The very ending image between him and her a third person
is an image that [? Bly ?] has used.
Are you familiar with his views of that same--
No, I'm not.
No, I'd like to be, though.
I cannot recall the poem, but that's--
No, I didn't know about it.
Do you mean about that two create the third.
To create the third.
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't know that.
I'm sure it's probably such a common experience.
That sense of-- there's something between the two
that's more spirit than flesh
Is it a space between the two, or the tension between the two,
or the unknown between the two that inhabits the third,
or how do you envision this third creation
that the two make?
Well, I just think--
let's say that I can call someone 3,000 miles away,
and we still recognize each other's voices,
we still have a relationship.
So there's some mysterious force that,
once there is a relationship between two, that actually has
an actual existence of its own.
And somehow you experience it most strongly
over space and time, the weirdness of it,
that there is in fact something that's there.
Which, according to the way we live in time and space,
shouldn't be there, but it is.
[LAUGHS]
Would you talk a little bit about rhyme and subversion
in your work?
I know that we can hear a lot more oral rhyme than one
might see at the ends of lines.
And here I'm thinking about Marjorie Perloff's
talking about Sylvia Plath manipulating rhyme--
the [INAUDIBLE] essay.
But can you talk about the use of rhyme in your poems?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Well, for me, it's more--
I think that I have a spiral at the center of the way I
think and perceive the world.
So that it's an echo effect-- that I've already been here
and it's a slight off version of the time before,
so it's an echo--
an inexact echo of where I was before.
And so for me it's--
and also, it has some kind of humor to it.
So that I had those two things going at once, I remember this,
but it's sort of funny too.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm just curious.
I was trying to hold together what you just read.
Right.
And I couldn't do it.
You couldn't do it.
I couldn't do it.
So I mean, if you had to articulate a certain principle,
I mean, thematically, or images, or sound patterns for that.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Well, I didn't read the breaks, but it's in 14 parts,
so it's sort of like the 14 stations of the passion.
I didn't want to break it up like that, but there are two--
two senses of the world operating simultaneously.
One is about human love, and the other one
is a sense of this, sort of, prolonged state of suffering
or crucifixion.
That has a more metaphorical-- so the two,
I completely put like that together.
Yeah I was trying to get the 14, and I--
Yeah, if I had read the numbers, you would have heard it.
Each one has five parts of 14.
OK.
Groups.
Five columns, 14 parts.
But I thought, it's so boring to read numbers.
[LAUGHTER]
But I can see, hearing anything this long, once,
like that must sound totally nuts.
[LAUGHTER]
I started hearing in one part, a string of, maybes,
and then I started hearing several, ifs.
So I started thinking of this as dwelling
is provisional-- as possibility.
And even when you're making statements of definition,
like your heart is, or the heart is--
it was like throwing out the possibilities.
That's right, exactly.
In a way, though, I think I like hearing it without the numbers.
Because there is myriad ways in which
I can connect parts of it.
And I just wondered, do you have the sense--
I like that sense of it not being able to be pinned down.
Well, that's my whole thing about the world
is that we live in a state of bewilderment.
And that the most dangerous thing
is to be sure of anything--
that you've got to allow yourself that state of-- oh,
where one minute you're absolutely sure that this
is the answer, the next it's the complete contradiction of that.
And if you could live in that state, you're in good shape,
but it's hard.
But so, you're absolutely right, it
is just throwing out possibilities,
and often contradicted.
One contradicts the other.
So that is definitely.
I want to ask you about the sense of balance
that you strive for as you work on your poetry.
Because it seems to me, being so balanced
between the rendering of emotion and the sense of visuals--
strong visual sense and also sense of emotion.
And you used the image of a sphere earlier.
And I hear that a lot in your work, and I don't know if you--
sounds like you revise a lot, but some people don't revise.
So I'd love to know if you revise, and if so,
if you revise for that kind of sense of balance and tension?
I do rev--
I revise a lot, but I can't--
I write all the time.
I don't know--
I don't write thinking that I'm making something.
I have an anti-iconic sense of about writing,
and that it's quite fleeting, and not important,
so throw it over your shoulder and move on to the next one.
But I do-- I want to get each one right.
And then it's almost as if it's just a period of time that
creates the form, so it's like an arc of exhaustion
with a certain idea, and then I just can't take it any further.
And that's really what determines--
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
There's a few points where there is really funny images.
I'm referring to specifically the line, [INAUDIBLE] so many
animal that [INAUDIBLE] them.
Right
It's very beautiful, when you think--
but isn't, just in terms of craft, is there anything that--
because a lot of the language is an [INAUDIBLE] in a sense.
Do you-- are you aware of prepping
the reader [INAUDIBLE].
Is there any sort of craft techniques that you aware
of, or is it just as it goes?
Ahem.
You mean, would I try to find a perfect--
that perfect set of words or--
No, it's not about the image itself, but that how those--
it's similar, to follow up some of the last questions about
how when that--
because we were kind of moving through--
kind of a shower of words.
Yeah, yeah.
--come to some clearing where [INAUDIBLE]
It's all just-- I swear it's just--
the poem-- I just do it all the time.
So that poem came in one stream, and then I broke it down.
And I had read a fairy--
a beautiful fairy tale in which the brother
of the heroine of this story was eaten by animals because he
had eaten so many animals.
I guess what I mean is--
And that was pretty grim.
The animals recognize-- were familiar with this body,
and that was [INAUDIBLE]
What was the story?
It was actually a Native American tale.
I have the little book at home.
Just a beautiful obscure story.
I can't remember the name But do you--
that doesn't answer your question.
[LAUGHTER]
It's more like how cautions are you in--
in the pacing, in a sense.
Is it kind of-- would you then, in the process of revision,
be very cautious about--
Yeah, no, my revisions go on forever.
I mean, I do pick away and do balancing
and absolutely moving things around
to make sure things go in the right place.
It's just the first draft is just an outburst,
and I never know it will come out of that.
One more question?
I'd like to come back to the concept of being sure
and after a while not being sure anymore.
Is it the necessary condition for you to create?
I mean, you're part of my [INAUDIBLE] outside
of [INAUDIBLE] science.
And as a scientist we like to control things,
we like to be sure.
And I'm astonished at the way a poet thinks
and is it the condition for creation,
this issue of not being sure and then produce things?
I would think it's probably quite similar.
I mean, each one I believe that moment, I totally have got all
the evidence and it's correct.
And then-- but it's not quite the truth,
so then I throw it away and move on to the next one.
That's funny, because this is a way of thinking
as a science makes me nervous.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Because-- but it couldn't-- you couldn't be a good scientist
if you're too sure all the time.
Sure, sure.
You know what I mean?
You would have to--
What we are striving to.
[INAUDIBLE] in a way [INAUDIBLE] Anyways, [INAUDIBLE]
No, I see what you're saying.
Thank you all very much.
[APPLAUSE]