DEREK WALCOTI
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this. But the truth of human agony is that a book does not assuage a
toothache. It isn't that things don't pass and heal. Perhaps the only privilege
that a poet has is that, in that agony, whatever chafes and hurts,
if
the person
survives, produces something that is hopefully lasting and moral from the
experience.
DM:
You've never had to deal with any type of censorship, but is the lack of
an audience - aside from other poets - a type of, not censorship, but of si–
lencing by neglect or indifference? What does this do to the voice, the silence
of not being heard, in a sense?
DW:
Well, I've always wondered about the sense of isolation of the Ameri–
can poets that is
so
acute in contemporary American poetry, especially the
generation of Lowell and Berryman and Jarrell and the others. How come
there was such adulation and yet such isolation at the same time? And how
come so many made almost a frantic claim to the right to be poets in a cul–
ture? I'm not an American, so I don't go through that. I really, in the
Caribbean, am not treated like a literary figure. And it's extremely healthy
because, in a way, I'm really left alone.
It
makes you very much your own
judge and your own applauder, unfortunately your own audience. At the
same time, it also does not make a social crisis out of the idea of being a poet,
as it does here.
I think the thing about being a poet in America, or even a young poet
in
America is the poet is almost crying out for the society to be hostile to him
- or her, I mean both him and her - to repress him, to take notice, to
imprison him, to pay attention in a sense. But what happens is suddenly or
quietly there is a very wide blandness that occurs, in which the poet is subtly
absorbed and given a name and a trade
separate
from the society, maybe
because of that naming. You are a poet, you write poetry, you get your
books published, you're in magazines. And you don't go around with a cape
and a rose, so you can't tell in this democracy how different being a poet
would be. And I think that it is this real unnavigable but hospitable space
ahead of the poet that finally makes a lot of them say, I'll just do something
else.
And that is another kind of death, really, that happens. It's not some big
dramatic thing. It may not be like breaking your pen and fleeing into the
jungle or something. But there's something that just quietly absorbs and
deadens the spirit. And it's not inertia, because Americans are vigorous,
industrious, honest - that's the quality of American activity - direct,
forthright. Pay you what you deserve, reward you with what you get,
etcetera. It's ajust society, and not a cunning one. And it isn't that you want
more evil, but it may be a very, very spiritually satisfied society - or
apparently spiritually satisfied society. It can't be disturbed. It's like making a
lot of noise in a void room. And I think that when that voice begins to sound
as
if
it's being raised for effect or lowered so that attention can be paid to it,
that middle ground is not found, you see. And then, in a way, the poet goes
