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INTERVIEWER
How would you describe your style?
KLEINZAHLER
I don’t think of such a thing as my style, and prefer not to. But one thing I’ve been made to realize about my poetry that is perhaps a bit different is that I continually change registers, which is more common in musical composition than poetry, and my models are musical, i.e. Bartók’s late string quartets. I suppose Mingus, in jazz, would also be a model of sorts, but less complex and interesting than Bartók, I think. Not that I can match their complexity. But I think this changing of register confuses readers who are more comfortable deciding at the top if this is a nice poem, or a pretty poem, or a sad poem, or an angry poem, whatever, and don’t like the tablecloth to be pulled out from under them just as they’re halfway through their Stroganoff.
INTERVIEWER
You have described yourself at this time as carrying around with you a book of Catullus, a collection of English Renaissance short poems, The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, and Pound’s anthology, Confucius to Cummings.
KLEINZAHLER
The Peter Whigham translation of Catullus was very important to me. There are three things going on with his Catullus: the first is, of course, Catullus; the second is his take on Catullus; and the third is that Whigham’s two chief influences as a poet are Williams and Bunting. Now there’s a trifecta a country boy from New Jersey was able to wrap his head around.
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