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You
don’t give too many poetry readings, do you?
No, but you know, of all the readings I gave, the one
I gave at USC was really the deadest. Something about
the audience or the campus, I don’t know. A lady
wrote me and asked if I would read. I was working in
the post office, and I was very anti-reading at the
time because I had a job, a little money in my pocket,
and I was saving my soul. I wrote her a two- or three-page
letter and said, “Happily, I’ll go to my
grave without ever giving a poetry reading.” Now
I’ve given about twenty or twenty-five.
How many did you enjoy
giving, or how many came off well?
Out of all of them, maybe four or five good ones. It’s
really a drag though, hard work — like being in
a ditch. I’m not an actor; I do it for the money
— strictly a poetry whore. For the time, giving
all these readings at colleges around California, I’m
living off the poetry fat of the land.
At the track, have you
ever come into contact with any of the people who own
horses or race them, or operate the track?
No. I guess the most interesting experience I had coming
close to people was when I was drunker than hell, and
in the last race, I happened to lay a big, heavy bet,
and I just happened to be right. I’d won maybe
two or three hundred dollars on the last race. I was
walking out counting my money — tens, twenties
— I was walking by, and here was the world’s
greatest rider at the time, Willie Shoemaker. He had
on a white sweater. It was getting dark. He was arguing
with somebody. He’d come in second, he’d
lost, and he was very excited and apologetic. Evidently,
the owner or trainer or somebody had had a lot of money
on that horse. He was saying, “I’m sorry;
he lugged in; I gave him a whip this way and that...”
and here’s this millionaire with him, and I’m
walking along; I picked the horse that had beaten him,
and I just happened to look up, and caught his eye.
You know how you feel good — sometimes you’re
glowing all over — I just said, “Hi, Willie,
”— like I knew him all my life —,
“Hi, Willie,” and I just strolled on out.
And he knew I’d beaten him, counting that money.
Did you ever meet anyone
interesting at the track?
Hardly. Men, women or otherwise. They’re kind
of drab creatures. Like checker players or bowlers or
people who go to wrestling matches. I got a saying:
People who go to the race track are the lowest of the
breed.” And Linda (King) looks up and says, “What
are we doing here?” I say, “Hell, I don’t
know.
Are you glad that you’ve
had as much or as little money as you’ve had?
I’ll go back to the corny concept of the “starving
writer” days. Especially when you’re young.
You don’t know where your next meal is coming
from; you don’t know if you’re going to
be able to get the rent up, and the landlady’s
footsteps are going by. When it isn’t terrifying,
it’s kind of interesting. The good old early days
— it’s kind of romantic. When you’re
young, you have these ideals; you’re going to
be a writer; it’s kind of romantic. It carries
you through. It felt good; I didn’t mind starving.
As long as you’re young, you say, “Shit,
I can do it; I can always straighten out and become
a damned fool or an industrialist or something. I’ve
got these years to really burn in glory.” But
when you get older, you’re starving in the room
at the age of fifty-two; you’re trying to be a
writer . . .
It doesn’t seem
so romantic any more.
Hell, no.
Do you have any regrets? Would you change anything in
your past?
No, especially the way I live. It’s been pretty
damn good, a wide-open gamble. I gave up writing for
ten years and I did that ten hard years of living —
drinking, hospitals, jails, women, bad jobs, madness.
Even now, I think of a night that happened, write a
poem, a short story. I can draw into that even now.
I don’t see how guys still in their twenties can
hardly write.
You mean because they
haven’t experienced anything?
You can’t reach in and get it. When I was twenty,
I was writing like mad, too. I think you write the way
you feel when you’re young, more than your experiences.
I think it’s better to be old, though, and reach
back.
When you talk about style,
in terms of clarity, or freedom from excess baggage,
or naturalness, what are you thinking of?
I’m really an “essentialist.” Maybe
reading so much poetry that seems to me devious and
secretive — people who have little secrets with
their friends — you know. A game — a code
that no one else quite understands. I try to break it
down and make it just as simple as possible —
just say what I’m thinking. That doesn’t
sound like much, but I think it’s important. Like
I’m talking to you now, I say, “My elbow
itches,” something like that. Of course, if you
write down “my elbow itches,” not many people
are going to take to that. You know what I’m trying
to say.
Just let it come natural.
Yeah, naturalness.
Which poets writing today,
or, say, after World War II, do you like?
That’s a tough one. I don’t read anymore,
I don’t even read newspapers. I’ve gotten
so locked up in myself. You can call it ego, or whatever.
Jeffers is dead. I can’t think of anybody, frankly,
who has really stirred me. This is a very bad time for
me to look around and say that this man’s good,
or that one’s bad. I really can’t say.
Is that simply because
you don’t follow what’s being written?
I don’t think it’s that. I drop on a few
lines, but I’m so turned off by what I read, I
just say I can’t waste any more time on them.
It’s an instinctive turn-off. I used to like Karl
Shapiro, something called “V Letter,” which
he wrote in World War II — very clear, simple.
Then he became editor of Poetry and Prairie Schooner.
Like others, he was good just in the beginning.
What’s your feeling
about experimental forms like concrete poetry?
Concrete poetry? It’s just a cute trick.
It does seem that there’s
no way concrete poetry can contain any real feeling.
There’s not enough meat in it. I tried something
more profound. Write a line of poetry that comes to
mind; say the first word has five letters, the second
three, the third seven, etc. Under that line, you have
to follow with one that makes sense with the top line
but yet has the same number of words, with each word
containing the exact number of letters as its corresponding
word in the previous line. Kind of a stylized vision.
It’ll be like a set of columns, finally. It’s
a good exercise to make it make sense.
Have you ever tried sestinas
or...?
I don’t even know what those mean. I don’t
tie myself up with all of that — rondeaus or any
of those things. I took a poetry class one time. I looked
around and said, “Shit, look at this.” I
decided not to learn what they were learning.
You’ve read a lot
of stuff from the past, but as a whole, you’re
not thoroughly schooled in the history or the craft
of poetry?
I wouldn’t say I could hold a conversation with
Olson — of course, he’s dead anyway, so
I couldn’t hold a conversation with him —
or Creeley, for example. Breath pauses and all that.
If I’d bogged myself down with all that, I wouldn’t
have had time to live. I put my stress elsewhere.
There are only a few works
of literature, past or present, that really move you,
is that it?
Yeah, I get more out of the racing form.
Do you follow politics
in the wider sense much at all?
I glance at a headline now and then. That’s about
it.
Have you ever found anybody
in politics anywhere that you respected?
Umm, I can’t even say Abraham Lincoln. Hell, no.
Can you?
Teddy Roosevelt?
Yeah, Teddy, he was a rugged boy. I don’t respect
them as human beings, but as showmen. We’ve had
some good showmen. F.D.R. in his wheelchair and all
that. He was the best. He hated the common man; pretended
he loved him. And that voice, that delivery. He knew
what he was doing. Sherwood Anderson, the playwright,
wrote his speeches. It all sounded beautiful. He was
going to go down in history, by God. Imagine being on
stage like that, and using all your men as stage hands.
Do you remember much about
Huey Long?
Huey — he was interesting. You know, down South,
when you’d be traveling around, on the bum; I
saw him once when I was crossing a bridge one day. He
stopped his car, jumped out, and gave me a dollar. Huey
was always jumping out giving guys dollars. This pays
off. The word gets around. He never gave a five or a
ten.
What do you think about
prostitutes and prostitution, based on your experience?
When a man is young, he kind of looks up to the prostitute.
She’s going to give him ass for a price, take
a lot of pressure off. I think a prostitute’s
worthwhile up to a point, but I think for a man it’s
a weakening process. A writer, he’s got to not
study the female; he’s got to live with her, be
hurt by her, hurt her. That’s very important;
these arguments, these split-ups, get-togethers. Prostitution
takes away the experience of two people rubbing raw
against each other. The man pays, he gets it, and he’s
through. It’s a kind of masturbation. I’m
not for prostitution.
You’ve never met the proverbial “whore with
a heart of gold?”
Never! They’re always looking to roll you, man.
You pick one up in a bar, take her up, lay her, you
fall asleep, you look up and there she is, looking through
your pants pockets. “If you touch that wallet,
baby, you’ve got a broken arm!” But I never
met one with a heart of gold, yet. I guess she’s
out there.
What do you feel about
the Women’s Liberation movement? Do their grievances
affect you at all?
They got some damned good points, you know. We have
pushed them around pretty much. They have been like
a secondary race. Of course, there are some man-haters
in there who don’t really want to liberate themselves,
they just want to say things against men. Leaving them
out, I think the Women’s Lib is a good legitimate
movement. I like what they say. They’ve taught
me things, that I do expect more. I’m all for
the Women’s Lib, though I don’t belong to
them.
I read your novel Post
Office, and the aspect that interested me most
is how you got by from day to day. You had to put up
with a lot of shit.
Listen, I had to quit or go crazy. They really have
some creatures there. I think the supervisors are picked
not for their mentality but for their brutality. They
go by the book, just like in the army, though I’ve
never been in the army. “These are the rules.”
I wrote Post Office in twenty drunken nights.
It’s got a real
strong character. The central autobiographical character
is the strongest point. It makes the book stand by itself.
At least I hope it keeps a lot of people out of the
post office.
What are some jobs you’d
particularly like to forget?
I’ve had about a hundred jobs. The novel I’m
working on now is called Factotum, which means
a “man of many trades.” I’m coming
upon all my hundred jobs, one by one, and when I think
of them, I ask myself, “Did I really do that?
Was it that bad?” Dog-biscuit factory, slaughterhouse,
railroad-track gang, stock boy at Sears Roebuck, gas-station
attendant. I don’t even think I’ve lived
that long. I used to gather bottles of blood for the
Red Cross — janitor, shipping clerk — it’s
all so drab. I burned up the years, and now I’m
crying in your beer.
That’s your beer.
Then I’m crying in my beer. I wish I could just
leap up and say something astounding. I really can’t.
What do you think of the
youth of today, their music, dope and view of life?
I think they’re a little off-stride there on that
dope. I like rock music myself; it’s vigorous.
To me, it’s sexual. But I can only be sexual for
so long — maybe until I hear three melodies. By
the fourth and the fifth, my mind has been beaten flat.
I no longer have it. It’s like trying to fuck
for ten hours — you can’t do it.
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