ARTHUR E. SMITH
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when a poet becomes political. All men must be political, obviously, if
we're going to live in a community that's worth living in, and poets are no
exception . Poetry is not outside the mainstream ofour lives, and if you take
it outside, then it seems to me to be something less than vital.
Int ;
Spanish poets, the very good ones, can write about a Spanish people and
produce a really good poem, and I fail to see that in many American poets.
You have to speak individually, or else sound fatuous.
Levine ;
I think you're wrong. Whitman talks about a people, and he's our
greatest poet. Most of us don't talk directly about a people but we imply the
people when we use the individual case. Our languages are different. But it
is true that we have a harder time making the kind of general statements,
and making them with authority . And when you look at the lives of many
American poets you'll find that they are very alienated, all the way back to
Emily Dickinson. So maybe we don't all feel that we speak for the people.
Int ;
Do you feel any compulsion to be socially responsive to any group or
movement? Do you feel any social obligation to Black, Chicano, Indian or
Women poets? There are some fine women poets in this country , but they
have been played down and sometimes ignored. As a result of this, do you
personally take a longer, more thorough look at books of poetry by women?
Levine;
Women in America have been writing marvelous poetry for a long,
long time , and I'm not at all sure that they have been slighted. They
haven't been by my tastes. I think that with Blacks and Chicanos-and
Indians I suppose, although I really don't have many acquaintances among
Indians-something else has taken place that isn't so much in the awarding
and the judging. It is something that takes place in their education where
they are told that they can't write. It's as simple as that. They are
discouraged from writing, so that you don't have Chicano poets to speak of
until rather recently. They endured a school system which conspired, I
think consciously, to tell them they could not write and even if they could
learn to write they wouldn 't write anything sophisticated or interesting
enough to ever please this tremendous audience. They were discouraged in
both cases from using their own language. In fact, they were told that they
were illiterate . Blacks and Chicanos were told they don't have a language.
Consequently, if their language is taken away from them, it is almost
impossible for them to write.
Int;
In other words, they are bilingual and yet have neither language?
Levine ;
No, they are not bilingual. Black people may become bilingual in
America if they want to get jobs at MIT or at advertising companies. They
speak a language which is a form ofAmerican English, which they are told is
not a form of American English, but a shit, fucked-up language, bad
language-but it is a perfectly articulate language with its own rules of
