ARTHUR E. SMITH
77
find his new style . Maybe it's more difficult for him. I admire the fact that
he searches around and tries different things. Also, we tend to think of a
poet in a certain way . Knott, for instance. We pick up his first book and say,
"Ah , this is just marvelous, terrific." Well , he didn't want to write that
book a second time . It was a very wise decision on his part. I don't know
whether it was reached in a wise way, but I think he was right . The minute
you turn away from doing what you have done already, what people expect
of you , even if you do well or ill , you run the risk of blame rather than
praise . In spite ofwhat everyone says
to
the contrary , you're thought of in a
certain way. You know , Ginsberg is supposed to write
Howl
again. And I
remember when
Kaddish
first came out- I happen to think it's one of the
great American poems-but I also happen to know that a great many
people were puzzled by it and thought it was a bore.
Int :
OK. Maybe for the sake of conversation I am creating an imaginary
villain . But could it be the book publisher's fault also, or publicity?
Levine:
Again, I don't think it exists. I think it's your fault. And if this
discussion went on in any interesting way, I'd have
to
ask you why you
created this villain . I might ask you now, why do you want these guys
to
exist? [Laughter] Why do you need to invent them? That's the only fruitful
direction we could go....
Int :
I see a lot of talent in a poet like Tate , or Knott , or whoever, and so much
of it seems to be a mindless groping . There are a lot of vacuous spaces . You
can read a lot ofTate before you hit upon a good poem. I did a review of his
book,
Absences,
and I liked it.
It
was good, but you have to go through it.
There are some awful poems in it, awful. . . .
Levine
.'
Yeah. There are a lot of awful poems in Hardy too, but they don't
bother me . You only read them once. Again, it's a question of the way
people want
to
write, and how they write their good poems. If Tate finds
that he writes his good poems by writing a lot of poems, then I suppose
that 's what he has
to
pursue . If Roethke suppressed ninety percent of his
work as you say he did , well , that's the way he worked . Apparently Rilke
could sit there for years , with great patience , with the assurance that genu–
ine inspiration would come . I can 't , and it would be very foolish of me to
assume that I am like Rilke and that I am a great genius , which I'm not, and
to
sit there and wait for this
to
happen , because what's going to happen is
nothing. I know that . And I don 't see any point in judging myself by this
other man . I'm a different guy. I have to find the way in which I can write
best and pursue it, and encourage other people to find their way, and not
belabor them with my way . Again, when you're talking about young
people , I think it's premature to talk about their careers. They are really just
beginning. I don 't know what you would have thought of the work of
