WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.430 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.430 --> 00:00:09.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.810 --> 00:00:12.630 align:middle line:84% JOHN ASHBERY: Well you're invited to ask any questions 00:00:12.630 --> 00:00:17.140 align:middle line:84% you might feel were appropriate or inappropriate. 00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:18.140 align:middle line:90% Yes? 00:00:18.140 --> 00:00:20.030 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 1: Mr. Ashbery, first of all 00:00:20.030 --> 00:00:22.155 align:middle line:84% I'd like to apologize for the [INAUDIBLE] of Keats. 00:00:22.155 --> 00:00:23.176 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:23.176 --> 00:00:25.740 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 1: [INAUDIBLE] 00:00:25.740 --> 00:00:28.080 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: I didn't know till I got here. 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:30.480 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 1: --turn your attention to events 00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:32.060 align:middle line:90% that occurred in the war. 00:00:32.060 --> 00:00:35.100 align:middle line:84% I know that art has had a big influence 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:37.260 align:middle line:90% on your life and your writing. 00:00:37.260 --> 00:00:41.550 align:middle line:84% And I was wondering if you feel the same way about cinema? 00:00:41.550 --> 00:00:44.040 align:middle line:84% And if so, maybe you could reflect 00:00:44.040 --> 00:00:48.460 align:middle line:84% on contemporary cinema with [INAUDIBLE] effect 00:00:48.460 --> 00:00:51.390 align:middle line:90% on your work? 00:00:51.390 --> 00:00:53.010 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well, it probably has had 00:00:53.010 --> 00:00:55.950 align:middle line:84% more of an effect than visual art 00:00:55.950 --> 00:01:02.760 align:middle line:84% although I've been an art critic and even a wannabe painter 00:01:02.760 --> 00:01:04.300 align:middle line:90% when I was a child. 00:01:04.300 --> 00:01:11.550 align:middle line:84% I don't think that I've gotten as much input or inspiration 00:01:11.550 --> 00:01:18.870 align:middle line:84% from artists, from other things, music and movies being 00:01:18.870 --> 00:01:19.954 align:middle line:90% one of them. 00:01:19.954 --> 00:01:23.440 align:middle line:90% 00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:28.110 align:middle line:84% And there's a difference between the artists 00:01:28.110 --> 00:01:36.240 align:middle line:84% of contemporary film who I feel an affinity towards and just 00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:38.940 align:middle line:84% old run of the mill B movies that 00:01:38.940 --> 00:01:47.010 align:middle line:84% are like some childhood memory that I keep seeing on TV. 00:01:47.010 --> 00:01:54.450 align:middle line:84% Of the filmmakers of the now or recent past, 00:01:54.450 --> 00:02:03.630 align:middle line:84% I think Godard is certainly an important influence and Ozu. 00:02:03.630 --> 00:02:08.940 align:middle line:90% 00:02:08.940 --> 00:02:13.095 align:middle line:84% My favorite probably is Eric Rohmer right now. 00:02:13.095 --> 00:02:15.595 align:middle line:90% 00:02:15.595 --> 00:02:17.220 align:middle line:84% Although I've just really gotten around 00:02:17.220 --> 00:02:20.880 align:middle line:84% to appreciating him in the last few years. 00:02:20.880 --> 00:02:23.460 align:middle line:84% Although I've seen his movies for a longer time than that. 00:02:23.460 --> 00:02:27.930 align:middle line:90% 00:02:27.930 --> 00:02:33.090 align:middle line:84% These are mostly non-American directors. 00:02:33.090 --> 00:02:36.040 align:middle line:90% 00:02:36.040 --> 00:02:38.220 align:middle line:84% I like American films very much but I 00:02:38.220 --> 00:02:42.750 align:middle line:84% can't think of a director who per se 00:02:42.750 --> 00:02:47.130 align:middle line:84% who has made a deep impression on me 00:02:47.130 --> 00:02:50.550 align:middle line:84% like you know John Ford or somebody like that. 00:02:50.550 --> 00:02:55.170 align:middle line:90% I-- they haven't particularly. 00:02:55.170 --> 00:03:04.740 align:middle line:84% But much of it is involved first with a sense of the past. 00:03:04.740 --> 00:03:11.910 align:middle line:84% And I have a vast collection of old B-movies 00:03:11.910 --> 00:03:15.390 align:middle line:84% that I have taped at the wee hours of the night. 00:03:15.390 --> 00:03:20.610 align:middle line:84% And it's as though I was always trying to find something 00:03:20.610 --> 00:03:23.430 align:middle line:90% that I missed a long time ago. 00:03:23.430 --> 00:03:26.910 align:middle line:84% And in fact, when I was a kid my parents were very strict 00:03:26.910 --> 00:03:30.480 align:middle line:84% and didn't allow me to go to the movies very much, 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:33.450 align:middle line:84% except Shirley Temple movies which they thought 00:03:33.450 --> 00:03:37.350 align:middle line:90% would have a beneficial effect. 00:03:37.350 --> 00:03:39.060 align:middle line:84% Also we lived out in the country and it 00:03:39.060 --> 00:03:43.080 align:middle line:84% was rather difficult for them-- for me to get back and forth 00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:45.900 align:middle line:90% from the nearest movie theater. 00:03:45.900 --> 00:03:55.500 align:middle line:84% And so that's one thing that keeps me going back to cinema. 00:03:55.500 --> 00:04:00.420 align:middle line:84% And the other is in the case of people 00:04:00.420 --> 00:04:02.790 align:middle line:84% as like Ozu or Godard which I just 00:04:02.790 --> 00:04:07.440 align:middle line:84% mentioned, the freedom which they have to suddenly stop 00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:10.830 align:middle line:84% things and you're in a different place 00:04:10.830 --> 00:04:14.550 align:middle line:84% without exactly knowing how you got there. 00:04:14.550 --> 00:04:20.519 align:middle line:84% The-- well, I like David Lynch's movies 00:04:20.519 --> 00:04:25.500 align:middle line:84% a lot too for that reason that you're in this world 00:04:25.500 --> 00:04:29.230 align:middle line:84% and you can't say what it means or how you got there 00:04:29.230 --> 00:04:30.300 align:middle line:90% but it's affecting you. 00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:36.930 align:middle line:84% And this seems to replicate life for me. 00:04:36.930 --> 00:04:38.980 align:middle line:84% I don't know if you had any more specific-- 00:04:38.980 --> 00:04:39.320 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 1: Thank you. 00:04:39.320 --> 00:04:40.778 align:middle line:84% I would just like to mention Lynch. 00:04:40.778 --> 00:04:43.950 align:middle line:84% I wonder what you thought about Lynch's work 00:04:43.950 --> 00:04:46.630 align:middle line:84% and particularly how he treats violence? 00:04:46.630 --> 00:04:50.820 align:middle line:84% It's something that-- it's hard for me to say. 00:04:50.820 --> 00:04:53.580 align:middle line:84% I don't really find it in your work in the way 00:04:53.580 --> 00:04:56.188 align:middle line:84% that I find it in contemporary cinema. 00:04:56.188 --> 00:04:58.172 align:middle line:90% I don't know [INAUDIBLE]. 00:04:58.172 --> 00:05:04.130 align:middle line:90% 00:05:04.130 --> 00:05:07.460 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well I'll often respond to work 00:05:07.460 --> 00:05:12.710 align:middle line:84% that doesn't really resemble my own or what I would like to do. 00:05:12.710 --> 00:05:16.640 align:middle line:84% And I don't see violence in my work. 00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:17.660 align:middle line:90% You're right. 00:05:17.660 --> 00:05:23.870 align:middle line:84% But I actually like Twin Peaks better 00:05:23.870 --> 00:05:26.120 align:middle line:84% than any of the movies of his that I've seen. 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:29.300 align:middle line:90% And it's-- I don't know why. 00:05:29.300 --> 00:05:32.300 align:middle line:90% It's sort of like-- 00:05:32.300 --> 00:05:37.290 align:middle line:90% it's like reading Proust for me. 00:05:37.290 --> 00:05:40.910 align:middle line:84% That may sound a little weird but I 00:05:40.910 --> 00:05:43.970 align:middle line:84% have that feeling of suddenly being absorbed in something 00:05:43.970 --> 00:05:46.580 align:middle line:84% that I have no wish to get out of 00:05:46.580 --> 00:05:51.680 align:middle line:84% but couldn't possibly get out of I did want to. 00:05:51.680 --> 00:05:55.280 align:middle line:90% Great art can produce in one. 00:05:55.280 --> 00:05:58.294 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 2: I would just like to go back [INAUDIBLE] If you 00:05:58.294 --> 00:05:59.920 align:middle line:84% could say something about your relation 00:05:59.920 --> 00:06:02.455 align:middle line:84% or not related to The Tennis Court Oath, 00:06:02.455 --> 00:06:05.240 align:middle line:84% the sense of a broken system, that's 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:08.170 align:middle line:84% the one we'll be able to see without abbreviation 00:06:08.170 --> 00:06:09.170 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE]. 00:06:09.170 --> 00:06:14.670 align:middle line:90% 00:06:14.670 --> 00:06:17.670 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: [LAUGHS] Yes, it's true that the Language poets think 00:06:17.670 --> 00:06:22.980 align:middle line:84% that's my only worthwhile book, I've been told. 00:06:22.980 --> 00:06:25.440 align:middle line:84% That book was written under strange circumstances. 00:06:25.440 --> 00:06:30.690 align:middle line:84% It really wasn't written as a book in fact. 00:06:30.690 --> 00:06:36.420 align:middle line:84% After my first collection was published in the Yale series-- 00:06:36.420 --> 00:06:39.150 align:middle line:84% in fact before it was published I went to France 00:06:39.150 --> 00:06:41.130 align:middle line:84% on a Fulbright scholarship and I ended up 00:06:41.130 --> 00:06:47.010 align:middle line:84% staying there for 10 years during which I was pretty much 00:06:47.010 --> 00:06:51.780 align:middle line:84% out of touch with American poetry, 00:06:51.780 --> 00:06:54.420 align:middle line:84% not because I wanted to be but because you simply 00:06:54.420 --> 00:06:55.470 align:middle line:90% couldn't find it there. 00:06:55.470 --> 00:07:02.100 align:middle line:84% And my friends didn't write to me very much or so 00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:06.720 align:middle line:84% it seemed, sending me their works and commenting on mine. 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:08.400 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:07:08.400 --> 00:07:10.590 align:middle line:84% I felt cut off from the American language, 00:07:10.590 --> 00:07:15.630 align:middle line:84% the American vernacular which has a great role in my poetry 00:07:15.630 --> 00:07:17.730 align:middle line:90% I think. 00:07:17.730 --> 00:07:24.480 align:middle line:84% And also the book didn't seem to have any success whatever. 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:27.690 align:middle line:84% There are only a few reviews most of them 00:07:27.690 --> 00:07:31.800 align:middle line:84% negative except for the one that my friend Frank O'Hara gave it. 00:07:31.800 --> 00:07:34.950 align:middle line:84% And of course that didn't count for me. 00:07:34.950 --> 00:07:38.700 align:middle line:90% 00:07:38.700 --> 00:07:41.520 align:middle line:84% And so I thought, well probably I'll never get another book. 00:07:41.520 --> 00:07:43.920 align:middle line:84% No one will ever publish another book of my poetry. 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:45.930 align:middle line:84% And if I want to go on writing I'll 00:07:45.930 --> 00:07:50.190 align:middle line:84% have to do it because I want to, not because somebody else is 00:07:50.190 --> 00:07:53.460 align:middle line:90% going to read it and enjoy it. 00:07:53.460 --> 00:07:56.520 align:middle line:90% 00:07:56.520 --> 00:07:58.890 align:middle line:84% And I was rather tired with the-- 00:07:58.890 --> 00:08:02.790 align:middle line:84% or I feel I reached the end of a certain preliminary stage 00:08:02.790 --> 00:08:06.900 align:middle line:84% in my writing at that time and wanted to try something new 00:08:06.900 --> 00:08:07.950 align:middle line:90% but I didn't know what. 00:08:07.950 --> 00:08:11.010 align:middle line:84% And so I just did a lot of experiments, 00:08:11.010 --> 00:08:14.250 align:middle line:84% sort of a lot of them involving collage 00:08:14.250 --> 00:08:19.410 align:middle line:84% or approaches similar to the cut ups 00:08:19.410 --> 00:08:27.270 align:middle line:84% that Burroughs and Corso were doing at that time. 00:08:27.270 --> 00:08:30.390 align:middle line:84% Although I wasn't aware of them at that time. 00:08:30.390 --> 00:08:35.070 align:middle line:84% And all I knew was I wanted to do something 00:08:35.070 --> 00:08:37.230 align:middle line:84% other than what I had been doing but I 00:08:37.230 --> 00:08:38.490 align:middle line:90% didn't know what that was. 00:08:38.490 --> 00:08:43.049 align:middle line:84% So I produce a lot of kind of unsuccessful experiments 00:08:43.049 --> 00:08:46.830 align:middle line:84% and then suddenly had an opportunity 00:08:46.830 --> 00:08:49.110 align:middle line:90% to get another book published. 00:08:49.110 --> 00:08:51.315 align:middle line:90% Or at any rate, someone-- 00:08:51.315 --> 00:08:53.910 align:middle line:90% 00:08:53.910 --> 00:08:56.490 align:middle line:84% judge of the Wesleyan series wrote me strongly, 00:08:56.490 --> 00:08:59.460 align:middle line:84% hinting that I had a good chance of getting 00:08:59.460 --> 00:09:02.220 align:middle line:84% a book published there if I sent my works in right away. 00:09:02.220 --> 00:09:05.070 align:middle line:84% So I sent in just whatever I happen to have around. 00:09:05.070 --> 00:09:07.260 align:middle line:84% And it was that and it did come out. 00:09:07.260 --> 00:09:13.680 align:middle line:84% And a lot of it is not very satisfying to me 00:09:13.680 --> 00:09:17.170 align:middle line:90% now, although some of it is. 00:09:17.170 --> 00:09:24.690 align:middle line:84% I think I actually succeeded in moving 00:09:24.690 --> 00:09:29.790 align:middle line:84% into a sort of next style in some of the poems in the book. 00:09:29.790 --> 00:09:32.130 align:middle line:84% But for some reason they're the earlier ones 00:09:32.130 --> 00:09:35.160 align:middle line:84% that I kind of after a few attempts 00:09:35.160 --> 00:09:39.840 align:middle line:84% that which satisfied me, I then kind of, 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:44.580 align:middle line:84% for reason I can't remember or didn't know perhaps, 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:50.730 align:middle line:84% dropped that style of writing and went on into much more 00:09:50.730 --> 00:09:54.120 align:middle line:90% dubious experimentation. 00:09:54.120 --> 00:09:56.640 align:middle line:90% 00:09:56.640 --> 00:09:59.760 align:middle line:84% But, as I say, there are a few people 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:04.080 align:middle line:84% who seem to think that seem to sort of like that. 00:10:04.080 --> 00:10:07.590 align:middle line:84% I'd say I like about 2/3 of the book. 00:10:07.590 --> 00:10:13.650 align:middle line:84% But every book I've found has, once it published, are things 00:10:13.650 --> 00:10:17.880 align:middle line:84% you wish you'd left out and even though they look fine even 00:10:17.880 --> 00:10:21.900 align:middle line:84% when you get proofs for the book at some later point 00:10:21.900 --> 00:10:26.140 align:middle line:84% after it's out, they become irritating to you. 00:10:26.140 --> 00:10:29.820 align:middle line:90% And in this case, it was-- 00:10:29.820 --> 00:10:33.798 align:middle line:84% there were more irritating ones than usual. 00:10:33.798 --> 00:10:38.180 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 3: Do you feel that some or much of your work, 00:10:38.180 --> 00:10:44.254 align:middle line:84% as you said, is a reaction to or of [INAUDIBLE]?? 00:10:44.254 --> 00:10:55.728 align:middle line:90% 00:10:55.728 --> 00:10:57.270 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: I think that probably that's 00:10:57.270 --> 00:11:02.190 align:middle line:84% the way I started out originally when I first 00:11:02.190 --> 00:11:05.460 align:middle line:84% began writing poetry in the '40s, when poetry 00:11:05.460 --> 00:11:07.590 align:middle line:90% was pretty academic and stodgy. 00:11:07.590 --> 00:11:13.280 align:middle line:84% And I kept trying to track down the few poets who weren't. 00:11:13.280 --> 00:11:24.920 align:middle line:84% And yes, there was always a kind of an anti-academic impulse 00:11:24.920 --> 00:11:27.020 align:middle line:90% that I felt there. 00:11:27.020 --> 00:11:30.386 align:middle line:90% 00:11:30.386 --> 00:11:32.900 align:middle line:84% I think though that there are-- there 00:11:32.900 --> 00:11:36.770 align:middle line:84% were a lot of poets, interesting poets of the '30s and '40s 00:11:36.770 --> 00:11:41.540 align:middle line:84% in America whose work is still forgotten today 00:11:41.540 --> 00:11:46.010 align:middle line:84% and who should be looked at again. 00:11:46.010 --> 00:11:50.090 align:middle line:84% If I ever had time, which I probably won't, I 00:11:50.090 --> 00:11:54.950 align:middle line:84% would try to make an anthology of some of these people 00:11:54.950 --> 00:12:00.860 align:middle line:84% who were considered pretty important at the time I was 00:12:00.860 --> 00:12:03.050 align:middle line:90% first reading modern poetry. 00:12:03.050 --> 00:12:07.262 align:middle line:84% And now their names would mean very little to any of you. 00:12:07.262 --> 00:12:20.960 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE] 00:12:20.960 --> 00:12:23.840 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: I suppose you mean the long poem called "Litany" 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:28.261 align:middle line:90% that's in two separate columns? 00:12:28.261 --> 00:12:28.886 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 4: Yes. 00:12:28.886 --> 00:12:30.933 align:middle line:90% 00:12:30.933 --> 00:12:31.850 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: I don't know. 00:12:31.850 --> 00:12:33.590 align:middle line:84% I'm always trying to think of something 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:34.940 align:middle line:90% that I haven't done yet. 00:12:34.940 --> 00:12:36.410 align:middle line:90% And often it can-- 00:12:36.410 --> 00:12:44.360 align:middle line:84% often it can be something very rudimentary or unpromising. 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:46.070 align:middle line:84% But the fact that I haven't done it yet 00:12:46.070 --> 00:12:50.120 align:middle line:84% makes me want to try and do it and see what will happen. 00:12:50.120 --> 00:12:53.960 align:middle line:84% And I don't know exactly how I started doing that. 00:12:53.960 --> 00:12:56.990 align:middle line:90% I was doing it for-- 00:12:56.990 --> 00:13:00.050 align:middle line:84% writing it for a while before I was actually aware 00:13:00.050 --> 00:13:02.570 align:middle line:90% that I was doing so. 00:13:02.570 --> 00:13:09.590 align:middle line:84% And looking back, I can see probably influences. 00:13:09.590 --> 00:13:15.320 align:middle line:84% One is-- well the fact that we're so frequently 00:13:15.320 --> 00:13:19.100 align:middle line:84% in a room or a situation where you're 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:22.640 align:middle line:84% trying to overhear two conversations at once. 00:13:22.640 --> 00:13:28.010 align:middle line:84% And I thought, what does this mean or rather 00:13:28.010 --> 00:13:32.960 align:middle line:84% what does what we hear of it all mean? 00:13:32.960 --> 00:13:35.000 align:middle line:84% Can it be possible that this is a different kind 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:43.370 align:middle line:84% of meaning than just sitting listening to somebody talk? 00:13:43.370 --> 00:13:46.210 align:middle line:84% Probably not because we never actually do that either. 00:13:46.210 --> 00:13:48.395 align:middle line:84% We're always wandering off into our own thoughts. 00:13:48.395 --> 00:13:51.830 align:middle line:90% 00:13:51.830 --> 00:13:58.460 align:middle line:84% Then I heard a work by Elliott Carter, 00:13:58.460 --> 00:14:01.970 align:middle line:84% his duo for cello and piano, shortly 00:14:01.970 --> 00:14:03.270 align:middle line:90% before I started writing it. 00:14:03.270 --> 00:14:04.520 align:middle line:90% And although I didn't-- 00:14:04.520 --> 00:14:07.880 align:middle line:84% I wasn't aware of it until after I'd written the poem, 00:14:07.880 --> 00:14:15.200 align:middle line:84% I think this was probably one of the things that got me started. 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:20.037 align:middle line:84% There was-- the work has a cellist on one, 00:14:20.037 --> 00:14:21.620 align:middle line:84% or at least the premiere that I heard, 00:14:21.620 --> 00:14:23.840 align:middle line:84% on one end of the rather large stage 00:14:23.840 --> 00:14:26.370 align:middle line:84% and the pianist is at the other end. 00:14:26.370 --> 00:14:32.030 align:middle line:84% So there is a kind of argument between these two entities 00:14:32.030 --> 00:14:34.280 align:middle line:84% who are quite distant from each other. 00:14:34.280 --> 00:14:41.990 align:middle line:84% And the-- actually it's for violin, I think, and piano. 00:14:41.990 --> 00:14:46.430 align:middle line:84% The violin of course being rather an unequal adversary 00:14:46.430 --> 00:14:51.320 align:middle line:84% for the piano which is so much-- has such a much stronger sound. 00:14:51.320 --> 00:14:55.760 align:middle line:84% And yet it frequently did seem to get the upper hand. 00:14:55.760 --> 00:15:00.050 align:middle line:84% And this kind of argument that went on between them 00:15:00.050 --> 00:15:04.620 align:middle line:84% I find, and continue to find, very interesting. 00:15:04.620 --> 00:15:06.740 align:middle line:90% And Carter's work much of-- 00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:09.920 align:middle line:84% it's all really very much like that. 00:15:09.920 --> 00:15:15.350 align:middle line:84% There are-- the instruments seem to be voices that 00:15:15.350 --> 00:15:18.560 align:middle line:84% are talking with each other, or ignoring each other, 00:15:18.560 --> 00:15:25.880 align:middle line:84% or in unison or they're almost personified. 00:15:25.880 --> 00:15:36.530 align:middle line:84% And another thing that some film buff of my acquaintance 00:15:36.530 --> 00:15:38.183 align:middle line:84% pointed out to me that I think is true, 00:15:38.183 --> 00:15:39.600 align:middle line:84% although I hadn't been aware of it 00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:43.250 align:middle line:84% until he said so, was that part of the film 00:15:43.250 --> 00:15:47.990 align:middle line:84% The Chelsea Girls by Andy Warhol, where there are two-- 00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:53.900 align:middle line:84% there's a split screen and two completely different monologues 00:15:53.900 --> 00:15:56.210 align:middle line:84% happening in each part of the screen. 00:15:56.210 --> 00:16:04.560 align:middle line:84% And I don't know, there might be other examples as well. 00:16:04.560 --> 00:16:09.560 align:middle line:84% But the point, I guess, is that this idea you 00:16:09.560 --> 00:16:16.250 align:middle line:84% have two parallel discourses that 00:16:16.250 --> 00:16:18.890 align:middle line:84% don't meet but somehow inflect each other just 00:16:18.890 --> 00:16:29.150 align:middle line:84% by being there together strikes some kind of a chord in me 00:16:29.150 --> 00:16:35.240 align:middle line:90% that I want to listen to. 00:16:35.240 --> 00:16:37.910 align:middle line:90% I'm not exactly sure why. 00:16:37.910 --> 00:16:41.390 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 5: In your poem "The Ice Storm," [INAUDIBLE]?? 00:16:41.390 --> 00:16:49.070 align:middle line:90% 00:16:49.070 --> 00:16:50.150 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: "The Ice Storm?" 00:16:50.150 --> 00:16:52.190 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 5: Yes. 00:16:52.190 --> 00:16:53.810 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: No, I wrote it in paragraphs. 00:16:53.810 --> 00:16:56.480 align:middle line:90% 00:16:56.480 --> 00:16:59.487 align:middle line:84% Also, well in the case of "Litany," 00:16:59.487 --> 00:17:01.070 align:middle line:84% people have asked me how I wrote that. 00:17:01.070 --> 00:17:06.823 align:middle line:84% What I did was I wrote the left hand side of the page, 00:17:06.823 --> 00:17:08.990 align:middle line:84% the column on the left, and the column on the right, 00:17:08.990 --> 00:17:10.730 align:middle line:84% and then went on to the next page, 00:17:10.730 --> 00:17:15.619 align:middle line:84% rather than writing one and then going back to the beginning. 00:17:15.619 --> 00:17:18.560 align:middle line:90% People often want to know that. 00:17:18.560 --> 00:17:20.707 align:middle line:90% So I thought I'd mention it. 00:17:20.707 --> 00:17:24.450 align:middle line:90% 00:17:24.450 --> 00:17:31.300 align:middle line:84% That was a kind of prose poem which I've heard with-- 00:17:31.300 --> 00:17:35.220 align:middle line:84% an idea that I've flirted with from time to time. 00:17:35.220 --> 00:17:36.720 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 5: Would you say [INAUDIBLE] 00:17:36.720 --> 00:17:38.480 align:middle line:90% record the story for you? 00:17:38.480 --> 00:17:44.360 align:middle line:90% 00:17:44.360 --> 00:17:48.880 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: No, I was thinking of it more as a kind of journal 00:17:48.880 --> 00:17:54.910 align:middle line:84% of not of my own but of somebody else's, 00:17:54.910 --> 00:17:59.230 align:middle line:84% some forgotten 19th century poet. 00:17:59.230 --> 00:18:02.457 align:middle line:90% 00:18:02.457 --> 00:18:06.400 align:middle line:84% I was thinking about the poetry of John Clare at the time. 00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:13.030 align:middle line:84% He's a poet whom I feel a lot of affinity with. 00:18:13.030 --> 00:18:17.710 align:middle line:84% He was a 19th century farmer poet in England 00:18:17.710 --> 00:18:25.210 align:middle line:84% who was insane for much of his life in an institution. 00:18:25.210 --> 00:18:30.250 align:middle line:84% But you can't really tell which of his poems were written when 00:18:30.250 --> 00:18:33.220 align:middle line:90% he was crazy in which weren't. 00:18:33.220 --> 00:18:35.650 align:middle line:90% They-- 00:18:35.650 --> 00:18:38.800 align:middle line:84% He was born in Northamptonshire which 00:18:38.800 --> 00:18:41.800 align:middle line:84% is mentioned at the beginning of the poem, 00:18:41.800 --> 00:18:46.655 align:middle line:84% not that anybody's supposed to make that connection. 00:18:46.655 --> 00:18:47.155 align:middle line:90% New York. 00:18:47.155 --> 00:18:50.980 align:middle line:90% 00:18:50.980 --> 00:18:54.370 align:middle line:90% I write most of my poems. 00:18:54.370 --> 00:18:55.840 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 1: In your writing you've 00:18:55.840 --> 00:18:59.360 align:middle line:84% written about the principle that makes works of art 00:18:59.360 --> 00:19:01.405 align:middle line:84% so unlike what the artist intended. 00:19:01.405 --> 00:19:04.080 align:middle line:90% 00:19:04.080 --> 00:19:06.910 align:middle line:84% How do you feel about your own work right now in that respect? 00:19:06.910 --> 00:19:10.460 align:middle line:84% What surprises you about it [INAUDIBLE] 00:19:10.460 --> 00:19:12.147 align:middle line:90% your own intentions? 00:19:12.147 --> 00:19:20.440 align:middle line:90% 00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:25.780 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well there's always a difference between what 00:19:25.780 --> 00:19:28.560 align:middle line:90% we imagine we're going to be-- 00:19:28.560 --> 00:19:32.500 align:middle line:84% this poem is going to be and the way it actually comes out. 00:19:32.500 --> 00:19:35.800 align:middle line:90% 00:19:35.800 --> 00:19:39.190 align:middle line:84% I think though that as years have 00:19:39.190 --> 00:19:44.080 align:middle line:84% rolled by that my poems are probably closer 00:19:44.080 --> 00:19:48.250 align:middle line:90% to my original intention. 00:19:48.250 --> 00:19:51.700 align:middle line:84% Although my original intention is something very vague, 00:19:51.700 --> 00:19:59.650 align:middle line:84% that I would be very hard put to talk about or define, 00:19:59.650 --> 00:20:07.300 align:middle line:84% which I suppose is probably true of any poet or any artist. 00:20:07.300 --> 00:20:14.080 align:middle line:84% But I feel more at ease writing now 00:20:14.080 --> 00:20:19.630 align:middle line:84% than I did when I was young, just I suppose because I've 00:20:19.630 --> 00:20:20.800 align:middle line:90% been doing it so long. 00:20:20.800 --> 00:20:27.760 align:middle line:84% And it becomes a kind of skill that you eventually 00:20:27.760 --> 00:20:29.590 align:middle line:90% acquire if you keep at it. 00:20:29.590 --> 00:20:33.430 align:middle line:84% Although I know poets my age wouldn't 00:20:33.430 --> 00:20:37.510 align:middle line:84% agree with this, who find that it doesn't get easier 00:20:37.510 --> 00:20:41.743 align:middle line:84% as time goes by, perhaps even more difficult. 00:20:41.743 --> 00:20:42.645 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 6: Yeah. 00:20:42.645 --> 00:20:44.906 align:middle line:84% Tell us your-- what you see as forthcoming 00:20:44.906 --> 00:20:49.160 align:middle line:84% and [INAUDIBLE] seems to be a certain [INAUDIBLE] difference 00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:51.930 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] meter from shorter poems. 00:20:51.930 --> 00:20:56.510 align:middle line:84% And I'm wondering if they also make different demands on you 00:20:56.510 --> 00:20:59.350 align:middle line:84% as you find yourself changing the [INAUDIBLE] 00:20:59.350 --> 00:21:03.730 align:middle line:84% before [INAUDIBLE] or adapting a stronger narrative structure 00:21:03.730 --> 00:21:07.568 align:middle line:84% as some of the other books by younger contemporary poets that 00:21:07.568 --> 00:21:08.510 align:middle line:90% are coming out? 00:21:08.510 --> 00:21:09.497 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:21:09.497 --> 00:21:11.080 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well unfortunately it doesn't 00:21:11.080 --> 00:21:12.700 align:middle line:90% have any narrative structure. 00:21:12.700 --> 00:21:16.780 align:middle line:84% It's just like my other poems except it's 134 pages long. 00:21:16.780 --> 00:21:19.130 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:21:19.130 --> 00:21:22.900 align:middle line:90% 00:21:22.900 --> 00:21:30.700 align:middle line:84% I certainly have never written as much in a short-- 00:21:30.700 --> 00:21:33.460 align:middle line:84% well not a short period, about six months actually. 00:21:33.460 --> 00:21:37.030 align:middle line:84% But I've never written as much in a six-month period 00:21:37.030 --> 00:21:38.620 align:middle line:90% as I did on this. 00:21:38.620 --> 00:21:41.620 align:middle line:84% I have no idea what the reception will be 00:21:41.620 --> 00:21:44.530 align:middle line:84% or whether anybody will ever read it even. 00:21:44.530 --> 00:21:55.210 align:middle line:84% It's a completely sort of stream of consciousness I suppose. 00:21:55.210 --> 00:21:57.550 align:middle line:84% Probably that could be said of all of my poetry. 00:21:57.550 --> 00:22:07.240 align:middle line:84% Although it usually seems to apply to characters in novels, 00:22:07.240 --> 00:22:09.790 align:middle line:84% like Molly Bloom, rather than the author. 00:22:09.790 --> 00:22:13.660 align:middle line:90% 00:22:13.660 --> 00:22:26.050 align:middle line:84% But there are kind of clusters of ideas that occasionally 00:22:26.050 --> 00:22:29.380 align:middle line:90% recur, I would say. 00:22:29.380 --> 00:22:32.410 align:middle line:90% There's a-- I don't know. 00:22:32.410 --> 00:22:35.860 align:middle line:84% There are thoughts-- there's things about death, 00:22:35.860 --> 00:22:41.630 align:middle line:90% and aging, and loss. 00:22:41.630 --> 00:22:45.850 align:middle line:84% These are not exactly new hot topics. 00:22:45.850 --> 00:22:49.930 align:middle line:90% But what can I say? 00:22:49.930 --> 00:22:52.750 align:middle line:90% They're there. 00:22:52.750 --> 00:22:54.790 align:middle line:90% I wrote it-- 00:22:54.790 --> 00:22:56.860 align:middle line:84% I often take people's suggestions. 00:22:56.860 --> 00:22:59.582 align:middle line:84% And I have an artist friend who asked me 00:22:59.582 --> 00:23:00.790 align:middle line:90% what I'd been writing lately. 00:23:00.790 --> 00:23:05.702 align:middle line:84% And I said I've been writing some short poems that I 00:23:05.702 --> 00:23:06.910 align:middle line:90% didn't really like very much. 00:23:06.910 --> 00:23:09.850 align:middle line:84% And he said, why don't you write a 100-page poem 00:23:09.850 --> 00:23:14.050 align:middle line:90% and write it about your mother? 00:23:14.050 --> 00:23:18.640 align:middle line:84% Because my mother had died shortly before that. 00:23:18.640 --> 00:23:21.520 align:middle line:90% So I actually did this in a way. 00:23:21.520 --> 00:23:28.060 align:middle line:84% Although there's very little in it about my mother. 00:23:28.060 --> 00:23:32.380 align:middle line:84% Nevertheless it occurs in a few places 00:23:32.380 --> 00:23:39.580 align:middle line:84% and maybe kind of an underpinning in the poem 00:23:39.580 --> 00:23:46.660 align:middle line:84% as well as a dissolving relationship, which 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:50.920 align:middle line:84% I was writing about at the time, which then stopped dissolving. 00:23:50.920 --> 00:23:57.130 align:middle line:90% 00:23:57.130 --> 00:24:01.330 align:middle line:84% Perhaps this is a result of the poem 00:24:01.330 --> 00:24:13.540 align:middle line:84% but I kind of see it as a graph of floating things that 00:24:13.540 --> 00:24:14.610 align:middle line:90% are hard to seize. 00:24:14.610 --> 00:24:16.630 align:middle line:90% And that's the definition. 00:24:16.630 --> 00:24:21.550 align:middle line:84% I didn't really know what a flowchart was for quite a while 00:24:21.550 --> 00:24:24.250 align:middle line:84% after I started after I chose that as the title. 00:24:24.250 --> 00:24:27.080 align:middle line:84% And I looked it up in the dictionary 00:24:27.080 --> 00:24:32.440 align:middle line:84% and said it's a graph or a chart indicating 00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:39.700 align:middle line:84% the direction of the operation of work 00:24:39.700 --> 00:24:48.650 align:middle line:84% as in a factory or the charting of a complicated activity. 00:24:48.650 --> 00:24:54.360 align:middle line:84% And so I suppose in that case this is a complicated activity. 00:24:54.360 --> 00:24:56.110 align:middle line:84% I don't think I was ever aware of the word 00:24:56.110 --> 00:25:01.240 align:middle line:84% until I happened to be listening to the Ollie North 00:25:01.240 --> 00:25:04.300 align:middle line:90% testimony on TV. 00:25:04.300 --> 00:25:07.630 align:middle line:84% And it mentioned that he'd used a lot of flowcharts 00:25:07.630 --> 00:25:11.170 align:middle line:84% while explaining his activities to people 00:25:11.170 --> 00:25:18.220 align:middle line:84% he was trying to convince in government to go ahead and let 00:25:18.220 --> 00:25:20.560 align:middle line:90% them do whatever it was he did. 00:25:20.560 --> 00:25:23.230 align:middle line:90% 00:25:23.230 --> 00:25:26.860 align:middle line:84% You mentioned being in France for 10 years. 00:25:26.860 --> 00:25:29.110 align:middle line:84% Would you talk for a few minutes about your experience 00:25:29.110 --> 00:25:32.920 align:middle line:84% of coming back to the States and finding-- 00:25:32.920 --> 00:25:39.550 align:middle line:84% how does American poetry after that [INAUDIBLE]?? 00:25:39.550 --> 00:25:50.020 align:middle line:84% Well actually I came back for a visit after a five year period 00:25:50.020 --> 00:25:57.730 align:middle line:84% of not having come back because I didn't have enough money 00:25:57.730 --> 00:26:00.590 align:middle line:90% to get back and go back. 00:26:00.590 --> 00:26:04.360 align:middle line:84% My parents would have sent me money 00:26:04.360 --> 00:26:08.180 align:middle line:84% to come home but not money to return. 00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:13.270 align:middle line:84% So when I came back I discovered to my surprise 00:26:13.270 --> 00:26:16.330 align:middle line:84% that people were reading my poetry 00:26:16.330 --> 00:26:19.870 align:middle line:84% and that there was, not only mine, 00:26:19.870 --> 00:26:24.490 align:middle line:84% but that there was a tremendous upsurge of activity in poetry 00:26:24.490 --> 00:26:26.800 align:middle line:84% which there had not been when I-- 00:26:26.800 --> 00:26:28.480 align:middle line:90% a mere five years before. 00:26:28.480 --> 00:26:32.040 align:middle line:84% I left around the time that the beat 00:26:32.040 --> 00:26:33.910 align:middle line:90% started giving poetry readings. 00:26:33.910 --> 00:26:38.890 align:middle line:84% But at that time, younger writers 00:26:38.890 --> 00:26:43.510 align:middle line:84% didn't give readings the way they have-- 00:26:43.510 --> 00:26:45.010 align:middle line:84% the way that has become very common. 00:26:45.010 --> 00:26:52.060 align:middle line:84% There were only a few readings that at the, say, at the YMHA 00:26:52.060 --> 00:26:54.965 align:middle line:84% in New York where Eliot and Auden and people 00:26:54.965 --> 00:26:55.840 align:middle line:90% like that would read. 00:26:55.840 --> 00:27:05.900 align:middle line:84% But these were not a very widely thing that happened very much. 00:27:05.900 --> 00:27:08.770 align:middle line:84% And so when I came back someone asked 00:27:08.770 --> 00:27:10.840 align:middle line:90% me to give a poetry reading. 00:27:10.840 --> 00:27:15.610 align:middle line:90% And I was completely amazed. 00:27:15.610 --> 00:27:17.860 align:middle line:84% And then I noticed that at that same night 00:27:17.860 --> 00:27:22.300 align:middle line:84% there were about a dozen other poetry readings in New York 00:27:22.300 --> 00:27:25.240 align:middle line:84% and that this happened all the time. 00:27:25.240 --> 00:27:27.745 align:middle line:84% So that I came back to find not only 00:27:27.745 --> 00:27:30.460 align:middle line:84% that there was a receptiveness to my poetry 00:27:30.460 --> 00:27:34.700 align:middle line:84% but to poetry in general, which hadn't been there before. 00:27:34.700 --> 00:27:40.795 align:middle line:90% So this was a pleasant surprise. 00:27:40.795 --> 00:27:43.390 align:middle line:90% 00:27:43.390 --> 00:27:53.440 align:middle line:84% And also by that time the first poets who got attention 00:27:53.440 --> 00:28:01.090 align:middle line:84% were the Beat Generation who became very visible promoters 00:28:01.090 --> 00:28:02.500 align:middle line:90% of their poetry. 00:28:02.500 --> 00:28:08.200 align:middle line:84% But when the first novelty of that had worn off, 00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:10.420 align:middle line:84% it seemed that then people had begun 00:28:10.420 --> 00:28:13.310 align:middle line:84% looking in for other kinds of poetry as well. 00:28:13.310 --> 00:28:20.620 align:middle line:84% So that there is a very broad range of interest 00:28:20.620 --> 00:28:23.462 align:middle line:84% of people who were actively interested 00:28:23.462 --> 00:28:24.670 align:middle line:90% in different kinds of poetry. 00:28:24.670 --> 00:28:27.190 align:middle line:84% And I just had never thought this was 00:28:27.190 --> 00:28:30.160 align:middle line:90% something that could happen. 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:40.390 align:middle line:84% And it was mainly that I think that was very different. 00:28:40.390 --> 00:28:43.840 align:middle line:84% And then I lived abroad for another five years. 00:28:43.840 --> 00:28:53.330 align:middle line:84% But I was then more aware of developments here 00:28:53.330 --> 00:28:57.410 align:middle line:84% that were really not very much happening in France, 00:28:57.410 --> 00:29:03.740 align:middle line:84% or in Europe, or in England at that time compared 00:29:03.740 --> 00:29:04.940 align:middle line:90% to what was-- 00:29:04.940 --> 00:29:07.340 align:middle line:84% America was really the place I think 00:29:07.340 --> 00:29:14.300 align:middle line:90% where new poetry got started. 00:29:14.300 --> 00:29:15.260 align:middle line:90% It's different now. 00:29:15.260 --> 00:29:17.948 align:middle line:90% 00:29:17.948 --> 00:29:19.490 align:middle line:84% There are other things happening in-- 00:29:19.490 --> 00:29:22.866 align:middle line:90% 00:29:22.866 --> 00:29:34.352 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 7: You said that the poetry [INAUDIBLE] 00:29:34.352 --> 00:29:35.810 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: What can I say about what? 00:29:35.810 --> 00:29:36.768 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 7: [INAUDIBLE]. 00:29:36.768 --> 00:29:39.560 align:middle line:90% 00:29:39.560 --> 00:29:42.710 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: Well I don't know. 00:29:42.710 --> 00:29:47.780 align:middle line:84% There's this-- I write these poems 00:29:47.780 --> 00:29:53.000 align:middle line:84% and then I can't imagine who was thinking like that 00:29:53.000 --> 00:29:55.610 align:middle line:90% or how they came out that way. 00:29:55.610 --> 00:30:06.410 align:middle line:84% And I don't have a strong feeling of a persona of my own. 00:30:06.410 --> 00:30:11.270 align:middle line:84% It seems as though I feel as though I were a microphone that 00:30:11.270 --> 00:30:19.340 align:middle line:84% was being grabbed by various people and spoken through. 00:30:19.340 --> 00:30:25.670 align:middle line:84% I was-- in fact, I just read a couple of days ago, someone, 00:30:25.670 --> 00:30:28.520 align:middle line:90% a poet-- 00:30:28.520 --> 00:30:30.480 align:middle line:84% a painter, I think, who said that he had-- 00:30:30.480 --> 00:30:30.980 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:30:30.980 --> 00:30:35.300 align:middle line:84% It was an English painter, Michael Craig-Martin, 00:30:35.300 --> 00:30:41.180 align:middle line:84% who studied painting in America and said 00:30:41.180 --> 00:30:44.390 align:middle line:84% that he had once gone to hear Eliot 00:30:44.390 --> 00:30:46.400 align:middle line:90% read his poems in New York. 00:30:46.400 --> 00:30:50.930 align:middle line:84% And somebody asked him about the persona of Prufrock. 00:30:50.930 --> 00:30:54.320 align:middle line:84% And he said that he had absolutely no idea 00:30:54.320 --> 00:30:56.240 align:middle line:84% what this poem meant, or what he was 00:30:56.240 --> 00:30:59.930 align:middle line:84% thinking about when he wrote it, or how 00:30:59.930 --> 00:31:01.230 align:middle line:90% it came out the way it did. 00:31:01.230 --> 00:31:05.000 align:middle line:84% It would seem totally strange to him. 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.050 align:middle line:84% And he couldn't account for any of it. 00:31:09.050 --> 00:31:14.600 align:middle line:84% And I was very glad to see there is a distinguished 00:31:14.600 --> 00:31:17.630 align:middle line:90% precedent for me. 00:31:17.630 --> 00:31:22.700 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 8: [INAUDIBLE] 00:31:22.700 --> 00:31:29.373 align:middle line:90% 00:31:29.373 --> 00:31:30.290 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: I don't know. 00:31:30.290 --> 00:31:37.110 align:middle line:84% I'm sometimes appalled by the person who wrote it. 00:31:37.110 --> 00:31:44.010 align:middle line:84% And yes, I probably would like to know him 00:31:44.010 --> 00:31:48.300 align:middle line:84% or her better just so that I would 00:31:48.300 --> 00:31:49.800 align:middle line:90% know who I was dealing with. 00:31:49.800 --> 00:31:53.490 align:middle line:90% 00:31:53.490 --> 00:31:59.730 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 8: [INAUDIBLE] 00:31:59.730 --> 00:32:03.060 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well as I've gotten older I've done less and less. 00:32:03.060 --> 00:32:08.700 align:middle line:84% When I was young I used to labor over poems endlessly. 00:32:08.700 --> 00:32:17.190 align:middle line:84% And as I say, I think in my case it's kind of a sort of knack 00:32:17.190 --> 00:32:18.840 align:middle line:84% that you develop as you go along. 00:32:18.840 --> 00:32:22.440 align:middle line:84% And as time has gone by I've revised less and less. 00:32:22.440 --> 00:32:26.910 align:middle line:84% Although there are still times when I feel that's necessary. 00:32:26.910 --> 00:32:32.640 align:middle line:84% But mostly now I think if I write something 00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:34.830 align:middle line:84% that seems unsatisfactory I'd rather 00:32:34.830 --> 00:32:38.040 align:middle line:84% scrap it and write something else instead, 00:32:38.040 --> 00:32:44.470 align:middle line:84% maybe saving a few goodies here and there. 00:32:44.470 --> 00:32:47.400 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 9: Do you there's a postmodern 00:32:47.400 --> 00:32:52.670 align:middle line:84% body of fiction in maybe the postmodern [INAUDIBLE].. 00:32:52.670 --> 00:32:59.670 align:middle line:90% 00:32:59.670 --> 00:33:03.120 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well in fiction there is as I understand it. 00:33:03.120 --> 00:33:09.480 align:middle line:84% I mean people like Raymond Carver, and Al Barthelme, 00:33:09.480 --> 00:33:21.380 align:middle line:84% and other kind of sort of absurdist or existential 00:33:21.380 --> 00:33:25.180 align:middle line:84% writers which we would have called them a generation ago 00:33:25.180 --> 00:33:26.810 align:middle line:90% or labeled postmodern. 00:33:26.810 --> 00:33:31.370 align:middle line:84% I don't know exactly what this means in the case of poetry. 00:33:31.370 --> 00:33:35.330 align:middle line:84% I still think modernism is alive and well 00:33:35.330 --> 00:33:39.733 align:middle line:90% and should keep on going. 00:33:39.733 --> 00:33:40.400 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 9: Yeah. 00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:41.192 align:middle line:90% That's what I mean. 00:33:41.192 --> 00:33:44.940 align:middle line:84% Why do you feel that if a painting [INAUDIBLE] 00:33:44.940 --> 00:33:47.210 align:middle line:84% a modernism rather than something 00:33:47.210 --> 00:33:48.390 align:middle line:90% called postmodern world. 00:33:48.390 --> 00:33:53.840 align:middle line:84% It doesn't seem to [INAUDIBLE] If there 00:33:53.840 --> 00:33:56.150 align:middle line:84% isn't an equivalent in poetry [INAUDIBLE] 00:33:56.150 --> 00:33:57.675 align:middle line:90% why do you think that is? 00:33:57.675 --> 00:34:00.530 align:middle line:90% 00:34:00.530 --> 00:34:01.460 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: I don't-- 00:34:01.460 --> 00:34:03.890 align:middle line:84% I'm not really sure but I have a feeling 00:34:03.890 --> 00:34:07.340 align:middle line:84% that it's a term that's been invented by critics just 00:34:07.340 --> 00:34:11.465 align:middle line:90% to kind of create some ruckus. 00:34:11.465 --> 00:34:18.520 align:middle line:90% 00:34:18.520 --> 00:34:23.090 align:middle line:84% I can tell in architecture what postmodernism means. 00:34:23.090 --> 00:34:27.650 align:middle line:84% It means the domes and columns and things 00:34:27.650 --> 00:34:31.730 align:middle line:84% like that look like an old building. 00:34:31.730 --> 00:34:37.100 align:middle line:84% I don't think that my poetry, to take that as an example, 00:34:37.100 --> 00:34:43.670 align:middle line:84% looks like an old building or is a kind of reconstruction 00:34:43.670 --> 00:34:45.350 align:middle line:90% of something that has gone to-- 00:34:45.350 --> 00:34:51.440 align:middle line:84% that has happened in the past and is a reaction to modernism, 00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:59.060 align:middle line:84% if by modernism you're talking about Stevens, Pound, Moore, et 00:34:59.060 --> 00:35:01.940 align:middle line:90% cetera, et cetera. 00:35:01.940 --> 00:35:11.930 align:middle line:84% I think there's-- today there's sort of a poetry that's new 00:35:11.930 --> 00:35:17.990 align:middle line:84% formalism, which would sort of like to nuke us back to the age 00:35:17.990 --> 00:35:24.320 align:middle line:84% of Longfellow and have everybody rewriting "The Courtship 00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:27.680 align:middle line:84% of Miles Standish" as far as I can see. 00:35:27.680 --> 00:35:35.420 align:middle line:84% But I don't see anything revolutionary or evolutionary 00:35:35.420 --> 00:35:35.990 align:middle line:90% about that. 00:35:35.990 --> 00:35:43.670 align:middle line:84% It's the same kind of boring academic poetry 00:35:43.670 --> 00:35:46.160 align:middle line:84% that's always been there and will probably never go away. 00:35:46.160 --> 00:35:48.840 align:middle line:90% 00:35:48.840 --> 00:35:54.770 align:middle line:84% So I-- So it's a question I just don't 00:35:54.770 --> 00:35:58.370 align:middle line:90% feel capable of dealing with. 00:35:58.370 --> 00:36:01.850 align:middle line:84% I've not looked into it enough to know. 00:36:01.850 --> 00:36:06.200 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 10: [INAUDIBLE] did you read the Cynthia Ozick review-- 00:36:06.200 --> 00:36:09.410 align:middle line:84% biography of T.S. Eliot in the article-- 00:36:09.410 --> 00:36:11.180 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: No. 00:36:11.180 --> 00:36:13.909 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 11: What is your sense of the [INAUDIBLE]?? 00:36:13.909 --> 00:36:19.340 align:middle line:90% 00:36:19.340 --> 00:36:21.260 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well I feel about a lot of it the way 00:36:21.260 --> 00:36:24.440 align:middle line:84% Harold Bloom feels about The Tennis Court Oath. 00:36:24.440 --> 00:36:27.800 align:middle line:90% 00:36:27.800 --> 00:36:35.720 align:middle line:84% I like a lot of it but it's gone farther than I would care to go 00:36:35.720 --> 00:36:39.090 align:middle line:84% and therefore I like it even more. 00:36:39.090 --> 00:36:42.455 align:middle line:84% I feel that the burden has been taken off of my shoulders. 00:36:42.455 --> 00:36:45.245 align:middle line:90% 00:36:45.245 --> 00:36:47.180 align:middle line:90% I really don't think that-- 00:36:47.180 --> 00:36:53.090 align:middle line:84% I really think that you can stretch 00:36:53.090 --> 00:36:56.390 align:middle line:84% the way in which poetry means almost to the breaking point. 00:36:56.390 --> 00:37:00.050 align:middle line:84% But I don't think you can go beyond that as so many 00:37:00.050 --> 00:37:04.580 align:middle line:84% of the Language poets have done, as some of them have done. 00:37:04.580 --> 00:37:11.180 align:middle line:84% But at the same time, again this is a sort of catchall term 00:37:11.180 --> 00:37:17.210 align:middle line:84% that includes a lot of very different people the same way 00:37:17.210 --> 00:37:20.180 align:middle line:84% I always felt that the New York School was 00:37:20.180 --> 00:37:23.660 align:middle line:84% a very unsatisfactory term that really didn't mean anything 00:37:23.660 --> 00:37:27.110 align:middle line:84% in terms of the people, the individual people in it. 00:37:27.110 --> 00:37:31.100 align:middle line:84% And I think that's true of Language poetry too. 00:37:31.100 --> 00:37:34.862 align:middle line:84% And perhaps even more so because there's so much-- 00:37:34.862 --> 00:37:36.320 align:middle line:84% in the first place, New York School 00:37:36.320 --> 00:37:43.490 align:middle line:84% was a label that was sort of attached to me and other poets 00:37:43.490 --> 00:37:44.910 align:middle line:90% in the group after the fact. 00:37:44.910 --> 00:37:48.230 align:middle line:84% We didn't sort of set out to found a new movement. 00:37:48.230 --> 00:37:53.120 align:middle line:84% Whereas that the Language poets definitely have done this 00:37:53.120 --> 00:37:56.820 align:middle line:84% and are always issuing manifestos, 00:37:56.820 --> 00:38:04.257 align:middle line:84% and anathemas, and excommunications to the point 00:38:04.257 --> 00:38:06.590 align:middle line:84% where it's really difficult to know what they're talking 00:38:06.590 --> 00:38:11.540 align:middle line:90% about when they use the term. 00:38:11.540 --> 00:38:15.800 align:middle line:84% But people-- certain poets in it like Clark Coolidge, 00:38:15.800 --> 00:38:24.280 align:middle line:84% Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian, who have-- 00:38:24.280 --> 00:38:28.645 align:middle line:90% 00:38:28.645 --> 00:38:32.080 align:middle line:84% There are quite a few that I like, now that I think of it. 00:38:32.080 --> 00:38:35.380 align:middle line:84% But who have not reduced language 00:38:35.380 --> 00:38:42.130 align:middle line:84% to mere sort of decorative shapes 00:38:42.130 --> 00:38:46.870 align:middle line:84% which seems to be what the agenda is 00:38:46.870 --> 00:38:50.608 align:middle line:90% for some of the more extremist. 00:38:50.608 --> 00:38:55.540 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 11: [INAUDIBLE] 00:38:55.540 --> 00:38:56.447 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: Yeah. 00:38:56.447 --> 00:38:57.910 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 11: [INAUDIBLE] 00:38:57.910 --> 00:39:03.850 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Yeah, I think they've gone beyond that and want to. 00:39:03.850 --> 00:39:07.960 align:middle line:90% 00:39:07.960 --> 00:39:09.880 align:middle line:90% I'd rather not name names but-- 00:39:09.880 --> 00:39:13.784 align:middle line:90% 00:39:13.784 --> 00:39:42.940 align:middle line:90% SPEAKER 12: [INAUDIBLE] 00:39:42.940 --> 00:39:44.380 align:middle line:90% ASHBERY: Yeah. 00:39:44.380 --> 00:39:50.770 align:middle line:84% Yeah, well I think that probably most artists 00:39:50.770 --> 00:39:54.280 align:middle line:90% would agree to that. 00:39:54.280 --> 00:40:00.850 align:middle line:84% I can think of very few who enjoy having 00:40:00.850 --> 00:40:04.060 align:middle line:90% working from under a label. 00:40:04.060 --> 00:40:08.890 align:middle line:84% But on the other hand, readers and audiences 00:40:08.890 --> 00:40:13.610 align:middle line:84% seem to find this much easier to deal with. 00:40:13.610 --> 00:40:16.450 align:middle line:84% And so it will probably go on happening. 00:40:16.450 --> 00:40:26.867 align:middle line:84% And if they feel that way, then why not? 00:40:26.867 --> 00:40:27.700 align:middle line:90% I don't think it's-- 00:40:27.700 --> 00:40:31.420 align:middle line:84% I just don't find it useful for somebody who 00:40:31.420 --> 00:40:34.930 align:middle line:90% is trying to create something. 00:40:34.930 --> 00:40:38.945 align:middle line:84% It's something that gets added on after the fact. 00:40:38.945 --> 00:40:41.320 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 13: You talked about your poetry before as a kind 00:40:41.320 --> 00:40:44.568 align:middle line:84% microphone where the voice is, rather than [INAUDIBLE].. 00:40:44.568 --> 00:40:47.404 align:middle line:84% It seems like the voices coming through the microphone 00:40:47.404 --> 00:40:49.240 align:middle line:84% get kind of weirdly distorted in a way. 00:40:49.240 --> 00:40:53.440 align:middle line:84% And I was just wondering if [INAUDIBLE] Wordsworth 00:40:53.440 --> 00:40:56.286 align:middle line:84% or Whitman or Eliot or Walden seem 00:40:56.286 --> 00:40:59.914 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] in your poetry in very strange ways. 00:40:59.914 --> 00:41:01.381 align:middle line:84% And I wanted to know if you could-- 00:41:01.381 --> 00:41:04.660 align:middle line:84% If you want to pick or you don't want to pick, pick one of them 00:41:04.660 --> 00:41:07.916 align:middle line:84% and say something about what you like and what you don't like 00:41:07.916 --> 00:41:08.832 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE]. 00:41:08.832 --> 00:41:13.036 align:middle line:90% 00:41:13.036 --> 00:41:16.900 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well I don't know I agree about Eliot. 00:41:16.900 --> 00:41:22.075 align:middle line:84% I don't see very many traces of his voice in mine. 00:41:22.075 --> 00:41:25.480 align:middle line:90% 00:41:25.480 --> 00:41:26.470 align:middle line:90% Whitman perhaps. 00:41:26.470 --> 00:41:32.050 align:middle line:84% There have been times when I've been felt 00:41:32.050 --> 00:41:39.440 align:middle line:84% or felt myself to be influenced by him, especially in the poems 00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:42.010 align:middle line:84% that I've written which have very long lines in them which 00:41:42.010 --> 00:41:49.300 align:middle line:90% was what I discovered in him. 00:41:49.300 --> 00:41:53.770 align:middle line:84% I've often felt that Whitman is a kind of misunderstood poet 00:41:53.770 --> 00:41:58.030 align:middle line:84% in the sense that we tend to think 00:41:58.030 --> 00:42:08.560 align:middle line:84% of him as this sort of kind of bumpkin 00:42:08.560 --> 00:42:12.820 align:middle line:84% who utters his barbaric yawp all the time, 00:42:12.820 --> 00:42:16.270 align:middle line:84% and always has something to say on every subject, 00:42:16.270 --> 00:42:19.600 align:middle line:90% and doesn't know when to stop. 00:42:19.600 --> 00:42:24.700 align:middle line:84% But that's to putting the worst case upon it, I guess. 00:42:24.700 --> 00:42:31.120 align:middle line:84% But I always find his work very beautifully crafted. 00:42:31.120 --> 00:42:36.890 align:middle line:84% And every word seems to count in his lines. 00:42:36.890 --> 00:42:39.040 align:middle line:84% In other words, this sort of kind 00:42:39.040 --> 00:42:45.280 align:middle line:84% of afflatus idea of his poetry I don't feel is there. 00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:49.060 align:middle line:84% At any rate it's not what's important to me. 00:42:49.060 --> 00:42:52.480 align:middle line:84% I think there's a great deal going 00:42:52.480 --> 00:43:00.970 align:middle line:84% on in the poetry besides the proclaimed message of reaching 00:43:00.970 --> 00:43:06.040 align:middle line:84% out to humanity which is of course, nothing 00:43:06.040 --> 00:43:07.310 align:middle line:90% wrong with that. 00:43:07.310 --> 00:43:13.120 align:middle line:84% But there are other things which make it even more 00:43:13.120 --> 00:43:15.650 align:middle line:90% effective at what it's doing. 00:43:15.650 --> 00:43:24.190 align:middle line:84% And I think the writing as opposed 00:43:24.190 --> 00:43:27.490 align:middle line:84% to the content in Whitman is something 00:43:27.490 --> 00:43:29.770 align:middle line:90% that I find very inspiring. 00:43:29.770 --> 00:43:31.900 align:middle line:84% And I have no quarrel with the content 00:43:31.900 --> 00:43:40.120 align:middle line:84% either but I find they reinforce each other in ways 00:43:40.120 --> 00:43:41.980 align:middle line:90% that always surprise me. 00:43:41.980 --> 00:43:45.220 align:middle line:90% 00:43:45.220 --> 00:43:45.720 align:middle line:90% Yes? 00:43:45.720 --> 00:43:48.180 align:middle line:84% SPEAKER 14: Is there something that you [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:48.180 --> 00:43:52.680 align:middle line:84% your perception of your relationship [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:52.680 --> 00:43:57.460 align:middle line:84% poetry [INAUDIBLE] like at the [INAUDIBLE] 00:43:57.460 --> 00:44:00.010 align:middle line:84% and the possibility of expression 00:44:00.010 --> 00:44:02.390 align:middle line:90% and the need to [INAUDIBLE]? 00:44:02.390 --> 00:44:05.852 align:middle line:90% 00:44:05.852 --> 00:44:08.310 align:middle line:84% ASHBERY: Well this is something I've often been asked about 00:44:08.310 --> 00:44:12.600 align:middle line:84% and I've never really been able to come up 00:44:12.600 --> 00:44:17.040 align:middle line:84% with an answer that's very satisfying to me at any rate. 00:44:17.040 --> 00:44:20.260 align:middle line:90% 00:44:20.260 --> 00:44:23.790 align:middle line:84% The only thing that occurs to me is that, as I say, I did 00:44:23.790 --> 00:44:27.510 align:middle line:90% paint up until I was about 18. 00:44:27.510 --> 00:44:34.590 align:middle line:84% And I had started out wanting to be a painter from my earliest 00:44:34.590 --> 00:44:35.190 align:middle line:90% childhood. 00:44:35.190 --> 00:44:37.620 align:middle line:84% And sometimes it seems to me in writing 00:44:37.620 --> 00:44:46.910 align:middle line:84% that I have almost a painter's instinct about using words. 00:44:46.910 --> 00:45:01.000 align:middle line:90%