WEBVTT

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Well, your first drafts
are too good, Annie.

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If you wrote really horrible
first drafts the way I do,

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it's not about being fearless.

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It's about being dogged, it's
really about being dogged.

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And I think people have
a certain fluency, people

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who write a lot, and
people who can, again,

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generate an early draft.

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It has all kinds of interesting
linguistic things in it,

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movement of the
mind, and all that.

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That's a separate problem,
one not known to me.

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Because my early drafts
are, they are just terrible.

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I mean, they're cliched in
language and in thought.

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And if I can find within that
something that I can hear,

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I write more off my
ear than anything else.

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So if I can come up with
some paradigmatic sound,

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then I can keep going.

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That's just dogged.

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So in a way, every
line is a surprise.

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You know what I mean?

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Yeah.

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Because I don't know
where it's going to go.

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I have no hope that
it will go anywhere.

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Sometimes, it
doesn't go anywhere.

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So if it does go
somewhere, it's going

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to go there by sheer dint
of what Auden called "words

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whispering to one another."

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Words juxtapose one to
another in some sort

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of musical relation
to one another.

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And then, that's going to
go someplace that was not

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in the forefront of your mind.

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As opposed to some
other poem that's

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made out of a more
self-conscious mind.

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That has a different set
of problems, I think.

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Because then, how
do you recognize

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where you're beating the palm
like a horse into its stall?

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Get over there, because
I want you to do that.

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As opposed to something else
that really comes out of,

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it comes out of play, I think.

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Or it comes out
of notion of play.

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Not how high?

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Isn't this great fun?

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But the way music is played.

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I don't know, does that--

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I hope that answers
your question.

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I'm not quite sure what
your question was, surprise.

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I like it, anyway.

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OK.

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All right.

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Yeah.

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I'm interested in--
you use so much form,

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and you're so interested
in language and syntax.

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And you managed to combine it
with these very amazing ideas.

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And it's a very sort
of huge question,

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and probably can't answer it.

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But I'm interested in how
you see all of these things

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interacting, and how you
see the form of the sonnet,

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plus all of these syntactic
things that you can do,

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plus all of the things
you're saying all at once,

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and how do you see
that interacting?

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And how do you get
it to interact?

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[LAUGHS]

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Well, every poem has form.

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I mean, we use that
pretty loosely, right?

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But what we expect,
I think, out of art

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is that it put some
shape on experience,

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which has no shape, right?

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So, basically, you're
starting with the chaos which

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is the world, and art to a
greater or lesser extent,

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depending very often on
the aesthetic at work,

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put a shape on it.

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As soon as you put a frame
around the painting, you say,

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this does not go in.

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These things go in.

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This does not go in.

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So, I mean, unless
you were to write

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one long poem for the
entire rest of your life,

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where everything that
came along you added in,

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you are making choices.

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And those choices
have to do with shape.

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And they had to do with
exclusion, inclusion

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and exclusion.

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That is form, that
is what form is.

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Because then, it
will put some things

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in relation to one another that
might not be discernible when

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it's out there in among chaos.

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When we talk about fixed forms
or traditional forms or any

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of those things, really, all
the difference between that

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and so-called free verse--

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I hate that term, I'd rather
use the term open form--

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the difference between
closed form and open form

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is just in the closed
forms, the patterns

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are brought more to the surface.

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So that they're more immediately
available to the reader.

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So the reader will
become aware of them.

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Whereas in open forms,
they are submerged.

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I don't mean that they're
not there, they are there.

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So, it seems to me that if
you're trying to make a poem,

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you are at least
intuitively going

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toward some notion of form.

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At different times, I found
the closed forms useful.

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In this particular
case, when I had

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written three of those little
sonnets, only one was a sonnet.

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But that was-- and I
had written the three

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things as separate poems.

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And then, it seemed to
me that they could all

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share a similar dilemma.

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And so, I wanted equal time at
the podium for all the voices.

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So I wanted them to have
the same length and shape.

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I also wanted something
that could manage paradox,

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because it seemed
to me it was going

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to be a subject matter that
would bring up paradox.

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And I wanted some
really fierce restraint

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against what I saw as
possible sentimentality.

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And so, that sonnet
was very useful to me.

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It's been around maybe
hundreds of years for a reason.

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And it also can signal
something to a reader

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as soon as the reader recognizes
that that's what it is.

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So if you have enough
of the regularity

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that the reader says, I
think that might be a sonnet.

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Oh, sonnet.

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Don't a sonnet kind
of turn in the middle?

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Don't a sonnet have a
history as a love poem?

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All of that then,
you just get to use.

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It's there, it
exists, and we think.

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So there have been times when
that's been very useful to me.

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The same issues, the same
principles are at work,

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like if you invent your own
little form, Marianne Moore,

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right?

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And essentially, I tried to work
in the sets I was telling you

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about the little short line
and just for my own sake.

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I like to get iambic
pentameter out of my ear.

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That was it for
something that was

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really harsh and not idiomatic.

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That's very much
up at the surface.

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I think, you can't
help but hear that.

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There are lots of
other things, though,

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that poets do that you might
not be aware of until you read

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the poem about 30, 40 times
just because the patterns are

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kept submerged,
and kept submerged

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for a number of reasons.

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If you're trying to
emphasize their speaking

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voice in a way that's
idiomatic, then you're

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not going to want it to
seem like it was shaped

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and written, made for the page.

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To me, that's what the
making of a poem is.

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It's to try to uncover some
sort of formal arrangement.

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It's a speech act that's in
a formal arrangement that

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tries to include as
much of the world

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as possibly can be included
without blowing it out

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of the water.

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But that's just the challenge
over, and over, and over again.

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And whatever the
subject matter is,

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is the occasion for trying that.

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It's really negligible.

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It's a horrible thing to say,
don't misquote me on that.

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But it is, in a way.

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I mean, I don't think that
poets are necessarily wise,

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I don't think we
have any answers.

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But it seems to me that
that's what the job is.

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And it's in lines, so that's
music, that is a rhythm.

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At some point, you have to
think about lines, right?

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So at some point, you're
going to do all those things.

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And just the longer you do
it, and the more you read,

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and the more you think hard
about all those things,

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the more you tutor
your intuition.

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So then, when you
sit down to do it,

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those things will begin
to raise their heads.

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