{"id":79807,"date":"2014-11-20T10:57:15","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T15:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=79807"},"modified":"2014-11-20T11:02:24","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T16:02:24","slug":"the-poets-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/20\/the-poets-speak\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poets Speak"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Angelou\"<\/a>

Maya Angelou backstage at the 92Y.<\/p><\/div>\n

At 92Y\u2019s Unterberg Poetry Center<\/a>, The Paris Review<\/em> has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers\u2014many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Now, 92Y and The Paris Review<\/em> are making recordings of these interviews available at 92Y\u2019s Poetry Center Online<\/a> and here at\u00a0The Paris Review<\/a><\/em>. You can consider them the deleted scenes to the printed interviews, or the director\u2019s cuts, or the radio adaptations, or\u2014let\u2019s not dwell on it \u2026<\/p>\n

The latest editions to the collection are three poets: Maya Angelou, Denise Levertov, and Gary Snyder.<\/p>\n

In this recording from 1988<\/a>, Maya Angelou<\/strong>, who died this past May, speaks to our founding editor, George Plimpton:<\/p>\n

\n

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool\u2014and I\u2019m not any of those\u2014to say that I don\u2019t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Denise Levertov<\/strong> died in 1997\u2014Kenneth Rexroth called her \u201cthe most subtly skillful poet of her generation, the most profound, the most modest, the most moving.\u201d Here she speaks to Deborah Digges in 1991<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Where I live in Seattle, I see a good deal more\u2014more sky, more trees. I can see the lake. And from one upstairs window I can see a bit of Mount Rainier\u2014when it\u2019s out … Who would want a mountain that was out all the time? You\u2019d stop seeing it. It\u2019s wonderful when it comes and goes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And Gary Snyder<\/strong>, \u201cthe poet laureate of deep ecology,\u201d talks to Eliot Weinberger circa 1992<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

There\u2019s no question that spending time with your own consciousness is instructive. You learn a lot. You can just watch what goes on in your own mind, and some of the beneficial effects are you get bored with some of your own tapes and quit playing them back to yourself.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We owe these recordings to a generous gift in memory of Christopher Lightfoot Walker, who worked in the art department at The Paris Review<\/em> and volunteered as an archivist at 92Y\u2019s Poetry Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 92Y\u2019s Unterberg Poetry Center, The Paris Review has copresented an occasional series of live conversations with writers\u2014many of which have formed the foundations of interviews in the quarterly. Now, 92Y and The Paris Review are making recordings of these interviews available at 92Y\u2019s Poetry Center Online and here at\u00a0The Paris Review. You can consider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7646],"tags":[11557,16112,5227,16111,14,12365,1132,10893,7221,165,14627,10113],"class_list":["post-79807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look-2","tag-92y","tag-92y-ungerberg-poetry-center","tag-audio","tag-denise-levertov","tag-george-plimpton","tag-interview-series","tag-interviews","tag-maya-angelou","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-recordings","tag-writers-at-work"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMaya Angelou, Denise Levertov, and Gary Snyder on Poetry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Part of the 92Y\/The Paris Review Interview Series, listen to these three writers on the art of poetry.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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