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Conversation With Pulitzer Winner Lou Simpson
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10818 |
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Section : |
The Arts
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| Issue
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7 / 1986 |
2,457 Words |
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Kate Hancock
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Al Poulin, Jr.: Welcome back to the Brockport Writers Forum, Louis. Since the last time we talked you've published four more books of poems: Searching for the Ox (1976), Caviar at the Funeral (1980), People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949-1983 (1983), as well as The Best Hour of the Night (1983). What kinds of ideas do you think you've resolved in the course of the last ten years and four books?
Louis Simpson: I've always written narrative poetry, but I think that in the last eight years or so I concentrated on writing a narrative of contemporary life. Along with the poems about life in the old country, Russia, I've developed a poem like "Physical Universe" that is able to talk about putting out the garbage. It's taken me quite a long time to develop the voice and style in which to do that, but I think that in this book, for the first time, it's quite clear. It's always been present for critics to see if they wished to, but this time it insists on being seen. And, quite evidently, it's striking people.
Poulin: You don't think there's been that kind of drastic change from book to book as there was in your earlier work?
Simpson: No. There was a very drastic change, as you know, from A Dream of Governors in 1959 to At the End of the Open Road in 1963, but the poem about contemporary life has developed in the last few years, and I've been able to see more clearly what I have to concentrate on in the future. I write best when I write about the contemporary world and tell stories about it.
Poulin: In our last conversation we also spent a considerable amount of time discussing your wrestling with Whitman's vision of America. Am I right in assuming that in your more recent work you've been moving away from that concern?
Simpson: Whitman was dealing in very general terms--with symbolic ideas. In my more recent poetry, I'm telling specific stories that show something more about life and character than Whitman ever tried to do. He wasn't very interested in that kind of thing. He has little bits of narrative, but he doesn't ever attempt to do a complete narrative, and that's what I'm doing now, not all the time, but quite a lot. Whitman for me is no longer that interesting. Oh, I admire him greatly, but he's not someone I can learn from now. He's involved with metaphysics and is very concerned with the universe, but I'm no longer worried about the universe--I'm concerned about situation.
Poulin: Many of your critics are focusing on you as the poet of suburbia. Is it possible that the suburban experience isn't one that Whitman could have anticipated or dealt with?
Simpson: Well, it's part of the whole technological development of the twentieth century that none of the prophets of the nineteenth century foresaw. Marx didn't foresee it when he predicted the clash between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He didn't know there would be a technological explosion which would make those terms obsolete. Whitman didn't foresee the technological explosion, either.
It's not just suburbia. The critics you mention pick up on that world because I've almost handed it to them on a plate, and they like it because it's easy. I'm not the poet of
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