F.
D.
R e
e
v e
Interview
with The
New York Quarterly
The interviewer tries, pretends to
disappear into his questions, and
the interviewee sounds nearly alone on a journey of talk, of
philosophizing. Interviews --- printed interviews --- take on a
formality that belies the bubble and fizz of speech. I met F. D. Reeve
in his Vermont village, in a fine little coffee shop. He wore jeans and
a soft brown sweater over a denim work shirt. Among such cordial people
confronting the snow and delighting in the mountains, it is no wonder
Reeve is happy there. In this setting with the growing sun of spring
pouring through the window, I asked serious questions about his work,
beginning with a small question:
NYQ: When you write, is it paper and pen or computer and keyboard?
It’s everything. It’s everything. Years ago, it was just pen and ink.
But now I can put it on the computer and I can actually correct it. You
get so that the computer becomes invisible. But I still have to work
from a hard copy.
NYQ: Is there a special where or when?
No. Riding along on these big highways is a very good time [for
writing]. You have pen in hand. You just watch the road and you think
of your line and you get it. Sometimes you can get four, five, six or
eight lines. And there is going to be a stop. There is going to be a
red light, something to stop. There is no bad time to write. You get
some good ideas in the middle of night, you should have put a pen and
paper near you. You can’t write on the pillow. [If you don’t write it
down] it’s gone, all gone. Like a charming dream.
NYQ: Do you remember your first poem?
No. How would you do that? It’s good we forget so much, so many
mistakes, so many tries. The challenge is always to see more, know
more, broaden your range, extend your themes. I began to get serious in
college. My first nationally published piece was in college.
NYQ: Is the reader’s (or listener’s) sigh at the end of reading a
piece, the
poet’s applause?
I don’t know what I think. That’s a neat question. What’s wrong with a
smile? Or just, “Holy Jesus!” Or, “I’ll be damned!” Or, “Hey! I never
thought of that.” Or …whatever. It’s surprise. It’s pleasure. It’s
excitement. It’s that you can go back and look at it, again. It’s being
ready to look at the next thing.
NYQ: In your poems you allude to Achilles and Ajax, to Virgil and Rome,
to
Dido and Troy. You allude to native Americans in their canoes on Lake
Champlain (in The Moon and Other Failures). We hear about King Arthur,
about Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and crafts (poetry?), of Hermes
and the cattle of Apollo. The lovers Abelard and Heloise. Classical
studies and mythology and Shakespeare figure in your poems. Your
allusions are many and really fuel your thought …and, obviously, your
poetry. Does today’s poet do that?
Oh, yes, some do. Sure. The point is if you’re going to try to find the
borders in terms of which you can share the Book of Knowledge with
other people, you’re going to have to reach for the most shared
material. Of everything that contributes to our culture. One of the big
splits between cultures is that ancient Greece isn’t thought to be a
part of modern Black and Latino cultures. Strictly speaking, it’s not
part of mine, either; but, it is how theirs, yours and mine all share
language …now. So, it’s part of what we’re actually working with. We
can say there is no reason why we can’t share Central or South American
public poetry, the decima, or any political poetry. Or poetry from
Africa. There are important forms in languages that don’t readily adapt
to expression in our language, but there are ways around such
“obstacles.” It all depends on how honest we want to be with what our
thoughts are, how skilled we can be at extending our contemporary
language. The ancient world was as much a combination of peoples as the
world is now.
NYQ: We’re all humanity first before we are separate cultures.
True, except it’s the culture that has come to us. We live in a culture
and carry it around with us like a snail in a shell. If you want to
ask, what do I leave out [of my poetry] …all the Eastern. There is very
little reference to Indian or to Chinese [history]. Though I appreciate
their long traditions and admire contemporary work and know some Indian
poets who write in English. There is one recent poem of mine you might
want to take a look at that carries references to Arabic. I don’t know
Arabic. And Arabic isn’t part of the English/Germanic language
tradition. So that it’s alien in that sense. But I have been conscious
for a long time of the need to get disparate cultures together and
greatly admire the poets who do.
NYQ: Your range is great: from the classical to the jazz of The Urban
Stampede and The Return of the Blue Cat.
I have been doing that ever since “Nightway,” a poem about the
relations between Navajo and Western cultures, and “Aclyone” and “Urban
Stampede,” updates, you might call them, of the old myths. I keep
working on new ones. I have another long poem. An adaptation of the
Daedalus-Icarus myth, that’s called “The Puzzle Master.” It’s using
other names because it’s been transposed to the Caribbean. There’s
Daedalus and he’s named “Delling.” There’s “Ingram,” who is Icarus. And
there is a chorus of what I call “Caribes.” They have to play a number
of different roles. A wonderful electronic-music composer, Eric
Chasalow is writing the music for it. It’ll be a multi-media
presentation, something quite new.
The idea is to make poetry a public presentation. At
the same time preserving its depth, its resilience, its inventiveness,
its range …in itself. In other words, not to “dumb it down.”
NYQ: I am getting a great sense of poetry being vibrant and alive in
2005.
Other people might argue otherwise; but, you certainly don’t give that
impression in this conversation.
I hope not. It’s certainly not dead. No. Absolutely not. In fact, what
I would like to do is make sure poetry is appealing. As a way of
remembering how to talk, how to think, and how to respect what people
stand for and what people do.
NYQ: About your translations from Russian. You were the editor of An
Arrow
in the Wall, which introduced readers to Voznesensky. What process do
you use to translate?
A lot of the translations of Voznesensky and others are done literally.
Somebody “Englishes” them and then some poet comes along and
“poeticizes” them. But I don’t do that, at all. I just search through
the text. I try to hide behind the words, to disappear in the tone of
the original. Can’t always do it, but that’s the attempt. Like
Lattimore with the Iliad. Or Hank Heifetz’s translation of Kalidasa’s
Kumarasambhava.
NYQ: So, is it a literal translation or are you adding a “burnish” to
it?
I don’t separate the two. I refuse to separate them. We just did a
book. Zephyr’s going to bring out a book. Margo Rosen and I translated
it. It’s the work of Anatoly Naiman. It’ll come out in the summer. It’s
his first poetry collection in English. And it’ll say “Translated by
Margo Shohl Rosen and F. D. Reeve.” Now, that doesn’t mean we did it
together. We didn’t. She did half of them. And I did the other half.
Even --- in the introduction --- to show the difference between us,
some of the differences caused by translating, we compare our
translations of two of the same poems.
NYQ: You learned Russian in college. When you visited Russia, did you
lecture in Russian or in English?
Both. It depended on the audience. I lectured to Russian students in
Russian. And if the class were an advanced English class and they were
discussing American poetry I spoke in English.
NYQ: May we revisit your article, “What's the Matter with Poetry?,”
which
appeared in Nation in May 1993? Please elaborate on these points from
your article:
"But the matter of poetry is a broad social concern,
the resolution of
which will show what we make of ourselves as a society."
I wanted to say first off that there’s nothing the matter with
poetry. It’s people who are playing games with it. We need poetry more
than ever. If you’re going to diminish the value of poetry; if you’re
going to allow advertising campaigns to shape politics, if you’re going
to allow political slogans to substitute for debate, if you’re going to
allow governmental lying to dominate the news; if the newspapers and
the [broadcast] commentators are not going to stand up for any kind of
purity of language …there’s nothing except poetry that will serve as a
standard for keeping us straight. For keeping some kind of truthfulness
in the language. We cannot trust the president; we cannot trust the
vice-president, we cannot trust any of the officials. None of them.
None of them. None of them. Never mind the people who “spin,” whose
effort it is to distort. And the people who don’t have to spin are
distorting. If we’re not going to keep our language, we’re not going to
keep our culture, we’re not going to keep ourselves.
NYQ:
There are different ways of communicating. We know cats and dogs
communicate. Birds communicate. Every living thing communicates. But
nobody talks the way we do. And as Eliot’s Sweeney says, “I gotta use
words when I talk to you.” The best means of preserving a language is
to honor its poetry. Not to demean the poetry.
"Even if bad poetry obscures the good, it serves a good purpose: It
binds people together in their culture. In our country today, culture
itself threatens to vanish."
Yes. The “Wall Mart-ization” of poetry. What everyone calls “the bottom
line.” Much more significant in the long run is the attention paid to
the bottom lines in poetry.
"...only through the language of poetry and the politics of consensus
can we rebuild our culture."
I believe that completely, Ira.. Because the idea is not to manipulate.
As you know, in the last ten or twelve years, a deviant sect or deviant
group trying to get power has been able to manipulate the passivity of
the country. And to get the complicity of the people who own the means
of production: the factory owners, the big businessmen …to go along
with it.
To take a current event, today is Monday [March 7, 2005] and on
Saturday there was nothing on the radio about the attack on Giuliana
Sgrena [the Italian journalist who was freed from captivity in Iraq and
subsequently wounded (while an Italian secret service agent was killed)
in a questionable shooting by United States forces]. Yesterday, the
[New York] Times had a little
piece on page 12 which was spliced into
another article about the assassination of an Iraqi judge. There was
stuff on the [internet] web right away. And today, even public radio
began presenting [Sgrena’s] point of view, as well. It’s very, very
clear that the version the Americans have given out is absolutely
untrue.
You see, that’s permeated our culture. People now expect to be lied to,
so they turn away from taking responsibility, even from showing
concern. The passivity of their response can only be very frightening.
By making them alert and making them aware of what resources the
language actually does have, itself, there’s nothing better than
poetry. It encourages people to take matters into their own minds and
to act.
We’re headed deeply into Fascism, Ira. The
parallels between Russia 1929-1934/7 and Germany 1933-39 and us right
now are terrifying. And again, only a minority is trying to prevent it.
It’s frightening and depressing.
NYQ: You write further, "More through our poetry --- which keeps our
language --- than through anything else can we keep in close touch with
our past and with one another." Do you still hold this to be true?
Absolutely true. Poetry will tell us that and what we must
remember. It’s all available. It all depends on what you are willing to
do. Where you are willing to put out. Where you are willing to see
what’s happening. Where you are willing to take responsibility for your
language. If only everyone would pay attention to what’s really said!
NYQ: In the article you maintain a focus on the social function and
concerns
of poetry. How do you feel (relating the poet to the social) about this
quote from Kenneth Patchen:
"The one who comes to question himself has cared for mankind."
You know where he got that. From Uncle Socrates. Just before he had his
third martini. Socrates’ inquiries were based on the faith that
ignorance is vicious. That what you don’t know will hurt you. And
that’s faith. The prevailing faith, now, is not. The prevailing faith,
now, is to hang onto belief and don’t worry about it. In other words,
if you don’t know …you can be excused. It wasn’t your fault. I’m saying
and Socrates was saying, “No! It is your fault. You should’ve known.
Ignorance is no excuse.”
NYQ: My editor finds the ending particularly poignant: "What's the
matter
with poetry? Nothing. In some places there's lots of it like the
white-tailed deer; in other places it's as endangered as the spotted
owl. But the matter of poetry is a broad social concern, the resolution
of which will show what we make of ourselves as a society. For years, a
fundamental dispute has been between those who would exploit the earth
and those who would preserve it. Same with culture: Fools and crooks
will exploit us for profit; people serious about poetry will preserve
cultural integrity and individual freedom of expression. To say that
poetry doesn't matter is to say that people don't matter."
It’s absolutely true, Ira. You know it, too. You share it, too. In
moments that really matter to us, we turn to some kind of poetry or
some kind of poetic thought or somebody else’s poetic thought or attach
ourselves to it or make it for ourselves. In joy or in grief, we commit
extreme emotional expression because language is freighted, loaded, as
best it can be to carry an emotional expression. The thing about caring
about people is …if we don’t care about the language that way, then it
means you’re not going to care about the intense commitment either to
people specifically, or in general.
NYQ: I find your words to be meditations:
“as a forest in the frozen silence
left behind when birdsong ends.” (from “Silence,” p. 6, The Moon
and Other Failures)
It’s probably one of the most extraordinary moments in the natural
year. We have birdsong here. But I can remember the most intense
birdsong I ever heard was in a little valley was outside Vence in
southern France. The birdsong just filled and filled the valley. It was
as if the trees themselves were musical and not just their little
singers in the trees. But, then, all of sudden, when their whole sexual
cycle came to its close …there was almost no noise, at all.
“and my soul waits for hers where fire makes the bronze shine.”
(“Longings,” p. 9)
If you go all the way back to the pre-Greeks, the people of the Heroic
Age, they were “Bronze-agers.” They worked copper and tin. They didn’t
work iron. That came later. The biggest fire, the best fire we have to
make anything shine is the sun.
“If soul is form and gives a body life,
reality is a gathering of ghosts.” (“Coasting,” p. 13)
That comes from a literal experience. Sometimes a line or lines comes
from a literal experience and it expands to complete a poem. I spent a
number of summers sailing the Maine coast and I could see shapes and
the illusions that happen in fog.
NYQ: “Upstairs, like sunlight, sleep
steals across the floor from chair to chair.” (“The Club,” p. 14)
You have to be very lucky in life, you know that.
And, also, when you write you have to be very lucky. All of a sudden
just, at some point, you don’t know why, a metaphor comes and it pulls
a series of ideas and figures together. I suddenly fancied sleep, like
an old Greek goddess, stealing across the floor and tapping each old
man in his chair.
NYQ: And, in The Urban Stampede, the Born Observer observes, “When he
holds
up a glass to see / what nature is, it’s himself he sees.”
That’s Narcissus.
NYQ: Your “Vermont Sonnets” are as beautiful as prayer and go from
quatrains
and couplets and tercets to forms that are independent or American or
…iconoclastic? But remain as beautiful as prayer.
What I wanted to do was put together a short sequence. I didn’t
know how many there’d be. I’d have been very happy if there had been a
dozen or fifteen. But I went with seven. And what I wanted to do was to
open the form up. And at the same time the form is still recognizable.
And the intensity and the relationships are retained within the form.
The basic sonnet structure remains, but altered, adapted, loosened and
reshaped.
NYQ: Robert Frost needs to rise in a conversation with you. You were
his
friend, companion and translator on the historic 1962 State Department
visit to the then Soviet Union. He (and you) met poets Akhmatova, the
aforementioned Vosnesensky and Yevtushenko and premier Nikita
Khrushchev. Your Robert Frost in Russia has been re-issued. A small
book with large implications.
He kept saying, Ira, that he didn’t want the State Department to
do it and that it didn’t sponsor it. He was being transported by
Stewart Udall [Kennedy’s Secretary of the Interior]. I got involved
because the State Department wanted to send a woman along and [Frost]
screamed and said, “Absolutely not!” And so they had to look around for
somebody to go. I didn’t really want to go. I said why should I go? If
he’s going on this jaunt to just look at pretty pictures and give
interviews what am I doing there? There’s no point to it. So, they
asked me, “What would you do? What do you want?” I said, “If I am to
go, he’ll have to agree ahead of time that he will meet some of the
leading literary people of the day…”
NYQ: Yevtushenko, Akhmatova?
Well, Akhmatova, yes. Yevtushenko he would’ve met anyway. But
Chukovsky, Granin, Oksman, Alexeyev, Tvardovsky. If he didn’t want to
do that, there was no point in my going.
NYQ: The holy grail to Frost was a meeting with Khrushchev, which did
happen; but, under difficult circumstances …and a fever.
Well, that was simply nerves. He was old and apprehensive and knew the
spotlight was on him.
NYQ: Frost’s first collection was titled Twilight (a private printing
of two
copies for Elinor, his wife-to-be and for himself). You have a poem
titled “Twilight” about a walk in the woods in that dissolving time of
day. And Frost has a playful little poem --- “The Telephone” --- which
claims that flowers allow lovers to “keep in touch.” Your “Telephone”
also ponders communication, but reaches back to ancient Greece and
Hermes and Apollo and Athena. But, ultimately, concerns a lover, as
well.
It’s a good question, very nice way to put it; but, no, [the
Frost titles] were not in my mind, at all.
NYQ: Your poems show a practical knowledge of building and of birds and
wonderful words (“subtends a millenarian moraine” and “coffled,” to
name a few in just one poem --- “Roller Coaster,” p. 22). When and how
did you come to have such respect and love for words?
My whole life changed when I went to college. I didn’t want to go
to that college but I was amazingly lucky because at that time they
sponsored a program being taught by R. P. Blackmur. One day I saw a
notice about creative writing, submit work to such-and-such an office.
I took some poems I’d written and Blackmur said, “I’ll take you as a
student.” Everything changed right there. My life—whatever it has
been--was launched. A few years after college, I was picked to be one
of
the young poets reading at the 92nd Street Y [in New York]. The other
two were Denise Levertov and Daniel Berrigan. And it was Blackmur who
introduced us.
NYQ: When you walk to your bookshelf, what book do you reach for?
I’d probably reach for the dictionary. I’m thinking of several
words that I haven’t had a chance to look up and I keep wondering
exactly what they mean and how they’re going to work.
NYQ: There has been criticism of the modern poet as more teacher than
poet.
Should the poet be only a poet? Or ought he open poems for others?
Well, the reason a poet is a teacher is that he has to live. So
it all depends on what devices society has set up for him. 75 and 80
years ago a lot of poets were making it by working for newspapers. You
could piece together a living by doing some editorial work and by
writing stories and by scribbling things. By the time people like me
came on the scene you had to be already very successful. Like Auden,
for example, in order to do it. But Auden’s comrade Spender made his
living as a teacher. Amherst’s Meiklejohn set Frost up. It’s all word
related.
NYQ: Thank you for our chat today. And thank you, F. D. Reeve, for
writing:
Come, marshal the clouds, scatter the sunlight,
make grass grow on October ground;
in the immortal night
give us each other’s sound.
(from “On October Ground,” p. 50 of The Urban Stampede and Other Poems)
Thank you.
—Ira Joe Fisher
F.
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f d r
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