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PARTISAN REVIEW
is in some way continuous, because you are always thinking about
writing a poem. Sometimes that part of your life has nothing to do
with the state of your disposition. You can be very sad and write a
kind of satirical or gay poem. Or you can be very happy and write
something very black. It's very strange. Language has a life of its
own : you write down one word and this word communicates with
others and you follow and participate, but not in a very consciously
active way.
MCP:
I was also wondering, since you've lived in India and Mexico
and Paris, whether particular locations inspire you to write?
OP:
Once I lived in England , in Cambridge, and I loved it. England
was a great discovery . I very much admired the English, and their
political institutions . I thought that England was the perfection of
political life . I believe the Latin countries could use the British
kind of political institutions, and the life and poetry . You have the
richest poetry of the Western world. I love reading the English
poets . I love Milton. He had such a bad reputation , thanks to
Eliot. But he's a great poet. He had a great imagination that fits
the modern world so well . This hell that he decribes is really very
modern, very accurate .
MCP:
Yes , and I think Blake is another person-
OP:
Yes, we have not talked about Blake. He was my first great
love. When I was in Cambridge I discovered Wordsworth. At
first I found him a monotonous poet, but when I saw the English
landscape, I found him a very great poet. The world is important
to my work. For Mallarme the world was not the world. It was the
idea of the world. For him the real thing was the streets and the
buildings and people. For me it's different. I don't think you can
have good poetry without the sensuality of the world.
MCP:
I think that for someone like Mallarme, the world was him–
self and the blank page and a room.
OP:
Yes, that restricted view is impossible for me . I don't even ad–
mire his position, though he was a great poet. My philosophy is
the opposite, it is that of the poets who can give embodiment to
the world: Blake, for instance. Or Wordsworth, when he talks
about his childhood in the
Prelude.
He talks about ice skating in
the woods , of young boys crying and -laughing.
It
was beautiful.
MCP:
Eliot says that after the metaphysical poets, there was a "dis–
sociation of sensibility" and that the metaphysical poets absorbed
things, new inventions , objects . Do you feel that this comes
naturally tp you, to absorb the modern world?
