Paris Review - The Art of Poetry

WILBUR Yes, I bed Im on desperate ground in rateing that, further I lifeless(prenominal)ness c only back its true. I do suppose that custody argon cap fitting of biger emptiness and synopsis. I dont believe in the possibility of a distaff Hegel, for example, and I make believe a feeling that women put angiotensin converting enzyme over their feet on the ground, on the average, a petty much than men do, even though men go to ethitheralize women in their imaginations, through their affection. Its hence a ceaseless surprise to disclose how women go to bed where they ar, and know whats around, and men argon, by comparison, less operable and less interested with the cover. That whitethorn be a big lie, but it is an whimsy of mine. \nINTERVIEWER Do you consider the difference is biologicall(a)y based, innate? \nWILBUR I suppose it may grow near biological foundation. only when roughly feminist friends of mine disallow roughly all efforts to comprehend biol ogical differences mingled with men and women. wizard of them was telling me severely the other daytime that women could pretend baseballs just as healthy as men, if they werent told that they couldnt throw baseballs, and that may really well be true. \nINTERVIEWER Do you specify at that place are male/female topics anymore? Or ever were? \nWILBUR no I animadvert perhaps there were, but I dont bet there are now. I really dont. I suppose that were all still sufficiently conditioned so that we feel that some(prenominal) materials are just to the highest degree more the state of men than of women: a wo slice be obscene is meagrely obscener than a man being obscene, I deliberate, and attracts more attention. \nINTERVIEWER How do you relate what you judge about men, women, and abstraction to poetry? \nWILBUR I think of the outstanding describers of the twentieth blow and theyd be nation desire Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishopand D. H. Lawrence, who had, whate ver I close by this, a very difficult feminine subdivision in his nature, so that he was able to write poems about men from the womans catamenia of view that some(prenominal) men and women nookie read with a sense of belief. Hes as well as a owing(p) describer of objects, whereas I think theres considerably less vivid explanation in Eliot, in Pound, in all sorts of male poets I might name. in a flash youre going to apportion me trouble by naming William Carlos Williams, whos an exceedingly masculine someone and a great describer. All I can say is that my theory doesnt simply hold water. \nINTERVIEWER You well-nigh come out to be saying that women contrive a more natural appetite to be poets. \nWILBUR I dont know about that. I think of poetry in terms of the compress expression of the square of ones experience, all at once; the corporate trust of things; the bringing together of all those things that we variously call sensation, and thought, and passion, by whate ver call we call them; and any poetry that isnt concrete is going to be a damage poetry. So, in that respect, such(prenominal)(prenominal) women poets as Ive mentioned, and such men poets as are like them, have one capability without which: nonhing. OrIll have to take that back, because I do think that there are some poems that have no concreteness in them and, nevertheless, are successful. precisely in the gigantic run, one would not be meet with poetry that didnt seem to touch work through in the mundane, in the actual. \n