I just read an astonishing interview with the poet John Berryman in the 1972 Paris Review #53, available here. It includes some analysis of his method, particularly in relation to the writing of the definitive Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and 77 Dream Songs, and this spills over again and again into colorful, passionate accounts of his life, his loves, his breakdowns and hospitalizations, his religious conversion (to "the idea of a God of rescue"), his love of Yeats, his friendships with Delmore Schwarz and Dylan Thomas, his teaching crisis in the critical period after the Kent State riots, his opinions vis-a-vis fame or an indifferent public, poetic gifts vs. achievements, confessional poetry, suicide, ambition, group therapy, scholarship, female characters in literature etc, and a whole slew of references and anecdotes, all fascinating in their way, to or about fellow writers, his influences, mentors, colleagues and friends, from Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Eliot, Whitman, Housman, Freud, Shakespeare, Augustine and Pascal. But its not just the wealth of detail that makes the interview so remarkable, packed as it is. It's Berryman's wonderful voice. He comes across as cultivated, balanced, authentic, and passionate, a man you wish you could meet and can hardly believe is the same person as the intimidating, fire-breathing workshop demon described by Stephen Spender, nor the legendary alcoholic or even the tragic suicide he shortly proved to be. Then again, he descibes his process in somewhat terrifying terms, terms which seek to make a virtue of what must have been in fact an excruciating experience. "The artist is extremely lucky", he maintains, "who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business", adding, in case we weren't sure of his commitment, "I hope to be nearly crucified." That his ordeal ultimately dragged him over these imagined limits has been, I think, our great loss.
Monday, November 29, 2010
John Berryman
I just read an astonishing interview with the poet John Berryman in the 1972 Paris Review #53, available here. It includes some analysis of his method, particularly in relation to the writing of the definitive Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and 77 Dream Songs, and this spills over again and again into colorful, passionate accounts of his life, his loves, his breakdowns and hospitalizations, his religious conversion (to "the idea of a God of rescue"), his love of Yeats, his friendships with Delmore Schwarz and Dylan Thomas, his teaching crisis in the critical period after the Kent State riots, his opinions vis-a-vis fame or an indifferent public, poetic gifts vs. achievements, confessional poetry, suicide, ambition, group therapy, scholarship, female characters in literature etc, and a whole slew of references and anecdotes, all fascinating in their way, to or about fellow writers, his influences, mentors, colleagues and friends, from Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, and Gerard Manley Hopkins to Eliot, Whitman, Housman, Freud, Shakespeare, Augustine and Pascal. But its not just the wealth of detail that makes the interview so remarkable, packed as it is. It's Berryman's wonderful voice. He comes across as cultivated, balanced, authentic, and passionate, a man you wish you could meet and can hardly believe is the same person as the intimidating, fire-breathing workshop demon described by Stephen Spender, nor the legendary alcoholic or even the tragic suicide he shortly proved to be. Then again, he descibes his process in somewhat terrifying terms, terms which seek to make a virtue of what must have been in fact an excruciating experience. "The artist is extremely lucky", he maintains, "who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business", adding, in case we weren't sure of his commitment, "I hope to be nearly crucified." That his ordeal ultimately dragged him over these imagined limits has been, I think, our great loss.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Quote: Frank Bidart
"We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed."
from 'Borges and I' in Desire
NB: David Foster Wallace intended this line as a possible epigraph for his final (unfinished, forthcoming) book, The Pale King.
from 'Borges and I' in Desire
NB: David Foster Wallace intended this line as a possible epigraph for his final (unfinished, forthcoming) book, The Pale King.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Excerpt from an interview with Patricia Hampl
Following is an excerpt from an interview with Patricia Hampl by Katherine Jamieson in last month's Writer's Chronicle, Vol. 43 #2.
There is a nugget of wisdom here for writers of creative non-fiction.
Jamieson: How do you help your students break out of a psychological self-focus in their writing?
Hampl: I encourage attention, descriptive writing. Not just looking to the past, not trying to understand it, but to attend to images almost as if they were photographs, and to write those. To discipline yourself to say what you see, rather than what you feel. Let the feeling flow through the seeing. I think it's a liberation.
One of the things that meditation tries to liberate you from is the terrible strictures of feeling, of the emotional batting about of rage and joy and anger. Mostly anger and frustration. All that thrashing around. Describing what you see liberates you from those feelings that are strictures.
They feel like your reality, but they aren't your reality. Your reality is your ability to see and say. But we think our reality is our ability to feel. Try just off-setting that a little, and saying my truth is saying what I see. It offsets the self, just a bit.
There is a nugget of wisdom here for writers of creative non-fiction.
Jamieson: How do you help your students break out of a psychological self-focus in their writing?
Hampl: I encourage attention, descriptive writing. Not just looking to the past, not trying to understand it, but to attend to images almost as if they were photographs, and to write those. To discipline yourself to say what you see, rather than what you feel. Let the feeling flow through the seeing. I think it's a liberation.
One of the things that meditation tries to liberate you from is the terrible strictures of feeling, of the emotional batting about of rage and joy and anger. Mostly anger and frustration. All that thrashing around. Describing what you see liberates you from those feelings that are strictures.
They feel like your reality, but they aren't your reality. Your reality is your ability to see and say. But we think our reality is our ability to feel. Try just off-setting that a little, and saying my truth is saying what I see. It offsets the self, just a bit.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Club Foot Orchestra plays Sherlock Jr, Caligari, and Nosferatu
San Francisco's Club Foot Orchesta has been around in one form or another since founder Richard Marriot formed the house band at Club Foot, the Bayview's arthouse-music venue, back in the early 80's. An eclectic bunch of classically-trained and avant garde musicians, CFO has come to be known best for its original scores for early silent films and performances in theatres around the Bay Area, but its not often that we get the chance to hear them, and certainly not in back-to-back performances for three classic films at the Castro, so get ready for an afternoon and evening of unusual delights this coming Sunday, 11/14. Two screenings of Buster Keaton in the 1924 surreal comedy Sherlock Jr. kick off this all day marathon, followed by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the bizarre and subversive expressionist film for which Marriot wrote one of his most widely acclaimed original scores, and finally the first Dracula film ever made, FW Murneau's 1922 Nosferatu - its score incorporates Middle European waltzes, klezmer, and gypsy music with some comic/ironic touches mixed in. Visit CFO website for more details of Sunday's program, including film clips and samples from their entire repertoire.
Monday, November 1, 2010
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