Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from September, 2010

David Huddle and Brian Brodeur

Brian Brodeur's How a Poem Happens recently had an enlightening Q&A with poet David Huddle, a part of which I'll paste below. This entry, and the whole blog is worth a long look. Do you have any particular audience in mind when you write, an ideal reader?  Tough question. I used to claim I thought about audience only after I had finished the piece of writing and had begun to wonder where I should send it. In recent years, however, I’ve been writing with my students, and in that case I’m writing for the immediate audience of the writing class where I will present my poem alongside the other poets presenting theirs. I do still like to think that I don’t write “to” any particular audience. This is sort of like confessing that one is somewhat promiscuous but one is not a complete slut. I'm not familiar with Huddle's poetry, but I will be pretty soon, you can bet, based on the quoted poem in that entry.

Franz Wright's Drafts

Just a quick note. I thought this presentation deserved wider audience. It contains discussions and drafts of one of our indispensable poets, to my ear. There's an interview linked within, which I've pulled out to the front, here . Reading his best poems make my internal organs contract, all at once. They're signs of witness, as well as signposts toward--and somehow working against--the sort of life that most of us have. They give us something to look up to and strive for.

What I'm Reading and More on Ted Berrigan

I am reading these books, in no particular order. I leave them at the bedside, by my laptop, in the library, in both bathrooms, and on the shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen, so's I always have something to read when I have time away from the kids. Yes, bathroom time is included in that. Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter: This book will scalp you and make you like it. I just got it today and dipped in here and there . Go get it now. Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan : Pretty much what it says it is. These interviews deal significantly with the Sonnets--even at the end of his life the first thing interviews talk about are the Sonnets--and I can't imagine that was pleasing for him, though he handles the questions every time without showing how many times he's been asked about them. That's a good skill to have. Paterson , by William Carlos Williams: I got tired of not knowing Paterson , so I'm reading it. Jury's still out on quality assessment,