WEBVTT

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The hardest thing with singing
for a lyric poem is to write--

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embark on the long poem.

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And because if there's any
narrative for the lyric

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poet in the long
poem, it's usually

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of the most diluted sort.

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Mm-hmm.

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And you've got this wonderful
new long poem pattern.

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What's your relationship
with that type?

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Well, I think--

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How to sustain it?

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Yeah, I taught a seminar
on the long poem.

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I continue to teach
it, not every year

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but every year or two.

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And in teaching that
seminar, I would usually

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teach a book a week.

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And I would change the
list almost every time.

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And the more I read of
contemporary long poems--

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these were all poems published
in English in the last decade--

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the more interested I became in
extending myself in that way.

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And even if a structure
is very transparent,

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like even if it's
formulaic, I always

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have a hard time
actually seeing it.

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And so I can watch the same
movie, almost, over and over

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and still not know
what's going to happen.

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And--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--so finding a structure
had to be my --

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it had to be my own process,
my own sort of detective story.

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And in that particular work--

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I had written one
book-length poem

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before that called Just
Whistle, and I couldn't tell you

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how I wrote that book now.

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I can still remember
how I did Deepstep.

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And I knew that-- and I
don't know why I knew,

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but I knew that I wanted
to write in sentences.

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And then after I had
filled my notebook,

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I started working
on my sentences.

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I didn't know that I wanted
to exactly braid or weave

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the material, but that's
what I ended up doing.

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And then I put the
pages that I had

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done on the wall in columns.

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And then I wrote
paragraphs of prose pieces

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as interstitial pieces
so that the columns

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would speak to each other.

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And then it ended
up being this sort

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of multifocal conversation.

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And it stayed very
conversational, you know,

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this--

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But there's a
delirium sort of thing

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that seems to push
in through it.

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That's the lyric--

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Yeah.

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--part of it?

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Yeah.

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And I just don't even know
if I could do it again.

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I mean, that was--

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What have you used for
examples in the classes

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of your relatively
recent long poem?

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I started the course
because I was a great--

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well, I don't even know
what the appropriate word

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is-- but out of love for
the work of Frank Stanford.

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And he had a 542-page
poem called "Battlefield

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Where the Moon Says I Love You."

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And so I wanted to teach that.

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I wanted to introduce it
to people in the Deep North

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and say, look, there's
this language coming out

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of this guy's toe jam, and
this-- is you should read this.

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It was just an occasion.

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Uh-huh?

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Excuse me, but did you
ever live in New Orleans?

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No, but I visited
New Orleans a lot.

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I even visited New
Orleans this summer.

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Did you live in Seattle?

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No, but I've visited Seattle
only recently, last year.

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And the reason I'm
asking is I'm not

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sure I have the right Carolyn.

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Oh, you don't.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I know that.

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Eh--

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You're not Carolyn Wright.

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Well, I am Carolyn Wright.

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But I'm not the
Carolyn Wright you're

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thinking of who lived in
New Orleans with every job,

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and went to India
and blah, blah, blah.

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No.

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OK.

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You understand what I just--

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I didn't exactly understand.

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[LAUGHTER]

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OK.

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You're not the first person
to make that mistake.

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Could you talk about some more
of the books that you taught,

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the long-form poems and
why you admired them?

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Yeah, well, I was going to
first answer Sue's question

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about poems that I had taught.

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"The Battlefield Where
the Moon Says I Love You"

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is a starting point.

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And I taught Bernadette
Mayer's "Midwinter Day,"

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which I think is a
very beautiful book,

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and it's back in print.

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And even though she writes
a lot of very raw material

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and unimproved poetry, this
is very architectural work.

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And I have also used
her book Utopia,

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which is not very architectural,
much more of a scrapbook.

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And I've used Jacques Roubaud's
"Some Thing Black," which

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is quite beautiful.

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Very straight poem,
very beautiful

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and intelligent on
his wife's dearth.

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And, Linda, I've used
Ron Silliman's Tjanting,

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which has always been one of
my favorites of his books.

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And he's written lots
of good long poems.

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He can't shut up.

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So he's got scads of
those to choose from.

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I could call on
one or two others,

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but that's the one I
seem to gravitate to.

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And Sharon Doubiago's
"Hard Country," and what--

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I always forget this list
when someone asks me,

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because, by now,
there are probably

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about 80 different book-length
poems that I've taught.

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So I'll think of some
more names later.

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