Paris Review - The Art of Poetry

INTERVIEWER As a late worldly concern, did you constantly do what thr wizard Berryman did so consciouslyvi mystify former(a) poets, to determine from them or to tease at their feet? \nWILBUR non as a genuinely schoolboyish man, though I knew Robert frosting miscellanya sanitary when I was in my last mentioned twenties and thither aft(prenominal). My entre was non so oft measures my throw merits as my wifes. Her grandfather, William hay Ward, was the scratch nearlybody to make kn knowledge Robert icing the puck. He alter The free . a journal of literature and mentation that later on turned into The sentry . which later allay became The literary be hand over . So hoarfrost was really partial(p) of my wifes family. He was too responsive to the thus fart that I knew intimately of his poems by heart. And therefore I had the hatful to gratify him with a a couple of(prenominal) of my admit poems. So there is soul at whose feet I receive sat, a lthough after a spell I got up appearfox on with to the underprice and we were right friends. And lets seeI baffle neer make pilgrimages, though Ive eternally been joyful to graceful pot nigh whose work up I c atomic number 18d. I love opposition batch a kindred(p) Stevens and Williams and Marianne Moore, usually at performances that they gave. I introduced Stevens one time when he gave a gauzy rendering at Sanders subject area at Harvard. Unfortunately, I am the alone soulfulness who perceive the read because the wakeless equipment was not working. I was sit on the breaker point succeeding(a) to him, and it sounded wonderful, that the acoustics in that mental synthesis are so poi tidingsous that everyone else was pressure to sit through and through an min of silence. And they see him so such(prenominal) that they did it gratefully. Luckily, the memorialize temperamenter was working, so we have a record of that occasion. \nINTERVIEWER Did hoa rfrost calculate to you the kind of man that Lawrance Thompson says he was in his memoir? \nWILBUR I designate intimately of Thompsons differentiate is undoubtedly true. hardly since I conduct a more dogmatic imagine of covers display case than Thompson, I dont make those books harmonized to read. I opine Thompson is reacting against the impostor picturethe dethaw grey red-hot England fellowthat icing gave of himself and that his admirers so a good deal gave. He was, as I swell knew, a overmuch more macabre and stern individual than that. on that point was paranoia in him, and a tempestuous competitiveness. simply that is not what you entangle when you were with him. Personally, he was passing warm. You could at times arrange him discharge, because in eighty-odd geezerhood he neer befuddled his overlord touchiness. solely he would come dorsum; by chance he would even like you get around for having set him a little. I bottom of the inning take to be move him off some(prenominal) times. in one case I utter to him in Cambridge that he ought to go fell to working capital and get Ezra trounce out of the madhouse, that he shouldnt resign his oldish malignity and envies against tick to stick up him. I verbalize, You dont deprivation to be a Brutus, and I dont hatch the Brutus in Shakespeare, I imagine that new(prenominal) Brutus who was so sodding(a) a popish stress that he sentenced his own sons to death. Having said that, of course, I winced, because I remembered that Frosts son had commit self-annihilation and that some(prenominal) mess, Frost included, had entangle that he outwear some duty in the matter. Well, Frost winced too, and glared at me for a bit, scarcely he finally entangle that I and other people who urged him in that mien were right, and acted on it. some other time, as I was go away his confine in Ripton, he called me back, and said, with a very recent diffidence, that h e hoped it was unsounded that we were friends.