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An
Interview with Galway Kinnell, (C) 2001
by
Daniela Gioseffi
Galway
Kinnell Interview | Poem: When The
Towers Fell
 Pulitzer
Prize winning poet, Galway Kinnell, has taught Creative Writing
for many years in the Graduate Division of New York University,
located near his Greenwich Village apartment . I meet the National
Book Award recipient in his parlor which affords a panoramic view
of The Hudson River from his writing desk. The wall behind him
is lined with hundreds of books of poetry and references of every
kind, including his own many books of poetry and translations.
I’ve known him for many years, but I don't notice that he
has aged or become jaded by his many awards including the coveted
Mac Arthur grant for his achievement in poetry. He seems vital
and astute as ever. When I called to ask for an interview, he
said that he doesn't have as many opinions as he once did. Selections
from many of his interviews were re-published in Walking Down
the Stairs ( U. of Michigan Press, 1978 Galway has just completed
the final touches of a new edition of his Rilke translations,
as well as a volume of selected poems for a British edition, following
his NEW SELECTED POEMS recently out from Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
He was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in
Spring of 2001. I've brought him a photo he took of John Logan--a
long deceased, poet friend we had in common. John and I were visiting
Galway's house in Vermont over twenty-five years ago when Galway
snapped the photo of us. He's pleased to see this memento of faces,
smiling happily amidst greenery, caught in time. Kinnell has been
a good friend to many poets, and he's helped to foster many younger
ones and myriad students. He generously remarks on the gorgeous
musicality of Logan's poetry. Bobbie Kinnell, Galway’s simpatica
wife of several years offers us some morning coffee. We settle
in comfortable chairs to begin our conversation.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Do you feel that American poetry really reaches
a vast audience, or do you think that we poets are of a society
that only talks with itself? Not that we don't do each other good
by doing so, but you've traveled the country a good deal, Galway.
You've been around a long time giving readings. Do you really
feel-- in a satisfied way--that your poetry reaches out into the
culture and the nation? I know that this is a question for popular
debate-- whether poetry matters--but how do you feel about
it at this juncture in your life?
Galway
Kinnell: Well, the status of poetry has changed over the last
hundred years. Then the voice of a poet, at least a certain kind
of poet, was a voice to be reckoned with. If Tennyson said something,
it mattered! If Keats said something, it didn't. If Whitman or
Dickinson said something, it didn't. It's not altogether an unhappy
thing now that poets' public utterances don't matter, because
in the past it was usually poets of the establishment who had
that power. What's happening now is there are so many people writing
poetry--and writing it very seriously--and many people who attend
poetry readings and buy poetry books and read them . So, while
poetry may appear somewhat publicly invisible in major media,
it exerts a quite powerful influence on a very large number of
individuals. In this way, it percolates up through the populace,
and over time may have a profound effect on who we are as a people,
and how we relate to each other and to other peoples as well as
to the other creatures.
Daniela
Gioseffi: I understand what you're saying. It's true that
well, who remembers who the poet laureate was when Alexander Pope
was writing? So the most visible poets today, might be the most
forgotten ones tomorrow, for all we know. We've even had a couple
of presidents, Kennedy and Clinton, who managed to have a poet
read at their inaugurations, but, there's the problem of such
a din of sports and sensational Hollywood entertainment, and all
the "opiates of the masses," that far more Americans
always know who the baseball, tennis, or football players
are, or the movie stars, than who the poets are. Does that discourage
you?
Galway
Kinnell: That fact alone doesn’t discourage me. What
does trouble me is a sense that so many things lovely and precious
in our world seem to be dying out or diminishing. Perhaps, poetry
will be the canary that flops to the bottom of its cage in the
mine shaft-- warning us of what’s to come.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes, and now with Global Warming and the ozone layer
disappearing, there’s a sense that what are we writing for?
Galway
Kinnell: Apart from those things that are very real like Global
Warming, I feel that there’s a deterioration in the cultural
life of the country. And that is a pity.
Daniela
Gioseffi: There's a kind of grossness, like gladiators fights,
a brutal, bloody sensationalism of entertainment and sports--more
so than ever, it seems, right now. Horror films about cannibalism,
sexual violence and truly repulsive imagery created with naturalistic
"special effects," more than ever…
Galway
Kinnell: Yes.
Daniela
Gioseffi: I know that you worked in the cause of registering
black voters during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. I
worked as an intern journalist in Selma in 1961, at the age of
twenty--helping to integrate Deep South television under the menace
of the Ku Klux Klan. My motives were simply that I was very naïve
and not so wise about the harm that was to befall me--and idealistic
about the work --but what would you say was your motive. Can you
say something about that work that you did then and what went
on around you and why you were involved in it as someone who was
really a poet at heart?
Galway
Kinnell: Ah, well, it was mostly that I found it unbearable
to live in a segregated society. In my childhood in Pawtucket,
Rhode Island, I wasn't really aware of the prevalence of segregation
because, though practically everybody was an immigrant, they were
almost all from Europe. There were no immigrants from the black
populations of the South or the Caribbean in my school. In my
childhood I saw very few people of color. In my grammar school,
there was one Jewish person. I learned about segregation later,
when I traveled about the country and spent time in the South.
But when I actually came to discover it, I found it shocking and
horrifying. I think when I first became aware of it. I was at
Black Mountain College in North Carolina, near Tennessee. I went
down there for a summer on my GI bill. And, there was a black
writer who came to visit, and I went into town with him. He had
to buy a train ticket and I went to the train station with him.
Well, the amount of fuss produced by a white and a black man walking
together was obvious. He grew worried, but I didn’t, because
I just didn’t realize that it was a dangerous thing for us
to walk together talking as friends. Afterwards, I talked with
him about it and he conveyed the experiences of his life that
made him to wary of the situation. Then, I came to know other
black people, and heard more of their experiences and read more
and more about the history of it all, and realized that it wasn’t
a phenomenon confined to just the Southern states, but that it
was pretty much a national phenomenon. Certainly New York was
a segregated city then, and still is to a significant degree.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes.
Galway
Kinnell: And then, not long after that, I was living in France
when the Civil Rights Movement became news, and reading the Paris
edition of The Herald Tribune. I read about the Freedom
Riders, and thought, my God, at last something is being done!
As soon as I got back, I sought out C.O.R.E.--which I’d heard
or read was going to do a voter registration drive. I realized
that here was an opportunity to do something instead of merely
stewing about it. As soon as I got back to this country, I signed
up with CORE, The Congress of Racial Equality, and went to Louisiana
for a summer of voter registration and a fall of attempting integration
in certain businesses in Hammond, Louisiana.
Daniela
Gioseffi: So you were down there working with the Congress
of Racial Equality, and registering voters. Very dangerous business
then. I can imagine how you feel about the recent Florida elections.
I hope more is going to come out in the news about that in equity
this year.
Galway
Kinnell: I certainly hope so.
Daniela
Gioseffi: I teach intercultural communication and multicultural
literature for tolerance teaching since I published ON PREJUDICE:
A Global Perspective in 1993--but I wondered, speaking of
those days: "The Last River" is a poem I admire, along with many
others, and I noticed that though "The Last River" is in your
first SELECTED POEMS, 1982, it's not in the recently published,
collection A NEW SELECTED POEMS, 2000. Is there a reason
why you left it out? It's not one of your best known poems,
but I still think it's a good piece and suited to our current
times.
Galway
Kinnell: The reason I took it out is that I don't think it's
as good a poem as it should be, and, yet, I don't see how I could
fix it now. When I went down there to work on in the South, I
thought it would be unseemly for me to "use" the situation down
there as material for art, and I decided not to write a word while
I was there. I put aside everything having to do directly with
poetry and just did my work as a Civil Rights worker. A couple
of years later I realized that was a serious mistake, I had misunderstood
the relationship of art and life.
Daniela
Gioseffi: It was idealistic, but all the same, the more said
anywhere and everywhere, the better, yes?
Galway
Kinnell: Exactly. It was ignorant idealism. I should have
gone down there thinking that my job was two-fold, one was to
do the work of voter registration and desegregation and the other
was to write about all this to be as informative as possible through
poetry or any other form of writing my pen might have taken. Later,
I tried to write about it, but what I wrote lacked the life that
it might have had originally.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Is it that you kind of took a Dantesque form in
"The Last River"? Is that what you don’t like about
the poem?
Galway
Kinnell: Taking that form reflected, I think, my sense that
I had delayed too long. Instead of invoking the Inferno,
I now think I should have taken a surrealistic approach and simply
treated the whole world as hell. It was hell.
Daniela
Gioseffi: It was Hell. It is hell! But, in many aspects
it's Heaven, too--especially when you are "Flower Herding on Mount
Monadnock," (--title of a Kinnell poem.) Then it does become a
bit of Heaven! So, you are not much enamored of "The Last
River?" I should ask you about a poem of conscience with which
you are happier.
Galway
Kinnell: I guess of those you've listed here, I more satisfied
with the results of "The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible,"
or "The Fundamental Project of Technology." "The Fundamental Project
of Technology" is a poem that I haven't read very often, first
because it's hard to read, and second, because it seemed to lose
some of its relevance, so to speak, with the end of the Cold War.
Daniela
Gioseffi: So to speak, yes?
Galway
Kinnell: Yes, only so to speak. The threat of nuclear war
is back again.
Daniela
Gioseffi. Yes, so much so that I’m working on a new and
revised edition of my 1988 compendium of world literature, WOMEN
ON WAR: International Voices for the Nuclear Age from Touchstone.
It’s to be redone by The Feminist Press, because the anti-nuclear
movement is building up again. We’re still facing the increasing
threat of proliferation, of Star Wars expansionism, of the weapons
on alert, the problems of radioactive waste disposal-- none of
which have disappeared at all. That’s why "The Fundamental
Project of Technology"–written in the early 1980’s remains
a very relevant poem for our time. What was the epigraph?
Galway
Kinnell: The epigraph for the poem is: "A flash! A white flash
sparkled!" --phrases taken from a description of the blast written
by Tatsuichiro Akizuki in his book, Concentric Circles of Death.
It forms a kind of refrain.
Daniela
Gioseffi: I've always admired that poem. In a way, it has
an epic proportion, sort of belying the first thing we said about
the power of "the ordinary and close at hand." Even though it
has intimate detail, it has a larger and omniscient point of view.
Galway
Kinnell: It has the weaknesses of the epic to it, but in my
mind what
saves
it is the peculiar difficulty of saying it. The rhythms clash,
idioms are
strained
to the limit, syntax pops, long series of monosyllabic words seem
almost
gibberish.
Its "voice," to me, conveys a horror—that is first felt in
the voice apparatus of someone saying it. But, of course, it does
have that weakness of epic "grandness"...
Daniela
Gioseffi: Speaking of epic grandness, I know you’ve written
a good deal about Walt Whitman, and some say that some of your
poems have been influenced by a Whitmanesque cadence. You did
after all edit The Essential Whitman, and many feel Whitman
needed someone to edit an essential version of his work--but what
would you say to these, perhaps, grandiose lines of Whitman from
Democratic Vistas:" the poem, As I Sat Alone by the
Blue Ontario’s Shore" in Poems of Parting, 1856:
Chant
me a poem,…. Of the range of the high
Soul of Poets.
And
chant of the welcome bards that breathe but my
Native air–invoke those bards;
And
chant me, before you go, the Song of the throes
Of Democracy
(Democracy–the
destined conquer–yet treacherous lip
smiles
everywhere.
And
death and infidelity at every step.)
Galway
Kinnell: Well, you know sometimes the grand way of saying
things doesn’t appeal to me. I think when I was younger,
it did. But, less so now.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Well the last elliptical couplet rings true as ever--but
why do you think that you feel that way? I mean, I feel some of
the same myself and I wonder if you can articulate why that’s
so as we become older and wiser-- if we do become older and wiser?
Galway
Kinnell: It just seems the more ordinary and close at hand
is often the more true and real.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Ah, yes, "the more ordinary and close at hand
is often the more true and real!" I knew you’d say something
succinct that would crystallize the thought. Can you go on a little
more with that idea. It’s a very good one for poets, I think.
Galway
Kinnell: Well no. I think that’s enough.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Well then, "brevity is the soul of wit!"
I believe that one can write a good or bad sociopolitical poem,
as easily as a good or bad love poem. I think Dante, Neruda or
Akmatova would agree. But, as I’ve read your poems: Oh,
To a Child in Calcutta, The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible,
The Fundamental Project of Technology, The Last River, Vapor Trail
Reflected in a Frog Pond, The Homecoming of Emma Lazarus,
and Shiefflied Ghazal, Driving West, I wondered what you’d
say as a teacher of literary art, and the idea that poetry
can offer human values and sociopolitical concern. What are the
pitfalls the poet has to avoid to do so effectively?
Galway
Kinnell: I certainly as a teacher encourage students who seem
to be writing or who want to write poems of social and moral teachings.
There are so many of our great poems that have explicit moral
teachings, and almost all of poetry has implied social and moral
teachings, but I think in that however in consciously writing
a poem that teaches, the danger to a poet is that he or she thinks
that they know the truth, and the poor slobs they’re
writing to don’t, and there’s a preaching tone or patronizing
air to such an attitude. I’d say that would be the danger.
The advantage though would be to directly speak about things that
matter tremendously to everyone, and to speak about these things
in a way that only poetry can in a kind of intimate human way
that makes you feel it as well as understand it.
Daniela
Gioseffi: But, maybe epic poetry is not always weak in its
grand view, is it? Sometimes we do need to look down over it all,
objectively, and be larger than we are in our view are. I know
that most of your poems have a more intimate view and the power
of the ordinary and close at hand--but, perhaps, the subject of
nuclear annihilation, as in The Fundamental Project of Technology,
needs a larger than life view to grasp and hold its magnitude.
The details in that poem of melted eyeglasses, the scorched uniform
of a schoolboy, charred dishes, a pair of melted pliers, a ring
fused to a helmet, the ordinary objects of human use left behind
after the scourge of the bomb, give the poem a human intimacy
in its omniscient view. Now, I wanted to ask you whether you see
yourself as a "nature poet." I know that your definition of nature
poetry includes urban poetry and the ant-hills of civilization.
Can you explain, please?
Galway
Kinnell: Yes, but I don't think of myself as a "nature poet."
I don't recognize the distinction between nature poetry and, what
would be the other thing? Human civilization poetry? We are creatures
of the earth who build our elaborate cities and beavers are creatures
of the earth who build their elaborate lodges and canal operations
and dams, just as we do. Ants have their intricate "cities"
under the ground, and the birds have their varied ways of building
their nests on earth. The human is unique in that it’s taken
over, but that’s no reason to day that the human is of a
different kind, a kind created in the image of some god while
all the others are created in the image of mere lumps of dirt.
There’s some kind of sense that we can do whatever we wish
with the other creatures, because God appointed us to do so, but
this notion of us as lords of the earth postdates the actual creation
of all animals and is a self-serving excuse for pillaging. There’s
this idea of divine intervention giving humankind the right to
dominance and usury of all other creatures, and that notion may
actually be misinterpreted even in scripture and rather self destructive,
considering the balances needed in the web of survival of our
own species. Perhaps, it’s wiser to think of humankind as
only one among the many animal species of the earth. All creatures
have their intricate ways of living on earth, their buildings,
nests, dwellings, dens and habitats. Humans are unique in one
respect: we've taken over–and, so successfully that we've
become a threat to many of the other creatures, and even a danger
to the earth itself. So, that's why I don't think of myself as
a "nature poet." Poems about other creatures may have political
and social implications for us.
But,
I think that every poem that I encounter which moves me has some
sort of political or social force to it. For example, though James
Wright has some blatantly political poems, like for example, "Eisenhower’s
Visit to Franco, 1959" there’s also a poem, by him which
appears to be the most apolitical sort of poem you can
find, titled "Sitting By the Bank of a River," and yet
it has it social or political implications. There the poet sits
with the mosquitoes, salamanders and various others creatures
on the shore--just meditating on the shore--and out of that meditation
comes a certain burst of love for his wife, Annie-- a love so
strong that he imagines himself dead and able, in the trance of
the poem, to talk to his beloved while she’s still among
the living. It’s an extraordinary poem, but the meditation
evolves from the poet’s identification with the other creatures
that rest by the river. Without that identification with the other
living things of the earth, we’ll never save ourselves or
the earth. If we just think of other animals as mere brutes that
we can do with as we will, there won’t be these wondrous
and free creatures to identify with--just a few on leashes and
in zoos, and on dinner tables.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes, it’s a pity that much of the money power
is in the cities, and many people who live in urban settings don’t
really get to view closely, for one small example, the
wonder of a ruby-throated hummingbird--most magnificent flyer
of earth weighing less than an ounce and making its way, non-stop,
across the Gulf of Mexico, through wind and rain, churning it’s
wings at eighty beats to the second. How the female builds her
tiny nest woven of spider webs and lichen, or the male does an
elaborate courtship dance, wings beating a hundred and twenty
beats to the second to win her! Or, how, for example, the chipmunk
thinks carefully as he tunnels his home in the earth, making one
room for sleeping, one for defecating, one for eating and food
storage, with a back door for escape.
Galway
Kinnell: Yes, and the much maligned pig, if he’s given
a pen with room to walk, designates one corner for his defecation,
and consecrates the rest for eating, walking and lying down. The
pig is actually one of the most delightful and clean animals.
Daniela
Gioseffi: And intelligent –
Galway
Kinnell: Yes very intelligent. We have distorted ideas
of other animals.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes superstitions and prejudices, as we used to
have for bats, for one example, before understanding and embracing
their important role as insectivores and seed planters of the
rain forest’s fruits.
Galway
Kinnell: Yes, the birds aren’t just singing for our
pleasure–
Daniela
Gioseffi: No, they’re devouring billions of insects that
would devour us if we keep killing them off by destroying their
habitats--and they are singing to call, court each other and warn
each other of danger, and declare territory and so forth. And,
that’s what I appreciate about your poetry -- this understanding
you display of the intricate web of life --how much other creatures
have communication systems, song, thought and feeling. That’s
something your poetry expounds and understands. There’s an
acceptance of our own animal natures, too, and a redemption of
everything in creation from warts to roses. Your animal poems,
The Bear, The Procupine, etc., have sociopolitical implications
in that sense. And, they are not the usual sentimental "nature
poems, " of Romanticism. They are deeper--more resonant with
the truth of existence and consonant with the naturalistic and
often brutal struggle for survival.
Galway
Kinnell: Well, James Wright has several very politically powerful
poems which have great social force to them. For example this
one which I happened to see lying before me in the table of contents
to his collected poems, "Eisenhower’s Visit to Franco,
1959," I’ve always thought the poem said a good deal
about our country’s relationship to others in the world of
power. "The American Hero must triumph over the forces of
darkness," is how it begins, so already the forces of darkness
are alive in the poem and there is an implication of dominance
over the other creatures and peoples of the earth–and so
it goes on. "He has flown through the very light of heaven
and come down in the slow dusk of Spain….Eisenhower has touched
hands with Franco…. (Kinnell quotes the James Wright poem
in entirety.)
Daniela
Gioseffi: You’ve said that Robert Duncan, for one example,
in his anti-Vietnam poem, "Uprising," was unafraid to
mention the actual names of leaders or characters of his time
in the way say that Aristophanes does in his plays. Does such
usage of proper nouns worry you in terms of the lasting power
of the poem–say in this poem of James Wright, too, which
talks very specifically of certain names in the political sphere.Do
you think such usage of temporal names harms the universality
of a poem?
Galway
Kinnell: Yes, Duncan doesn’t hesitate to use topical
names, as many poets have--and I remember people complaining back
in those Vietnam protest days about the use of living politicians
names and dates and places in poems. The issue was what would
people think of these poems when those names were dead and forgotten.
Wouldn’t it be better to write in generalities than to be
so specific? But, I don’t really thank that’s a consideration
one should worry about, because the specifics matter, the details
even of people who might not be heard of hundreds of years from
now can resonate if used properly. We can feel the force of Robert
Duncan’s or James Wright’s poem through these names.
I think of Francois Villon, in the fifteenth century when books
were first beginning to be widely duplicated, published, and distributed--and
his first editor said this poem can’t last because it’s
made up too much of incidence and people unknown to the future
who were around in Villon’s time, But, when we read Villon
now, he brings us back to his times with the historical resonance
of his era, and we realize, too, that those types of people live
around us today, in our on society, as well. They are analogous
to our times, and that offers an element of universality. There’s
this thing about political poems–one must learn something
them them, learn something about the political event, and if possible
in the best poems, about oneself as well. Robert Duncan does this
in his poem "Uprising," one of the earliest, protest
poems about the Vietnam war.
Daniela
Gioseffi: I think you are absolutely right, and those details
bring the world alive in a poem. As Grace Paley says, politics
is a part of everyone’s lives, but some writers write
as if they didn’t live in the world and their lives were
not effected by what goes on around them. People do talk about
the sociopolitical issues all around them. They are a part of
the experience of our lives and need to be brought to some sort
of understanding in poetry. Neruda wrote plenty of loves poems,
too, as did Gingsberg or Levertov or Rukeyser. I think that James
Wright’s poem succeeds because of its details. What about
this other idea you’ve sometimes expressed--for example in
an essay on Walt Whitman--that poets can write themselves toward
a better health and wholeness if they are honest in their self-knowledge.
Can you say something about that?
Galway
Kinnell: Self-knowledge is always helpful to our well being–but
if we divide humankind into the good and the bad--and put ourselves
among the good and others among the bad or poor slobs, we can
never write truthful poetry. It's all false, if based on that
erroneous premise–that we are the pure poet and the stupid
rabble is all to blame. No doubt some people are morally better
or worse than some others, but it is necessary to see that there’s
no absolute classification. Some poems separate humanity into
two camps: We, the "good people," the poets and lovers;
and they, the Hitlers and Stalins, or Kissingers, and Nixons,
and so on. We make the killers seem to belong to a different species.
Knowing that what we call evil in others also exists in ourselves
makes it more possible to write something that has authenticity.
Ethridge Knight says in one of his poems, "I am all of them,
they are all of me." The best anti-war poems allow us to
remember that we and the enemy are brothers, as in Wilfred Owen’s
last poem, he imagines that he meets in hell the man he’s
killed in war–a "strange meeting" of accomplices.
Whitman’s war poems are like that too. Some old fashioned
nineteenth or eighteenth century political poems often tended
to have an antagonist and the voice of purity as narrator. But,
at the end of the Illiad Priam crosses over the lines of war to
meet Achilles. The two enemies reach an almost loving understanding.
We need to understand the possibilities for evil in ourselves
and not write so much from lofty, self-righteous perches in order
to achieve a believable authenticity.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes, excellent advice for the writer--and to see
no easy division helps us to avoid projecting all the evil or
self-hatred that might lurk untapped in ourselves onto others.
Projection of evil seems the root of all prejudice and trouble
in the world. I’m trying to think of a literary example of
what you mean.
Galway
Kinnell: Well, let’s see? The Great Gatsby might
be an example of a piece of American literature where the writer
doesn’t put himself outside the ugliness or corruption,
in an attempt to satirize-- but shows the decadence from the inside
out, and is a part of the society perpetuating shallow values.
The narrator is witness from the inside of the scene he exposes.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Ah yes! And, "The Dead Shall Be Raised Incorruptible!"
(Title of another Kinnell poem.) I think it was in 1926 that Marina
Tsvetayeva said in her essay "The Poet on the Critic"
that "Poetic schools —a sign of the times--are a vulgarization
of poetry." What do you think about the divisions of so called
"Language Poetry, Neo-Formalism, Neo-narrative, Abstract
Expressionist, Performance Poetry, Slam Poetry, and so forth?
Do you feel that these schools of poetry fragment the culture
and are divisive? The lonely alienation of artists through the
centuries has always been something of a sociological phenomenon,
but do you think poetic schools and theories are a vulgarization
of poetry as Tsvetayeva said? For example, Robert Pinsky has said
that when form overpowers content, we tend to have a decadence
in art-- or words to that effect.
Galway
Kinnell: Well it might be true sometimes, but then it might
not be true other times. I’d say that for example in the
Duino Elegies of Rilke it might be possible to say that
form overpowers content, but the content shines through all the
same. Or, maybe about Gerard Manly Hopkins’s poetry you could
say that form overpowers content. Still, in both those cases,
the content seems to shine forth as if from behind the form. It’s
as if Rilke chooses his words the way he wants them to sound,
but they fill up a more intense meaning because of it.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes, the last part of "Vapor Trail Reflected
in the Frog Pond" was like that for me. I think that may
be an example of what you are saying: "And the rice paddies
in Asia/ bones/ wearing a few shadows/ walk down a dirt road,
smashed/ bloodsuckers on their heel, knowing/ the flesh a man
throws down in the sunshine/ dogs shall eat/ and the flesh that
is flung into the air/ shall be seized by birds,/ shoulder blades
smooth, unmarked by old feather-holes,/ hands r-rivered/ by blue,
erratic wanderings of the blood,/ eyes crinkled almost shut,/
seeing in the drifting sun that gives us our lives/ seed dazzled
over the footbattered blaze of the earth." But, I noticed
you cut the last line from the earlier version of the poem in
your latest collection, A New Selected Poems, 2000–in
which you’ve done a bit of revising on some of the poems.
Was it because the words were overpowering the content--too carefully
chosen? I felt they were aptly saying what they were saying better
than any other words could say it--but maybe you felt that form
was spewing content after it–so you cut the last line and
ended with the starker line: "the drifting sun that gives
us our lives." A beautiful and simpler ending. I think a
poet feels when he’s hit the notes just right and
I bet you know when you have.
Galway
Kinnell: Well, I don’t know? Probably I feel it when
I do, but the only example that comes to me just now is the first
time I was ever a little amazed at by my own lines. I was describing
the sewage flowing into the East River, in "The Avenue Bearing
the Initial of Christ Into the New World" I think it went:
"the brown sink of dissolve,/ The white float out in shoals
and armadas,/ Even the gulls pass them up, pale/ Bloated socks
of riverware and rotted seed/ That swirl on the tide, punched
back/ To the Hell Gate narrows, and on the ebb/ Stem seaward,
seeding the sea." I recall getting a little thrill from writing
those sounds to match their meaning.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Well, but, I don’t think form is over powering
content there. It’s just organic to it, but I remember
those lines very clearly--and what I love about them is that idea
of redeeming everything from warts to roses. It isn’t about
something pretty, but the words make it wondrous. You’re
portraying a big city’s sewage flowing out to sea --the reality
of our animal natures. Yet, your words portray that reality with
a reverent wonder at the vastness of the sea, the flow of the
driven waters, and the hugeness of the city and its monumental
waste–full of its visceral and animal nature…
Galway
Kinnell: But, going back to that question earlier about schools
of poetry, and not only all the kinds of schools, but all
the unique individuals who don’t belong to any schools--the
vast variety of poetry being written in this country is amazing.
So, I think it’s a sign that poetry is in good health, and
that there are many poets and groups of poets who get together
and find they are similar to each other, forming what might be
called schools. It’s good that many different kinds of poets
are extremely excited about writing poetry, and if everybody was
writing the same way that wouldn’t be so good. Maybe, in
the forties there was a sameness to the poetry being produced,
at least that which we know about–but anyway now, there’s
such a variety that it’s clearly a very vibrant art form.
The only regrettable part about it is some of the ill feelings
among some of the groups for each other. Have you noticed that?
Daniela
Gioseffi: It would seem to be so for sure! (Laughter.) I’m
not a part of any particular group myself, but I know what you
mean.
Galway
Kinnell: Yes, you can see it in various ways--that there’s
an ill feeling among some of the groups. I think it’s necessary
for poets to realize that they have much more in common with each
other--even though they may write in differing styles and ways--than
they have in common with the society as a whole. We’re all
together in the art of the word in our different ways. When one
poet reads or hears the work of another, it might mean little
to that given poet because of temperamental differences, but that’s
okay. It doesn’t mean that one must disparage that poet.
Daniela
Gioseffi: But if a certain kind of poetry is receiving all
the attention and prizes because of a power hold, and the audience
says, gee, is that poetry? I don’t get it! And the audience
starts turning away from poetry and saying, "I can’t
get anything from it, I guess poetry isn’t for me, but only
for poets!" Then maybe that isn’t so good-- as readers
or audiences are turned away. But, what interests me is that poets
like you do not feel this anger toward the more solipsistic branch
of poetry, but that more abstract branch of poetry–that language
or abstract branch–seems to be angry with the poets who are
still trying to say something with poetic clarity and reach out
to communicate with accessibility. So, it seems that the anger
goes from the abstract, or solipsistic branch of poetry-- which
fancies itself new and experimental--toward the poets who are
loved for being accessible. Not that every line is as easy to
absorb as ever other, and not that there isn’t abstract poetic
expression in accessible poets, but those reachable poets have
this big heart for the experimental ones! It doesn’t seem
so much to be reciprocated, if I’m making any sense.
Galway
Kinnell: Hmmm?
Daniela
Gioseffi: Is it because they’re trying to make something
new by chopping down the beanstalk of the giants that came before
them?
Galway
Kinnell: Well, maybe, but it’s possible to make something
new without chopping down what comes before or is concurrently
around. There’s so much room for different styles.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Do you pay much attention to the performance poets
and the poetry slams and C.D’s and video’s, Hip Hop,
and what not, that’s around?
Galway
Kinnell: Somebody once wanted to have a "senior slam"
with Allen Ginsberg and me, (laughter) -- but I didn’t want
to read my best poetry under those circumstances. However, I like
the phenomenon of slams. I think they’re good for poetry,
and I’m going to introduce some slammers, myself.
Daniela
Gioseffi: At "The Peoples Poetry Gathering" in downtown
Manhattan?
Galway
Kinnell: At CBGB’S. I’m going to read for a little
bit, and then I’m going to introduce some slammers…..but
the thing about "The Peoples Poetry Gathering" is that
it’s an event that’s trying to bring together all the
different kinds of poetry and help them realize they‘re all
part of the same art form. Last year, I read with a Cowboy poet
and I enjoyed it.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes, I’m going to host a Polyglot open mic.
at that varied gathering in April. There will be every sort of
style and culture, too. Do you feel that a poet has to have a
certain image to attract an audience--the way Walt Whitman deliberately
effected the clothes and demeanor of the working man, for one
example? Allen Ginsberg, too, cultivated a certain "Beatnik"
or Bohemian image.
Galway
Kinnell: Well, I don’t think its necessary, but I have
no objection to it. Robert Bly is one poet that I can think of
who dressed a certain way-- with his panchos and had a certain
style, and I don’t think it’s bad at all.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Yes, and aftger I came to his Great Mother Conference
performing to my African lyre and dancing, he picked up a dulcimer
and started dancing, too. But, I love the way Robert stirs things
up and keeps us thinking. He’s always so alive with ideas
and controversies. It’s great! I have a question for you,
though, that may be embarrassing, but I’ll ask it anyway.
I don’t know if you remember Blake’s poem, "The
Ballad of Mary," about a handsome or lovely woman who goes
out into the world and at first everyone loves her, and then the
next thing they’re doing is throwing mud at her and trying
to kill her out of envy, and their envy depresses her and makes
her turn inward. You have an image, which I don’t think you’ve
tried so much to cultivate, of rugged masculinity. I think it’s
more who you really are, but do you think that being an attractive,
rugged sort of manly man whom women fancied has brought you some
envy or hurt or a hindrance? I ask this as I know that being attractive
when I was young sometimes brought me a measure of envy, or the
wrong kind of attention, and took focus away from my work. So
attractiveness was more of a hindrance than a help. I just wondered
what you’d say about that for a poet, for a poet’s life?
Galway
Kinnell: Well now that I’m old and homely, I look back
at pictures of myself when I was younger, and I think I was handsome.
However, at the time those pictures were taken, I had no idea
I was. I regarded myself as rather ugly, but looking back I see
that I was, at least in some of the pictures, in others, (Laughter)
I look the way I thought I looked. So, I’ve never thought
of myself as handsome and I don’t know how it effected my
career if I was?
Daniela
Gioseffi: You don’t think it’s brought you any sort
of envy or grief from other men? I’ve certainly heard jealousy
expressed by other male poets. This thing of being a bit of, how
shall I say? -- "matinee idol" of poetry, so to speak?
Galway
Kinnell: Well, no one would have told me about their envy,
so I don’t know if it was ever so. (Laughter.)
Daniela
Gioseffi: Well, maybe, it’s brought envy from some men
which you didn’t notice, or maybe it’s stupid
question, but I do hope that you will one day be our Poet Laureate
before your through–-though Stanley Kunitz is an admirable
one! You deserve to be our Poet Laureate one day for your fine,
very American poetry! You've given so many interviews, and there’s
a bevy of them in WALKING DOWN THE STAIRS from the Poets
on Poetry Series of Michigan University Press. After reading that
book, I hardly knew what was left to ask you, so I'm grateful
that you've consented to this interview. Is there any other question
or questions you wished an interviewer had asked you which at
this time in your life you'd like to expound upon. Anything that
you wished someone had asked you at this juncture of your life
in poetry.
Galway
Kinnell: Ah, let me think….(Pause.) Do I ever regret
having chosen poetry as my vocation over some other?
Daniela
Gioseffi: I'd love to hear your answer to that, because I'm
having my own regrets at sixty -- thinking I ought to work in
a soup kitchen, or become an organic gardener, or just watch the
birds and feed them everywhere to help their survival. (Laughter.)
So, what would be your answer to that question?
Galway
Kinnell: I've never had a moment's regret, except sometimes,
thinking that our species might destroy the planet and everything
on it. Then, I wonder if there might not have been another vocation
I could have taken up that might have let me be more practically
effective in this respect.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Oh, I feel that answer in a very heartsick place
when you articulate it. It's a very important point. How does
the poet -- feeling such worldly despair at this time -- go on?
Galway
Kinnell: Who knows? Maybe the best we can do is do what we
love as best we can. Perhaps, by trying to bring together one’s
art and one’s life with one’s values.
Daniela
Gioseffi: Do you feel that you are differently motivated to
write now than you were as a young man. Do you feel the same fervor–as
say when you wrote "The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ
Into the New World" as you do now when you pick up your pen
to write now? Do you feel your differently motivated when you
sit down to write.
Galway
Kinnell: I think I wrote with just as much fervor when I was
young, as I do now, but I also sometimes wrote with a whimsy that
I don’t think I do so much now. I don’t mean I don’t
write with humor, but that kind of whimsical play has kind of
disappeared-- and so, perhaps, it feels like more fervor, maybe
less intermixture of unreflective triviality or whimsy , but probably
I wrote then with as much desire, but with less reflection perhaps?
Daniela
Gioseffi: Perhaps you wrote with more pure observation than
contemplation, I think you’ve become more ironic than whimsical,
perhaps, more meditative now....
Galway
Kinnell: Well, one can’t speak of one’s own writing
very well. That’s for others–for readers--to decide.
It’s best to leave that to others.
Daniela
Gioseffi: I'm glad you go on writing energetically and with
as much fervor as ever. I think we need more poets like you who
engage the visceral world, who make us sense our animal natures
and accept them.There's a good deal of overly intellectual poetry--precious
and urbane--overly intellectual and decadent poetry that's too
abstract or solipsistic for the general reader to participate
in. There's not enough deeply natural poetry being written-- poetry
that faces death and organic life squarely, and makes living in
touch with earth and all creation resonate with beauty and horror,
wonder and despair---redeeming everything from shit to flowers
as you do in your work. I'm glad that we have you as one of the
American giants among poets of our time, and I thank you for your
time.
Galway
Kinnell: Thank you, Daniela.
Interview
Copyright © 2002-2003 Daniela Gioseffi.
All Rights Reserved. First appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review,
Fall-Winter 2002-2003 issue. Shorter versions appeared in The
Cortland Review and Big City Lit online.
Galway
Kinnell Interview | Poem: When The
Towers Fell
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