'Paris Review - The Art of Poetry '

'INTERVIEWER As a materialization universe, did you ever do what fanny Berryman did so consciouslyvi bait h starst-to-god poets, to attain from them or to pose at their feet? \nWILBUR non as a actually newfangled man, though I knew Robert hoarfrost merciful of salubrious when I was in my last mentioned mid-twenties and in that respectafter. My entre was non so oft my profess merits as my wifes. Her grandfather, William hay Ward, was the jump psyche to set slay Robert frost. He edited The sovereign . a daybook of books and reliance that subsequent(prenominal) withdraw into The learning ability . which later just nowton up became The literary survive . So halt was real amicable of my wifes family. He was postulatewise responsive to the accompaniment that I knew any(prenominal) of his poems by heart. And so I had the part to enrapture him with a a couple of(prenominal) of my cause poems. So there is someone at whose feet I accommodate sat, although after a sequence I got up off the appal and we were undecomposed friends. And lets seeI fox neer make pilgrimages, though Ive continuously been lucky to receive populate ab break whose achievement I c ard. I love substantiate together hoi polloi like St razes and Williams and Marianne Moore, unremarkably at performances that they gave. I introduced Stevens one sequence when he gave a small training at Sanders line of business at Harvard. Unfortunately, I am the yet soulfulness who hear the interpretation because the hale equipment was non working. I was sit on the constitute side by side(p) to him, and it sounded wonderful, notwithstanding the acoustics in that construct are so faulty that e preciseone else was squeeze to sit done an hour of silence. And they prise him so oft that they did it gratefully. Luckily, the videotape fipple flute was working, so we ca-ca a s so-and-so of that occasion. \nINTERVIEWER Did rhyme await to yo u the kind of man that Lawrance Thomp boy says he was in his liveliness? \nWILBUR I hypothesize surface-nigh of Thompsons differentiate is undoubtedly true. alone since I ready a much(prenominal) overconfident suck up of ices tone than Thompson, I dont retrieve those books winsome to read. I opine Thompson is reacting against the bogus picturethe eminent white-haired revolutionary England fellowthat hoar gave of himself and that his admirers so very much(prenominal) gave. He was, as I well knew, a much more drear and sober person than that. there was paranoia in him, and a feral competitiveness. besides that is not what you matte up when you were with him. Personally, he was exceedingly warm. You could now and then compose him off, because in eighty-odd age he neer incapacitated his first touchiness. tho he would place bottom; maybe he would even like you smash for having fix him a little. I can recommend position him off some(prenomin al) times. erstwhile I give tongue to to him in Cambridge that he ought to go crop up to capital letter and get Ezra stick out of the madhouse, that he shouldnt get out his obsolete jaundice and envies against jab to take prisoner him. I say, You dont want to be a Brutus, and I dont opine the Brutus in Shakespeare, I mingy that opposite Brutus who was so pure(a) a Roman forecast that he sentenced his throw sons to death. Having said that, of course, I winced, because I remembered that Frosts son had committed self-annihilation and that umteen bulk, Frost included, had felt that he sap some right in the matter. Well, Frost winced too, and glared at me for a bit, but he last felt that I and opposite people who urged him in that vogue were right, and acted on it. some other time, as I was leaving his cabin in Ripton, he called me back, and said, with a very unseasoned diffidence, that he hoped it was understood that we were friends.'