By Kathy Florence

 

Originally published in the University of Arizona Poetry Center Newsletter Volume 18.2, Spring 1994.

Early in March 1994, Robert Pinsky spent two days at the University of Arizona. After giving a poetry reading on Wednesday evening and a lecture on Thursday morning, he and I sat in the Poetry Cottage and relaxed. Robert Pinsky's books of poetry include Sadness and Happiness, An Explanation of America, History of My Heart, and The Want Bone.  He is also the author of several important critical works including The Situation of Poetry: Contemporary Poetry and Its Traditions; Poetry and the World; and co-translator with Robert Hass of Czeslaw Milosz's The Separate Notebooks. Pinsky's verse translation of Dante's Inferno was published this spring of 1994 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He currently teaches at Boston University.

Kathy Florence: In the essay "Responsibilities of the Poet" you talk about an idea that I really love. You say that "poetry is the very art of being interesting." You then elaborate on this idea in the essay "Poetry and Pleasure." In that essay you say that there are many failed or uninteresting poems that poets write, submit, publish. Do you have any thoughts on what we are concentrating on when we write, submit, share, publish these uninteresting pieces?

Robert Pinsky: I suppose we are thinking too much about that process of dissemination. It is like a child who sees his parents and cannot shut up. Have you ever seen an overly garrulous child? The child babbles in a subdued panic, because the poor thing is not getting some reassurance or recognition or something that it wants. The child becomes irritated with itself. I think, when we put forth the uninteresting, we are thinking more about the process and the thing at the end of the process and not some essence that justifies both of those. We are eager for some sugar that doesn't have any protein in it.

To be interesting is particularly germane to poetry among arts because it is so essential. It involves so little technology. It uses something everybody uses all the time. It uses speech, the bodily phenomenon of speech, the voice. It is like the games you play by yourself when you are not near a television or a book, a movie, a musical  instrument, or a radio, like when you go into introspection—daydream.

Compared to other quite impressive arts, like film, it uses such a minimal thing. It uses interest, as in the word interest—inter-est—Latin for what we have in common. If I am going to sail off with a lot of olive oil jars in my boat, and you are going to help me buy the boat and the olive oil, you have an interest in my enterprise. It is between us. It is among. It is interest.

It is like several friends who get together behind a boat full of olives, I mean to sail out with. We are all interested in whether I survive, whether I manage to find a good customer who will trade me some brass tripods for the olives.

When we are doing it right, it is like friends at a party who don't plan a topic. Friends aren't thinking about dazzling or impressing. They are thinking about having a good time. They trust that they are interested enough in one another and the things that one another are doing that there will be lively and passionate and amusing conversation. Whatever that thing is that you do for one another that  lovers will do, or friends will do—there is something that always will be between, something to be added to.

Interest is not the process of adding, and it is not the gratification at the end of the process. It is the essence. It is the protein of the process. It is whatever that new inter-est is. It is hard to say it. It is hard to say when you are doing it. I think it is that fundamental and elusive to be interesting.

Kathy: It is just hard to do.

Robert: Of course it is hard, right up until the very second that it is easy.

Kathy: When I was reading Poetry in the World I was fascinated by this gathering that you wrote about, the gathering in honor of George Oppen. At the gathering there were several speeches you were, "sorry to say, that emphasized the themes of neglect and resentment. That being a writer was depicted as a thankless, bitter work." I figured that in order to make such a comment you would have to feel that being a writer was a thankful, joyous work. Could you say a few words about that?

Robert: One of the most wonderful things a person can do is to make any kind of art. I think that this is very nearly a universal sentiment. People usually express it in relation to musical instruments. You can ask a wide range of people from very different occupations and social classes and ages what their dreams are, things they wish they could do. Wishing they could play an instrument is very common.

I think that this is a way of saying that to make something that wasn't there before is one of the best things. To make beautiful sounds—I think that desire—is very related to the fact that we are an animal that relies upon speech as a way of cooperating to survive. The famous classical tag is that we don't have thick skin, or sharp claws, or big teeth, we can’t run very fast, many animals can climb better, and we can't fly. But we are clever and we can communicate elaborately with variations in sound. A lot of it has to do with pitch and consonants. Chimps are also very clever but they are less good at pronouncing consonants and at varying pitch. So I think that one of the most gratifying intellectual things possible is to be able to do this, even a little, like someone playing a horn or a piano a bit. There is no promise that the world will kiss you in the face or give you big checks in response to this. It is as it should be, a great pleasure in itself. I do feel thankful for having it. I might feel devastated if I didn't have it.

As things in the world go, I think that there is a lot of appreciation for art. It sometimes amazes me. We have all the terrible practical problems of feeding people adequately, of terrible diseases, wars, irrational prejudices. Yet there does seem to be a universal. As far as I know, in every culture there also is respect accorded to the idea of art.

Writers make art out of the medium of ordinary discourse. "Is your tape recorder plugged in?" "Can you loan me a dollar?" "Is that your car outside?" That is the medium, it's that! And we make art out of it! I think it is impious not to register some gratitude for that medium and participate in that. Of course there are times when one wants more, something bigger. But that was a gathering of people who had, by and large, been able to earn their bread or some of their bread through this activity and had received a certain amount of recognition for it. Nobody had pleaded with them or begged them to do this. They chose to do it presumably because they had some joy in it.

I guess I should add that we were honoring a writer who had a long life, who had suffered a great deal because he had cleaved passionately to unpopular political principles, and for whom art had been a joy that he had returned to at different times in his life. It seemed ungracious to devote any time on such an occasion, to saying that we wish the New York Times would review our books more often.

Kathy: Elaborating on the idea of playing an instrument, last night at your reading you said that you would like to make the English language your own instrument. Could you say a few things about how you think about that when you are reading, writing, editing?

Robert: I hope I expressed that as an ideal, an ideal I hope to approach, and understand I will never attain completely. An ideal I will never attain even in relation to the metaphorical comparison I was using, the comparison to the saxophone, a European instrument that has been made an American instrument by certain geniuses.

I am speaking in the context of English being a language that is the product of many successive peoples taking over an island from previous peoples, then a language of imperialism, and for my family a language that they came to as a refuge when they emigrated from Eastern Europe where they had been oppressed. It is in some sense my language and in some other sense I am very aware that I came to it. It has welcomed me and I have welcomed it, and this affinity that has to do with invasion, and improvisation, and synthesis, and syncretism is part of that. Thinking about how powerful its effect on me has been, and how much it has worked upon me, and how much the culture associated with it—the American culture—has worked on me, to then think in the most grandiose terms possible, one would like to work it, and with it as well, in the way that those great African American players worked on the saxophone. But it should very much be put in terms of the ideal or a pretty remote navigational star, and not something that one actually hopes to attain completely.

Kathy: That gets back to the idea of knowing your own history.

Robert: Or knowing as much of it as possible, because you never know all of it. Understanding as much as possible—what the garments, the music, the words, the prejudices, and the ideas of your life are. We didn't invent romantic love. We didn't invent capitalism. No one of us invented any of these things. We didn't invent the computers we use, the cars we drive, the words in our mouth. On the other hand, in the community we still participate in the process of invention. We will never understand all of it. The more you understand, I presume, the more autonomy you have, the more invention.

Kathy: I had another question in relation to the reading last night. Most readings are conducted as performances. There is a performer/audience barrier that is erected and maintained to no end. What is it about your experience or philosophy that made you decide to break that barrier and ask the audience how we wanted to run our time together?

Robert: Congenitally as a person, I seem to be fascinated by breaking membranes. I am drawn to changing and challenging rules or to teasing them. Anyway, in relation to the conventions of poetry readings, I am a maker of poems, I hope. I am not a performer. I am certainly not a maker of poetry readings in the sense that a poetry reading is a playlet or a drama. I am always a little upset and feel a little divergent from my own students when they start talking about poetry readings by commenting on the poet's clothes or personality. It seems to me they are making very little distinction between the excellence of the work and the excellence of the performance.

Take Elizabeth Bishop; I loved to hear her read her poems, but she was not a very flamboyant performer. By a lot of people's standards I suppose those readings were not so good. There are other people with forceful personalities, with attractive physical presences, who can make fairly mediocre writing sound passionate and impressive. So "the reading" is a form I enjoy up to a point, but I like reminding myself and the audience that this is not on the analogy of a concert—a concert is the essence, the manifestation of the art. This art of poetry, for me, has for its medium one human voice reading the words of the poem, one at a time in a certain order.

It is the nature of the human body that sounds come out of it one at a time in a certain order: that is the medium of poetry. It is not one person looking south toward a group looking north. Once I am in the situation of giving a poetry reading though, I don't want to bore people.

I like breaking the barrier, maybe by inviting suggestions or questions. I like dealing with the audience in a collaborative way because that reflects my idea of what I am doing, that is, presenting my writing to people, perhaps giving them a notion of how they might read it to themselves or to their friends. I would like to think that the better praise is not, “what a wonderful poetry reading" but "what wonderful poems."

Kathy: I like the differentiation between the poem being finished or presentable and the presenting as the finishing.

Robert: In my case anyway I am not a performer. Some people I suppose would say that they are performers. I believe that once you are performing, as in reading or presenting things, not to be as effective as possible is rude. It is a disservice to your work, and it is also rude to the people who have given some of their time to sit in the room. So it is wrong to be boring. One should try to be as interesting and giving as possible, but at the same time it does well to register the dignity of the art in that it is transportable. Each of us can memorize a poem we like and have it in our head as we drive a car, or take a shower.

Kathy: While I was reading The Want Bone and An Explanation of America, I noticed that the length of the poems are rather long. In fact in The Want Bone only four of the poems fit on one page, strangely enough one of them was the title poem. Do you see a difference in what you are trying to write about, or how you are trying to say something when you start making the decisions between long and short poems?

Robert: I guess the missing link in the formula is my book History of My Heart, which came between An Explanation of America and The Want Bone. I think that in the wake of An Explanation of America, I realized how deeply interested I was and how drawn I was by the double meaning included in the phrase "changing the subject," which means both changing the topic and transforming that which is subjective—that moment in which, like an ice skater changing direction, the poem changes direction. It is a moment that I had to focus on in a book-length poem like An Explanation of America because if you can't change in a work of such length, you will be boring. A long poem presents certain demands that are of a plastic kind of texture; you feel silk, you feel wet gravel, you feel hot sand, you feel wool, water, you have to alternate crunchy and soft. Rapid transitions become terribly important. An Explanation of America is so much based on making little deflections. I hope that what it does is to make the audience always think that the voice performing the poem might fall. It is like a high-wire act, or a balancing act, where you can fall into total banality, and there is just enough to keep from doing that.

As I look back on my work, I think that in History of My Heart, especially in the poems in tercets, I started concentrating on transitions as one of the main poetic virtues. Just as a writer might go into a phase of concentrating on sensory detail, narration, idea, or concentrating on certain richness of aural texture, I got very interested in certain almost violent transitions. It turns out that for a long time now, the ideal space for me to do that curvet is rather longer than The Want Bone and rather shorter than any of the sections in An Explanation of America. It is a poem of a certain length and in tercets.

Kathy: You talk a lot about skipping and skimming; you mentioned skating just now. You repeat this sentiment in your writing and in your speech. I was struck by a style in your poems that mimics this idea. I see many things. Countries, horrors, hope, myths, words, "necessary evils," and pleasures are all listed quickly in a skimming, skating manner. At one point you have a phrase that all the things listed "are all spokes from one trunk." This idea is so consistent that I was wondering if this is how you view the world, or is it only the you that you bring to literature?

Robert: All of the above. Some of these things seem to come from the body. I think there is a physiological stamp of impatience in me. I had a hard time in school. I wasn't a good student. I can remember often well-meaning (or sometimes not well meaning) efforts of teachers and others to correct me, admonishing me that I lacked stick-to-it-iveness or perseverance. I was all made up of brilliant flashes. I can remember being painfully, painfully bored in school. I had an Orthodox Jewish upbringing and I can remember those Saturday morning services, those three-hour morning services, and the desperate tedium. Often my hand was holding a book full of tautological whines to God to bless us because we sanctify to Him as blessed the holy day that He gives us to thank the blessings of His blessed sanctification to bless us with the high holy day which is the day on which we stand here with these blessed books in our hands and read these tautological blessed sentences over and backwards and around until we are ready to scream. I am not sure that those painful days in school and hours in the synagogue didn't give me a kind of permanent desire to focus energy into quick thrusts—to get over many, many yards very quickly.

Kathy: That is very funny. Yet yesterday you made a comment about not being funny. Just this moment I tied yesterday's comment up with the skipping and skimming idea. I think that many of the things you skim over are very funny. It is just that you put them next to horrific things like the Holocaust. I wonder if because we are trained to give the negative things so much more weight, that when you balance them with the dualisms you use—you even use this and that, onion...

Robert: Passion and onion.

Kathy: Yes, passion and onion. I wonder if you put a positive and a negative, or a light and a somber next to each other, if we aren't left with a somber impression.

Robert: I think I am funnier as a person than as a poet, and I think you have put your finger on the difference. I don't think I have ever written a really funny poem, certainly not a poem that is entirely funny. I envy those who have. At most, I seem to go for that gasping moment when we're about to laugh, but then there is something else too, or the opposite—when you're about to be somber and then there is something that is sort of absurd. I like that movement, that moment of gasping or imbalance, of uncertainty. Often at moments of emotion there is an inappropriate giggle, a nervous giggle, like inexplicable tears. That nervousness, that peculiar blending—it seems true to some aesthetic effect that draws me or some emotional need. If you are going to do this inclusive motion, you may sacrifice the timing of the full, delicious ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Kathy: Maybe when you were speaking earlier about being funny, maybe you were thinking of leaving with the impression of ha, ha, ha—as opposed to when you are speaking with someone, then it comes and goes.

Robert: Yes, yes. The kind of ha, ha, ha like a speedboat hitting a wave and you are over it. You hit—ha, ha—and then you are onto the next wave.

Kathy: You are so clearly interested in many subjects: biology, mechanics—you were helping to diagnose my car accident without even seeing the car. I see a lot of mythology in your writing, and my guess from the way you structure your thoughts is that you are interested in philosophy. I was wondering if you have ever collaborated with other disciplines on any art projects?

Robert: Well, I am the author of computer interactive entertainment, one of the early ones. It is called Mindwheel and was sold as an electronic novel by Broderbund Software. The package said Mindwheel by Robert Pinsky, author; William Malaga and Steven Hales, programmers.

Kathy: When was this?

Robert: I think it came out in about '85.

Kathy: Early. For interactive, that is very early.

Robert: Yes. Mindwheel is the only work of mine about which—well, while in a store I asked the guy (this was in the late 80's), "What do you have in the way of interactive fiction?" And he held up a copy of Mindwheel and he looked at me and said, "This is a classic." [Followed by loud laughter.]

The company wanted a sort of a highbrow writer, a serious writer, to write the text for one of these things. The real, true classic was Zork, a Dungeons and Dragons thing where you go into different rooms and find swords, and lanterns, and dwarves and so forth. They wanted me to make more sophisticated imagery, so I unleashed sixteenth century poetry, and Dante, and my dream life. It was a wonderful, pleasurable project, working with those guys and creating this computer entertainment. It is no longer on the market. It is very hard to get a copy anymore. For some years I would get calls from mostly teenage boys who somehow got my phone number; periodically, they would call up and ask for a hint or some Mindwheel lore. That has pretty much tapered off.

Kathy: Did they believe that everything has to have lore associated with it? There is so much over marketing these days.

Robert: Mind​wheel was a puzzle. They often wanted hints on how to get deeper into the plot of the game. There are times when you have to fill in missing words in a poem, or you are dueling with a character and you have to call your opponent names. There are turns in the game and the kids wanted to get hints out of me.

Kathy: I understand that your translation of Dante's Inferno is in the galley stages. Could you say a few things about that project?

Robert: The book is coming out in August. Recently dealing with the designer makes me realize again how much I love the 38 monotypes by Michael Mazur that will illustrate the book. He was making the monotypes while I was creating my version of the same Cantos. Mike loves the poem and reads Italian. Working together was a wonderful time of giving and receiving criticism and suggestions.

Kathy: You are lucky to have an opportunity to do such a project.

Robert: Yes, it has been a great stroke of good fortune.

In 1997, three years after the interview, Robert Pinsky was named US Poet Laureate, a position he held for 3 years.