The Iowa Review
Volume 25
Issue 1 Winter
1995
An Interview with Jane Cooper
Eric Gudas
Jane Cooper
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Gudas, Eric and Jane Cooper. "An Interview with Jane Cooper." The Iowa Review 25.1 (1995): 90-110. Web.
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Article 16
An
Interview
with
Jane Cooper
-New
YorkCity: July, 1994
Green Notebook, Winter Road seems to be your most American
book so far, in terms of its concerns and even of the forms you've chosen
to write in. Do you agree? What do you think has made it
possible for you
Eric Gudas:
in a way,
to write,
as a citizen?
a very
question. But yes, you're right, I do
Jane Cooper: That's
complicated
think this is my most American
book. First of all, it's a book that's very
with
and
how the sense of history
much
concerned
extends an
history,
life, both as you look back and as you look ahead into the future.
to
I used
think that what was most
important for Americans was to focus
this was the legacy of World War II for
outward, to accept internationalism;
individual
me. At
the same time,
three-quarters of my ancestors came from what used
"old American
from Georgia,
Florida, Tennessee,
families,"
in
is
What's
that
the
Stories"
section of Green
changed
"Family
I've consciously
that legacy, rather than turning away
explored
to be called
Delaware.
Notebook
as I did earlier. But
from
it, toward internationalism,
are aspects of my
consciousness
citizen, if you will.
of being
both
an American,
these attitudes
and of being
a
I've always been very interested in imagining what the task is for
Then,
an American
an American writer,
artist. In this book there are two extended
on Willa
meditations,
Cather
and Georgia
O'Keeffe,
and
the American
a very
as their signatures,
and that's obviously
landscapes
they chose
a
different focus from writing
Cather
long poem about Rosa Luxemburg.
one
at
in
I
Antonia?"For
shall
be the
says
My
point?she
paraphrases Virgil
into my country." Of course she's leaving
first, if I live, to bring the Muse
a central flaw in her, but, you
points to
know, this too is part of our legacy, that until quite recently someone could
. . .
still feel that way.
out the Native
EG: That
Americans,
which
she could be the first one?
Eric Gudas was
the interviewer.
90
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JC: That
Nebraska
she could
EG:
that no one had ever written
never
Plains.
about
to be the
Obviously,
you're
going
the South, but still she gave up trying to write
and decided she could write about Nebraska.
first one to write
Henry
be the first one,
and the Great
James
about
It seems you made
a real decision
at some point
to try and write
like
about
the South.
I've always had it in the back of my mind to do. Lately, I've been
with my assistant,
through old boxes of poems and poem-drafts
going
Beatrix Gates, and there are a lot of attempts at writing
poems about the
JC: Well,
never
good. It's not that I
thought
to myself.
it's as if I'd made a promise
South, most
of them not much
it, but with
this book
of doing
if you'd talk a little about your family background,
an introduction
to some of the people they'll meet
give interested readers
the "Family Stories" section of Green Notebook.
EG:
I'm wondering
to
in
and inheritance?or,
let's say, by
by upbringing
I spent my childhood
in the deep South, until I
and inheritance.
geography
was ten, and my father's family is Southern from way back. Up till this
a
but not about my father, or
book I'd written
good deal about my mother,
JC:
I'm half-Southern,
Iwrote
when
I think now
about
that one
part of my life it seemed
I didn't write more about my
the Southern
reason
unsatisfactory.
father's family
I really needed to find out who Iwas
earlier is that they seemed so powerful.
apart from them. I think we know this can be true of boys who have strong
is understood
how much
about the effect on
paternal figures, but Iwonder
young women?
had been a lawyer in an old family firm in Jacksonville,
a series of
Florida, became,
through
surprises, one of the world authorities
on aviation and space law?someone
who in his fifties began to lead a very
international
life. And my uncle, his younger brother, Merian C. Cooper,
father, who
My
was
a
in documentary
and later, for many years, John
film-making,
He had had a very romantic youth, and was
Ford's partner in Hollywood.
the original genius behind King Kong. So as children we breathed the air of
pioneer
a lot of
a lot of old stories
family mythology,
that we were brought up with. The story told in "How Can I Speak for
took place right after the Civil War, was one of
Her?", for instance, which
romance! And
then there was
91
the most
memorable
stories
of my
childhood.
Who
knows
how much
is
true?
seems
to
important to say is that I'm not using family background
sense in this book?I'm
create a domestic
using it to extend the individual
consciousness
and
And a lot of it is mythol
mythology.
through history
What
itwas important
ogy. Also,
romantic or terrible aspects,
of my
childhood
during
to me not just to get down the old South in its
but to get some sense of the honky-tonk
South
the Depression?that
is, the cousin who painted on
spiderwebs and got to theHobby Lobby of the 1939World's Fair!And the
children inmy rural public school?the kind of South that leftme with a
social
reality
EG:
Both
conscience.
a part of my
very much
was
and
then
there
the everyday
stuff,
some of which was very
funny.
those
things
were
a lot of romantic
was
life?there
that we
lived with,
It seems you've
been
able to get a real mix.
. . .
I hope so. Marilyn
Chin read the manuscript
just before
JC: Who knows?
to press and found a kind of nostalgia?nostalgia
it went
for a South of
she called an "old-fashioned
American
stable families and what
compas
sion." That was a shock to me, because the last thing I imagined was that
Iwas
there are things here I don't even see
feeling nostalgic. But probably
Iwould never underestimate
the tremendous
charm that the South has
yet.
for me,
the giftedness of many people who come out ofthat
courage. But it's just such a complicated
heritage.
area?and
their
the
the things you really seem to be trying is to balance
in
of
withthe
charm.
the
"Hotel
de
heritage
Especially
complicatedness
.
.
.
Dream,"
you get a quite jaunty feeling of being out on the docks.
EG: One
of
JC: Iwanted
to get a jaunty
feeling.
...
to "relish
the poem ends by asking a really difficult question?how
child's
/ unjust white
yet redress" your "sensuous,
precious, upper-class,
...
one
to balance those two verbs against
?
another
past"? How
EG: But
JC: The
92
"relish"
is also real.
to just have
EG: Whereas
something
I'm obligated
JC: That's
right.
"redress"
would
be,
in a way,
to say, "This
is
to do."
. . .
itself,
poems have always been concerned with the act of writing
the act of narrative. For
and in your new book I see a new concern with
EG: Your
an
instance,
early draft of "How Can
I Speak for Her?"
began with
the line,
"This is a story I have known allmy life, but how can I tell it to you if I
story it is?" The poems seem to be asking, How does
a story? Whose
can be
story is it?Who
approach
spoken for, whose
Does
this seem accurate to you?
memory?
don't
know whose
one
even as a child, is how the
JC: One of the things that always struck me,
same stories got told differently
I
by different people in the family. When
was
ever
saw
Roshomon?this
before
I'd
heard
of
first
years
was knocked
out by it, because I thought, That's just
deconstruction?I
that the story he or she is telling
how it is, each of these people is convinced
is the story. It was just impossible for me as a child, or even as an adult, to
know what was
true. My
aunt, for instance,
"the Castilian,"
ther's grandmother,
then her North American
husband
always said that my grandfa
had been married off at fourteen, and
brought
her back
father, who was
to this country and
amuch more austere
sent her to boarding
school. But my
said nonsense,
their first child was born before she
than
aunt,
my
storyteller
ever left Cuba. Well,
in that case I believe my father's version, but I had
called "How Can I Speak for Her?" "What Each One Saw," and
originally
to show the same story from three different points of view,
I had wanted
as a little child, and then his
starting with my grandfather
grandmother
woman.
And as I got deeper and
telling what she saw, and then the black
I realized that I simply couldn't do it?I had no
deeper into this material,
the white woman
saw, I couldn't imagine what her life
right to say what
was
like,
given both
of repeated
experience
couldn't write
about
the
that she obviously
had and the
arrogance
and suffering
that she had. And
if I
uprootings
her I certainly
couldn't write
about the African
her history of slavery, all those years on a plantation,
and
.
.
.
And
Africa before that.
finally that inability became the point of
to life somehow.
the story, along with the desire still to bring those women
woman,
with
West
93
a very important
story for me as a child, that that great-great
at
two
knew
African
least
tribal dialects, which
she had never
grandmother
It was
to her white
revealed
moment
that moment?the
of the
family. Until
Itwas pretty rare, I think, but she had grown up
themselves
been taken out of Africa and still spoke
never knew.
poem?they
with people who had
those languages, and from
Cuba,
and
and she knew
then
as a boss.
the time she was
the languages,
It was
such
ran the
in
eight she
plantation
I presume, first as a child at the breast,
an evocative
story for a kid to hear.
I keep finding
little things that are
poems
and yet I don't think that changes the truthfulness
inaccurate, or speculative,
to
too
I'm trying
of what
do, because I think that those embellishments
Throughout
the Southern
have become
a part of what
happened.
as
seeing the story inside time,
something
in your own version of it.
that's evolving
EG: You're
that's still evolving,
so. Time is very
in this whole book. When
important
JC: That's probably
I used to tell people that time is the unseen character,
I taught fiction writing
move
a
and part of my wish in writing
longer poems is to
through time in
way
The
that the lyric doesn't always do, or doesn't need to do in the same way.
tale of these stories,
the meaning
of these stories, changes as the
generations
EG: And
change.
you're
not
trying
that as an element
to deny
in the story
itself.
not to. I'm sure I fall on my face sometimes,
But
like everybody.
as it evolved. Jan Heller
I
Can
read
"How
for
Her?"
people
Speak
for instance, was very helpful to me, because she kept saying, "You
JC: Iwant
many
Levi,
you can't even
say that about the African woman,
was on her side as well.
braced,'
thinking that the embrace
say 'they em
How
do you
was
I
know how
she felt when
told the two
they embraced?"
always
women
embraced, but Jan kept saying, "What does that mean?" And itwas
out of that question
that the title came.
can't
EG:
So there's
anything
94
about
a tension
anyone
between
trying
in the story?
to tell a story
and not
assuming
to have characters who
JC: I really want
not to be any kind of authority over
that?but
it almost drove me crazy!
EG: How
are not
and at the same time
myself,
to try to do
them. It's interesting
see relations
among the various forms you use in your
lyrics in long lines, poems in regular stanzas
? Given
the multiplicity
of concerns
in the
do you
new
narrative,
book?prose
and even rhyme, blues ...
book, how conscious was your
choice
of what
to work
forms
with?
the two poles of speech and
JC: I've always felt that poetry vibrates between
between
song, or you could say that the poem has to find itself somewhere
were
forms
and
singing
always fairly easy for
telling. Short, regular lyric
a
took me
long time to learn how to write free verse. This book is
different in that I played around with long lines in a number of poems in a
and I began to explore
that I had never done before,
the use of
way
I certainly think of as
narratives which
aren't in verse at all, but which
the
like
"From
the
prose narratives,
poems. Mostly
Journal Concerning My
me?it
Father"
and "How Can
I Speak for Her?", were
much historical detail that a lyric form would
itwould have been impossible. And Iwanted
be reinvented.
I wasn't
of varying
the choice.
conscious
narratives
that contained
so
have been wrong
for them,
so the form had to
the detail,
forms
particularly
as Iwent
along?the
necessity preceded
Take "From the Journal Concerning My Father," for instance. I had the
to write about my father, and I started
idea a couple years ago that Iwanted
was
putting down a few notes. Then one day I
looking through a box of old
most
I
I
and
that
of this poem in the early
had
written
found
drafts,
really
it. But what was most
came
interesting was that there
and
the finished piece only
separate poems,
I realized that some lines about myself,
about saying
to what
of my childhood, were intimately connected
about him. So it's been an incremental matter for me
'80s and forgotten
were
originally
all about
three or four
together when
to the natural world
goodbye
Iwas
saying
rather than, most of the time,
EG: And
you wrote
a blues
"Wanda's
Blues."
a deliberate
poem
...
I went
one.
?
to a rural
school outside
public
Iwas seven, eight, nine, and many of the kids were the
Jacksonville when
children of shrimp fishermen or white
sharecroppers. This was during the
JC: Yes,
95
and their poverty
Depression,
to write about
always wanted
seemed
EG: What
was
it like to work
Later, looking back, I
children, but I'd lost their language.
access
like the sound
again to something
those
the blues form gave me
of their lives.
Somehow
bottomless.
in longer
lines?
JC:A challenge!The year that I had theBunting Fellowship Iwas stuck at
one
said to me, "I'll give you an assignment.
I've
point, and Marie Howe
a
to
told
freshmen
so
in
write
I
and
my
poem
just
suggest the
long lines,
same
for you, too." And out of her assignment
came the
assignment
elegy
called "Long, Disconsolate
to
which
I'd
been
write in other
Lines,"
trying
. . . It's not that I had never used
ways.
long lines?"Estrangement,"
written
earlier, is in lines that are just as long?but
suddenly this became
to really experiment with.
I think playing around with
something
long lines
to write
then gave me permission
in prose lines, or speech lines. I like the
idea that this whole book is a kind of counterpoint
of song and speech, of
I'm always interested
in getting different
singing and telling. Musically,
and juxtaposing
them one with another. I tend to say
"compose"
rather than "write" when
I think of my poems,
and in the Willa Cather
there's actually a slightly different music
for each
"Vocation,"
poem,
section. And in the same way
in the book as a whole
to keep
I wanted
one
so
kinds
of
different
tonalities
that
other,
setting
against
right after
Lines" you have the poem "Bloodroot,"
which was
"Long, Disconsolate
effects
written
the same winter
but
in very
short
lines.
I didn't want
to give up
anything.
EG: You
writing
putting
JC: When
were
just
your poems,
a book
together?
I say composition,
I had a remarkable
painting.
often and sixteen,
than any poetry
96
rather than
speaking about thinking of composing
and I'm wondering
if you feel the same way about
I think both
of music
teacher when
painting
and she really taught me more
teacher I ever had. So I still have
a
and of composing
between
the ages
Iwas
about composition
in art
that sort of spatial sense.
EG:
of music,
Speaking
me.
to
movements
Could
specifically
when
the four
parts of the book
really feel like
you talk about what
you were
thinking of
Green
Notebook
you put
together?
that this is not going to be an easy book for some readers,
JC: I know
because
the parts are so different from one another.
are used to
People
books where
there's an increasing underlining
of a few main
themes, and
this book really has four very separate sections, so it requires a
willingness
on the part of the reader to
keep
is related. . . .
everything
starting over. Of
course,
in the end, for me,
The first part, "On the Edge of the Moment,"
ismade up of lyrics that
at
look
there are also poems about my
friendship,
aging, dreams. And
in
which
literal
but out of
parents
they're scarcely my
parents any more,
some
of parents. I do think that as you get older your parents
mythology
become almost mythological
figures to you. It doesn't mean that you forget
who your actual parents were, but if anything they loom even
larger than
they did when
they were alive.
"Family Stories" is the second
and here there's not only a variety
characters as you move
back and forth
section,
but a variety of different
That pleases me very much?I
time.
wanted
the book to have a
through
more
peopled quality than it had in earlier versions before these poems were
of forms
written.
what
the
"Family Stories" is also of course acknowledging
to someone of my age who then didn't go on to
Southern legacy has meant
live in the South, who just had that memory.
And
"Give Us This Day" concerns illnesses, but specifically what Iwould
of illness," that is, the communities
that ill people make
the "culture
themselves
call
for
and how
"The Children's Ward"
is the
they think. Incidentally,
one instance in the book where prose is used as itwould be in a short
story;
too
this is not a non-verse
out."
"written
poem?it's
And
then finally "Vocation:
A Life" contains
the long
are examinations
O'Keeffe
and Wilta Cather, which
Georgia
rience of an American
woman
sequences on
of the expe
artist at different
ages. Age is very important
same
as we get
the
experience
phenomena
changes
older?and
how it doesn't change. And this is of course another aspect of
the fascination with history.
I think it's important that in both the
"Family
to me,
how
Stories"
nineteenth
our
of
and the "Vocation"
century
the poems keep going back to the
sections,
even
and
before that, at the same time that there's a lot
97
is part of the legacy
of moving
forward into outer space, which
I really was
with
father.
like what
up
brought
questions
can we do with
outer space, and what
it. I had a strange
constitutes
sense
I think, in the
that domestic
life inmy immediate family
background,
was very much what I imagine life in a nineteenth-century
family to have
of imagery
from my
yet all the time the thinking was extremely
pioneering,
daring and
were
in
Cather
and
O'Keeffe
born
the
Both
nineteenth
theoretical.
been,
in the same year as my
century?O'Keeffe
father,
I find oddly
1887, which
interesting.
EG: Throughout
the book there is that question of the speaking
two
between
eras, of being almost able to touch the nineteenth
at the same time
forward
looking
figure being
century and
to the twenty-first.
to get that
to get that. Iwanted
of the self, that
enlargement
JC: Iwanted
sense of continuity.
lack right
Partly because I think it's what Americans
a
a
sense
of their history,
and that gives them
now,
very uncertain sense of
destiny. Kids don't study history in school the way they used to, they don't
see much
on
that's accurate
I hope
Wars?
I'm not
television.
only
looking
do you have
I wanted
backward,
What
to anchor
to be
Star
looking
too.
forward,
you feel that there are any other
the book's four sections?
EG: Do
concerns
that thread throughout
Concern with
solitude?equally.
friendship.
JC: Concern with
with survival of life on the earth. A sense that our experience
lives.
dreams as much as our daylight
EG: Have
dreams
always
been
a great
Concern
includes
our
source for your writing?
I think I use them more freely now, but there have always
JC: Absolutely.
Not
all dreams make
of course, but
been dream-poems.
good poems,
that in, and
there will be a great dream and often I can work
periodically
even
if it's not
if it's only two-and-a-half
lines, it's there
poem,
I like poems
that are not just about one thing but that are
nevertheless.
For instance,
in the poem
of
different
parts of my experience.
layerings
there's a dream in the third stanza about a locked door
"Ordinary Detail,"
98
the whole
which
was
to me, and when
I had that dream I thought it
very important
a
to be whole
Instead it turned out just to be that little
poem.
it certainly changed the poem.
was
going
sliver?but
EG: We
started
talking about
at this
point.
talk some more
earlier,
longer poems
and maybe
we
could
I've always thought it was a big mistake
for people to think
JC: Basically,
as
or
of poems
of
only,
essentially,
lyrics. If you look at the history
literature, the novel doesn't turn up until quite late, and before that it's epic
that we consider fiction was originally
poems, dramatic verse?everything
to go beyond
I've always wanted
the confines of the lyric
can
for
what
For
the
do.
many years I taught a
losing respect
lyric
course called Long Poems.
(At one point it was Long Poems and Short
. . What
mean
were
two courses.
Stories! I
those
interested me
my
.)
And
poetry.
without
were
American
long poems,
two books
of Paterson,
I've always thought the
a
on paper and Americans
seem to
long poem attempts to put
community
have had an exceptionally
hard time doing that. Whitman
is the central
Whitman
of "Song of Myself."
But I also loved
figure for me here?the
particularly
the first
because
and Frost's North
of Boston, which
a
I
of
but
think
it's
pretends
longer poems,
really
village, and
as
as
can talk to
it's
full of solitudes
any village could ever be?nobody
were
else.
Muriel
and
very important,
anybody
long poems
Rukeyser's
The Book of Nightmares,
parts of The Bridge, and Galway KinnelPs
Jean
teaching
to be a book
Valentine's
"Solitudes."
And Adrienne
especially
"Twenty-One
"Contradictions:
Tracking
Difficult
longer poems
and the one
Love
Poems,"
Poems"?and
now,
recently,
and sequences,
about pain?
"An Atlas
of the
World."
EG: But what
JC: As
sustain
Rich's
early
it yet.
about your
own
practice?
as 1953, I was
trying
I had more
luck with
to write
a
longer poem, but I couldn't
There are three sequences in
sequences.
and another
in Maps &
of Six Mornings,
a
in
wrote
I
in
three
1977-78,
Finally,
parts called
long poem
on
"Threads: Rosa Luxemburg
from Prison,"
based
letters Rosa Luxem
wrote
to
was
a
Liebknecht
when
she
in
burg
Sophie
political prisoner
toward the end of World War I. This was very different from
Germany
my first
Windows.
book,
The Weather
99
that
and I got excited by it?the momentum
I'd done before,
anything
of
builds up as you move
lines, moments
through time and yet details,
. . . The
a
to
of
Luxem
is
of
many
poem
collage
overlap.
feeling begin
as I immersed
own images and quotes her actual words,
but
myself
burg's
it was
in her Prison Letters,
and O'Keeffe
Cather
poems
ends.
to different
further,
With
I simply
"Threads,"
to May
a
dialogue with her. The
carrying on
in the new book take the same techniques
as if Iwas
was
Stevens who
read the Prison Letters over and over,
using
the figure
of Rosa
Luxemburg
and talked
in collages
and paintings, but I didn't read a full-length biography of her till Iwas
me a year and a half to finish the poem. With "Vocation,"
through. It took
over a period of,
I did a great deal of research and it built up incrementally
finally, ten years! It all started with my realization that for Willa Cather the
of
experience
a
writer
herself
was
connected with
declaring
profoundly
her the way Iwanted
and nothing
else. But to understand
read the novels and short stories that deal with New Mexico
the Southwest
to, I not only
and the Four Corners
that was written
her personally.
ambitious.
about her,
and a good deal
who had known
doubt
of the poem
No
region,
I read everything
she wrote
especially by contemporaries
this slowed me up. But the design
is
to do
are four parts, and basically,
through Cather, what Iwanted
a woman
art at different ages?in
about
her
artist
feels
how
explore
vital
age, and old age. Having been amarvelously
youth, childhood, middle
There
was
an ungenerous
person as she grew
quite
never
older, and at one point I began to think I'd
get her through middle
me up. She really had to face her solitude?the
too
So
this
slowed
poem
age!
woman,
young
Cather
has to face it?and
became
the poem calls "coldness at heart." The O'Keeffe
Road," was a kind of spin-off from the Cather,
in
of the Southwest
looking at O'Keeffe's
paintings
what
"The Winter
sequence,
I had been
because
to open out my
instead of continuing
O'Keeffe
twelve?but
EG: Do
poem
100
poems.
I cut down
part of my
Cather,
own
Then,
fairly limited experience of New Mexico.
I found myself writing
the
with
the Cather poem,
a
ten or
lot of them?maybe
there were
Originally
order
you
does?
to just four. I think of them as an addendum
same subject.
thinking about the
see them moving
through
time
in the same way
to the
the Cather
JC: Not really, because they're all old age poems. They
a little bit, but all of them bleakly face old age as a kind
is not something
abstraction of being very old?which
I feel in O'Keeffe's
about but which
very late work.
move
through time
of abstraction?the
that's much
And
written
then there are
I was
in the Southwest.
For
felt when
things that I personally
I was staying, was
instance, I felt that the landscape around Taos, where
inNew England,
not human-centered.
In the Northeast,
everything
simply
and the
is more or less human in scale, but then you go to the Southwest
certain
scale
I think
is monumental.
the Native
Americans
are related
to that
to possess
it, but white people are not
they never tried
to
time an Easterner
said
related to it. Someone
me, Every
us off, take things away, so the poem ends "I
they try and rip
because
landscape
particularly
comes here
to take nothing
that this was a
away." I also felt, profoundly,
was
to
it
for
there
didn't
that
me,
respect,
just
profound
belong
landscape
are
absolute hands-off.
So those ideas got into the O'Keeffe,
although they
concerns
too. A lot of the Cather poem
in the background
of the Cather,
of
property.
conceptions
was meant
EG: The
first
section
physical
experience
of the Cather
of a Southwestern
poem
is an evocation
landscape.
of one person's
. . .
the easiest
the youth section, and it's much
"Desire,"
JC: Right?that's
It's a poem that
is a difficult poem for anybody.
section. I think "Vocation"
but
it's
hard to follow
reads well aloud because it's closely scored musically,
on the page. And I have no answer to that. Whereas
is I think a
"Threads"
even
if you don't know much
very accessible poem, humanly
speaking,
about the actual history. Cather protects herself, she does so even in this
poem.
EG: Do
you
think you were working
to protect
her,
too?
In "Threads"
JC: I think she protects herself, I think she's very guarded.
to explore was the nature of a woman who
is a political
I wanted
what
cut off and vulnerable
as she grows more
and more
activist, especially
I was
she is in prison.
scientific
thinker, the original
because
also very
struck by Rosa
Luxemburg
the
isn't
ecologist. My Luxemburg
probably
a
not
Nor areWilla
is
character.
comfortable
and
she
anyone else's,
certainly
in increasing fame
who seem to have worked
Cather and Georgia O'Keeffe,
101
yet
isolation.
There
nor would
myself,
was able to meditate
is a paradox
I have wanted
on
some
women
are
not
absolutely
to be any of them. But
I
them
through
concern me: the
of the themes that most
here. These
of the earth, the importance of relationship,
the nature of solitude,
to grow older, what
whether
enforced or self-imposed,
what
it means
it
. . .
means
to be a woman who breaks the mold.
survival
EG:
In the Foreword
must
have
Could
to
Scaffolding you wrote of your "urgency
in relation to "Threads"
consciousness,"
specifically
a woman's
been
explore
and what
certain
talk about
you
to
still in manuscript.
poems from Green Notebook
new
to
in relation
this urgency
book?
your
JC: I had already started theWilla Cather poem at the time I put Scaffolding
together,
to
explore
so Iwas
thinking ofthat, but I believe I've always had an urgency
a woman's
consciousness.
After
all, my earliest poems were
to write
I
poems from a woman's
point of view. And while
of women's
roles have changed over the years, I don't
think my feeling that I can only write as awoman
has ever changed. Maybe
to say that the new book is not
it's important
only full of a woman's
attempts
think my
war
definitions
a female
"I" who
and puts the
always
perceives
individual
and the book
also, there are women
poems
together?but
characters all the way
like Muriel
through. There are friends,
Rukeyser,
are
women
are
there
the various
characters like
artists, then there
made-up
consciousness?it's
in "Ordinary Detail," who's not me and is not anyone
the young woman
I know but is someone that I could imagine quite well, who wants
to make
nice for everybody?her
life has come to the point of betraying
everything
her. And there's Wanda, Clementene,
from the Infusion Room,
Maryanne
the two women
very much.
with some
in "How Can
It's not that men's
. . .
intimacy
about
I Speak for Her?" Women's
lives interest me
lives don't
I feel I can write
the kinds
you've had a long-standing
talk a little about that?
EG:
I know
interest me?but
of things
interest
that women
in biography.
run into.
Could
you
and autobiography
both attract me because,
JC: Biography
again, they
reveal the intersection of the individual
life with history,
the way individ
I think I've said enough
uals have of being in the world.
I
about what
wanted
102
to do in "Threads"
and what
Iwanted
to do with
Cather.
Certainly
Iwas
kind
concept of the "Lives,"
by Muriel Rukeyser's
to which
she returned throughout
her career. But
influenced
and verse,
of work
both prose
I think this
to me even before I read Willard Gibbs or
important
The two questions overlap, of long poems and biogra
turn out, in some real sense, to
the long poems I've written
was
"K?the Kollwitz."
phy, because
have been biographies.
EG: But
JC: Well,
EG: Could
awareness
right
now.
It's not
that Imight
not write
another
kind
....
. . .
I'm glad not to be writing
at the moment
we
in which you've
talk about ways
of race and class into your new work?
a long
poem!
been
able to incorporate
once made the
race and
JC: I think you
point that I hadn't really dealt with
class much before, which
startled me, because these have always been such
concerns. But Iwas looking back through Scaffolding, and Imust
passionate
see
I
what
say
you mean. Perhaps the original shape of Maps & Windows, my
second book, showed a political awareness that is somewhat dissipated now
that the poems have a different order in Scaffolding; or perhaps some of the
still unpublished
there's a small poem
poems would be revealing. Anyway,
of the Suburbs" that you might
from Maps & Windows called "A Nightmare
take a look at. It concerns
an
woman
inWestchester,
upper-middle-class
I imagined her?who
time the late '60s?as
thinks there's going to be a
and so she keeps a pistol in her bedside table. And because
black revolution,
she has a pistol, someday she is going to shoot it. I'm convinced,
if you have
. . . So she's the one who will start the
pistol, you're going to shoot it.
a
That is poem about both race and class, but it's also a poem
revolution.
not
that was considered racist by several early readers, which was obviously
a
what
a
I think that in
reading I had to deal with.
is not only a feminist poem and a poem about
that is conscious of race and class. At the point in putting
I intended?but
it was
"The Flashboat"
Scaffolding
work but a poem
Green Notebook
together when
I not only had to write about
endemic
militarism
that were
to write about the South,
I really set myself
race and class, but also about the sexism and
in my
childhood
among people of my
a certain kind of
I
and
of
think
my father fought all those
generation
family.
ever did, of his age, but they were
there, all
things as well as anybody
103
around
forget
same. And
just the
militarism?perhaps
people particularly
as somehow
to include militarism
part of the whole
syndrome.
us,
not a new
EG: So it's obviously
a new
It's not
awareness.
. . .
I do
see?in
looking back through
more
to
the
be
limited to the personal
appear
poems might
Scaffolding?that
out of, almost, certain assumptions
of
than I'd meant. And to be written
I'd rather not feel Iwas
how one lives and how one was educated?which
JC:
always
EG:
going
It seems
certain
but
awareness,
to do.
a conscious
task of much
to get at the root of
of this book
assumptions.
JC: I think that goes back to the ethical idea of whose story is it?Probably
it's not
the same
quite
related question would
the Southern poems with
inward
as "Vocation,"
increasingly
from
are related. Another
they
interesting,
it's possible in the same book to be writing
a poem as
their clear social concerns, and writing
but
thing,
be how
is about
which
the daily
lives
around
an artist who
her. The
cut herself
juxtaposition
off
seems
difficult. You asked if I had definite things Iwanted to accomplish?and I
guess I really needed to do both those things. But
artist?one
doesn't want to be totally self-reflexive.
EG: We've
in the book,
even
to write
about
an
talked about your family and about the South asmajor presences
and I think a third major presence is that of Muriel Rukeyser.
. . .
so many different ways.
JC: She was threaded through my life in
which
She used to ask audiences, "Who was your first living poet?"?by
she meant, At what age did you realize that poems weren't
just locked up
by dead people, generally men, but that there are living,
the streets around us? And while Allen T?te was
breathing poets walking
one
of my schoolmates,
and I sort of knew him, Muriel was
the father of
in books written
my first living poet. When
her first two books from
Iwas
or fourteen my
and I suddenly had
twelve
college,
woman
out there
this quite young,
energetic
poems. Of course I didn't understand much of what
was
was
104
very moving.
sister brought back
the sense that there
in the world
she was
writing
doing, but it
to teach, in the early '50s,
to Sarah Lawrence
two people were
we
friends?no
became fast
she began to teach there, and
ever less alike. Her work was important to me, but at the same time it was
And
then soon after Iwent
so different
she published before
the work
from my own, and especially
was
not
I
much
influenced
I
think
that
1960,
by it and even
some aspects of it. Her way of making
images flow
consciously
rejected
and
one
them
for
into
instance,
another,
leaving
apparently unfinished,
about
to
was absolutely what I didn't want
rushing from one thing to the next,
to
Iwrote
be very fully fleshed out, very finished
do. Iwanted
everything
as I've said,
in another tradition. Eventually,
and exact?I was still working
was
Iwas influenced by the "Lives," and by her concept that this
something
about
hadn't
been
written
that
with
lives
do?work
could
before,
poetry
that had even
in some way been
I realized something
"lost."
that in her Preface
remember
else. You'll
Recently,
to the Collected Poems she talks about "two kinds of reaching in poetry, one
informed
the evidence
based on document,
itself; the other kind
by
. . .where
are shared and we all
things
I've
the secrets." It's taken me till just now to see that the mix
recognize
a
not
mix.
in
in
if
tried for in Green Notebook
is,
Rukeyser
style,
spirit
unverifiable
EG: And
fact,
as in sex, dream
since her death her work
has been out of sight, out of print.
. . .
before I comment on that, let me say that I believe her to be
JC: Yes?but
one of the absolutely
litera
American
central figures in twentieth-century
ture. And I'm delighted
there is now such a revival of interest in her work.
need her power of making
that I am it," her courage, wit,
We
we need her power
connections,
that comes from writing
music
very center of your body.
it seem insane that her Collected Poems was
All of which makes
go out of print. And for years
was difficult
to teach her work.
she was
"to know
out of the
allowed
to
so it
or
barely,
badly, anthologized,
In any case, she has never been easy to
the rush of images and the generali
teach. Students often can't deal with
as
Levi
Heller
zations, though
says in the new Muriel Rukeyser Reader
Jan
(Norton, 1994), it helps if you start at the end, with her last three books, and
then work
backward.
...
I used
to teach some
and
long poems,
I think it would
be
of her
I had a struggle.
always, both at Iowa and Columbia,
is coming around to her?that
easier now. I think the world
people
can read
105
her now with
pleasure who
ten or fifteen
years
have
ago might
drawn
a
blank.
EG: She's
catching
in many
ways
that kind of writer,
one who
people
are just now
up with.
out of what,
she really wrote
for her, was the present, which
JC: Well,
means
that she was ahead of most of us. Also,
she's a Romantic writer?or,
"
as she would
have said, a "poet of possibility.
Which
doesn't mean
that
she's eternally
that she doesn't
but does mean
optimistic,
give up on
salvation.
But what
obviously
that's hard for some people to address, especially politically.
there are a lot of more
you can't get around is her vitality;
perfect poets who don't give out the same vitality.
And
EG: It might be important to balance that kind of criticism of her
work?that
it's trying
it's not always as perfect
to do in the world.
as it could be?with
a
feeling
of what
a
it's trying to do in the world,
JC: It's not only
feeling of what
though
you're right to bring that up, but it's how the body of poetry and prose adds
this enormous body of work,
and you can't leave
up, fits together. Here's
out any of it, if you're really going to do her justice. The more you read of
her,
the more
valuable
If you simply excerpt a few short
time, because people are going to see
did that get there? Why didn't she finish that?
she becomes.
to have
poems, you're going
small flaws and think, How
a hard
are some
in every poem?there
to
I think if you
end. But
beginning
Not
. . . She's an enormous
accomplished.
of a lot of scope myself,
I profoundly
that
think
seem
of
from
just wonderful
the scope of what
she
figure. Never
having been
admire that quality in her.
of scope, you're a writer who,
the question
despite
to
commitment
has
poetry,
passionate
published
only about
on
in
comment
four
books.
Could
that?
poems
you
EG: On
a writer
a
lifelong,
a hundred
Iwas forty-four before my first book came out,
it's true?clearly.
JC: Well,
I had already been writing
which means
seriously for over twenty years
I finally got a book published.
when
So it was in a real sense a "selected
poems,"
106
and in fact all three books
before
this one were
"selected
poems."
In going through the boxes of old manuscripts
that Imentioned
earlier, I
startled to find that there are probably a couple of hundred more poems
was
never
that have
A
been
published.
were
decisions
perfectly
to do about
published?those
decent, and I don't know what
a Collected Poems
publishing
been seen before! You want
lot of
them
sound.
shouldn't
have
some
But
been
are
quite
It's very odd to consider
include old poems that have never
that would
them.
to be concerned
with
what
will
happen next,
you did in some kind of silence twenty or thirty years ago.
a bit
can be found
Still, even I believe that I've made something
larger than
on the library shelf.
not with what
EG: Could
writers
talk about
the way
the support and guidance
and your vision of it?
shaped your work,
you
have
JC: I would
be just nowhere
as a poet were
it not for my
of other
friends?that's
what I really believe. This book is dedicated tomy three oldest friends in
were
the early '50s: Muriel
Rukeyser;
Sally
a
a
sense
with
of
and
the
science, theology,
poet
unique
Appleton Weber,
natural world;
and Shirley Eliason Haupt.
Shirley, who died in 1988, was
who
poetry,
friends
from
a
was
also a very gifted poet. Phil Levine
painter, but she
her in his essay, "Mine Own John Berryman,"
about the Iowa
we were all three a part. And I'd be glad to dedicate
of
which
workshop
another book to my friends in poetry from the '60s: Grace Paley, Adrienne
primarily
mentions
on the
I imagine using
the same epigraph
and Jean Valentine.
dedication page, from Emily Dickinson,
"My friends are my 'estate'." And
to me,
who
then there are younger
these
poets
days are very important
Rich,
a number of my old students,
including
have not only been willing
friends
My
both graduate and undergraduate.
to listen to my endless drafts of
shared their own drafts and shared their lives, and given me
have given me patience and fortitude,
and
extremely
good criticism?and
a
to
I
with
that
I'm
writer
and
the
fact
slow
that
back
put up
keep going
poems
but have
revise,
hoping
disagreements,
EG: Do
you
to make
but
think
the work
more
that is the breath
truthful. Of
course we've
had our
of life.
the idea of a writer-mentor
is important
for younger
writers?
107
not as important as peers. My own experience
the work of both Cal Lowell and John Berryman,
who were our teachers, extravagantly,
and often they touched me as human
were not role models
But
for me, nor could they be. Who
I
beings.
they
I had been living
learned most from were the other people in the workshop.
JC: Important enough?but
at Iowa?I
really admired
in the years right after World War II, and there, in order ever
to think you could send out a poem to the littlest magazine,
you had to
was
it
believe
every single day, and never sent out a
perfect. So I wrote
secret
to Iowa in 1953,
became
life. Then Iwent
my
single poem; writing
in Princeton
and there were
all these young men sending poems out, getting them back,
getting them back, and it was just a much more daily
sending
Itwas a hard time
way to deal with being a poet, amore democratic way.
a
someone
me
to
in
like
be
for
class, because there were almost no
writing
them out,
women.
Iwas
friends
in poetry
lucky to have Shirley. And I don't think Iwrote well that
about my work and maybe
rather precious.
year; I got very self-conscious
a
But it was a year that started me writing
after
again,
painful silence, and
started me thinking about my work more professionally,
and I believe that
as
came from the workshop
come from my
to
it
has
continued
members,
EG: How
have
over
these years,
the recent
changes
all these years
in New
in your health
affected
York.
your work
as a
writer?
JC: This is a tricky question for me. Probably
start, that I have primary immune deficiency,
lack gamma globulin. But
immune deficiency.
About
to say, right from the
and that I've always had it; I
it's not AIDS,
thank God, which
is an acquired
a
was
five years ago, there
period when my
I need
but I got sent to a doctor who pioneered
the
in this country for people like me, and these
treatments have changed my life. Still, what may be most significant for my
is that I see illness as ordinary. Iwould
like to include it within
the
writing
began to go downhill,
use of intravenous
treatments
health
daily, ordinary world.
"The Children's Ward"
for me
is the oldest
piece in Green Notebook,
I had my life given back when
and it was
to write.
Iwas five
important
never
I
in
and
that.
It's
all
work
various
ways.
years old,
my
forget
through
a lot of death in my work,
There's
but there's also a lot of the opposite?
Itwas this that I tried hardest
what Mark Doty
calls "joy in ongoingness."
very
108
to get in "The Children's Ward" ?an unexpected
vigor
seems to be "about."
the
story
against everything
and humor
that go
to the long prose piece
I relate "The Children's Ward"
In an odd way,
is part of Scaffolding,
and now
in Maps & Windows
that first appeared
This
in
the
of
Manufacture
Been
Has
Used
Poetry That Could
"Nothing
Have
would
Been Used
never
in the Manufacture
be so directly
of Bread."
autobiographical
In both
unless
cases,
the material
I felt that I
could be
useful
beyond myself.
Iwrote "The Children's
our
relatively
people in
are
to
know
for
it
is
who
how
children
understand
they
society
protected
or
out by the idea that a child could know he
she is
dying. We're freaked
Ward"
because
Iwanted
that.
there are a lot of children in the world who do know
dying. Well,
in some ways
They don't handle it quite the way adults do, of course, but
a
Iworried
For
time
long
remarkably well.
they handle it better?anyway,
like a totally separate experience,
the poem "The Infusion
apart from the rest of the book. But then Iwrote
treatment
in now, and I thought,
I'm
is
the
about
which
Room,"
program
that "The Children's
Ah,
Ward"
would
seem
that too is a culture of illness.
I'm very
people who
interested
in the people
Imeet
in the real-life
Infusion Room,
and often other serious
gamma globulin deficiency
are
some
There
conditions
young children there, too. I have no
desire to write a book just about illness; the point is always the people.
that I had the IV treatments Iwas very allergic to
The first six months
also have
as well.
also come home and, you
be quite sick. But I would
know, rush to write it all down inmy journal, because the experience of the
to me. That poem really came
seemed so . . . exemplary
Infusion Room
Even now the people
out of my journal entries from the first few months.
them,
so I would
on me, but I no longer have the same clarity. I
a strong
impression
was
in as a child it was the same thing?I
still
I
the hospital
think with
it so vividly.
remember
make
at a reading once, you
In introducing
your poem "Ordinary Detail"
said that one of the jobs of poetry is to give people the words for what we're
more about this?
feeling at this moment. Could you say
EG:
as well as the reader or hearer words. That
JC: Poetry gives the poet words,
poems starts out, "I'm trying to write a poem that will alert me to my real
109
life," and I think that's what poetry must do. Too often what we think we
feel iswhat we were taught to feel, or what we felt last year; we click into
a familiar
complex of feelings. But it's very hard to sit down and think,
is the truth of my life at this actual, passing moment?
What
And if you can
do that.
. . . It's what
you have
to try for.
EG: In the jacket copy for theWhite Pine Press edition of JamesWright's
Two Citizens,
Could
value
you
it?
you wrote of the value you place on "the poetry of renewal."
about how you envision
such poetry and why you
say more
I actually said on the jacket blurb was, "As I get older, it
JC: Well, what
seems what
I care most
about is the poetry of renewal, or rather, of the
at
self-transcendence."
Cather has a line I love?it's
gallant effort
quoted in
more than it is
a
growth is,
anything else,
refining of
And I've always been very interested in people
the sense of truthfulness."
who keep pushing
themselves,
themselves,
keep transforming
keep trying
"Vocation"
?"Artistic
to get a little nearer to the truth, and at the same time reach beyond what
they have done before. I think Adrienne Rich, for instance, is preeminently
this kind of poet. I just think that if you can write so that every stage of your
has its own wisdom?that's
it's
life makes its own contribution,
wonderful,
awonderful
I'm writing
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gift.
now
Iwould
things
like to be able to do that. Iwould
that I couldn't
have written
like to think that
any earlier.