DEREK WALCOTT, SEAMUS HEANEY, AND CHRISTOPHER LYDON
607
historical experience has been a matter of his art, and that is a rare
fidelity, and a necessary one in order that poetry make its reality and
its authority felt in the
res publica.
And if America is to choose a poet
laureate, I don't think it could have chosen better, because Warren's
poetry produces history, as well as being a reaction to it. In other
words, his ambition was never just literary. Of course, he had literary
gifts and literary ironies and contributed a lot to the teaching of liter–
ature in this century. But his concern is with the life of the culture,
rather than just with his own literary career. I'm not just thinking of
the fact that he writes, in this wonderful late flowering, a poem like
"ChiefJoseph of the Nez Perce." The good thing about Warren's ap–
pointment to the laureateship is that among living American poets
he is one who has made history part of his subject. He has made re–
sponsibility to history and the prophecy of American destiny part of
his career. It's a large voice with large poetic responsibilities being
shouldered, and I think that it is proper that he is the poet whom the
republic honors, because he has done honor to the republic by keep–
ing it in mind in his own work.
CL:
What history are you talking about?
SH:
For example, the relationship
betw~en
poet and region which he
began with. He was one of the Fugitives. In the begirining as a
young poet he, along with others, thought carefully about the rela–
tionship between, if you like, a literary career and a communal
destiny. He then went on to write"':" and this is as much a matter of
the
pitch
of his voice as the content of his subjects - as if poets and as
if poetry had a responsibility for things other than just their own ex–
cellence. There is roughage in his poetry, there is subject matter,
there is an encounter with the world of prose. There is - just to take
that recent long poem - an engagement with the matter of the treat–
ment of the American Indian. It's not done in any kind of sentimen–
tal way, this is an historical moment. That poem "Chief Joseph of
the Nez Perce" is a narrative which examines responsibility in the
past and conscience and looks at the complexity of the nineteenth–
century American experience. I also mean that he himself is intent
on being equal to history. A lot of poets, nowadays, wilt in the face
of that. They go towards a very personal lyric mode. Fair enough;
it's an entirely proper response. They feel that their art or their au–
thenticity would somehow be compromised by taking on public
matters. But poetry always, from Homer through Dante, has that
challenge. And Warren did not refuse the challenge and rose to the
occasion in many places. It's the largeness of the voice and the enter–
prise that I salute, and that I think the appointment salutes.
