WEBVTT

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Jane?

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I'm just wondering why
you wrote in the poem

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that you presented today--

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yesterday morning, rather
than this morning, or why

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did you write that as
if it were tomorrow?

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I wanted to--

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I think I just wanted to--

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I mean, I don't know if
I thought about it much.

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But I wanted to be
looking back on it.

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I want to-- I think that just
increased the elegiac sense

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of having left Arizona.

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I mean, maybe I'm just
so anxious about making

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this plane--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--that I put myself into
line somewhere else tomorrow.

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I think it was just that
the backward look would add

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to the elegiac tone of that.

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And it's a curiosity
I've always had,

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like why you don't see just
dead birds all over the streets

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all the time.

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Where do they die?

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I don't know.

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And don't tell me.

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But if you know.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But I mean, there
are millions of them.

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And you would think that
just flying through the air,

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that they'd croak,
and they'd fall

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on your car, fall
on the gas station,

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or you'd find a couple
on the roof occasionally.

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You never see them.

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It's like the elephants
going off to die somewhere.

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You don't have to go to an
animal exotic as the elephants.

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Anyway, so that was
venting a little curiosity.

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And it's true in my
Arizona highways poem,

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it's an appreciation for
your state kind of also.

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Yes.

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When you mention that
if a poem doesn't work,

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you throw it away.

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Yeah.

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Other people I've heard say,
you have to be disciplined.

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I think it was Emily
Dickinson, supposedly,

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who rewrote and rewrote and
tried to perfect each poem.

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Do you think that's a
discipline in itself

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to say, this isn't working,
I better just forget it.

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It's really I think
it's very idiosyncratic.

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I mean, I think I
just find for myself

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the more I'm kind of
laboring and revising,

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the more it's not working, and
it just begins to shut down.

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I throw it away.

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I think there's kind of a fall--
of course I'm revising later.

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I mean I'm tinkering and
looking for the word.

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So it's all right to
put it aside for a while

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and come back.

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Oh, of course.

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Yeah.

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It's just that I think the
distinction between writing

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and revision is
somewhat false anyway

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to begin with-- like
dancer and the dance.

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I mean, when I'm
writing, I'm revising.

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Otherwise it would be a
rather mindless activity.

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And when I'm revising,
I'm writing aren't I?

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So I just-- the way I work is
just, I try to work quickly.

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And I try to abandon proj --

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I try not to waste
time with poems

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that I'm pretty sure are
not going to go anywhere.

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There's no flow, and it's
not going [INAUDIBLE]

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If there's no flow or feel
like it's not going anywhere,

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it's like I bail out.

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Frost says, a poem cannot
be fretted into being.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And when I feel like I'm
fretting it into being,

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I abandon it.

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But that's interesting.

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Because when I read some of your
poems, I thought about Frost.

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And that's what I first
connected to them.

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I like your idea of
the conversation.

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Uh-huh.

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Because I think that it's
almost like meeting somebody.

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And you have a very
simple conversation,

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and then you know them
better you can have a deeper,

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more meaningful conversation.

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That's good.

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And you certainly feel that
intimacy and personal address

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in Frost.

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I mean, I know there are people
who say they revise their poem.

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I mean, Mary Oliver, whose
poetry I like quite a bit,

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says that she writes 30,
40, 50 drafts of a poem.

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I just wouldn't admit
it if I did that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Maybe I am doing that,
just not telling you.

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I just wouldn't want to
say, this is the 50th draft.

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What do you think?

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Gonna put someone in
a real spot there.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[INTERPOSING VOICES]

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I like number one better.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Yeah, right.

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First thought, best thought.

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I like Henry Taylor says--

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I'm with him.

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He says, if at first-- his
motto is-- "if at first you

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don't succeed, hide all
evidence that you ever tried".

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[LAUGHTER]

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