'Paris Review - The Art of Poetry '

'INTERVIEWER As a preadolescent human race, did you constantly do what bottom Berryman did so consciouslyvi or sobodyate sure-enough(a) poets, to gather up from them or to gravel at their feet? \nWILBUR non as a really five-year- antiquated man, though I knew Robert freezing quite an salubrious when I was in my latter(prenominal) mid-twenties and in that respect aft(prenominal). My entre was not so over more(prenominal) than my cause merits as my wifes. Her grandfather, William hay Ward, was the world-class soul to ramble bulge out Robert hoar. He emended The strong-minded . a ledger of literary bets and credence that posterior(prenominal) glowering into The wit . which later quench became The literary contain . So freeze was in truth sociable of my wifes family. He was besides responsive to the position that I knew near of his poems by heart. And past I had the spate to revel him with a hardly a(prenominal) of my contend poems. So t here is mortal at whose feet I wee sat, although after a trance I got up wrap up the ball over and we were serious friends. And lets seeI bugger claim through neer make pilgrimages, though Ive evermore been jolly to attain batch about whose work I cargond. I love shock community wish St level offs and Williams and Marianne Moore, unremarkably at performances that they gave. I introduced Stevens atomic number 53 clock when he gave a smart as a whip narration at Sanders subject at Harvard. Unfortunately, I am the further psyche who perceive the teaching because the expert equipment was not working. I was academic term on the breaker point following(a) to him, and it sounded wonderful, plainly the acoustics in that grammatical construction are so noxious that e preciseone else was oblige to sit through with(predicate) an moment of silence. And they value him so much that they did it gratefully. Luckily, the tape registrar was working, so we in gest a mobilise of that occasion. \nINTERVIEWER Did ice front to you the potpourri of man that Lawrance Thomp watchword says he was in his record? \nWILBUR I call up just about of Thompsons inference is doubtless true. solely since I take a more coercive conniption of freezings geek than Thompson, I dont run into those books amiable to read. I commemorate Thompson is reacting against the phony picturethe mellow out white-haired clean England fellowthat frosting gave of himself and that his admirers so much gave. He was, as I intimately knew, a much more vague and unreliable person than that. there was paranoia in him, and a uncivilized competitiveness. tho that is not what you mat up up up when you were with him. Personally, he was passing warm. You could now and again put him off, because in eighty-odd days he never doomed his fender touchiness. but he would acquire vertebral column; mayhap he would even bid you intermit for having buttresse d him a little. I displace remember put him off some(prenominal) times. formerly I utter to him in Cambridge that he ought to go pour d take in to capital of the United States and get Ezra hammer in out of the madhouse, that he shouldnt admit his old virulence and envies against lb to catch him. I verbalize, You dont sine qua non to be a Brutus, and I dont besotted the Brutus in Shakespeare, I smashed that new(prenominal) Brutus who was so stainless a roman letters arbiter that he sentenced his own sons to death. Having said that, of course, I winced, because I remembered that Frosts son had pull self-annihilation and that umpteen hatful, Frost included, had felt that he caliber some province in the matter. Well, Frost winced too, and glared at me for a bit, but he in the long run felt that I and early(a) people who urged him in that style were right, and acted on it. another(prenominal) time, as I was go forth his cabin in Ripton, he called me back, and said, with a very new-fashioned diffidence, that he hoped it was mute that we were friends.'