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The Poet's craft: Interviews from the New York quarterly
Craft of Poetry, Interviews from the New York Quarterly
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
Published January 1, 1987
16 people want to read
About the author
William Packard
113 books5 followersPackard was born September 2, 1933 and was raised in New York. A graduate of Stanford University, where he earned a degree in Philosophy and studied under the poet and critic Yvor Winters, Packard was a presence in the literary circles of the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1950s and 60's — circles that included Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Patchen, and Kenneth Rexroth. Packard was most active, however, in New York City, where he lived and wrote for more than half his life.
While in New York, Packard hosted the 92nd Street Y’s poetry reading series, was Vice President of the Poetry Society of America, and was co-director of the Hofstra Writers Conference for seven years. In 1957 he was awarded a Frost Fellowship and, in 1980, was honored with a reception at the White House for distinguished American poets.
Packard's literary career spanned nearly 50 years and resulted in the publication of six volumes of poetry, including "To Peel an Apple," "First Selected Poems," "Voices/I hear/voices," and "Collected Poems." His novel, "Saturday Night at San Marcos," was heralded as "a bawdy, irreverent send-up of the literary scene." His translation of Racine’s "Phedre," for which he was awarded the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, is the only English rendering to date to have maintained the original’s rhymed Alexandrine couplets, and was produced Off-Broadway with Beatrice Straight and Mildred Dunnock. His plays include "The Killer Thing," directed by Otto Preminger, "Sandra and the Janitor," produced at the HB Playwrights Foundation, "The Funeral," "The Marriage," and "War Play," produced and directed by Gene Frankel. Three collections of Mr. Packard’s one-act plays, "Psychopathology of Everyday Life," "Threesome," and "Behind the Eyes," were recently produced in New York. He was the great-grandson of Evangelist Dwight L. Moody and wrote the non-fiction book "Evangelism in America: From Tents to TV."
Beginning in 1965, when he inherited from Louise Bogan the poetry writing classes at New York University’s Washington Square Writing Center, Packard taught poetry and literature at NYU, Wagner, The New School, Cooper Union, The Bank Street Theatre, and Hofstra, as well as acting, and playwriting at the HB Studio in Manhattan. He is the author of the textbooks "The Art of the Playwright," "The Art of Screenwriting," "The Poet’s Dictionary," "The Art of Poetry Writing," and "The Poet’s Craft: Interviews from the New York Quarterly."
For his work with the New York Quarterly (NYQ), which he founded in 1969, Packard was called "one of the great editors of our time" by poet and novelist James Dickey. Cited by Rolling Stone as "the most important poetry magazine in America," the New York Quarterly earned a reputation for excellence by publishing poems and interviews with the prominent poets W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Paul Blackburn, Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz, Anne Sexton, Charles Bukowski, and W.S. Merwin, among many others. In fact, NYQ has, in its thirty-year career, published virtually every important poet in the nation. But the magazine is equally acclaimed for supporting the work of lesser-known poets. The poet Galway Kinnell once said of the magazine, "The New York Quarterly serves an invaluable function — and that is finding and publishing wonderful talents — such as Franz Douskey, Antler, Pennant, Lifshin, Inez, Moriarty — who may not have the recognition that their work so richly deserves."
The New York Quarterly temporarily suspended publication when Packard suffered a stroke, but returned to print shortly before his death.
While in New York, Packard hosted the 92nd Street Y’s poetry reading series, was Vice President of the Poetry Society of America, and was co-director of the Hofstra Writers Conference for seven years. In 1957 he was awarded a Frost Fellowship and, in 1980, was honored with a reception at the White House for distinguished American poets.
Packard's literary career spanned nearly 50 years and resulted in the publication of six volumes of poetry, including "To Peel an Apple," "First Selected Poems," "Voices/I hear/voices," and "Collected Poems." His novel, "Saturday Night at San Marcos," was heralded as "a bawdy, irreverent send-up of the literary scene." His translation of Racine’s "Phedre," for which he was awarded the Outer Critic’s Circle Award, is the only English rendering to date to have maintained the original’s rhymed Alexandrine couplets, and was produced Off-Broadway with Beatrice Straight and Mildred Dunnock. His plays include "The Killer Thing," directed by Otto Preminger, "Sandra and the Janitor," produced at the HB Playwrights Foundation, "The Funeral," "The Marriage," and "War Play," produced and directed by Gene Frankel. Three collections of Mr. Packard’s one-act plays, "Psychopathology of Everyday Life," "Threesome," and "Behind the Eyes," were recently produced in New York. He was the great-grandson of Evangelist Dwight L. Moody and wrote the non-fiction book "Evangelism in America: From Tents to TV."
Beginning in 1965, when he inherited from Louise Bogan the poetry writing classes at New York University’s Washington Square Writing Center, Packard taught poetry and literature at NYU, Wagner, The New School, Cooper Union, The Bank Street Theatre, and Hofstra, as well as acting, and playwriting at the HB Studio in Manhattan. He is the author of the textbooks "The Art of the Playwright," "The Art of Screenwriting," "The Poet’s Dictionary," "The Art of Poetry Writing," and "The Poet’s Craft: Interviews from the New York Quarterly."
For his work with the New York Quarterly (NYQ), which he founded in 1969, Packard was called "one of the great editors of our time" by poet and novelist James Dickey. Cited by Rolling Stone as "the most important poetry magazine in America," the New York Quarterly earned a reputation for excellence by publishing poems and interviews with the prominent poets W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Paul Blackburn, Richard Eberhart, Stanley Kunitz, Anne Sexton, Charles Bukowski, and W.S. Merwin, among many others. In fact, NYQ has, in its thirty-year career, published virtually every important poet in the nation. But the magazine is equally acclaimed for supporting the work of lesser-known poets. The poet Galway Kinnell once said of the magazine, "The New York Quarterly serves an invaluable function — and that is finding and publishing wonderful talents — such as Franz Douskey, Antler, Pennant, Lifshin, Inez, Moriarty — who may not have the recognition that their work so richly deserves."
The New York Quarterly temporarily suspended publication when Packard suffered a stroke, but returned to print shortly before his death.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 31, 2015
Though dated, this collection of perspectives from various “contemporary” poets provides a good overview of what’s involved with the poetry writing. The “craft” side was particularly interesting - length of lines, breaks in the line, indentation theory, visual presentation (“space means time”), titles; dead spots, authenticity, prolix (verbosity, diffuseness), obscurity.
There were good exchanges on the distinction between the poems about ideas and the poems that one experiences, and between those poems that have stand alone meaning versus those that require knowledge of an external context. Reacting to the belief of some that poetry “is an attempt of the poet to create or recreate his own experience and to pass it on,” James Dickey disagrees. A poem he says is to “awake the sensibilities of someone else, the stranger. Now if I said the word ‘tree,’ you and I would not see the same tree, would we?” Off hand, this notion of poetry being divorced from the intent of the poet is strange, as if free verse takes on a new meaning. The statement (Robert Creeley) that a poet who says he understands all he writes is “absurd….I certainly don’t understand all of my own poems” is also interesting.
For me, the best observation in this collection comes from Gary Snyder regarding how a poet evaluates his or her craft: “[W]hat kind of criterion do you employ, in feeling that a poem is well-crafted? How do I feel when I feel a poem is well-crafted? It’s an extremely subtle thing, but part of it can be described in no other way than taste. There is an intuitive aesthetic judgment that you can make that in part spots phoniness, spots excess, spots the overblown, or the undersaid, the unripe, or the overripe, and feels its way out to what seems just right, and that balance is what I work for, just the right tone, just the right balance, for the poem to do just what I wanted it to do. Or…for the poem to be just what it wanted to be.”
Overall, the common theme in this collection is that poetry is, as one of those in the collection called it, “voice music,” and it comes in an endless variety of styles.
There were good exchanges on the distinction between the poems about ideas and the poems that one experiences, and between those poems that have stand alone meaning versus those that require knowledge of an external context. Reacting to the belief of some that poetry “is an attempt of the poet to create or recreate his own experience and to pass it on,” James Dickey disagrees. A poem he says is to “awake the sensibilities of someone else, the stranger. Now if I said the word ‘tree,’ you and I would not see the same tree, would we?” Off hand, this notion of poetry being divorced from the intent of the poet is strange, as if free verse takes on a new meaning. The statement (Robert Creeley) that a poet who says he understands all he writes is “absurd….I certainly don’t understand all of my own poems” is also interesting.
For me, the best observation in this collection comes from Gary Snyder regarding how a poet evaluates his or her craft: “[W]hat kind of criterion do you employ, in feeling that a poem is well-crafted? How do I feel when I feel a poem is well-crafted? It’s an extremely subtle thing, but part of it can be described in no other way than taste. There is an intuitive aesthetic judgment that you can make that in part spots phoniness, spots excess, spots the overblown, or the undersaid, the unripe, or the overripe, and feels its way out to what seems just right, and that balance is what I work for, just the right tone, just the right balance, for the poem to do just what I wanted it to do. Or…for the poem to be just what it wanted to be.”
Overall, the common theme in this collection is that poetry is, as one of those in the collection called it, “voice music,” and it comes in an endless variety of styles.
November 14, 2011
Most of the interviews here were interesting for one reason or another and worth the time. Stanley Kunitz had some of the most pointed insights about craft, while it was interesting to see Alan Ginsberg’s predictions that the world would end by 2000. This particular fear, that is, of a nuclear apocalypse, seemed heavy on the minds of a few of the poets here interviewed. Ashbery also had many interesting points to make about how he approached a poem and his take on experimenting and exploring. His interview was perhaps my favorite, interesting at every turn. Kinnell’s interview was the least successful. He didn’t seem interested in the interview at all and the collection, as a whole, would have been better without it. Sometimes it was more the enthusiasm that was conveyed than any insightful remarks. James Dickey’s interview was like this, though, a remark he made that will stay with me till to the end is “you can’t transcend your origins.”
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December 20, 2019"The thing about poetry is that if you're moved by a poem you might not wish to say anything at all. You might wish to live with that poem in silence for a while. If you're not fully able to understand it, maybe if you just read it to yourself again and again, get it by heart, you will come around to understand it - and understand it in a way we don't have terms for expressing. In a class, however, they want you to analyze the poem, say exactly what it means, clear up the difficulties. You have to commit two sins: eradicate the mystery of the poem and talk about it on demand (Galway Kinnell, pp. 72-73).
May 2, 2008
2 of 5. A couple of good interviews, mostly bad though.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews