20 Questions with Robert CREELEY
photo by Indra TAMANG
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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6. America characterized as a song? What song?�
How about �Farther Along� � secularized?
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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.
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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.
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9. World poet or American? Both?�
Whatever the question implies, the local is always it.� There is no �world� otherwise, even �American.�
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10. What would you say to the president if you met him on the street tomorrow morning?
Get a life!
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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.�
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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 (1959�61) did�nothing finally to inform me.� It was like living in a bubble.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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16. What was the most influential little mag.?�
Cid Corman�s Origin � that�s where I found my company.
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17. Would you say that poetry smells of wood smoke or exhaust?�
You got me!
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18. What essential book would you take on a long journey alone?�
Weirdly, I haven�t a clue.
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19. What time is it where you are now?
One twenty-one pm.
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20. What word of advice to the world?�
Stop killing people as a means of solution.�
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