572
PARTISAN REVIEW
are, like the #14 from "Tattoos," or my dream from this
morning when the man approached me for the check to Jesus.
"Virgo Descending" came out, though, as a very narrative
dream. Obviously, I fleshed it out, but the image of seeing my
grandmother, of walking through these cavernous halls, emer–
ged very narratively. I don't know exactly, but that took only
two or three days
to
write. Some poems, some of the little poems
in
China Trace,
for instance, took a month to six weeks. So
spontaneity exists in the beginning of the poem, and each time
you come back to it you make little spontaneous insights into
how it might be done, but there is not one long continuous
writing as if it were a dictation. That never happens to me. My
mind works in flashes and starts and not in continuous move–
ments as Ginsberg's; he must have a mind like that in order
to
have written "Howl" in the length of time he describes or
"Kaddish," which he wrote overnight at long sittings. I can' t sit
still for that long and still concentrate.
Remnick:
When do you work?
Wright:
Catch as catch can. I can't sit for that long a period.
I work for an hour or two, get something down , get up, read,
walk around, come back to it, try to get something else down
and work on what I have. No long stretches. I envy people who
can do that. A friend of mine, the poet J on Anderson, writes out
everyone of his poems completely over a night and then goes
back the next night and begins to rework. The first versions are
done in one sitting. Never for me. No matter how long or short
the poem. The one-line poem in
China Trace,
"Bygones," was
the result of days of work.
Remnick:
How did it start?
Wright:
As a one-line poem, and then it got longer and then
shrank. I thought that I could get one line with a title that made
sense. I was trying to write a one-line poem-try it. It's hard as
hell!
Remnick:
You 've tried many technical experiments. "By–
gones" is only one example. Are technical experiments a real
impulse
to
write for you?
Wright:
Technical experiments are a major source of inter–
est to me. Every poem should have something new to me in it;
otherwise, it holds little interest to me as a writer. What I have
to say, I say. How I say it is a continual discovery.
