76
Levine :
Yes. But how old is he?
In!:
Maybe 32? 30?
PARTISAN REVIEW
Levine:
So it seems very presumptuous
to
say that he's got one good book in
him. He may have forty more years of writing life . He's written many good
poems , he's been very successful, and because he has been so successful he's
probably published everything he writes , whereas with a less successful poet
we wouldn't be so aware of his bad poems-they wouldn 't be in print .
In!:
That 's what I'm getting at. Roethke, for instance, was supposed to have
published only about five percent of everything he wrote before his death,
whereas Tate-I would imagine just from the sheer volume-publishes
ninety percent of everything he writes.
Levine :
I would tend to think that the late Roethke published a lot more than
five percent . In the beginning, he had a very hard time making a career of
it. And if you'll read his letters, you'll see how much his career meant to
him . It's sad to see that he was a careerist in every sense of the word . He
worked hard to create his success, and when he got successful he loved it , he
ate it up. I don 't see anything wrong in liking your success . You would have
to be an idiot
to
be ashamed of your success . I mean , you fail in so many
things in life that you might as well get the most out of it.... But I'm just
not aware of people writing one book and failing . Some people get run over
by trains and their lives are cut short, but I'm trying to think of someone
who wrote one good book....
In! :
How about Bill Knott or Dennis Schmitz?
Levine :
Well, I continue to find the poetry of Schmitz very interesting , and he
too is a guy in his early thirties. I didn 't publish a book until I was 35 years
old. I don't know what a book I would've published at 28 would 've looked
like .
It
might have looked like shit. The rhythms of people's lives are
different. I think , in other words, that you 're creating a lcind of imaginary
villain . The poet who writes one book and "cashes in " as you say, and then
turns his back on writing . I don't think it happens. What one frequently
finds is that a poet writes the poems of his rwenties and in his thirties he's
not interested in writing them again . He 's not the same guy. In the
fust
place, he's already written those poems and there wouldn't be much sense
in writing them again-
In! :
That's one thing-
Levine :
Let me finish . The other thing is that he is somebody else. So he
begins
to
write another poem. Maybe he begins
to
experiment with another
style . And ifhe started early , then of course he's perfected a style. James
Tate was awfully good when he was awfully young. A great many American
poets weren't even writing at the age that he was very proficient . I was just
beginning. So at the age of thirty, he has a lot to throwaway before he can
