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An Interview with Donald Justice |
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In 1997 elimae interviewed Donald Justice, who died in August 2004. This interview has been retrieved from the archives in honor of this fine poet. His Collected Poems is available from Knopf, and he is remembered as well for his efforts to reawaken interest in the works of Weldon Kees and Henri Coulette.
elimae: You have been accused (and I'm not being entirely flippant in choice of verb) of being our premier descendant of Wallace Stevens. How do you feel about such a "judgment"? Donald Justice: I am flattered to be called a follower of Stevens but aside from about 3 poems, all dating from quite a while ago, I don't think it pertains. "Ladies by Their Windows," the oldest poem in point of composition in my first book, is the closet thing to a poem of discipleship, and I was of course aware of that at the time and unembarrassed by it. To come under the shadow of an excellent poet of an earlier generation is part of the apprenticeship of any poet, I believe; and then to step out again from the shadow.... My "elegy" for Stevens consciously plays off Stevens lines and manners in a sort of hommage. "The Alp at the End of the Street" tries to nail down what the short-line free verse of early Stevens was like--to see, for example, if it was perhaps a line that did not necessarily belong just to Stevens but could be employed by others without anyone's minding. I can't think of anything else off-hand that follows Stevens, for better or for worse. (I may be forgetting something.) If you asked me, I'd say Ashbery was much more the heir of Stevens, though only a part of Stevens, of course. elimae: You have also been praised for the musicality of your verse and for the perfection and precision of your diction and imagery. Do these qualities in any way relate to your study of music, or are music and verse entirely divorced in the manner of their creations? Donald Justice: If my poems are musical, as indeed some have claimed, they have, I hope, the music of poetry and not the music of music. But then how could they have the music of music, which is completely and utterly different from the music of poetry? I think the two kinds of music have nothing--or next to nothing--in common. In poetry the word music is pretty much a figure, not a fact--a metaphor at best. The most that I would be willing to grant is that both music and poetry come out of similar sensibilities. elimae: No matter how much critics and writers may try to ignore the issue, we seem to be living still in the shadow of the great modernists. The literary "scene" is splintered, and there is, as far as anyone can tell, no handful of indisputable contemporary "greats." Whom do you see as our greatest living English language poets? Is there anyone born in this century whom you would rank alongside Yeats, Eliot, Pound? And, for that matter, among the modernists themselves, can you detect any sifting out of "levels"? Is Frost rising or falling, for example? What about Williams? Is Eliot still where he placed himself, on a step below Yeats? Donald Justice: The living poets writing in English I most admire are Anthony Hecht and Richard Wilbur. A handful of others write at a very high level either all of the time or enough of the time to count--and yet are virtually unknown. I wonder if that matters; I guess it does. I'd name Edgar Bowers and Robert Mezey, for instance. I would recommend Miller Williams as well. You will note, I am sure, that a number of great names are missing. If Bishop and Larkin were still going, they'd of course make my list easily. But--and perhaps this is just the blindness of being too close up--none of these poets, fine as they may be, seems to be in the pantheon of the masters like Eliot, the early Pound, Yeats, and (until fairly recently) the somewhat underprized Hardy. I think Frost also belongs right up there. And (to be a little overnice in judgment) I would put Stevens and Williams just under that level--and that's still pretty darned high. As for the Eliot and Yeats--whom you ask about specifically--there are times it seems to me Eliot is clearly better, and then I read some of the dull parts of the Quartets again and he slides, etc. All these rankings are involved in continual shiftings and are, in any case, mostly game-playing. Sort of fun, yes, but a game. Just at present I might be inclined to put Hardy right at the top. elimae: You have been involved in the reintroduction to the American literary public of two unjustly neglected poets--Weldon Kees and Henri Coulette. What drew you to the work of these two men? And can you comment upon your work with Joe Bolton's poetry, a poetry I am not familiar with? Donald Justice: What drew me to the poetry of Weldon Kees and Henri Coulette? I don't know quite how to say what it is I think I see in their work--am confident I see in their work, really. They both have sufficient formal skills--Coulette especially; I think that is important, though currently not valued as it should be. And these skills enable them to deal with American life with great acuity and penetration--and both do so, brilliantly at times; and even when they are not brilliant, they are believable and honest. You would get a fair sense of the American society of their time from reading their poems. You might not know so much about their private lives, and that would be just as well, say I. Now what you often get is too close-up a view of the private lives of the poets, without much of a broader or deeper view (or vision). And I would mention the name of Joe Bolton, a much younger poet, as belonging to the same line of poets, if there is in fact such a line. Maybe we could call them "realists." (We have plenty of fantasists.) I hope to be bringing out Bolton's Collected in 1999--I wish it could be sooner. In the meantime, I believe his Days of Summer Gone is still available from Galileo Press. Worth going to some trouble to get hold of. elimae: Your work has, throughout your career, moved easily back and forth between regular and free verse. How do you feel about the "new formalism"? Are these poets on the track of something important, or are they limiting themselves to dilettantism and mere "popularity"? Is the formal verse/free verse argument still worth debating? Donald Justice: The new formalism? In some respects a press agent's term--and why not? It often helps to be seen as belonging to a group, whether one does or not; and for the group to be thought to have characteristics in common, whether they really do or not. The formal/free debate is still worth debating or even worth fighting out--I can remember in the late fifties when (for the first time that I felt it keenly) the battle lines were drawn by the old Allen anthology of the Beats, etc. It was intended as a warlike attack on us tamer, more traditional writers. The attack carried the day--in the academy (although or perhaps even because that side of the argument involved attacking the academy--the academy always seems to eat up & endorse attacks on itself, being apparently congenitally masochistic and self-hating) and in popularity and in magazines, etc., etc. The rest of us--pushed to the side--were allowed quietly to go on writing formally, since nobody much cared, once the battle had been lost. Like the last spitball pitchers--who were allowed to go on using the illegal pitch until they retired, though no one else was to be permitted to use it after a certain date. Well, what's good about the new formalists is that they said this was wrong. It was wrong. What I can't appreciate about the new formalists in general--there are exceptions, Dana Gioia notably, for one--is that they don't really seem able either to take their formalism seriously or else do not understand it or have no knack for it. I'm thinking particularly about the handling of the meters. Sometimes it seems they've never read Milton or Tennyson, say-- or not paid attention. The meters, the traditional meters, have their roots in the practice of the great poets of the past, and without knowing them you just can't luck into the beauties and expressiveness of the meters. Beyond that, it is not particularly a triumph of form to ape a sestina or villanelle, using tinkered rhymes, a hodge-podge of meters, etc. Form is more than mechanical; but it ought to be at least quite sound mechanically before we allow it to be called formal. I think the writers of most of the sestinas, say, that seem to be oozing out of poetry workshops these days probably haven't read Sidney's great sestina or Dante's, or.... But enough. And of course free verse written well can also be called formal. The trouble with that side of the argument is that most free verse is not written well--it, too, often betrays a great ignorance of what we can call the tradition of free verse itself--and free verse does have a tradition. elimae: Is there any poet born since 1940 whose work captivates and thrills you? If so, who is it, and why? Or do you agree with Eliot that, as one gets older, one loses the ability to tell what is wonderful and resonant for younger writers? Donald Justice: Well, "captivates and thrills" is putting it pretty strongly. I guess I do more or less agree with Eliot that as one gets older it does become harder to see clearly who the good new poets are. (It always was hard, of course, but one is probably always more in touch with what's good among one's contemporaries.) I do like Franz Wright and Baron Wormser and Carol Frost and Mark Jarman and (as above) Dana Gioia--and there are undoubtedly a half dozen others I should be mentioning, if only I knew or remembered. elimae: Just for the hell of it, let's assume that this interview will be read by every wanna-be-poet under 30 in the country right now. Any closing words of wisdom? Donald Justice: Words of wisdom? If you are going to write formally, learn the forms--the meters especially--from study of the great poets and poems of the past. It also helps a lot to know some poets from other languages (but perhaps not too many)--a few stars to be guided by. If you are going to write free verse, study of the great past masters of free verse is likewise absolutely necessary, I should think: Stevens & Williams, Pound & Eliot--and a scattering of other poems if not poets. Then of course everyone will--whether advised to or not--develop two or three favorites, whether they're really all that marvelous or not, and these favorites are to be prized--they are an important part of the mix. March 6, 1997 |
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