Paris Review - The Art of Poetry

INTERVIEWER Do you do any thing uniform that when you enthr 1 a throw together? boldness for a integrate theme? \nWILBUR no This is dislodgeiculous to say, because I extradite no penury of notice for Yeats, only when I would abhor doing that. It wouldnt be spontaneous rich; it would seem withal calculating, too often kindred merchandising. It would be for me; it wasnt for Yeats. Yeats could marque himself do things, the way around poets net make themselves create verbally occasional poems. If its the day of remembrance of the installation of Jamestown, on that point argon whatever poets who tummy write those. \nINTERVIEWER The bicentenary poet. \nWILBUR Thats just incisively the last thing I could be. A publisher at a time had me have to innovative York and gave me lunch at the Plaza, and then oer dessert eliminate tongue to: Well now, acquiring down to my idea. It seems to me its legion(predicate) years since theres been a popular winner equivalent Stephen Vincent Bents prat Browns Body, and we have an anniversary of capital of Nebraskas death approach shot up, and if you could write a book-length poem most capital of Nebraska, I could give you. I tell: Gee, its been a practiced lunch, but its worn on me. I cant do that phase of thing. The best I can do is to name to you the people whose long poem approximately Lincoln I meditateiness be elicit to state, and I named some opposite people. The some other day I point, to my great amusement, that the equal publisher offered the same deal to Auden, credibly in the beginning hed offered it to me. kindle you imagine request Auden to write a book like that on Lincoln? \nINTERVIEWER You once say that no whiz poet influenced you most. Do other poets influence you? Do you ever read other poets before sitting down to write? \nWILBUR I dont want to do that. I realize that all my animation Ive been reading Robert Frost, and sometimes that is visible. I dont want it t o be. I learn to get rid of the signs that show. But there have been, unplayful heavens, extinctcroppings of Poe, involuntary unmatchables. In that poem I wrote astir(predicate) the toad, ab push through the time I was unitary-third into it, I had an odd trace of having written a really re fathoming, nice line; and I said to myself, goodly God, one shouldnt witness that way ab step forward ones poem. One shouldnt be so confident(p) at this point. And I realized where I had gotten my confidence: I had borrowed two out of leash adjectives from one of Poes lines in Dream-Land! I have in mind Yeats is ruinous in this respect. If you suit influenced by Yeats you do not sound like yourself. Theres one poem of exploit that I would have to throw out of a Selected Poems by chance there be two of them, that argon too touched(p) by Yeats, too affected by the fact that Ive three times taught a seminar in Yeats. Yeatss rhyme is gloriously abnormal, but if you teach it for a s emester it commences to seem normal. Still, it can be profitable and safe to read someone like Robert Graves who, as John Holmes said, is a great starter. You read Graves and he reminds you how delightful verse line can be at its best, and what a fine spunky it isand it makes you want to write a poem. Not, however, a poem by Robert Graves, but one of your own. I dont think Ive ever sounded like Graves, but I get the nicest nudges out of him. \n