>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^E00:00:04 ^B00:00:21 >> Good evening. I'm Mary Ann Brownlow and I'm a Programming Consultant here at Hill Center. And welcome, and thank all of you for braving really this Arctic chill to come here this evening. But it will be well worth your while. This evening is a; we're continuing I think Rob said this is our seventh, eighth episode of "The Life of a Poet, Conversations with Ron Charles." Very in depth conversation with Ron, who is the Editor of Book World at the Washington Post with, you know, some of the really best poets in the United States and just incredibly thrilled this evening to have Frank Bidart with us. Hill Center, you know, produces large numbers of extraordinary programs every week, every month. For instance, next Wednesday, along with the Pen/Faulkner Foundation we're, have a conversation with editors of an Anthology, "Voices Beyond Bondage," which is a collection of 19th African American Verse, so please join us for that. This evening is made possible by a partnership with the Hill Center, Library of Congress, the Washington Post, and with the support of the National Capital Bank. We hope you'll join us for a reception and book signing across the hall afterwards. And, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we have three enormously inventive, thoughtful gentlemen here with us this evening and it's, you know, my great pleasure to turn the proceedings over to Rob Casper who is the head of the Literature and Poetry Center at the Library of Congress. Please welcome Rob. ^M00:02:24 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:33 >> Thanks, everybody. And thanks, Mary Ann, for that introduction. We're thrilled to be back here in the cold, cold winter of 2015, celebrating our Spring Life of a Poet series launch with Frank Bidart, who came from even colder Boston, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a place that actually does have snow. Ron Charles; yeah, Ron's done amazing things. I remember when he started the series and we were talking about poetry and now the Washington Post has a monthly column on poetry and Ron was the, one of the poetry judges for the National Book Critics Circle Award. So I feel like poetry is becoming more and more a part of his life, the, the, the, the newspaper's life, and a part of DC Community in great way. So I'm very excited about that. Let me tell you a little bit about the poetry and literature center at the Library of Congress. We are home to the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry who is, at the moment, Charles Wright. We also put out a lot of programs like this over in our buildings in Capitol Hill just a few blocks up Pennsylvania Avenue. If you're interested in any of our programs, you can check out our website, which is www.LOC.gov/poetry. I also want to take the opportunity tonight to remember a dear friend of both the Hill Center. One of the founders of the Hill Center, and one of the friends of the Poetry and Literature Center, Steve Cymrot. He and his wife, Nicky, helped make this series possible. They connected me to, Mary Ann to me, and really, really helped do this as they helped create the Hill Center. So I think the whole community owes them a great debt of gratitude. They've been a part of Capitol Hill for decades. Steve's enthusiasm for books and writers was very inspiring, and all of you who knew him felt, I'm sure, the same way. And I would like to dedicate tonight's even to him. And now I'd like to introduce Frank Bidart. Mary Ann said a little bit about him. Let me just say, he's the author of nine poetry collections, most recently "Metaphysical Dog," winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award that, which is for sale out, out in the Lobby among with a couple other of his books. He is also the co-editor with Georgetown University Professor David Gewanter, who is here tonight, of the collected poems of Robert Lowell. Bidart's many honors and awards include the Wallace Stevens Award, the Bollingen Prize, which once upon a time existed at the Library of Congress, the PEN/Voelker Award, and a Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. A Fellow of the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, Bidart served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2003 to 2009. He has taught at Wellesley College for many years where he is now Andrew W. Melon Professor in the Humanities, and a Professor of English. Bidart's work has earned the admiration of our country's best critics and writers, including a number of those at the Washington Post. In a review of "In the Western Night," collected poems, 1965 to 1990, Michael Dirda said that Bidart "generates so much power in poems like 'The War of Vaslav Nijinsky,' 'Ellen West,' and 'Herbert White,' written respectively in the persona of an insane dancer, a suicidal anorexic, and a serial murderer, that few readers will be able to resist him. ^M00:06:22 [ Laughter ] ^M00:06:25 "Part of his effectiveness comes simply from his ability as a storyteller. You long to discover what happens to his poor doomed people." And in a roundup for the 2013 National Book Award finalists, Elizabeth Lund called "Metaphysical Dog" one of Bidart's boldest books, adding "he writes about the deep hungers that fuel many of his central conflicts, a need for intimacy, a desire for the absolute, freedom from others' definitions, and an aesthetics of embodiment in a world where nothing fully satisfies. Bidart skewers cultural ideas about love, sex, and marriage and he does not spare himself or his readers, but art is his constant companion." Get ready for some serious reckoning in poetry and in conversation and please join me in welcoming Frank Bidart. ^M00:07:29 [ Applause ] ^M00:07:30 >> I'm so glad you're here. >> I'm here, glad I'm here, too. I'm glad the snow allowed me to get here. >> Yeah. You, you are the only person in the room who came here for the weather. >> [Background Laughter] That's right. It's true. >> Sorry. I am Ron Charles. I heard one woman say, Frank, James Franko looks so much hotter on TV. You're, you say you, you grew up obsessed with your parents. >> Yes. >> In "Golden State," you're write, "I know that you, the necessity to contend with you, your helplessness before yourself has been the center of how I think my life." Why? What, what were they like? Were they extraordinary people? >> Well, you know, it's funny, I, I have friends who have said that they experienced similar things as kids. Certainly not all kids do. My closest relationship was with my mother. My parents divorced when I was five. I can hear the hum now. Is it a... When I was five, I took my mother's side. >> In the separation of your parents. >> In the separation, and she wanted an ally. And my father was alcoholic and et cetera. And, but, you know, they were the most interesting people I had ever met. Not that I'd met many, but, they were very smart. My mother engaged me in the drama of her life. >> And she wrote poems? >> Well she wrote poems. Not good poems and not poems; in fact, she didn't get her life into her poems. I mean she wrote poems about, about petunias and things, and; which would be fine if you knew how to invest that with emotional import, but she didn't. >> Okay. >> And, and it's not as if she was writing poems all the time. I mean she was not obsessed with it. But it's something that she sort of tried to do with her left hand. I mean, I think really the, the tragedy of my mother's life was very connected to the tragedy of I think many, many women in our world or at least in that world. And that is, she was an extremely smart person who did not find any way to manifest her spirt and intelligence in the world. >> No interesting work? >> No. And well, and she, between the divorce with my father and her remarriage about seven years later, she had run a doctor's office. And she was very good at that and the, the doctors loved her and valued her and she was important and that was great for her. But in Bakersfield in the 1950s, if you married someone who was doing relatively well, the woman had to give up her job. You know, I mean, it was just, it was a, a, it was something you did in a way as a sign of the six, of the, the fact that you were marrying someone who was successful. And she then stayed home and kind of went crazy. You know, I mean she had only me to think about. >> You didn't have a brother? >> No. I'm an, I'm an only child and very quickly she was not happy in her second marriage, and I became the center of her emotional life. And the problem is at 12 or 10 or eight, I gloried in that. I loved it. I loved being that important to her. And it was a terrible trap for both of us, but I was in no position to understand the, the cost. And, and later when I wanted to find a life that was my own, it disturbed her tremendously and she, she absolutely was not in control of her response to that. >> You moved far away. >> Well I, I went to college. >> East coast. >> No. No, no. I went to University of California at Riverside which is not very far away from Bakersfield. And, and, but she become extremely demanding about my coming home say in summers and things. And when I didn't one summer, she, she had a kind of breakdown and... >> Diagnosed? >> Yes. A long terrible story, but she, she had a very, very bad breakdown. I did come home because my stepfather asked me to because he was so disturbed she was having hallucinations. They were in various kinds of crises, including financial. And, and then she went to a hospital for about six weeks. She had psychotherapy there which was great for her and she continued to do that for years. And, and she got much better. But she saw this as a kind of chastisement; as a sign that somehow her life had been a failure and in a way, the most complicated, long term, totally involving relationship I've had in my life was with my mother. I've certainly had relationship with, with, with people my own age, but nothing lasted very long and I've always lived alone. I mean, many, many gay men live with other men or get married now, but I have never done that. I like being alone. I think I'm terrified of a certain degree of intimacy and of, of dependence on another person, and it, it's very connected to my relationship with my mother. >> In your latest book, in one of the poems, she begs you to move back home and teach in the local college there. >> That's right. That's right. >> And you don't and you feel terrible about it. >> Right. Right. Could I, should I read that poem? I mean, I, I actually, that's one of my favorite poems in the book. It's called "Writing Ellen West." Is this alright? >> Yeah. Of course. This is a poem about; one of the things it's about is writing a much earlier poem. >> That's right. >> About an anorexic. >> I have a poem about an anorexic named "Ellen West" and this is a poem about writing that poem, but writing the poem as a way of contending with what I felt after my mother died. And I think in this, reading it in this context of discussion of my mother will highlight an aspect of the poem that is, that is good. The poem, it's a little difficult to, to read a poem about another poem that you, you don't know. But the poem attempts to summarize something about this other narrative. I hope you can get enough from the poem about the other narrative. Writing Ellen West. "Writing Ellen West was exorcism. Exorcism of that thing within Frank that wanted, after his mother's death, to die. Inside him was that thing that he must expel from him to live. He read 'The Case of Ellen West' as a senior in college and immediately wanted to write a poem about it but couldn't, so he stored it, as he has stored so much that awaits existence. Unlike Ellen he was never anorexic. But like Ellen he was obsessed with eating and the arbitrariness of gender and having to have a body. Ellen lived out the war between the mind and the body, lived out in her body each stage of the war, its journey and progress, in which compromise, reconciliation is attempted then rejected then mourned, till she reaches at last, in an ecstasy costing not less than everything, death. He was grateful he was not impelled to live out the war in his body. Hiding in compromise, well wadded with art he adored and with stupidity and distraction. The particularity inherent in almost all narrative, though contingent and exhausting, tells the story of the encounter with particularity that flesh as flesh must make. 'Ellen West' was written in the year after his mother's death. By the time she died he had so thoroughly betrayed the ground of intimacy on which his life was founded, he had no right to live. No use for him to tell himself that he shouldn't feel this because he felt this. He didn't think this, I'm sorry. He didn't think this but he thought this. After she died his body wanted to die. But his brain, his cunning, didn't. He likes narratives with plots that feel as if no one willed them. His mother in her last year revealed that she wanted him to move back to Bakersfield and teach at Bakersfield College and live down the block. He thought his mother, without knowing that this is what she wanted, wanted him to die. All he had told her in words and more than words for years was that her possessiveness and terror at his independence were wrong, wrong, wrong. He was the only person she wanted to be with, but he refused to live down the block, and then she died. It must be lifted from the mind, must be lifted and placed elsewhere, must not remain in the mind alone. Out of the thousand myriad voices, thousand myriad stories in each human head, when his mother died, there was 'Ellen West.' This is the body that you can draw out of you to expel from you the desire to die. Give it a voice. Give each scene of her life a particularity and necessity that in Binswanger's recital are absent. Enter her skin so that you then can make her other and expel her. Survive her. Animal mind eating the ground of Western thought, the mind-body problem. She, who in the last months of her life abandoned writing poems in disgust at the failure of her poems, is a poem. She in death is incarnated on a journey whose voice is the voice of her journey. Arrogance of Plutarch, of Shakespeare and Berlioz, who thought they made what Cleopatra herself could not make. Arrogance of the maker. Werther killed himself and then young men all over Europe imitated him and killed themselves but his author, Goethe, cunning master of praxis, lived. Frank thought when anything is made it is made not by its likeness, not by its twin or mirror, but its opposite. Ellen in his poem asks 'Without a body, who can know himself at all?' In your pajamas, you moved down the stairs just to the point where the adults couldn't yet see you, to hear more clearly the din, the sweet cacophony of adults partying. Phonograph voices among them, phonograph voices, their magpie beauty. Sweet din. Magpie beauty. One more poem, one more book in which you figure out how to make something out of not knowing enough." >> Very powerful. ^M00:20:51 [ Applause ] ^M00:20:55 >> But it, you know, unfortunately, the poem is a, is a report on something that in fact was true. I mean what happened. >> Did you know when you wrote Ellen West it was an exorcism? >> Yeah. >> Or did you read that back into it? >> No. I don't, I didn't use that word to myself. But I very much thought of it in terms of; it was complicated because on the one hand I actually identified with Ellen West and loved Ellen West, but I wanted to get her out of me. I wanted to get out of me the impulse to die. The, the, the, the feeling that it was intolerable, the compromises, and the ways in which one cannot manifest oneself in the world, I wanted to escape that. And, and the way of escaping it was to embody it and make it other. And, and in that sense it was an exorcism. >> Why did you write that in the third person? You speak in other poems openly as "I"? >> Right. It's very strange. I mean, there's something so releasing about being able to talk about Frank. Frank did this, Frank did that. >> You don't do it very often. >> I don't do it often, but, but each time I've done it, there's been something, a real charge about, a real thrill in it. It's so interesting because I think when I began writing poems, I thought of, of poems that were first person as simply "I" poems. And at a certain point, I don't think it was in my first book, I think it was maybe in my second book, I realized you could talk about you. You did this, you did that, and you're talking oneself, and it's a way, but it's a way of talking to oneself, and it's very, very liberating. >> You don't mean the reader the way Whitman does? When he talks about you reading these pages? >> No. No I don't mean that. No, there's another kind of poem, I'm not, at the moment I'm not sure which, which ones, but I know I've written a lot of, what you did you this, you did that, you thought this, and it's, it's clear from the context that the writer, me, is, is talking to myself. And as I say, that just felt; there are all sorts of things I couldn't say as "I" that I could say as "you." >> Because of the times? >> No, I don't think it, I don't think it was a social, I don't think it, say it had to do with being gay or something. I don't think so. I think it, it, it, there's a kind of intimacy, a lack of boundary, when you say "you" that is not true when you say "I." This is also true at a more, in an even larger way, say when I wrote the poem "Ellen West" in her voice. >> Right. >> There are parts, most of it is in, in her voice. It was fantastically liberating to be able to say, to speak in her voice, because I could speak about things that I couldn't speak about in my own voice. >> Right. >> And, and I didn't feel that I was lying or making it up, but there were, there were things that were true that seemed, I don't know, just couldn't be said as Frank Bidart says. >> Right. >> These are mysteries, I think. There's also, there's also the, the, the O, N, E, one, that you know, like, in O'Hara's marvelous poem, "Step Away from Them," about going into Times Square and he's, you know, he's experiencing seeing all these things, walking through that world, and then he suddenly recites all these, the names of all these people who died. And it's as if he's been walking along and fallen in a hole. And then, afterwards, he doesn't say "I did this" or "You," he says, "and one walks, and one does this," and, and there's this peculiar way in which he gets both the kind of objectivity, kind of distance from himself. He makes himself more a creature by suddenly that very, quite odd dramatically, one does, one does. So I think that in fact, there's so many different strategies to manifest the eye. >> You wanted to go into acting at one point? >> Well, I have. I think it must be clear by now. >> [Laughs] In one poem you said that you were 11, you made your mother drive you to Hollywood and have professional photos taken. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I grew up, I mean, the thing is that Bakersfield is itself is a, lacks any of the virtues of LA, even. >> Whoa. [Laughs] >> No it does, it really, it really does. But... >> I always thought that was B. The massive parking lots. >> No, the sense of, you know, when I grew up loving movies, I could, in Bakersfield, I could see new movies, but I could never see any films from the history of movies. I kept reading about, you know, Betty Davis in something that came out in the '30s, I could never see it. >> You could only see the latest. >> And I, and I also could never see foreign films. And by, very quite soon, I was reading about Antonioni and Fellini and Japanese films, and I couldn't ever see them in Bakersfield. >> Yes. >> So in LA, you can. Well, anyway, the, but, so, but Bakersfield existed in this sort of odd you know, on the edge of celebrity-dom. And my, my parents when they were together for complicated reasons knew certain movie stars. And they never wanted to be in that world all together, but, but, celebrity culture had already become very important in this, in this country. I think it had been for a very, very long time in the 20th century. And, and, and I'm sure in the 19th century. But in any case, it was, it was a powerful factor. >> You're not that old. >> Well, I was born in 1939, 75, which I'm very proud of. I can't believe I have survived. >> But the 19th century is very vague. >> No, no, no, but I've read enough about it, you know, in the way that Lillie Langtry was famous in... >> And you know, this wasn't just an aesthetic interest. You wanted to be a director at some point, right? >> Well yeah, well, it's, early I wanted to be an actor and then I realized that the person who really made films was the director. >> So you were going to do that? >> So I wanted to be a director, for a very long time. >> Yes. >> Really up through college. >> Yes. >> And then for reasons I did not understand after college, I did not want to go to film school. I'd been an English major, I had loved being an English major. I wanted to make movies that were as complicated as Milton and, and in Hollywood at that time, that seemed extremely difficult. This was before, this was before the sort of rise of independent film, for the most part, and... ^M00:28:13 [ Background Noise ] ^M00:28:20 It sort of, I, I bought a, a good camera and then shot a few feet of film. But at some level I thought if I were really a director I would have made a film... >> Already? >> Already. >> Yes. >> Yes. And I, and, and I think that's probably right, you know. Spielberg was making films at what, ten or something, and, and I didn't. And there's a way in which I, you know, the center of what compels me is not something you can put a camera in front of. The, you know, the, the poem I just read you, I would not know how to make a film of that because the center of the film is not, is, is, is, has to with patterns and relations that are never any, at any one moment, in a single image. >> There not primarily action. >> That's right. Or they're not, or they're not what is ordinarily understood as an action. There, there an action of the spirit, of identification, of, of ideas not of, of things that I think could be images. At least I wouldn't know how to do it. >> What I'm wondering then, is are these gematic [phonetic] monologues that you're so well-known for, that have been, so that are sort of canonized now, is that your, does that come out of your interest in drama? >> Oh; well they're my films in a way. I mean, they, they, they are, they I think embody all the impulses I had to make films. And, I mean, I, I love drama. I love characters. I love, I mean I do think narrative is central to art, and central even to the visual arts. Not always and not, not to every visual art, but visual artists have always used elements of narrative. And I think in a way, with the rise of the novel, increasingly poems became occasions in which narrative was suppressed, in which there was not as strong a sense of narrative. I think that's a tremendous loss. There are very strong narratives in Wordsworth. Certainly, I mean of course in Shakespeare and Milton and, and Homer, I think, I think, narrative is, is there, there only... It's only possible to think about certain things if you have a narrative in mind. I mean, the poem I read you is really a narrative. It's a narrative about a son, a mother, about this other narrative that the son is identifying with, and using as a way to solve a problem in his life. >> Yes. >> And, and I think the, the kind of modernist, prejudice, against narrative; and I very much, am totally someone who celebrates the modernist revolution, but I think that was a real, an element missing from it, and that is I think there should be people have not learned how to, poets are not taught how to think in terms of narrative. >> No. Not many people do it. >> And not many people do it. >> You aren't doing it much either now. >> Well, but I have, you know, in subsequent to "Metaphysical Dog," I have written another "Hour of the Night," >> Yes. >> which is a long narrative about Genghis Khan. >> Yes. >> And the >> You announced... >> There are buried narratives in, in "Metaphysical Dog." >> Yes, I agree. You announced yourself to the world with a remarkable poem. I thought it was; I hadn't read it since college. I thought it was shocking again. >> Yes. Right. Yeah. >> It really... >> It is shocking. >> I'm not going to have you read because it's just too disturbing. Herbert White. >> No, I know. >> Why? Why did you begin, begin your career with that shocking poem? A child murders, a rapist, pedophilia, necrophilia... >> Right. It was very conscious act. I had, you know, Eliot begins his first book with "Prufrock." I loved the idea; and you know, which was poem that shocked people. >> Not like this. >> No. Not like this. But it was a different world. And you know pound had to, had to, he spent months talking Harriett Monroe into publishing "Prufrock" in Poetry Magazine. She did not do it easily. She did not think of it as, as poetry. ^E00:33:08 ^B00:33:18 I had been reading Yates. Yates has wonderful passages about the anti-self and about discovering what you can do as an artist through the anti-self. The anti-self is a character, or a story, a narrative in which someone like you, but unlike you in profound ways, is embodied. And that you can see yourself and discover yourself in the difference. >> Yes. We all can relate to that, I think. And, or, even with a character like Ellen West, it makes perfect sense. >> Yes. >> This character? [Background Laughter] >> Well, well, okay, I mean, this has to do again with Bakersfield. ^M00:34:04 [ Laughter ] ^M00:34:08 To me Herbert white is the quintessence of a, an element in that culture and, and, and, and it is... ^E00:34:17 ^B00:34:23 He's someone who resolves a problem not through analysis but through action. He has a problem with his father, some intolerable thing that he feels in relation to his father, and the way he resolves it is by going out and finding someone and killing them. And it's always a leap why that is the resolution, but it is the enacting of violence out of an absolute inability to apply to it all the things that in fact civilization teaches you. And, you know, in a way, it's, it's the attempt to, or the need to resolve something without any of the helps that culture education give one. Can I read it? Actually, let me read a passage from it. I don't want, certainly don't want to read the whole poem. But, yes, but the... ^E00:35:41 ^B00:35:53 Well he, he, he, he takes this, "I got in the truck and started to drive and I saw a little girl who I picked up, hit on the head, and screwed and screwed and screwed and screwed, then buried in the garden of the motel." And the motel is where is his father is staying. Then it goes on, "you see, ever since I was a kid I wanted to feel things that make sense. I remember looking out the window of my room back home and being almost suffocated by the asphalt and grass and trees and glass just there, just there, doing nothing, not saying anything, filling me up, but also being a wall, dead and stopping me. How I wanted to see beneath it, cut beneath it, and make it somehow come alive." And I think that wanting to feel things makes sense, is a, is a profound and really universal human desire. >> Yes. >> And he has no means to do that except through violence and enacting a, something that momentarily feels good. And then, of course, the, the, what's terrible is not only what he does, but in fact he can't even sustain the fiction. He cannot then continue to believe someone else did it. >> He looks and thinks, who did this? It couldn't have been me. >> Who did this? Exactly. And when he has to face the fact that he did it, it's intolerable to him. He is in hell. >> Right he is. >> And I think that constellation of feelings, the desire to resolve something by doing something that you don't even understand why it feels, but it feels good, and then discovering that it doesn't feel good and resolves nothing. I think that is a, well to me is very much connected to the world I'm from. >> Yes. >> And I was this kid who was constantly trying to use culture and books and movies and music and, and then you know, education, and then analysis, psychoanalysis to, not to enact, try to resolve things through such patterns. >> Right. >> And of course it's connected to my parents. I mean, I think my father's drinking was very much, you know, latching on to something that felt good in the short run and that he, he did not understand its relation to the rest of his life. >> Right. You say you lodged your faith in art. >> Yeah. I did. I have. >> That's was your salvation. >> And I'm afraid I still do. I mean, I have, I have not found a, a, another thing to, to lodge my salvation in. And it's not that art... You know, Eliot is very contemptuous of, of, of people who, you know, art is kind of spilt religion. But in fact, you know, it is my substitute for the, for something that gives me perspective and, and which I have experienced some transcendence. >> Right. You left the church? >> I did. I was, I, I went through... You know I wanted to be a trapist [phonetic] at one point, and I'd been reading Thomas Merton, and then when that collapsed, the whole set of convictions about, about deity collapsed. >> You're an atheist. >> Well, I'm an agnostic. I mean, I, I, I don't want to say what's not there, but I, I, I... >> You lodged your faith in art. >> I lodged my faith in art. >> You say in another poem, "Where creatures who need to make, making is the mirror in which we see ourselves." >> Yeah. And I think that's true. >> Making. >> That's true. And the problem is, with someone like Herbert White, is what he makes is terrible, and he cannot... In fact, when he sees himself in that, he can't bear it, and has to believe someone else made it. So really in that narrative are elements in a way of everything I've thought since. I mean, the, the, it's a kind of terrible negative of, of, of, of the me in the rest of my work. >> The most extreme example. >> The most extreme example. And I like the idea of, of starting a work; at starting... >> A career? >> my first book, a career I hoped, with the most violent opposites. >> Had that poem been published separately anywhere? >> No. >> So that was it. It was... >> That absolutely was it. >> Your introduction. >> And I, my first book; I mean, I, I will forever feel enormous gratitude to Richard Howard. I had not met Richard but we had friends in common. And he was the poetry editor of the American Review, which was a paper back original and very much read at, at, at, at one point. And I sent him a couple of poems and he said he didn't think they were right for the American Review, but to send him more. So I had a manuscript which was all but finished. The last poem was not there. Everything else was there, and I sent it to him. And he wrote me back an incredibly generous letter. One of the most important letters that I've ever gotten in my life saying, he was starting a new poetry series at Braziller and he still didn't think these poems were right for the American Review, but he would publish the book when I finished it. >> So it, was it the first book of the series? >> No. Well it could have been except that I hadn't finished the book. And it, it turned out to be the fourth book in the series. But, in other words, he, he offered to publish a book none of the poems of which had appeared in a national magazine, which is incredibly rare. In fact, I do not know of another example of that. >> And risky. >> And, yeah. Extremely. And it, it was very, very gutsy and generous of him. >> Yeah. You write "when the as yet unwritten poem within you demands existence all you can offer it are words." >> Yeah. >> [Laughs] But I don't understand that, what is the poem but words? You suggest that the poem is, has some platonic existence outside of its language. >> Sure. Well, I mean, if you're writing a poem called "Ellen West," That's mostly in her voice, at some level, you don't think it, it's not just words. It's, it's, it's a, it's a narrative, it's gestures, it's your sense of her life, of all those things that are generating words. >> Yes. >> And I think poems should connect one, not just with words, but with what, the things that generate words. And what we're talking are not just words today, we're talking about things that generate words. And, I, at some level the, the poem that you write is an attempt to manifest that thing that you are imagining. And if I were, if I were a film maker, I could offer it other things. I probably couldn't offer it words in the same way. >> Right. >> And; or you have to, you have to figure out how this thing that you, that seems to want embodiment... >> Yes. >> can find embodiment in words. >> So you feel it? >> Oh, yeah. >> Inarticulately? >> Yes. >> And then you render it into words? >> Yes. >> And I've heard you're obsessive about the placement of the words on the page. >> I am, I am, yeah. >> The capitalization, the punctuation, that you've made up your own sort of, not punctuation, but your own arrangement of punctuation. The dash semi-colon... >> Yes. >> which would drive our copy editors crazy. >> Right, right, right. >> That doesn't exist when you read the poem, though. I mean I'm wondering how your poems survive when spoken instead of read on the page. Because I've read other poems, and I won't use any names, but she knows why the "Caged Bird Sings." ^M00:44:13 [ Laughter ] ^M00:44:16 >> And I thought, neh. But then I heard her deliver those poems, and she was spectacular. >> Yes. Yes. >> But your poems, when spoken, I think would, would rather than gaining something, might lose something. >> Well. Okay. There's so many things in what you said. >> First of all, my favorite pianist is Artur Schnabel, and Schnabel said he was only interested in playing music that was better than any performance he could give. If my poem is good, it's going to be better than any reading I give of it. >> Okay. >> And so if, if, if you say my reading in fact is not up to the poem, I say good, that's fine. I mean that means that there's, that there's irreducible there on the page that, that a, a poem should have. You know, when I read George Herbert, "My Door," I think that this poem is better than any essay I could write about it, any reading I could give of it. It's richer, it's more complicated, it is, there are more possibilities of feeling than, than can be manifested at any moment. Again, it has to do with the, the war in a way between the mind and the body, between, between manifestation and an idea. >> Yes. >> So, but, I think it, since the only way the reader is ever going to know the poem, given the fact they probably are not going to hear it, or they're not going to hear it certainly if they, if no one has ever had a good experience of it on the page. So therefore, you've got to make the page embody that poem. In, in, in every way you can. >> Yes. >> And, and so the way I've set poems down is an attempt to do that. >> And what are you, when you fiddle--I don't use that in a derogatory [inaudible]... >> No fiddle's a good word. I mean... >> It sounds [inaudible], and I don't mean that. But when you fiddle with the punctuation trying to get it just right, what, what does that mean? What does the "just right" punctuation mean to you? Are you trying to match the way it would sound if spoken? Or are you trying to match the way it looks, or should look? >> I'm trying to, I'm trying to match that, that thing I wanted it to be, that ideal thing in my head. How can I put this? ^E00:46:44 ^B00:46:55 >> I absolutely do not punctuate in order to reproduce the way I read it aloud. Rather the way I read it aloud is an attempt to orally, in another medium, embody what I understand the poem wants to be on the page, and the page is the truest manifestation of it. As I say I think the, the poem on the page is truer and more complicated than I can make it manifest. >> Certainly. >> The ^E00:47:35 ^B00:47:43 So therefore; there's a essay, I grew up, you know, there was a great age of criticism I grew up in, in the '40s and '50s and '60s, and Blackmur has an essay called "Language is Gesture." and the sense that a poem is a series, and that words themselves in a, in a work of art, are gestures. They are not simply in some sense just words, certainly not the denotative meaning of words has to do with gesture. And so when I write, when a line ends with a dash that hits a semi-colon, there's a kind of gesture that moves this way, that meets a barrier, and that something then happens under it. And it's, it's to try to make the poem that in a way, arena of forces that ideally the poem is. I try to do that on the page and then similarly to do it aloud. But, but when you're reading something aloud, it's a different medium. It's not the same medium as the poem on the page. It is the voice. And in some ways, silence and pauses in the voice correspond to silences and pauses of the poem on the page, but they don't correspond in some mechanical way. It's really why four great pianists will play a given work very differently. >> That's a great example. >> And, and it's not, you know, it's not that one is necessarily better, and they can be quite radically different. I mean the same thing is true of conductors. I mean I, you know I love Ford Fangler, and I love Klemperer, and they're very, very different. And they give me an intense experience of a, of a work that is also each, each is a different vision of that work. And in a way, to read a poem aloud is to embody a vision. In fact, there's a line somewhere, actually you quoted somewhere, about how a poem aloud is the, is, is the, an attempt to manifest the vision. But it's attempted to manifest in, in a medium. So when I read a poem aloud it's, it's changing the medium. >> Yes. It's a totally, as you say a different thing. >> It's a different thing. >> Right. >> That's right. But it's an attempt to serve the same thing. >> I thought of it; in one of your poems; in your [inaudible], you say I have invented a far more accurate and specific notation for dance. >> Yes. >> And then it was obvious. I mean, obviously notation for dance is going to be different than dance. >> Right. >> In the same way a written poem would be different than a spoken poem. >> And it's incredible. He did that. I mean he, he worked tremendously hard to find a way to notate dance. And really before video tape,... >> That was it. >> There was not a good; there, and, and there was no commonly accepted way of writing down choreography. And, and similarly, you know when, when Stravinski wrote [inaudible], he said he heard things he, that he did not know how to write down. And in fact the different orchestrations there because the, the [inaudible] has had different orchestrations. That's partly an attempt to find a way to write down what he heard. And, and those ways are different. >> I want you to read a poem for us. "Guilt of Dust." >> Yes. >> Remember that poem? >> Yes. Yes. Sure. >> This is a poem that strikes me as very different hearing it and reading it. >> Yes. And in some ways, I feel like... >> That's not my mark. >> Yeah. No, no it's fine. In some ways... >> Somebody's written in this library book. ^M00:51:45 [ Laughter ] ^M00:51:47 >> In some, in some ways I feel this is a poem that I have never, that I don't, did not set down adequately. I like what one can get, not the way I read, but I like what one can get hearing it in a way that I'm not sure the eye first gets it. Anyway, the title, it comes from, it's a phrase in, in Herbert, "Guilty of dust and sin." And you think about "guilty of dust," I mean, you know sin we're sort of, we're trained to think of that as a source of guilt. But the fact, it, it's saying that we are guilty of being, of manifestation itself, of having a body. >> What else could we do? >> What else could we do? Exactly. So we're guilty in, in our very being, in our very essence, before any action, before any choice. Okay. Guilty of Dust. "Up or down from the infinite center, brimming at the winking rim of time, the voice in my head said, "Love is the distance between you and what you love. What you love is your fate." Then I saw the parade of my loves, those performers, comics, actors, singers, forgetful of my very self so often I desired to die to myself to live in them. Then my parents, my friends, the drained spectres once filled with my baffled infatuations, love and guilt and fury and sweetness for whom? Nail spirit yearning to the Earth. Then the voice in my head said, "Whether you love what you love, or live in divided ceaseless revolt against it, what you love is your fate." And you know, I think that's true. What one loves is one's fate. And you don't choose what you love. And, and you can, you can live your love in revolt against what you love. But... >> You tried that. >> Yeah. And I've tried that, yes. And... >> You have a poem called "Queer" in your latest collection. >> Yeah. Sure. I can read that. >> And this is a poem certainly about... Well, you know, I have lived through the most, and you have lived through the most, astonishing revolution. >> I know. >> The, to live in... You know, in 1950, to think about, that this country would be debating whether gay guys can get married... >> Yes. Yes. >> is astonishing. I mean it's, it's, it's simply incredible. >> So I wonder how a poem like this will age. Fifty years from now... >> Who knows? >> kids will pick up this poem and think, "What?" >> Yeah, I know. Or, or, I don't know. I think the resistance to homosexuality will continue in large pockets for a long, long time. Whether it'll ever go away, I don't know. I hope it, I hope it, it will seem like a quaint thing from the past. But... >> Shame won't go away. >> Shame won't go away, and bewilderment at not understanding why you love what you love. Why you care about the things you care about. Or why certain things bring, bring an intensity that nothing else brings. >> Right. >> Well. >> This poem has a long span. It looks back and forward I think in a very interesting way. >> Okay. Now I have to find it. >> I think it's marked. Check one of those. >> I think I can, yes. I found it. Okay. ^E00:56:06 ^B00:56:12 The poem begins with the issue of, certainly, what anybody gay had to face is the issue of, of lying. And it's one thing to lie to other people, more terrible is when you begin to lie to yourself. And it starts out with that issue. Okay. Queer. Lie to yourself about this and you will forever lie about everything. Everybody already knows everything, so you can lie to them. That's what they want. But lie to yourself, what you will lose is yourself. Then you turn into them. For each gay kid whose adolescence was America in the '40s or '50s, the primary, the crucial scenario forever is coming out, or not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Involuity, involuted, velleities of self-erasure. Quickly after my parents died, I came out. Foundational narrative designed to confer existence. If I had managed to come out to my mother, she would have blamed not me, but herself. The door through which you were shoved out into the light was self-loathing and terror. Thank you, terror. You learned early that adults' genteel fantasies about human life were not for you, life. You think sex is a knife driven into you to teach you that. >> That's spectacular [inaudible] conclusion. >> But you know, and it, unfortunately it's true. You know, I, one reason I never was explicit with my mother about being gay is that it was so clear she would not have said, "Oh, you're terrible." Or; she would have said, "Oh, what have I done?" You know, it was her... >> It's always about her. >> It was all, it would have been about her failures. And it was also something the culture was talking about, constantly. That is, if a, if a boy was gay it's because the mother had failed in certain ways, and, or the father had failed, or both of them had failed. >> So many of your poems are about insight and the failure of insight. Do you think that's true? That's a, a pattern you notice, too? Deep, deep skepticism over and over again, about the possibility of insight. >> And the, the, the sense that, you know that experience something like insight, or that you experience it as insight, and then you later feel it wasn't quite... >> Right. >> You know, there, there's a wonderful phrase in, in Eliot, "We had the experience but missed the meaning." And, you know, in the, and, and, and you search for that meaning and you have had the experience, but you, to make them coincide is very hard. >> And again and again, the villains, if there are villains in your poems, are people who insist on their own insights as being revelations. >> Yes, that's right. >> You say... >> Or, and, who they're, and, and therefore it's a variety of lying to yourself. >> Yes. The, those who are the vessels of revelation, or who think they are, ravage us with the promise of rescue. >> I do think that. Very much. >> Herbert White says, well you already read that. Would you read a poem called, "Self Portrait"? >> Sure. This is a poem in many ways I'm very, I'm very, I was pleased by, this, I wrote this when I was very much going... >> It's in here, back here. >> Oh, okay. I'm very much going to Lowell's office hours. Lowell was a great teacher and a very wonderful person. And he had this amazing institution. Every Tuesday morning after his first class, which was on the preceding day, he had an open office hours for like two hours in which anybody from the community could come. >> You mean, not just students? >> Not just students, no. And he would often have; I was a graduate student, so he would have graduate students come and, and, and, and he could have a different kind of discussion then you could have in the, in the classroom with undergraduates. But it was wonderful because, as I say, lots of people from, from Cambridge, or Boston, who were just visiting Boston would, would come by and bring a poem and, you know, and you could talk to Robert Lowell about your poem. >> That is amazing. >> It was astonishing. It was great. I do not know of anybody who does anything like that now. So, or, or people from; he always did a, a literature class, "Sometimes, the Bible is Literature," and they would also come to this and then be bewildered by the fact it mostly had to do with poetry. I mean I, there was a, a guy who had a stack of, of, of books about, about the Bible and he was in that class and, and you know, we started to talk. This was before Lowell arrived, and, and he said well, you know, does, something like, is he a writer? You know, and he really did not know that Lowell was a poet. Anyway. This is a; I, I say I'm, I'm pleased with this because when I brought this poem to, to office hours, he; and it's the model behind it, is not only [inaudible] self-portrait, but a translation that Lowell did of the poem. But the point is, it's a sonnet, and it's a rhymed sonnet with this, quite a strict rhyme scheme. The only sonnet I've ever written. Lowell did not recognize it was a sonnet. You know, which is to say he couldn't see the rhyme scheme. And I wanted it buried. I mean I wanted it to be there, but to be, feel so necessitous that you didn't think that this person was reaching for a rhyme. So anyway, a little, a, a, a little triumph I had very early. Okay. Self-Portrait, 1969. He's still young, 30; but looks younger. Or does he? In the eyes and cheeks tonight, turning in the mirror, he saw his mother, puffy, angry, bewildered. Many nights now, when he stares there, he gets angry. Something unfulfilled there. Something dead to what he once thought he surely could be. Now, just the glamour of habits. Once instead, he thought insight would remake him. He'd reach what? The thrill, the exhilaration unraveling disaster that seemed to teach necessary knowledge became just jargon. Sick of being decent, he craves another crash. What reaches him, except disaster? Anyway, he thought insight would remake him. >> Yes. >> And you know, and I, I'm very grateful to a series of therapists I had. I mean, they really did, my life was remade. >> So you do believe there is insight. >> Yes. But it's not as if you can just cling to those [coughs] insight you, insights you have and then treat them as, as the answer to your life. >> That becomes jargon. >> And that becomes just jargon. Yes. And, so it's, it's, it's something that's constantly has to be rediscovered, thought out again. >> "The moral law within is near to madness." >> Yeah. >> What do you mean by that? >> Well that's in a context about Kont and, you know, Kont's sense of the moral life within, the moral law within. >> I'm sorry, I misread that. It is the moral law within. >> Moral law within, is, is that thing that we have to use as our guide and that we can rely on, and... >> But for most of us that is not madness, is it? >> Well, except, except, again and again, I mean look I'm sure those people who are massacring students in, you know... >> Yes. >> They're not saying we're evil and doing something terrible. They're just, they're saying to themselves, they're doing something good and moral. >> Right. >> And the fact is there's no; if you look at the history of the world, there's no agreement on what's moral. >> There is general agreement that we should be loving and kind to one another. ^E01:05:33 ^B01:05:39 Am I hearing people say, "No. No."? [Laughter] >> Well, I'm not sure there is. I mean, yeah, I, I think, yes, there is, there, that has happened, that there is, there is a kind of ecumenical; on the other hand, you know, when people believe fiercely something, they are very often not loving and kind to one another. And, you know, there's sides, you know, Jesus said a lot of things and one of them is that, "He comes to bring the sword." And, you know, you have to give up your mother and father, and you, that there's a side of Christianity that is very fierce. >> Yes. >> And there's a certainly a side to Islam that's very fierce. And, you know, I mean, I, I think there are very great atrocities that have been committed, probably in the name of every religion. I mean, I bet even Buddhism, and I don't know enough about the history of Buddhism. >> Remember this? This setup? >> Yes. Exactly. >> These three things. >> Right. Okay. This is a... >> It's very cynical. >> It's very cynical. This is, this, it's, it's a proposition. Man is a moral animal. Two. You can get human beings to do anything if you convince them it is moral. Three. You can convince human beings anything is moral. ^M01:07:04 [ Laughter ] ^M01:07:06 And unfortunately, I think that's true. >> In the "Third Hour of the Night," your last... >> Right. >> published... >> Right. >> Hour poem... >> Right. >> you write, if you'd read this. I hope >> Okay. >> I've written it correctly. Starts at the very top there. >> Yes. ^E01:07:27 ^B01:07:31 Understand that you can delude others, but not what you mourn more and now call the beast within you. Understand the cloak that maimed each gave each power. Understand that there's a beast within you that can drink till it is sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied. It alone knows you, it does not wish you well. ^M01:08:03 [ Laugher ] ^M01:08:04 >> I mean, I have, you know, I do think... ^E01:08:06 ^B01:08:11 you know, psycho analysis is very much de-emphasized, Freud's sense of the death impulse. >> Yes. >> I think we do have this profound negativity within us. >> The good we do, we do not. >> Yes. Exactly. And that, that there is a kind of beast within us that wants to destroy us. And I think people who are, often who manage to do what they set out to do have overcome some very profound impulse towards self-destruction that is also built within us. Now why this should be the case, I do not know. I mean, I don't, I don't pretend to know. But I think it's, it's, it's something that, there's a, there's that war, I think, within everyone. I can't know everyone, I can only know myself and the, you know, and the, the friends that I talk to. But, and I, I, it's not as if I feel oh, well, I got over that 20 years ago. Not at all. I mean I feel constantly I'm contending with something that is, wants to destroy my ability to finish a poem, or write a poem, or understand. >> You say, I have a friend who says that he has never felt a conflict between something deeply wished or desired, and what he thought what was moral. >> Right. >> And then you say, "Father such innocence is surely a kind of Eden, but somehow I can't regret that we are banished from that company." >> Yeah. [Laughter] That's, I do, I [inaudible]. Yeah. >> Remember these? >> It's so amazing to, to be talking to someone who's actually read everything. ^M01:10:11 [ Laughter ] ^M01:10:14 >> Half of which I've forgotten. But... >> One of the, some of the final lines, I think are so lovely, then we'll bring this to a close tonight. You've been a fabulous audience. ^E01:10:23 ^B01:10:30 >> Infinite the sounds, the poems, seeking to be allowed to submit, that this dust become seed. Like those extinguished stars whose fires still give us light. >> Just lovely. >> Look I don't want, let me, let me also, there's a very great pianist, Dino Lipatti, who died very early, and there's a EMI LP with notes that have quotations from his wife, and in the notes to that record is the line, likes those extinguished stars whose fires still give us light. And it's not my line, I've sought in anthologies and on line and stuff, for the source of it. It's undoubtedly, or I think probably, a translation of something, maybe in Romanian, he was Romanian. I've never been able to find the source of it. But also I can't pretend it's my line. ^M01:11:38 [ Laughter ] ^M01:11:41 >> You're very modest. >> No. It's not. >> It's been a pleasure talking to you tonight. >> Okay. >> Thank you so much. >> It's been a great pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, truly. ^E01:11:52 ^B01:11:54 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at www.LOC.gov. ^E01:12:00