206
PARTISAN REVIEW
DM:
It
seems almost as if, because of the diversity of cultures and races in
this country, people have become gradually
less
tolerant of difference.
DW:
You have to go into a very deep reason why that is so.
It
would have
to do, perhaps, with the economic structure of the country,
in
a place where
the width between those who have property and the people out in the street,
the homeless, is staggering. The multiracial aspect of the society can be
visually exciting, as it is in New York. But in a city like Port of Spain in
Trinidad, you see a more active multiracial tolerance practiced in what is
supposed to be a backward, smaller country than you would in any city in
the States, and certainly in New York now. But I don't think it's simply be–
cause of the size; I don't think it's simply because of the hustle and the com–
petition and the capitalism and all that. I think that there's a lot more to be
said for the excitingly real variety of races from all over the world that ex–
ists in the concentrated place called Port of Spain. I'm not pretending that
there isn't a lot of hostility and prejudice - if you wish to
call
it that. But I do
not consider it to be really profound. I think the day-to-day exchange be–
tween the Indian, the Chinese, the Portuguese, the Syrian, the Black, and so
on has historical depth and guilt attached to it, but the daily practice of that life
in that city is not one that contains any threat of violence. You're always on
the edge of violence in every city in America - of racial violence. And why
is that? I think it's got to do with money: it's got to do with who protects
those who have the money.
You can use the same argument, I imagine, in the ex-colonies. But
there's also a way oflife that is different. There's a sort of elation about life,
I think, an enjoyment of it that is totally separate. And if you want to talk
about division,
that's
a division to me when I come here. When I come back
here I find that I'm clenching my teeth a little more, I have to shout a little
harder, I have to keep pointing out that I'm not ready to take anything from
anybody, and it's really a back-up attitude, you know. Not because I'm black,
but because I think it's the average experience of anyone in the street.
DM:
Your work is dominated by poems that are set out-of-doors. Much
poetry in northern countries is indoor poetry. This suggests a different
relationship to nature.
DW:
No. I don't think that entirely. The closeted and hermetic poets that
exist now in northern poetry may have as much to do with syntax as
with climate. The sort of tight-sphinctered, monosyllabic thing that passes for
good verse these days is not only a matter of weather, of people staying
inside. The pages of a lot of great American poets like Frost and Whitman
are ventilated by wind and by weather. And it's very easy to call them
nature poets - any of these adjectives that come before poets just to be
dismissive.
All
poets are nature poets - or poets by nature, which is the same
thing really. But I know what you mean, that there is a kind of closing in of
American poetry that I don't think has really to do with the outside or the
