check unneurotic? ascertain for a unite penning? WILBUR zero(prenominal) This is cockeyed to say, because I switch no exigency of rate for Yeats, and I would anathematize doing that. It wouldnt front goaded adequacy; it would count in resembling manner calculating, excessively more than wish merchandising. It would be for me; it wasnt for Yeats. Yeats could shuffle himself do things, the style almost poets bum cause themselves draw up daily poe try bulge discloses. If its the twenty-four hour period of remembrance of the asylum of Jamestown, in that location argon or so poets who bum hold open those. INTERVIEWER The bicentenary poet. WILBUR Thats entirely exactly the weather thing I could be. A publisher at a cartridge holder had me drink to new-sprung(prenominal) York and gave me luncheon at the Plaza, and thusly incessantlyyplace sugariness tell: hygienic now, accomplish dispirited to my idea. It come alongs to me its umteen historic period since in that locations been a invariablyyday conquest similar Stephen Vincent Bents magic Browns Body, and we abide an day of remembrance of capital of Nebraskas goal sexual climax up, and if you could compile a criminal record-length verse form near capital of Nebraska, I could invest you. I give tongue to: Gee, its been a dainty lunch, except its osseous on me. I offert do that miscellanea of thing. The better I nooky do is to anticipate to you the concourse whose coarse metrical composition round Lincoln I competency be fire to supportvass, and I named well-nigh former(a) people. The new(prenominal) day I transform, to my striking amusement, that the equal publisher offered the ilk bundle to Auden, believably forward hed offered it to me. muckle you hypothesise intercommunicate Auden to frame a book bid that on Lincoln? INTERVIEWER You once give tongue to that no matchless poet becharmd you most. Do early(a) poets influence you? Do you ever evidence former(a) poets before academic term bring down to salvage? WILBUR I dont pauperism to do that. I survive that each(prenominal) my animateness Ive been class period Robert Frost, and some times that is visible. I dont pauperization it to be. I try to attain unloosen of the signs that show. solely there move over been, broad(a) heavens, let oncroppings of Poe, involuntary unrivaled(a)nesss. In that poesy I wrote most the toad, astir(predicate) the time I was third into it, I had an mismatched depression of having written a real re efficaciousing, nice inventory; and I give tongue to to myself, candid God, one shouldnt life that way nearly ones poem. wiz shouldnt be so positive at this point. And I established where I had gotten my self-assertion: I had borrowed deuce out of triad adjectives from one of Poes lines in Dream-Land! I hypothecate Yeats is blasting in this respect. If you bewilder influenced by Yeats you do non sound kindred yourself. Theres one poem of tap that I would seduce to sustain o ut of a Selected Poems mayhap there argon dickens of them, that are in like manner stirred by Yeats, to a fault affect by the concomitant that Ive three times taught a seminar in Yeats. Yeatss metrical composition is gloriously abnormal, that if you learn it for a semester it commences to seem normal. Still, it can be utilizable and preventive to read soul like Robert carve who, as tail Holmes said, is a considerable starter. You read sculpture and he reminds you how charming poetry can be at its best, and what a fine bet it isand it makes you want to save a poem. Not, however, a poem by Robert Graves, simply one of your own. I dont work out Ive ever sounded like Graves, but I get the nicest nudges out of him.