568
PARTISAN REVIEW
in the Skin Trade
and
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.
So
there was some background early on: it was a good thing to read
books in my house. Puns and language play were also encour–
aged. Love of language is the primary thing for a poet even
before he has anything to say. W.H. Auden said that and he was
right.
Remnick:
Did you do any writing before the army?
Wright:
I used to try to write stories in college but I wasn't
very good at it. I've always said that I am the one Southerner I
know who can't tell a story. My mind doesn't seem to work that
way, but in short flashes and bursts, which is more akin to
writing poems. Also, the kind of language I like is much more
conducive to poetry than to fiction in that it's more condensed
than fiction is able to carry for the most part.
Remnick:
You've said elsewhere that a poet is "stuck" with
the first poet he reads and enjoys.
Wright: To a certain extent I think that 's so. For instance,
I know my teacher at Iowa, Donald Justice, first read Kenneth
Patchen, who is so far away from Don justice's esthetic and
his whole road to and from poetry that you could hardly
imagine one being more different; however, he still says he re–
tains to this day a great affection for Kenneth Patchen because
he was the first poet he read. The first poet I read who was
important to me was Pound, and one tends to stick with that.
He was a beautifully gifted poet, but one who had problems
that I didn't really know about when I first started reading him.
Remnick:
Political problems?
Wright :
Yes, politically he made many missteps, shall we
say, and had at least several very wrongheaded, incorrect opin–
ions that he pushed as vigorously as he pushed anything. And
perhaps he was also more professorial in his poetry than I
would have liked him to be. As my experience widens and I see
more things that are possible and not possible in poetry, I still
think that Pound was a great poet and, so far, probably the
leading figure in American poetry in this century.
Remnick:
Did Williams's poetry help you at all?
Wright:
I am a great admirer of Williams. I love him. You
can't write poetry in this century without having read Williams,
and how can you read Williams and not love him? Imagine
getting that kind of simplicity, specificity, emotion, and power
out of little things. He was able to do it simply-for the rest of
