The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20030215020113/http://www.milkmag.org:80/20QCreeley.htm

20 Questions with Robert CREELEY

photo by Indra TAMANG

1. If you could characterize the twentieth century as a film actor, who would it be?

Marlon Brando � just that that�s where I came in and he was the one whose presence most defined the world I took us both to be fact of.

2. Do you have a writing ritual, or is the process different each time?

I have places I feel at ease, and that matters.I think it was Leger who used to put on white coveralls to paint � and the Goncourt�brothers reputedly contrived to have early morning sex, so as to free themselves from distraction.I like working on a computer or�else paper, if that�s all that�s handy.Simple needs!

3. Are the spaces between notes, or words, as important as the words themselves?

Whatever locates the phrasing, or phasing, is part of the action and those �spaces� are certainly a crucial component.

4. How has jazz music shaped your aesthetic?

I think it�s most had to do with my sense of phrasing, or how a serial pattern, call it, might be sounded or heard.Too, it�s made me aware of how much can go into such a pattern without losing the coherence.

5. Favorite memory of an experience in a car?

Actually it�s the memory of a story about an experience in a car.Years ago someone told me the story of William Faulkner and his�terrific friends driving drunkenly along some river near Oxford, Mississippi.Apparently the one driving wasn�t able to make a left�turn in time, whereupon Faulkner said matter of factly, �I believe the son of a bitch is going into the river.�And they did.

6. America characterized as a song? What song?

How about �Farther Along� � secularized?

7. What are you working on currently?

Staying with it.I know I do work on things but too often that frame feels like painting the house or going to the dentist.

8. Gaugin or Van Gogh? Why?

I couldn�t choose between them � each is terrific, albeit they are very different.Both seem primarily painters, come hell or�high water.

9. World poet or American? Both?

Whatever the question implies, the local is always it.There is no �world� otherwise, even �American.�

10. What would you say to the president if you met him on the street tomorrow morning?

Get a life!

11. Most influential poet of Latin America?

Cabral was certainly solid � and I always was moved by Parra and Neruda, that active sense of a real person being there.��Do you know Samuel Beckett�s great translations of Mexican poetry?Octavio Paz did the selection.

12. Why?

I feel very dumb trying to answer because what do I know about Latin American poetry?My own generation with few exceptions�had little relation to it and when we did, it seemed still faint and too late.In some ways I�d be persuaded to go back to Ed Dorn�s�telling me about Euclides da Cunha�s Rebellion in the Backlands (1902)because that book is probably still the best sense of South�America I�d know.It was translated by Samuel Putnam.Two years teaching the patrone�s kids on a coffee plantation (195961) did�nothing finally to inform me.It was like living in a bubble.

13. Is a poem like a field or an ascent into the void?

�A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words� � or perhaps it�s the tree one will never see a poem as lovely as.Both�propositions come from New Jersey as it happens.

14. Is the Internet our friend, or adversary?

For me it�s been a great resource in every sense � as looking up just now both the date and exact title for da Cunha�s book, and then�making sure I had the Williams� quote correctly.Our very means here of doing this exchange (e-mail) has been an invaluable resource,�traveling about or just staying home.Too, there has never been a more efficient and unobtrusive support for writing itself than that�which a computer provides.

15. What was the first rock 'n roll song you remember hearing?

Fats Domino singing �Ain�t That a Shame� and other classics of the moment in Ma Peak�s tavern on the way to the town of Black�Mountain from the college.Some nights the whole physical floor used to rock with the dancing.

16. What was the most influential little mag.?

Cid Corman�s Origin � that�s where I found my company.

17. Would you say that poetry smells of wood smoke or exhaust?

You got me!

18. What essential book would you take on a long journey alone?

Weirdly, I haven�t a clue.

19. What time is it where you are now?

One twenty-one pm.

20. What word of advice to the world?

Stop killing people as a means of solution.


milk home