An Interview With William Stafford Essay Research

An Interview With William Stafford Essay, Research Paper

This interview was conducted on February 6, 1971, at William

Stafford’s home in McLean, Virginia, and was published in Crazy Horse 7

(1971). Dave Smith is the interviewer.

Dave Smith: Does the poet mythologize his own world in the sense that he makes the

things of his world better or worse than they are.

William Stafford: If I could think of an image for myself, instead of

domesticating the world to me, I’m domesticating myself to the world. I enter that world

like water or air . . . everywhere. Mythologizing, yes. I’m writing the myth of the world,

not the myth of me.

Smith: You go out into the world rather than bring it into you.

Stafford: I do go out into it, but in the way of permeating it. As a poet I am

picking it up, though I am not making it into me; rather, I am making me into it. We are

just working with images here but I don’t feel as a writer that it is my function to turn

experiences into manifestations of myself. Instead, I am like a reporter. I am like the

electric eye.

Smith: What, then, is the role of "craft" in the writing of poetry.

Stafford: It occurs to me as I travel to campuses for readings that many of the

people I meet have the feeling that there is a mechanical ability involved in the making

of poetry. That, especially among young poets, poetry requires a craft of them that they

don’t have. But that isn’t the way that I see poetry. Poetry and prose to me are very

close to the same thing. The distinction is not so much in the craft that’s gone into it

but in the way you present it to a reader. If you say something in such a way as to ask a

certain amount of attention from the reader, that’s a poem. And if you don’t alert him to

its being a poem and let it be prose, well then that’s prose. And prose can be every bit

as complex and difficult, it seems to me, as poetry.

Smith: Does this say anything about the unsuccessful poet-turned-novelist.

Stafford: Well there is something I don’t think we are going to get at in this

discussion that makes a difference. There are some very intelligent people who just can’t

write a good story. It just takes something else. You have to be possessed or there is

something inside you, a story, that writes itself.

Smith: Do you think it is disappointing to discover you are writing about

something.

Stafford: Yes I do. It is a dangerous thing to want to be a writer and to have to

press so hard that in poem after poem, in page after page, you are asserting something,

you are pressing to establish something. Instead you have to go venturing along, to be

willing to give it up, to give up all kinds of assertions in favor of some inner thing I

can’t quite identify here. It is like a development, a pre-development of what you started

with.

Smith: Do you experience dry periods and read as a kind of cure.

Stafford: I have a lot of gusto for reading, yes. I read a lot, and all kinds of

things, but not as policy, rather just because I’m addicted to reading. I just like to

read. I don’t experience those times when I don’t have anything to write because I write

whatever it is that occurs to me. Some writers experience difficulty that may be because

their standards are too high. They feel they can’t write well enough. But I write anyway.

I think that activity is important.

Smith: Do you think that it is impossible to "go to school" on other

poets when you can’t get at something you want.

Stafford: I don’t think it is that conscious with me. For one thing I don’t know

what I’m trying to achieve. I just write and find out what happens. And, besides, my

reading is more in the nature of excited looking around.

Smith: Do you read many of the new books of poems.

Stafford: Well I read a lot of poems but I do read them fast. So that each time is

like a little recognition. Just to see how it goes really. And I neither feel greatly

influenced by nor turned off by the poems. I just feel a kind of comfortable cordiality in

my reading.

Smith: Did you ever hear what Ford Maddox Ford said about Joseph Conrad. That the

only great man is the man who is naive because he can still be delighted with and

surprised by the world.

Stafford: Yes, I like that. I like that idea. Because the contrary attitude of

feeling that you have solved things beforehand seems a false stance. That is, what unfolds

from time cannot be anticipated and the naive stance toward it is the only realistic

stance to take. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does. I think that his

distinction is that if you feel you have it solved, then you are not a writer. But if you

feel that you are exploring something that hasn’t happened yet, then that’s the way it is

and that’s what a writer does.

Smith: As a graduate of the Iowa workshops, what do you think of workshops.

St

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать