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PARTISAN REVIEW
grammar and in many cases it has a lot more vitality and expressiveness than
the main WASP language. We are constantly borrowing from it . I notice
th;lt my kids, ever since they have been in school , have come home with
Black expressions that have a lot of vitality and snap , just as I did when I was
a kid. We borrowed heavily from Black language , just as we have been
borrowing Black music and Black poetry and the blues and folk songs-and
telling these people that they don 't have a language and they don't have a
music and they don 't have a song and they don 't have a culture . They've
known otherwise. And they 've gone on composing, writing and making
great art . And we now pick up books that are written in Black language and
we recognize that it 's poetry . We know that Etheridge Knight is a tremen–
dous poet. We know that Lucille Clifton is a fine
poet,
and . .. but that is
recent . It seems
to
me that it's a very good thing. Thank God it 's taking
place . I see here, locally, a lot of very gifted Chicanos writing-a really vital
literary movement . Part of the impetus
comes
from the fact that there is so
much Chicano experience that as
yet
has not received its poetry , so that now
there is this tremendous rush
to
give it the poetry it deserves. I find it one of
the most vital movements , perhaps the most vital movement , in contem–
porary American poetry. I'm dazzled by how much good Chicano
poetry
there is being written by people who are really very young , still in their
twenties. Now whether or not I am going to pick up every book by a Black or
a Chicano or an Indian or a woman and say, "Wow, lowe this book some–
thing, " I don 't know that I'm going to do that. I'm going
to
start reading
the book and ifI'm enthralled and excited by it, then I'm going
to
be en–
thralled and excited by it.
Int:
I was going
to
use
the example of Sylvia Plath. Not that she was so ignored
during her life , but she wasn't that recognized either. In fact , she didn 't
publish many of her good poems until after her death. Not many people
were interested in them even when she was sending them out .
Levine:
I think that's untrue. She was immensely successful-not successful
in the way she became successful, which is really unlike the success of most
poets .
After she died she became a celebrity , but that's something else . I
think as a poet she was very successful . She was younger than I and she was
much more successful than I. I knew her work and I liked her work. The min–
ute Isawthepoems that were to wind up in
Ariell
was enormously intrigued
and excited by them , and so was everyone else I knew who read poetry.
Int :
Robert Bly said in an interview in
The San Francisco Book Review
that if a
poet
is good and is writing good poetry, then for God's sake , leave him
alone . Don 't give him prizes and awards and money. These,
if
nothing else ,
will destroy him .
Levine :
In general, that 's probably
true.
Although I'm not going to name
