Giving Their Word
Conversations with Contemporary Poets
Edited by Steven Ratiner
University of Massachusetts Press
Based on a three-year series of interviews conducted by Steven Ratiner for the Christian Science Monitor, this book offers extended conversations with twelve of the most influential poets writing today. Their comments are wonderfully detailed, refreshingly honest, and provide the sort of intimate introduction to both poet and text that readers are rarely privileged to enjoy. Included are conversations with William Stafford, Mary Oliver, John Montague, Charles Simic, Seamus Heaney, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, Carolyn Forché, MartÃn Espada, Marge Piercy, Rita Dove, and Bei Dao. In the book's closing interview, Steven Ratiner makes a return visit to Donald Hall's New Hampshire farm shortly before the publication of Hall's collection Without, which focused on the death of his wife, poet Jane Kenyon.
Giving their word is what poets do; it is their stock-in-trade, their daily bread. In the hands of the most accomplished, a poet's words are transformed into a kind of window: looking inward toward the territory of memory, dream, personal mythology and opening out onto the landscape of the shared world where life and work are rooted. For each poet there is an intricate relationship between these two realms and poetry's third domain, the language that bridges both experiences and becomes the body of the poem. Giving Their Word shows us that the poet's fidelity to that relationship sustains his or her development over time, urges the writing toward new levels of discovery, and bestows on readers that most prized of commodities: a feeling of the authentic.
For poets, students of poetry, and that far-flung community of readers for whom the contemporary poem still provides a journey worth taking, this book will present a host of pleasures. Giving Their Word enlarges the frame through which we view the poet's text and yields significant insights into the craft and character of each of these writers.
Giving their word is what poets do; it is their stock-in-trade, their daily bread. In the hands of the most accomplished, a poet's words are transformed into a kind of window: looking inward toward the territory of memory, dream, personal mythology and opening out onto the landscape of the shared world where life and work are rooted. For each poet there is an intricate relationship between these two realms and poetry's third domain, the language that bridges both experiences and becomes the body of the poem. Giving Their Word shows us that the poet's fidelity to that relationship sustains his or her development over time, urges the writing toward new levels of discovery, and bestows on readers that most prized of commodities: a feeling of the authentic.
For poets, students of poetry, and that far-flung community of readers for whom the contemporary poem still provides a journey worth taking, this book will present a host of pleasures. Giving Their Word enlarges the frame through which we view the poet's text and yields significant insights into the craft and character of each of these writers.
This compilation of conversations serves as a source of biographical information about the writing lives of 13 leading contemporary poets while offering instruction and inspiration to writers of all kinds. Each conversation captivatingly interweaves the life of the poet with the writing process and the creativity that his of her poetry represents. Consider even the chapter titles—William Stafford: Opening the Moment, Carolyn Forche: The Poetry of Witness, and Donald Hall: The Work That Makes a Home—which not only reflect each poet's body of work but also hint at the superb content of each of the interviews Ratiner (himself a poet) has compiled. Commenting on his interview process with Forche, he notes: 'The story seemed to just tumble forth, gaining momentum like a river coming down from high ground.' This could also describe Ratiner's expert interview process and the publication of this book, which is an absolute pleasure to read. Highly recommended for all libraries.'—Library Journal
'Ratiner is a hugely sympathetic and thoughtful reader, capable of persuading us, through the quality of his attention, that the poets he has chosen are well worth our attention. Surely it is by design that the interviews in this book suggestively reflect the rich color fields of the American Mosaic. . . . 'Reports from the Frontier' might be an alternative title to this stimulating and even exhilarating book. One returns from it in much the same state as one does after immersion in a work of art: energized, emboldened, and hungry for more. . . . I plan to assign it to my students as soon as it is published.'—Askold Melnyczuk, founding editor of Agni
''Conversations' is the right word for Steven Ratiner's appealing book. Poets love to talk and they talk best about their work when their interlocutor has 1) read that work and 2) listens to what they have to say. On both counts Ratiner excels and thus his conversations get to the gist and pith. This book delights and instructs.'—William Corbett, author of Boston Vermont: Poems and
Literary New England and writer in residence in
the MIT Program in Writing and Humanities Studies
Poet and educator Steven Ratiner has contributed poetry and prose to numerous magazines in America and abroad. Two of his chapbooks were published in 2002: a retrospective collection from Pudding House Press's Greatest Hits series and Button, Button, an artist's book in collaboration with Marty Cain.
