The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Carl Rakosi Author(s): L. S. Dembo and Carl Rakosi Reviewed work(s): Source: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1969), pp. 178-192 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1207759 . Accessed: 18/11/2011 11:39

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http://www.jstor.org CARL RAKOSI

Q. I wonderwhether we could begin, Mr. Rakosi,with biography. You consideryourself a Midwesterner,don't you? A. Actually,I was born in Berlin,Germany. My parentswere Hun- garianJews who happenedto be living there at the time. When I wasa yearold, the familymoved back to Hungaryand I lived in Baja, a small town in the south, until I was six. And then my father,my brother,and I came to this country-that was in 1910. We came first to Chicago,then moved to Gary, Indiana,and finallywound up in Kenosha,Wisconsin. So Kenoshawas really my hometown. That's whereI was broughtup and went to school.Then I went to the Uni- versityof Wisconsin and got a degree in English and a master'sin educationalpsychology. Q. How did you end up in socialwork? A. It was sheeraccident. This was a period of severeeconomic dis- tressand it was extremelydifficult to get a job anywhere.I happened to be talking to somebodywho was also looking for a job and he said, "Why don't you go into social work?"I didn't even know what it was.He didn'teither, but he told me therewas an officein Chicago where they were hiring people, so I went down there. This was the AmericanAssociation of SocialWorkers office, and if you were alive and had a degree,they hired you, there was such a shortageof per- sonnel.And if you werea man, they spreadout the red carpetfor you. I startedout with an agencyin Cleveland.I had not by any means given up the idea of writing;I thought I could do both. But I fell in love with socialwork and that wasmy undoingas a poet, in a sense. I didn't actuallygive up the idea of tryingto write poetry until the

X, 2 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE late 'thirtieswhen I was fooling aroundwith differentthings. I left socialwork for a while and came backto the University.... I thought maybe if I went into psychiatry,this would give me something I could do and still write. Anyhow, social work just drew me very strongly.But it wasn't until the late 'thirtiesthat it seemed impos- sible for me to be a socialworker and to write at the same time.

Q. That's very interestingbecause the dust jacketon Amulet states that you stoppedwriting because you were disillusionedwith a world in which poetryno longerhad a place. A. That is anotherelement, too. During the 'thirtiesI was working in New York-this was duringthe very depth of the Depression-and any young person with any integrityor intelligencehad to become associatedwith some left-wing organization.You just couldn't live with yourselfif you didn't. So I got caught up very stronglyin the whole Marxianbusiness. I took very literallythe basic Marxianideas about literaturehaving to be an instrumentfor social change, for expressingthe needs and desiresof large masses of people. And be- lieving that, I couldn't write poetry,because the poetrythat I could write could not achieve these ends.

Q. Perhapswe can talk for a while about the kind of poetry you had been writing.I know that yourwork appeared in LouisZukofsky's "Objectivists"Anthology and that you are presentlyconsidered to be one of the objectivistsper se. Williams mentions in his Autobiog- raphythat he got togetherwith Zukofsky,Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen,and BasilBunting to launchthe movementaround 1928 or so. I was wonderingwhether you participatedin any of the discussions. A. That is not correct.Williams did not get togetherwith those men to found the objectivist movement. And I doubt whether it is a movementin the sensein which that wordis generallyused. The term reallyoriginated with Zukofsky,and he pulled it out of a hat. It was not an altogetheraccurate way of designatingthe few people assem- bled in the anthologyand also in the "Objectivist"issue of Poetry. But he wantedsome kind of name,and he checkedout the term with me and, I assume,with some of the other people. The name was all right,but I told him I didn't think some of the poems in the anthol- ogy were "objectivist"or very objectivein meaning.He said, "Well, that's true,"but I've forgottenthe reasonshe gave for stickingto the name. It didn't matter. But Williams had very little to do with it. He was included,but it didn't come from his initiative.

CARL RAKOSI [ 179 Q. I see. Well, in anycase, would you saythat you could writepoetry that was "objectivist"-whateverit meant-whereasyou couldn'twrite poetry that was Marxist?And that finallybecause objectivistpoetry had no social implications,it became meaninglessto you, and that was perhapsone of the reasonsyou simplygave up poetry? A. No, no. I nevertook my associationwith Zukofskyand the others that seriously.After all, I was living in the Middle West, except for a brief periodin New Yorkwhen I was seeingZukofsky, and I didn't even know any of the other people. Q. Did Zukofskyhimself make an impressionon you? A. He came along at a time when it was very importantfor me to have someone like him around.I'd send him something to look at and it would come back with just a few comments,but they were alwaysright on the nose. He seemed to know better than I what was true Rakosiand what was not. I reallyhave a very warmfeeling for Louis for this critical feedback.We had a most interestingcorres- pondence.I still have his letters, incidentally,although I don't think Louis would want them revealed.They're very short, like some of his poems.If Louiscould get somethingon a postagestamp, he'd do it.

Q. What about Zukofsky'spoetry? A. I believeit has a strongsense of form-it is veryfirmly structured; the interstitching,you might say, is extremelyfine and standsup re- markablywell. I also feel, however,that there are some self-defeating things in his work;his personalself, his humanity, seldom comes through the way it really is. I find this regrettablebecause funda- mentallyI think he is a warmperson. The many ellipsesin his work bother me becausethey represent,perhaps, his subconsciousway of preventingthis human part from coming out. On the other hand, there is a real dignity there and a compactsolidity. I wish, however, that Zukofskyhad nevermet Pound. I think that maybehis direction wouldhave been different.

Q. Howso? A. First, I had better admit that I believe that Pound's critical writing-particularlythe famous"Don'ts" essay-is an absolutefoun- dation stone of contemporaryAmerican writing. But in his own work I think he's been disastrousas a model, totally disastrousto younger writers.I'm thinkingparticularly of the Cantos,of its epic tone. What

180 . CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE was this based on, after all? On man's experiences?Certainly not. The experiencesof men in the Cantoshave only a highly specialized, idiosyncraticinterest. On his view of the natureof man? Ridiculous! In Pound'sview he is a boob or a crook or something equallybad. On his theoreticalsystems? His choiceshere are not even interesting. Why then an epic tone? Becauseof Pound's own personalneed for supremacy,grandiosity. One has the feeling that everythingwas fed into his excitinglyrical machine to servethis purpose.It's not honest. He pretends that his materialis epic when it is only a device to achievegrandiosity at the expenseof the reader.All that pretenseand double-dealingare nauseatingto me. And irrelevant.People today arenot heroic,and modernhuman nature is not epic. It's just human, and anythingelse is just playinggames.

Q. And you believe that Zukofskyis grandiose? A. No. Actuallythe long form of A is better suited to Louis than the shorterforms, since more of him comes throughin it. But Pound has providedhim with a large-scalemodel of unconnectedfragments and has led him to believe that it's all right to make the most recon- dite, specializedreferences, as if it could be taken for grantedthat a literatereader would be familiarwith them and have Pound'sattitude towardsthem. If I'm readinga poem by Pound, why should I care what he read somewhere?It's of absolutelyno interestto me.

Q. Don't you think he's able to make it interestingto you by put- ting it into a poem? A. No, he's not. He pretendsto know what he does not know and is contemptuousof all the boobs who don't understandhis references and have not realizedwhat is obviousto him; for example,that Con- fuciushad all the answers.The final imagethat comes throughin the Cantos is of a masterof languageand cadence,but the man who is speaking,the person, is preposterouslygrandiose. And a terribleex- ampleto others,who havea hardenough time keepingtheir own streak of grandiosityunder control so as to be able to have an authentic encounterwith a subject,without havinga Loreleichanting to them what they yearnto hear but know cannot be, that the road to great- ness lies in grandiosity.But that's Pound's song, and once a person has been exposedto Pound'saura, it is difficultnot to succumb.After all, who doesn't want to be great? But there's a lot of this stuff around. Poetry gets judged, for

CARL RAKOSI | 181 example,as great;greater than; not so great as; good but not great, etc. Also, from Pound's grandiosityit is only a short step to the bewitchingnotion-which, incidentally,Zukofsky is far too selective to fall for-that everythingthat comes into the mind is precious.The long poem thus becomes a necessity for some writers.Before they have learnedhow to write an authenticshort poem, it is announced that they are at work on a long one-meaning they'reon something reallybig. Which leadsto an irrational,philistine system in which one had to feel apologeticabout "Brightnessfalls from the air,/ Queens have died young and fair"because it is only two lines long.

Q. Getting back to my originalquestion, what kind of poetry did you hope to write? A. Well, at first I was very much seduced by the elegance of lan- guage, the imaginativeassociations of words; I was involved in a languageworld-a little like the world of Wallace Stevens,who was an idol of mine duringa certainperiod. But at the sametime, another part of me did not get away from social reality.You'll find in the Youthful Mockeriessection of Amulet a lot of scorn for what was going on in the socialworld. In my recentwork I'm doing something differentand for me verydifficult, and that is to take somethingquite personaland turn it into poetry. After all, nobody is interestedin Rakosias a person;why should they be? It's a tremendouschallenge, therefore,to see whether the person Rakosi and what is happening to him can be turned into poetry. Now Americanais different.In these poems I was fascinatedby folkloreand I was searchingthere for basic Americantypes that have really influencedour thinking-and these typesare in all of us in a way. I'm sorryI peteredout on Ameri- cana;I was hoping to go on.

Q. I'd like to get back to the problem of an "imaginedlanguage world"in a moment, but in the meantime could you elaborateon what you were just sayingabout the Americanapoems? Perhaps you couldcomment on Americana1 [Amulet,p. 38], that shortpiece about a pioneerwho is askedwhy he's takinghis gun into Indian country, since "If yourtime has come, you'll die anyway,"and replies,"I know that, but it may be the Indian'stime." A. Well, who was the Americansettler, what was he reallylike? It seemedto me the truthabout the pioneerwas not that he was roman- tic, but that he was practical.His replyis very primitiveand shrewd.

182 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE This is my own personalconcept of what the pioneermust have been like, not in the way he appearsin Americanfolklore, of course,where he's made heroic.

Q. I had the idea that the poem was simplybased on a punch line. But you are actuallysaying that one shouldreflect on the speakerwho has made the utterance,rather than on the utteranceitself. A. Well, I think so. Althoughit's true I tried to packa lot into that last line.

Q. But to get backto the main body of yourpoetry, in "ShoreLine" you wrote, "This is the raw data./ A mysterytranslates it / into feel- ing and perception;/ then imagination;/ finally the hard / inevit- able quartz/ figureof will / and language."It seems to me that this is an indicationof how you view the poetic processin general.Wouldn't this passagebe in accordwith what you were sayingabout an imag- ined languageworld? A. I think that's true, though it's not the whole thing. The first draftof what I want to writewill be prettymuch rawdata that'sbeen changedaround. Then I keep changingit aroundsome more, but it's still raw data. It hasn't been convertedyet to a . . . I would say a mysterychanges it. I really mean a mysterybecause I don't know what it is that makes the conversionpossible. I only know when I haven'tdone it. What is it in a personthat doesn'tlet him be until he has transformedan experience,certain feelings and observationsthat arerelated to each otherand suddenlystrike him as importantsubject- matter?I don't know the answer.

Q. Well, actuallyI had in mind the state of some of the perceptions and imagesin the finishedpoem. "The Lobster,"for instance,seems to be presentingraw data, althoughif you look at it carefully,it's not rawdata by any means:"Eastern Sea, 100 fathoms,/ greensand, peb- bles, / brokenshells. / Off Suno Saki60 fathoms,/ graysand, pebbles, / bubbles rising./. . . The fisheryvessel Ion / drops anchor here / collecting/ plankton smearsand fauna." A. Well, thereare a lot of detailshere, but they'recertainly not just rawdata, they add up to the sea, the mysteryand coldnessof the sea. By the way, this poem has been reprintedmore than any other; for some reasonpeople have liked it. I reallydon't know why; in a way, it's less Rakosithan almost any other of my poems becauseit doesn't

CARL RAKOSI 183 havepeople in it. What I wastrying to projecthere is a depersonalized somethingwhich is the sea.

Q. What about the personof the speakeras he sees each of these items broughtup from the bottom?Isn't the readerviewing this "raw material"through the eyes of a man locatedon the fisheryvessel? A. That's so, but what I was tryingto do was to write a poem with- out the poet.

Q. Do you believe that's possible? A. It's possible(perhaps only relatively),though I reallydon't enjoy doing it that way.

Q. The poemcalled "Time to Kill"seems to raisethe samequestions. It seems to be giving raw data, objectivedescription-though, when you considerit, the observationsare clearlythose of a man with time to kill, someonewho is bored,perhaps. A. That's right,up to a point. This was a hot summerafternoon and you know how everythingthickens and slowsup when it's hot, so that one's perceptionsof what'sgoing on become slowerand denser.Then alongcomes an old man into the scene, and I felt and tried to convey a bit of pathosthere.

Q. But you wouldsay then that thereis a humansubject, a perceiver?

A. Oh yes, it's very differentfrom "The Lobster"in that respect. And "Time to Kill"was writtenrecently, whereas "The Lobster"was written thirtyyears ago. I couldn't have written "Time to Kill" as a young man. Q. Why not? A. I wasn't relatedto realityin that way then. Q. What do you mean? A. A lifetime of involvementwith people in social work came be- tween these two periods.This might make me a poorerpoet in some waysbecause I'm not so completelysubsumed by languageas I was then. I'm equallyinterested in subject-matter. Q. You mentioned Stevens before. By my calculationsyour poem

184 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE "Homageto Stevens"must be an earlyone since it seemsto be chiefly a linguisticexercise. A. Yes, very early.If I had had more poems to put into Amulet I would have left that one out.

Q. Why so? A. It doesn'treally say anything.I was just enjoyingthe pleasuresof the imagesand the language.I don't know what kind of experience Stevens started with, but if you take one of his poems and try to understandit as a man sayingsomething, you're lost. Its beautiesare somethingutterly different. He's killed all subject-matter.

Q. Would you say that Williams has done the same thing? A. Oh no, Williams had a great respectfor subject-matter.

Q. Well, Patersonis concernedwith a human subjectand a human world,but I had in mind some of the earlierpoems that were simply formalpresentations, matters of perceptionagain. A. Perhaps,but with Williams you always have the feeling that there'sa man there talking.With Stevens,you don't get that feeling. He's transformedhimself into something wonderfuland beautiful, but he's not a man talking.

Q. But you must admitthat some of yourown subjectsare not always immediatelyapparent. That poem called "The Gnat,"for example,or "The City, 1925." A. I had a little troublewith the gnat poem, too, when I rereadit. The subject-matterreally is winter-if you will imaginethe rigorsand the enormityof winter (the winter is especiallyenormous in Minne- sota). And what is one person?He's reallya gnat. That's me, a gnat in winter.

Q. Well, what are the "six rivers/ and six wenches / the twelve / victories"in the lines that end the poem? A. I can't answerthat. I may have left the subjectof winter in the middleof the poem and gone on to somethingelse, in which case the two halvesmay not go together,I'm ashamedto say. Or the six rivers and six wenches, which I would consider twelve victories anytime, anywhere,may have flashedthrough my mind becauseof the winter,

CARL RAKOSI | 185 to triumphover it, as it were, and so on. In any case, I am not com- fortablewith the poem's ellipses.

Q. Don't you have anotherpoem called "Januaryof a Gnat,"which repeatssome of the images? A. That is one of my firstpoems. It's all imagery,really. The subject is reallymy own imaginationplaying around with what winterfelt like. Q. What winter felt like from a highly imaginativepoint of view, not what it felt like literally. A. Right, right. Q. Does "The City, 1925" also have a subject, even though the imagesdon't seem to have any logical connectionbetween them? A. Well, let me say this about it. I'm a young man of twenty-two, timid and lonely,and I come to New Yorkfrom a small town and it's overwhelming-theimmensity, the profusion,the infinitevariety, the people.The poem is an effortto come to termswith this overwhelm- ing impression.Since this is my first exposure,there are all kinds of objectsto be described-objectswhich have no connectionwith each other. The connectionis throughmy perception,through my receiv- ing of them in their tremendousmultiplicity. Q. So once again the perceiverbecomes the importantelement in the poem. A. That's true. But intuitivelyI intended to keep these objects as intactas possible,to keep theirintegrity intact. So thereis this element of an adherenceto the integrityof the object that makesit different from mere description.At the same time, you are right.The real sub- ject of the poem is not the objectsthemselves, interesting though they are,but what this young man is experiencingin their presence.What is importantis that the integrityof both the subjectand the object be kept. That is, I respect the externalworld-there is much in it that is beautifulif you look at it hard. I don't want to contaminate that; it has its own being; its own beauty and interest that should not be corruptedor distorted.But so does the poet havehis own being. Q. What would you say are some of the corruptingforces on per- ception of the actualworld in its intrinsicbeauty? A. Well, here let me speakas a psychologist.There's the strongest

186 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE kind of pull in a poet againstsubject-matter-in fact, againstwriting a poem at all. No psychologistunderstood this as well as Otto Rank. He calledthis forcethe counter-will.This forceis alwaysaround when the urgeto write is felt, and is a match for it, and often more than a match. The fine hand of this counter-devilis evident, of course,in a writer'sprocrastination, but also operatesbehind the scenes in other more subtleand deviousways whenever one is evadingsubject-matter, by being rhetoricalor elliptical,for example.On the surfacethis looks innocent,as if it were just a literarymatter, but if the writerhimself thinks so, it just means that its protectivepurpose has been achieved and he has been conned by his counter-devil.In the process,he may makesomething as good, or even better,but the fact remainsthat he did not retainthe integrityof his originalimpulse, he had to appease or deceivehis counter-willwith a substitute.You can see this counter- devil is a very live fellow to me.

Q. What about the matter of abstraction?This brings us back to Pound's "A Few Don'ts." A. Abstraction,of course, is the most common deadly offender. When you write about somethingas though it were a principleor a concept or a generalization,you have in that moment evaded it, its specificity,its earthlylife. You aretalking about something else. Really a differentorder of reality.

Q. Let me see if I understandyou. You seem to be saying here that there are two kinds of corruption that are at the extreme of one another.One is a complete evasionof the subjectby the use of formaldevices in the poem, and the other is an excessivelyrational apprehensionof the subject,so that the subject is transformedinto the poet's conceptionsabout it ratherthan presentedin its so-called inherentbeing. A. If you changethe word"conceptions" to "generalizations,"you're right.It's extremelydifficult to presentthe subject,the object that has been the cause of your experience,in its integrity-and you, the por- trayerof it, in your full integrity.

Q. Actually,it is preciselythis kind of approachthat might be called "objectivist."Does this correspondto your idea of what the term reallymeans? A. I think so. It was the reasonI thought the term was prettygood

CARL RAKOSI | 187 originally,when Zukofskythought it up. One way to see what it is is to see what it is not-how objectivismdiffers from imagismor sym- bolism, for example.You might think for a moment that, after all, objectivismis a form of imagism or naturalism.But imagism as I recall-and I haven't read any imagist poems in thirty years-was a reactionto the period immediatelypreceding, against literary affec- tations. So the imagistsset out to do what the French impressionists in paintingdid: go out into the open and look, see what you see, and put it down without affectationof the then dominantliterary influ- ences.And that's as much as they did, but it wasn'tcomplete. It was only the first step in a poetic process.That's why imagism is not altogethersatisfying; the personof the poet is not sufficientlypresent. Now symbolism,of course,is more in contrastwith objectivism. It seemsto me that the subjectof symbolismis a poetic state of feel- ing and its aim is to reproduceit. It reallydidn't mattermuch what you startedwith-whether it was a floweror the moon. All the poet was concernedwith was his own feeling. And for that subject,sym- bolism is suitable,but it's a very narrowsubject.

Q. A state of feeling that was far removedfrom the object itself? A. Simplyhis own state of feeling. He didn't care about the moon really,or about a flower,the real characterof the flower.

Q. The radicaldifference then is between a state of feeling per se and one resultingfrom a direct perceptionof the object. A. Let me put it this way. This was a generalizedstate of feeling that the poet carriedaround with him. An object was simply an oc- casion for him to projectthis feeling.

Q. This feeling that the symbolistpossessed-his approachto reality -was in a sense a priori... A. Absolutely. Q. ... whereasthe objectivisthas an a posterioriapproach. He let his feelingsdepend upon the objectand was faithfulto the object. A. Right. Now take my poem "To a Young Girl." The girl is not an abstraction;she remainsreal all the way throughthe poem. She's not the epitomeof a younggirl, she is not a beautifulideal of a young girl, she is a realyoung girl. Now she becomessubjective in the sense that I, or the speaker,carry on a certaininner dialogueabout her, but

188 i CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE that's my business,that's my realitywhich I projectinto the poem. But the girl is a real person.I respecther reality.

Q. This gets us back to "ShoreLine," doesn't it? You begin with the rawdata and then, being faithful to it, you transformit into per- ception and feeling and then into somethingimaginative. A. I think so. I didn't realizewhen I wrote those lines that they were such a true expressionof what goes on in me and of my view of poetry,objectivist poetry. But that's true.

Q. "To a YoungGirl," then, while being basedon an externalobject, reallydescribes something that is goingon in the mind of the poet;he's imaginingwhat the girl herself might be thinkingand he carrieson an imaginarydialogue with her. It seemedto me that the point of the poem was the liveliness,to say the least, of the old man's thoughts and feelings. A. Yes.

Q. In fact I was remindedof Humbert Humbert and Lolita. The nymphetturns out to be partlya creatureof an old man'simagination. A. I agree, I agree. You know, speakingof fidelity to the object, somethingelse just occurredto me. Amulet was reviewedin a new British journalcalled the GrossetesteReview by a young poet who found a similaritybetween me and a youngCzech poet namedHolub. Holub is a physicianand he's reportedto have said that he was in- fluencedby Williams, whom he read in translation.I have Holub's book at home and it's true that there are similarities.It seemed to me that maybeone reasonWilliams, Holub, and I have somethingin common is that none of us has been a professionalpoet nor an academicperson; we've all had similarprofessions and perhapsour experiencein them has led to a similarityin our poetry. Williams alwayshad a feeling of respect for the object. Actually,as a pedia- trician, his work was as much psychological-establishinga rapport with mothers and children,being reassuringand understanding-as it was medical.And this is true for the social worker.I don't know which medicalspecialty Holub was in, but he may also have had this kind of experience.Williams, of course,never stopped writing, as I did; I suspecthis firstresponse to experiencemay have been like mine, but that he was morein the habit of transformingit into literarymaterial.

CARL RAKOSI 1 189 Q. An interestingidea. So you feel that your poetry is closest to that of Williams? A. Well, no. I would say the one who is closest to me is Charles Reznikoff.

Q. From what you'vebeen saying,I can see what you mean. A. I think that Reznikoffcomes throughin his earlierpoems as a thoroughlycompassionate man. He comes throughas a person.When he's observingsomething, you're inside him.

Q. Your Americanapoems seem reminiscentof some of the things he was doing in Testimony. A. I was fascinatedwith that book. But what he was saying there is that the raw data can speakfor itself. It was what happened,what was in the law books and court records,and it's poetry.

Q. So he's looking at realityfrom his own professionalviewpoint, as a lawyer. A. Not exactly.He's simplyrecording it with the homely specificity and phraseologyof legal languagein the way it would be done in a good court record.That book did not get good reviews,as I recall.I think the critics said he hadn't done enough with the material.But my first reactionwhen I read it was that maybe Reznikoffis right. Maybe the materialcan speakfor itself. But my assumptionsin the Americanapoems are different.I don't assume there that the raw data is the poetry.One thing that is similarthough is that Reznikoff seems to have been fascinatedwith legal languageand let it stand that way. In AmericanaI was fascinatedwith the unique flow of col- loquiallanguage, and I kept it that way.

Q. Would you call Reznikoffan objectivist? A. Yes. I would think he goes about writinga poem prettymuch as I do. Not so much in Testimonyas in the earlierpoems. Years ago Zukofskytold me that I must get togetherwith Reznikoffbecause we had a lot in common.We've nevermet, though.

Q. Did you ever meet George Oppen? A. No. But I respecthis poetry.It can come throughwith brilliant

190 | CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE perceptionsof reality,in which the self is interesting,as well as the object.But I can't warmup to it. It's strippeddown too much. Q. I wonder whether I might change the subject completely now and ask you a personalquestion. What made you decide to startwrit- ing poetryagain after a lapse of over two decades? A. Well, that'sa verygood story.I got a letter one day that had gone the rounds of a number of differentcities, before it finally reached me, from a young Englishmannamed AndrewCrozier. He said that he had run acrossmy name in an articleby Rexroth,had looked up my work in magazines,and copied every single poem I had written. He had made a bibliographyand wanted to know whether I had written any more. Well, the thought that somebodyhis age could care that much for my work reallytouched me; after all, there were two generationsbetween us. And that'swhat startedme. There'san amusingbit to that letter. You know my legal name is CallmanRawley, not Carl Rakosi,and Crozierhad a greatdeal of trouble trackingme down. Fortunatelyhe was not discouragedby a letter from my publishersaying that he doubted if I was alive and that he had heardthat I may have been a secret agent for the Com- inter and died behind the Iron Curtain.However, this was only a rumor and Crozier must not breathe a word of this to anyone! I can guess where this rumor might have come from. My publisher must have gotten to someone who knew my old friend, Kenneth Fearing.Fearing and I had been roommatesat the University.This is just the kind of prankhe would play. I can hear him laughinglike hell over it.

Q. Well, at least the letter reachedyou and that was fortunate.One final question. Did you revise any of the earlier poems that were includedin Amulet? A. ActuallyI made a lot of changesin the magazineversions I incor- poratedinto my first book, Selected Poems, in 1941. Zukofskysaid I had ruined some of them. He was right. I cut out too much. In Amulet I changedsome of them backcloser to the original,and others forward,as it were,to the 1960's.But I'm neversatisfied. I could keep rewritingthem all my life. It's a good way to get nowhere,because a person is constantlychanging, and what satisfieshim one day is bound to dissatisfyhim the next. Unless one's criticaljudgment has improved,therefore-and there is no reasonfor that to happen after a certainage-the third versionis apt to be as good as the fourth, or

CARL RAKOSI 191 even better,because it's closerto the originalstimulus. But it's no use telling myself that. I can't keep hands off. There's a dunderheadin me somewhere that persists in believing that a fresh perception of a poem is more right than the old. The oaf refusesto face up to the fact that everynew occasionis a new situationand has to have a new poem. What a battle I'd have with my counter-willif I ever ad- hered to that!

April4, 1968

192 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE