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The Argotist Online |
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Joanne
Kyger and Simon Pettet in Conversation Joanne
Kyger Simon Pettet, as well as the recent author of More Winnowed Fragments, is the author of Selected Poems. Black Sparrow published his Selected Art Writings of James Schuyler in 1999. He is also the author of two books with the photographer Rudy Burckhardt, Talking Pictures and Conversations About Everything. British by birth, he is a long-time resident of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
SP:
Hi Joanne! JK:
Hi SP:
First,
how would you put together a sentence, if you were the ‘master (mistress) of
all time and space’? 1 JK.
I would issue an edict that all mandatory sentencing is over. I would advise
discretionary sentencing when needed. SP:
Discretion,
discretionary, distinction - "discrete"
- what a beautiful word! I look it up in the OED, and come across this (among
other citations) - from Henry Peacham: ‘Raine or water, being divided by the
cold ayre, in the falling downe, into discreet parts’. So just what are we
distinguishing here. It's all water, right? - and air? - or words? - so what do
we do with them? JK:
Finding focus is like winnowing words 'til a larger fragment floats to the
surface, or drifts through the air and lands like a word in a book.
Your recent book, for example, More Winnowed Fragments. 2 When
did you start writing that particular book? Is it chronological? Do you write in
the morning or the evening? SP:
I
think of poetry as accretion - (just like Walt Whitman!) I love the fact that
there is continuing presentations of, what is, finally, the same book. More
Winnowed Fragments, (the title) is a little...dead-pan – ‘Here's some
more fragments, you might want to check out the earlier ones!’ I wish I were
disciplined about my writing hours. Are you disciplined? JK:
If I write down at least one thing a day, I call that discipline.
A “thing'” can be a sentence, a dream fragment, or a telephone
number. But it is “of the moment”. SP:
I think of that as accomplishment. If I can "accomplish" at least one
"thing" a day, that's good (if I get to accomplish more things, that's
good too!). I wish I wrote (sentences, a poem) every day, but I don't. I write
letters and scribble notes, but that doesn't "count", right? Do you
think the epistle is a sad lost art? (‘now, with e-mail...’) Do you think
we're apt to squander? (our attention, I mean) -The Wonderful Focus of You
(sic) 3 - you mean focus of attention? JK:
‘The Wonderful Focus of You’ is the focus of the "other". And when
that other ONE is no longer in your life, all that energy and concern and heart
has to go somewhere, so it can open out to include everyone - the mucho plural
“you”. And, of course, I mean always a focus of the moment, in the moment.
Much poetry I read now-days is so self-consciously poetic and opaque that I am
never introduced to an interesting reality. It's like writers are trying to hide
themselves, as if the “self” is no longer of interest. The epistolary voice
has such a personal confidence about it, one is always included. I mean if
you're writing a letter, it is to someone, you aren't just whistling in the
dark. Email has certainly engendered a kind of epistolary short hand literacy. SP:
…or epistolary short-hand laziness? JK:
I
try to practice a kind of daily notational writing. I often don't bother with
the “I”, it takes too long. One “checks in”
to the world of the written self. If I stop for too long I get anxious
and think I have to reinvent the poetic voice again. I use my portable notebook
for jotting in the morning. And then try and write at least one line, dated, on
the computer I use in my studio. We
(Donald Guravich and I) were planning a trip to Veracruz last January-February
(2006), but had to cancel it. It was a very stormy, wet winter here, and I wrote
a daily line or two, which incorporated the weather damage, along with news of
the U.S. administration's current horrors, and including occasional hopefully
illuminated states of mind, dream bits, and observations as to the state of
“nature” around me. SP:
Could you perhaps quote some fragments from it? JK:
"I really can't stand the 'formality' of 'intelligence
Who really 'cares' if the eucalyptus
have the smarts" JK:
(So) How many years does your More Winnowed Fragments cover? SP:
Oh
a long time, maybe ten years? , it's that "winnowing", can a poem
(every word, every line) "hold up"? I'm pretty tough with myself, I
think, but for the best (at least, I say it's for the best!). There's a major
proportion of attrition. I
know, "hold up"? - to/for what? JK:
Do you “test” your poems by reading them at poetry readings to see if they
“hold up”? I find if I can't bear to read a poem anymore, it probably
shouldn't be in print. SP:
I find that, by the time it comes to a public reading, I'd better have
some confidence in its worth, otherwise, crikey, what am I doing? I
often let poems "marinate" for a little while before I
"re-discover" them, and then, how interesting, did I write that?.
Well, manifestly I did, but...or, alternatively, did I really write that (and
what on earth was I thinking)? Yes, I have scattered things in print that I'm
embarrassed about. JK:
Yes.
But that was long ago, and those magazines are gone -- except for the
collection in that Granary book, A Secret Location on The Lower East Side.
4 SP:
Alice Notley in her review of your work 5 speaks of your
"honesty" as perhaps your abiding characteristic. What do you think of
that?" JK:
Well,
are you attracted to poets who you think are lying to you? SP:
(Francois)
Villon? Gregory Corso? - but wait a
minute, the poem can't lie, can it? JK:
Your reader will know if you “fake it”-- i.e. if you're a spin-master of
verbal acrobatics. Laura Riding 6, back in 1938 in a rather profound
flourish defines a poems as an 'uncovering of truth so fundamental that no other
names besides poetry is adequate except truth’. SP:
I like that, summoning up the essence, fundamental (but not fundamental-ist!) JK:
Laura Riding was also prone to pronouncements like ‘historical time has
stopped with me’. SP:
Ah well then maybe I'll reverse my opinion! What do you think about time-travel? JK:
I think it's happening at this very moment.
copyright
© Joanne
Kyger & Simon Pettet 1
Simon acknowledges that he's "stolen" this as his opening salvo from
Tom Clark's wonderful interview with Ted Berrigan in United Artists 4
(re-published in Talking In
Tranquility: Interviews With Ted
Berrigan (Avenue B/ O Books,
Oakland, CA, 1991). 2
Full disclosure. Simon's recent book of poems, More Winnowed Fragments,
appeared at the end of 2005, with a cover note from Joanne – ‘More Winnowed
Fragments/Ah, romance, the hint of mystery/perfect, quirky interludes -/this is
the lesson he comes to teach/Charmed in every wryly conceived moment’. 3
The Wonderful Focus of You (Z Press, Vermont, 1980). 4
A Secret Location on The Lower East Side: Adventures In Writing 1960-1980
(Granary Books/NYPL, New York, 1998). 5
Alice Notley - Coming After: Essays on Poetry (University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, 2005 - the article on Joanne first appeared in Arshile 9,
1998) 6
Laura Riding in In Extremis: The Life of Laura Riding - Deborah Baker
(Grove Press, New York, 1993).
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