Реферат: Online Interviews With Robert Pinsky Essay Research

more friends than it is easy to name helped out, besides Seamus and Tom, including Rosanna

Warren, Frank Bidart, Bob Hass, and many, many others. Steve Greenblatt. David Ferry. Mike

Mazur, Gail Mazur, Peter Sacks. For me, the only difference between translating and

writing a poem is that in translation one doesn’t have to think what to say next.

FEED: Are Creative Writing programs — the

Creative Writing poetry "track" — helping or hindering modern poets and poetry?

Have they narrowed the audience? Or were such programs necessary for the survival of

poetry in the second half of this century?

PINSKY: America, without the single

unifying folk tradition or the aristocratic tradition of some other cultures, has relied

on school to care for many things. Even jazz and the films of Keaton and Hitchcock now

find a harbor in universities. Creative writing becomes obnoxious when it becomes a guild.

But it is valuable in other ways: To the extent that English departments have abandoned

literature, creative writing programs have inherited it.

FEED: When does creative writing become a

guild?

PINSKY: A guild is an organization that

requires membership in order for a person to practice a craft. For instance, the

silversmiths or shoemakers allow only guild members to make silver candlesticks or leather

brogans. It would be obnoxious to limit the art of poetry to accredited members of the

creative writing guild.

FEED: You’re a great jazz lover. How is

jazz like poetry? Any favorite poems about jazz? (One of mine is Levin’s "I Remember

Clifford.")

PINSKY: Like poetry, jazz is based on

contrasting recurrence and surprise. Most poems I like are not "about" topics in

this way; "Ode to a Nightingale" is not about a bird, and "Sailing to

Byzantium" is not about sailing or a city or sages. A wonderful poem that includes

jazz references, that comes to mind, is O’Hara’s "The Day Lady Died," which is