Title: Patricia Marx Interviews: James Dickey
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I'm delighted to have as my guest today one of America's major poets Mr
James Baker. Mr Dickey has been published in almost every literary
periodical and is the author of four volumes of verse into the stone drowning
with others helmets and most
recently bucked dancers choice which won the National Book Award for Poetry.
Mr Dickey you've taught in your force in World War two and in Korea and
you worked for years in various advertising agencies.
When did poetry become the major concern in your life.
I don't
know I don't even know that it is a major concern of my life
now but it began to. Take a dominant position on gas when I when
I no more began to get fascinated with the sound
of my own
voice sort of sort of like.
Finding out that you have a certain natural aptitude for something not all that's natural it might be unnatural but.
What really fascinated me was when I saw and this was one night I can remember I just
walking down the supermarket about groceries and the idea came to
me that I could put words in a certain order and they
would stay as I put them
down on paper and they would say what I told him to say that they're so
fascinated me I think I'll never get to the end of it for the rest of my
life. Does this happen before you before you actually did it or after you've been writing for
a
while after I'd been writing. All right no while but the fact that you have absolute domination
of all of the languages.
If you if you just know what you want to make it do and if you can can make it do that
and then it develops a fascination that nothing
else has I thought do you actually feel that much in control of the language
or sometimes the language dictate what it's going to say to
you. Hard to say about that I think sometimes one sometimes the
other but there is an absolute relation between the awfulness
poem you did say it you might have been building better than you know but
that something that you put down. You can remember the physical act of doing it
and and the revisions and so on why you made the decision cut this out put
this in so on it is something that
you you will understand the fall against or borrow
the against time.
How had you been reading long before you actually had something published or did to come about
quite close time.
Not for a long road. I was going to major in philosophy
and I did major and philosophy and Vanderbilt and minored in astrophysics.
An odd combination. Unlike most people who go to college.
I wanted I was twenty three when I started after the
war had been to college a little bit before but I didn't get any credit because I left for the semester.
And I went to Vanderbilt and I thought What the hell I got the G.I. bill and why don't I why don't I just
take things that interest me you know. I wrote wrote
some when I was an undergraduate and and the teachers that I
had Vanderbilt was very encouraging and they seem to like what I was doing a lot I myself didn't
I was like it
and and so around the time I
was saying you know I guess an aging senior of twenty
six when I was six there was
a poem to the Swan interview and John Palmer accepted it
and and I thought well you know maybe if I can
do this I can go in and explore the medium a little more and
and you know let's just see what happens. And so I'm just all built up from
there when you said that you weren't sure that poetry is the major concern of your life.
One of the other contenders is
teaching you know not teaching really and I like teaching. Very much but it doesn't absolve
me that much on I don't know I remember something in a Hemingway novel
while one of the characters says about life great abstraction.
Maybe if you learn how to live in it you learn what it's all about that's what that's what I'm trying to
do I just want
to learn how to live and live live my life the best way for
me to live it and poetry is. His part of it but so was his
offer a soul as
a way to lift and so is taking care of my family
so my personal relationships with people and
so a lot of other things I mean I would distrust anybody
who who gave him poetry so much primacy that nothing
else mattered but poetry that this would be wrong because poetry is and is and
ever on art that that comes out
of experiences is a kind of an interpretive
org And if you don't have those you don't have
any any any material to or to write about.
I wonder you did most of your life in the south you were born in Atlanta Georgia.
Do you feel in any way that you are a regional poet or that your roots are in
South my roots and definitely in but I'm not like I'm original put
it all on I don't know the South and saw the history of the
and not so much a proponent of the Southern
mystique isn't my very great teacher Donna Davidson was
invented Vanderbilt My remember just as and
few conversational passes said Mo to me about poetry than almost anybody else has ever
done and I'm not
I'm I've lived away from it too many to him too much and lived in other places.
I love the world we're in March so the South is my place the southern United States because of
the because I was. Accidentally
bond but the great the great thing about existence seems to me than
almost the computer. And supermarket
assed aspect of things is saddening to may not love to be in Europe where
you can go across the street and everything changes the cuisine
the wine the local causes everything changes and different is different. That's something
that wouldn't have been there if these people hadn't developed in this particular locality.
That's what that's what makes it go
from Les. When you say that poetry is part of your life and
certainly not the major part. Can you describe it all the experiences in
your life that that form the basis that had the greatest impact
on poetry.
I don't know I have I have this one idea though that seems to me to be true surely in
my case I don't know if it is to other people but I suspect that it is that there are that there
are all kinds of different people different kinds of characters
in in any one person he
has orders and every man is both an angel and
a beast that that's true and there there.
There is a.
There is a side of me in that that has nothing to do with poetry at
all it's an it's and simply
an aging ex athlete who reads the papers to
sound Georgiades are loaded against Dick tiger with the most interest in the
world of what time Michael are there in the four hundred metres and last
week you know that that's one side and I would that side would
be contained I would write never to read or write or read a word
of poetry as another sounded likes to hearten I'd like to consort
with with archers and. And is
a member of the California vomit
color's
Association and there's another sounded like folk musicians and like the phone.
Tradition especially the guitar on a banjo bluegrass amusing and would also
be contented to write any poetry but just sit around and talk to musicians and listen to.
And play and hopefully play with them.
And listen to records while the really great ones play like Doc Watson for
example. And then there's a side that likes Scala things
and likes to live at least in rhetoric and
the great ecclesiastic writers like Lang Jeremy
Taylor and there's a side that likes to read novels over a relatively
relatively obscure side and not and with not a great deal of authority that likes to
read novels and then there's another woman likes to write poetry
and a good deal of it because a lot
he's he's fascinated by what possibilty might occur the next time a
system to
try I wonder if you could describe how a poem comes into
being you can tell us all different from so the different ones but I'll tell you
for me now them and created create I used to just sometimes I just start out with a war that same
code with a quark context. You know but this is not really
of our profitable way from a what now. What I now get is a.
Is a kind of a of a communication from the beyond hope so it seems
that this that of the
other thing that I remember that I've read about or that I've encountered someone somewhere
or another or some way or
another another would is a potential for the kind of poetry that I write.
Sometimes these days these things will lie buried in what the guys William
James call the deep well of unconscious cerebration for a long time.
The only rule of thumb I have is that when
something. Some image or some van or something comes back to
me enough then I know that eventually I'll have to deal with
it and I try to deal with but it.
There they are they're just the sort of irrational associations that keep flowing to the surface is if you keep
thinking to yourself Well you remember when I did that all you men when I saw
that NACA take that and
maybe we could use that as a sort of a
dramatic framework to say on this that or the other thing. Or as
a situation itself it's just so interesting to write about it so
unusual that maybe we can maybe we can maybe we're going to sort of
start playing around with and see what happens next this is the last of the Web
Start where it ends at
some this thinking when you say something haunts you enough that you know you've got
to deal with it the pony what you mean by Deal with it do you understand it better when you've
written about you know what that's that's right. Like I like to think so
but sometimes it turns in to suffer some kind of sea change undergoes a sea change where
it's different where you don't understand the thing itself as it
occurred but a but another thing
happened which is better than the original and.
And understand that isn't a higher act of understanding
than understanding the actual circumstance in which the point came
and that's that's as close as I can come to the phone and what happened to what I what I think rather happens
if you do you become more aware of what you've experienced
you can sharpen your own
awareness and Yes yes but there still is still stand somewhat apart from what you
said about it.
You know you know how what
you've based the poem on. But you also remember
how it was you know you see what you've made of it
and what you always hope and follow is a truth that you've invented is a
better truth than the actual truth. You know the most
dramatic interesting more profound truth a more
poetic truth.
Then what's your age and I began what is there a distinction
between you was a private individual and you as a poet. I mean. Yeah Felix
Yes I definitely you know how in what way.
Well I dislike people my list again on this
and I dislike people who insist on living like poets because I really
don't know what poets live like my idealism is of
somebody like Bach who was and who was an ordinary man who just sat
down and wrote Remora
music and not and not somebody who'd who lives the poem
the what is sort of come to be the lowlife tradition of power of the poet like Baudelaire.
Are like Dylan Thomas like Theodore at because some of the time.
There is a kind of a feeling among ports that I sort of oh it to themselves to be awful.
You know and that people will endure them to people more than anything they can
do. I've had my awful times but it's
not something that that that ought to be normative that it ought to be a lot
of that ought to just.
In your poems. Dickie you often express a kind of pantheism and
a desire to lose yourself in nature. I wonder if you could
describe it or your attitude towards nature.
I don't really know what my attitude toward it is except that it. Except
that when you really stop to look at it now or look at
anything from a glass grass blade to the bark on a
pantry to the way the sun hits the lake. Now the way I'm out in the shade of
a
mountain.
It's unbelievably
miraculous you feel if you really love deeply enough the
main feeling that you have all that I have is that what it is is that that that.
Of our privilege being to be here to be doing
this
privileged someone that can't so many millions have been have
done but the but the intensity of you know the
single moment of some small
small thing that you notice that nobody else and this is
probably if you have a if you need a definition as probably the poetic moment.
Most of your poems out of your own prison experience.
Well there but you'd have to guess I guessed if I want my personal experiences a lot of
them are things which are a long road of literally every word of that is
true every word is one of the few that is and but there
are other things that
I may have read about in a newspaper or
an account and some kind of women when you encounter things I mean a lot of different ways you can encounter
him you can encounter
him. They can and they can be real people in real situations and things that you've done and people that
you've known they can be things that you would like to have done and people you would like to have
known they can be things that like in the heaven of animals which is I
guess become a while a circular thought
to pieces came from watching the Walt Disney films the African
lion and another long thing a man and I'm doing
for the last world for rain came from another Disney film
wide wilderness. So you take it where you can get it. Anything that impresses you as
an idea or as an image and there's nothing that says there's no law that says you can't try to do
something with
the thing that puzzles me is is your poetry used
to express such a reverence for nature for life for
living beings human and animal. How can you when you love animals so
much also hunt. Well contradiction.
No there and there really isn't a contradiction hard some.
Much different and I'm not good I'm not a I'm not a really first
rate option or good or really first rate stalker the thing that
I like
the most is that it gets me into the relation with
them and then. But I can vent some animals live
live their lives and and the most precarious possible circumstances.
And there is that intensification that if you are saying and do come
down to drink in a creek and the first dawn
light you understand you
understand the intense nervous awareness that
they always live in the never free of it at that kind of intensity
could be got into poetry it would be remarkable and it
would the animal awareness in this that they
live their lives or any animal lives with it has
any possibility of being hunted either by men or other animals'
lives in a situation in
which in which every possibility has to be instinctively considered.
They won't put a foot down if they're going to make a noise. They have
to come they drink like see this.
Doesn't offend you as a sensitive human being to kill the
very thing not at all not at all not at all odd love love love the
and. How can
it because that's that's the sign that they
understand that you can do is to try to kill them.
I mean if I sentimentalise and took pictures of them and that sort of thing that
that wouldn't I wouldn't be in as deep a relationship of the day as I would if
I was trying to go that's something they understand that's the environment that they live
in that's what they they will develop in order to
evade and in trying and trying to in trying
to kill. I'm with that very close range with an arrow. That means that I've got to enter
into their environment I've got to try to second guess them and I was in a sense I've got to become
an animal with them and this is something that I'm convinced they
appreciate had very indifferent
success but it's only in that relation that the that
the full connection between me and them can exist
if I saw him and I gave my love a honey you know I should go something like that
that's that's condescending. That's me
being a human
and patronize ing them as a Swede
the Latin
model but to go out into the into their country with them match wits
with them play the great the great game with them and it seems to me that
that's
honoring him in a way this sticky Joan hole we lock wrote about your first
volume of poetry into the
stone and I couldn't hear if one must find fault. One must
find fault. It would be with an occasional unintentional obscurity that
Morrison poems and I wonder if you would Mr security whether
you well know I would try to do admit to it I guess I don't know what other
people I know perfectly well what I mean a heart attack but other people would be able
to get it out but that there are problems
and. What I want to do really was to find a way
of being simple without going fan and it's I guess in a
way kind of paradoxical
that the way that I chose to try to achieve that was
to write this kind of very
clotted
difficult poem poetry in the beginning and then try to crowd
or to keep the intricacy and get a much more simple diction
to express
it in your most recent dances choice you make.
Frequent use of the broken line and I wonder what the function of that
is well on the broken one of the split in
the car some reviewer calls it and is.
I guess just a kind of a device to try
to what I originally conceived of it as as a device
to try to reproduce. What seems to happen in the mind when I want to
so Shiites and when one and an addition this kind of
splitting off of words by four or five
typewriter spaces which is the way I presented the poem so the editors which publish them.
Results in a kind of an awed breathless on
rushing quality that I like very much. I guess enough and I way it's what the
Tech freshman English textbooks called
impressionistic I don't have any quarrel like that only you know I'll quote I don't have
any quarrel with that it's only a question of whether it works in a particular context
and what you feel you can do with it that you couldn't
do in the past
by your sound is different the sound is different the flow is interrupted the.
There is a kind of and what I what I what I really wanted to have
a prime sound like is
the is the inspired stammering is of a village idiot.
But they have to be inspired stammering not just an establishing.
Do you feel that in your most recent poetry. You're trying new things
or is this just your organic development do you feel you're grappling with
new problems or new new techniques
are always always I've got. I've got another book coming out
called Falling which
is different from any of the others different from from the.
Relatively predictable experimentation of into
the Stones or the
plastic stuff that I did most mostly in drowning with others
and the
experimental sort of song
of what you would say. Of helmets except that it was a sort of an
extension of drowning with others balked at the choices different from either one of those reads
very differently to May and following is different from ADD So this is a great lesson of the car so
I NEVER a lot of sense a bit trapped in a style.
I remember reading somewhere Cocteau on Cocteau's advice to
poets was find out what you can do best and then don't do
it do you think in stylistic Tunes or do you
really think about what is you want to say in the best form comes from the
context but I know what I'm going to work in for working toward more and more as.
The possibility of making statements that
people will believe which will not be able or statements like go down to the most of
them are going to get me a six pack of Budweiser. That's a statement. But there's also
a statement you can make in Carteret which is
amazing I want to try to be able to make amazing statement.
Let's take you I wonder if you would tell us what
other poets writing today in American you most admired.
Well I think Theodoret is the greatest poet We have had in this country. I don't think there's any any
any possible competition to him not even Whitman who I guess will be the next best.
He had the essential thing
which is the ability to make his time sound
like the Earth itself or speaking to you
and the rest of the people compared to him seemed.
Hopefully artificial. And got up done on
purpose. You know but he didn't have that he had that natural it's like somebody has a
beautiful stride or signed a pitcher like Sandy cofactor who has
a great on you just had that natural saying everybody else seems unnatural
compared to him and that's an important thing to me.
William Stafford has some of that I thank you is a very good thought all of
our wasteful writes too much but what the best of his sons
are just wonderful to Jane's right is good he's got a lot of
the same kind of natural gas that right
hand and then Louis Simpson is guilty as a fine and
biting incisive uncompromising
nervous
Merican quality which I think is awful and those about the best ones
of my
might do no women thought
that I would still be able to write a letter saying that
I stress and I go. Somebody like Sylvia
Plath is a mildly interesting rather kind of
a kind of a gab a mystification what it is and it
has no real sustaining power. It doesn't really hit you it hits you as
an X.. Display or an excellent display of
literary virtues and that's it the key of A final question what
is your feeling about the state of poetry today and do you feel that there's so much
talk that is dying the way theater is dying. Do you feel it is in a
vital phase or and its future is bright.
You go or you go around to schools and read and you see how bright it really
is there is a sort of shamefaced NESA bound to some kids who come to
poetry readings
and they their mothers want to move go on and be good C.P.A.'s and everything and here they
have this. Sneaking and kind of. It's criminal interest in
poetry
but if you go and talk to you give them some kind of hard
to give them some kind of hope about one and you say yes and use Reggie write those poems
and and if you want to spend your life as a poet spend it you've only got one if you want it that
much to do it.
That kind of an example. Well that's been afforded by wrecked by
Louis Simpson or anybody else who gives a lot of readings is I think probably going
to
Marge maybe through various circumlocutions themselves or any in
ways as a very real fact of the American consciousness one of
these days. Thank you Mr Dickey You've been listening to the American
poet James Dickey whose recent volume of various Bach dances choice
won the National Book Award for Poetry. Thank you and goodbye for now.