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Unread 05-20-2019, 11:39 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
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Default Interview with Stephen Dunn

Tim Green of Rattle just sent out a reminder of his excellent interview with Stephen Dunn, in a past issue. Well worth reading it if you haven't already, or re-reading if you have.

Some snippets I particularly liked:

Quote:
DUNN [after a discussion about being "in the zone" in either sports or poem-writing, in which everything comes magically easily and your ego disappears and you lose all sense of time]: Well, there are two processes, I think. One is the process you’re talking about and the other is revision. Most of my poems become poems in revision. It’s a different mentality; it’s a colder enterprise. You don’t want to disappear. It’s problem-solving, really.
Quote:
DUNN [defining a good poem]: Ah. It’s certainly a poem where what you started with is not what you ended up with. A poem that develops different allegiances as it goes, that surprises and subverts. I always tell my students that a good poem is a very difficult thing to write; don’t expect it. Of course they do write good poems now and then, and in retrospect they like that I’ve told them in advance it’s not going to happen.
Quote:
DUNN: [...]Even if we say our best thing, our smartest thing, if it doesn’t have a formal apparatus to hold it together, nobody’s going to pay any lasting attention to it.

GREEN: What do you mean by formal apparatus? Because most of your poems are free verse …

DUNN: I spend a lot of time talking about the formalities of free verse, which are essentially hearing what you put in the air of your poem, following it through, shaping it, writing great sentences, knowing what the arc of the poem is—that’s what we mean by architecture.
[Edited to add: Oh, and a hearty "Amen!" to this next bit, too! Gotta include this.]

Quote:
DUNN (on why he hasn't written about his Parkinson's): [...] I don’t think my life is interesting unless I make it interesting. There’s no reason anyone should care about me. The burden is on me entirely to make whatever I’m doing interesting. To me, first of all, and then to others.
[Edited to add: And I like the part of the conversation about poetic truth vs. factual truth, too.]

Full interview here:
https://www.rattle.com/a-conversatio...-stephen-dunn/

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 05-20-2019 at 11:56 AM.
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