Christopher Wagstaff

Must have taken me a year to work through this collection. The interviews cover a lot of territory and I have surely forgotten much of the earlier ones. One the other hand there is a lot of repetition, naturally enough, so my reading of the earlier interviews will surely have helped me read the later ones.

I am not much of a poetry reader so this book was certainly a voyage into waters not utterly unknown but for which my maps have only the vaguest sketches. Over the years I have made occasional forays into poetry but I tend to come away more puzzled than anything else... yet with enough of a sense of depth to keep coming back around for another traverse. Hence my reading of this book.

One thing I really appreciated here was that despite my vast ignorance I did not feel excluded. Certainly the book was thick with references to very familiar names - Pound, Williams - very unfamiliar names - Jack Spicer - and everything in between. But I could pick up enough about these authors from the context that I never felt utterly lost. This book empowered me. It has given me some tools and orientation so I feel like maybe on my next traversal I will a a bit broader perspective from which to read.

I think I just picked up some of Duncan's works in a book store, impressed by the high praise in the blurbs on the cover. So my diving into Duncan is really quite random. Now, after working through the interviews, I know that he was homosexual and quite famously so in his time, having written about it at a time when it was practically unprecedented. I remember some rather graphic descriptions in one or two interviews, so probably this is not a book for ten year old children, but really any ten year old who could read that far into the book would be able to handle those few sections anyway.

In probably the last long interview there was some discussion about the habitat of the poet. But all through the book there is constant discussion about community - mostly about poets but also about painters, especially since Duncan's partner was a painter. What would it be to participate in such a habitat? I suppose as a software and electronics engineer I have a professional habitat or two myself... but oh my that is a long way from poetry! What a strange world we live in, where our culture is so fragmented. I appreciated this collection of interviews as a kind of guided tour, like an open house in a habitat that I usually experience as rather closed. Some of this open spirit I think is Duncan's. I'm not sure I am quite ready to tackle his poetry yet... ah, Duncan mentioned Robert Browning a few times... I got into The Ring and The Book some years back... I could pick that back up and read the next section... that might be a proper way to celebrate finishing these interviews!… (more)