Various (Packard, William (Editor); Ashbery, John; Auden, W.H.; Blackburn, Paul; Bukowski, Charles; Creeley, Robert; Dickey, James; Ginsberg, Allen; Jong, Erica; Levertov, Denise; Peters, Robert; Snyder, Gary; Wakoski, Diane; Warren, Robert Penn et al.)

The Poet's Craft: Interviews from The New York Quarterly

ISBN: 0913729558
New York, NY, USA: Paragon House Publishing, 1987. First Edition. Softcover. “Q: You have talked about this before, but would you begin this interview by describing the early influences on your work, or the influences on your early work? / A: Emily Dickinson. Poe’s BELLS— “Hear the sledges with the bells—Silver Bells!...” Milton’s long line breath in PARADISE LOST / Him the almighty power / Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky / With hideous ruin and combustion down / To bottomless perdition, there to dwell / In adamantine chains and penal fire, / Who durst defy the omnipotent to arms. / Shelly’s EPIPSYCHIDION— “one life, one death,/ One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,/ And one annihilation. Woe is me!...” The end of Shelley’s ADONAIS; and Shelley’s ODE TO THE WEST WIND exhibits continuous breath leading to ecstatic climax. Wordsworth’s INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY— / Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: / The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, / Hath had elsewhere its setting, / —also Wordsworth’s TINTERN ABBEY exhortation or whatever you call it: / a sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused, / Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, / And the round ocean and the living air, / And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; / That kind of poetry influenced me: a long breath poetry that has a sort of ecstatic climax…”--Allen Ginsberg, pg. 30. William Packard (1933-2002) was an American poet, playwright, teacher & novelist; he was the founder and editor of the New York Quarterly, a national poetry magazine cited by Rolling Stone as “the most important poetry magazine in America.” Offered today is the collection The Poets Craft: Interviews from The New York Quarterly (1987). This collection of interviews features: W.H. Auden (1907-1973); Paul Blackburn (1926-1971); Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997); Denise Levertov (1923-1997); Robert Creeley (1926-2005); Charles Bukowski (1920-1994); Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) a/k/a, LeRoi Jones; and Diane Wakowski (b. 1937) among many others! From back cover: “With the publication of this major reference book, poetry lovers everywhere now have an important new resource on the art and craft of poetry. Synthesized from the pages of The New York Quarterly and edited by William Packard, The Poet’s Craft allows more than twenty of America’s greatest poets to speak their minds on the styles and techniques that have proven most successful for them…Here in one volume, the contemporary poetic mind is spread out before us in a series of fascinating, nothing-held-back conversations. The book offers a special insight into the poet’s secret mind, with its strange mingling of intellection and intuition. Harsh, spicy, and wise, it is vital reading for poetry lovers and practitioners throughout the country.” Stylishly Signed in thin blue ink at title page by former owner. Trade-format Softcover. First edition, Presumed first & only printing although not explicated as such at copyright page. Book in very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges, and light smudging/scratching to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #8958]

Price: $25.00