Interview With Gertrude Stein
Why do you write?
GS: “I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.” (The Making of Americans)
Why do you repeat the way you do?
GS: “There is then always repeating in all living.” (The Making of Americans)
How are repetition and memory linked?
GS: “There is no left or right without remembering. And remembering.” (Identity A Poem)
It seems you really love language.
GS: “I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do when they live where they have to live that is where they have come to live which of course they do do.” (Lecture I)
Do you feel misunderstood?
GS: “How pleasantly I feel contented with that.” (An Elucidation)
I’ve heard you like food? What’s your favorite dish?
GS: “Apple plum, carpet steak, seed clam, colored wine, calm seen, cold cream, best shake, potato, potato and no no gold work with pet, a green seen is called bake and change sweet is bready, a little piece, a little piece a little piece please.” (Tender Buttons)
Are you sure you’re talking about food?
GS: “Very pleasant weather we are having.” (Bon Marche Weather)
Alright I’ll be more general.
GS: “The teasing is tender and trying and thoughtful.” (Tender Buttons)
What is love?
GS: ‘Love of a person makes better soften.” (History or Messages from History)
What is loss?
GS: “A widow in a wise veil and more garments shows that shadows are even.” (Tender Buttons)
What is fear?
GS: “A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it.” (Tender Buttons)
What is life?
GS: “Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rate, this is this.” (Tender Buttons)
What is language?
GS: “Sentences are historical.” (We Came. A History)
What is repetition?
GS: “Sometimes it is very hard to understand the meaning of repeating.” (The Making of Americans)
Try.
GS: “A language tires. A language tries to be. A language tries to be free.” (Photograph)
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Interview With Anne Carson
I hope you don’t mind if I ask some personal questions?
AC: “My personal poetry is a failure.” (Decreation)
Alright, then maybe you can answer some of my personal questions?
AC: “Do you fear the same things as I fear?” (Men in the Off Hours)
Probably. Let’s see.
AC: “Yes I admit a degree of unease about my motives in making this documentary.” (Men in the Off Hours)
What’s the point of loving others?
AC: “There is a black planet speeding towards us.” (Glass, Irony and God)
Why is the sky so insistent?
AC: “Existence will not stop until it gets to beauty…” (The Beauty of the Husband)
Why did my mother leave my father?
AC: “A wife is in the grip of being.” (The Beauty of the Husband)
Why did their marriage fail?
AC: “…if it is a game, if they know the rules, and it was and they did.” (The Beauty of the Husband)
Why does life hurt so much, even when we expect it?
AC: “The tough wound plucks itself.” (Decreation)
And why can’t I sleep?
AC: “What could be more hopeful than this story of an empty eye filled with seeing as it sleeps?” (Decreation)
To move forward, what must I leave behind?
AC: “Love dares the self to leave itself behind, to enter into poverty.” (Decreation)
Is that why life feels so hard?
AC: “It takes practice to shave the skin off the light.” (Men in the Off Hours)
What do we do when love is ending?
AC: “Life pulls softly inside your bindings. The pod glows—dear stench.” (Men in the Off Hours)
And how do I get to the other side?
AC: “The actions of life are not so many. To go in, to go, to go in secret, to cross the Bridge of Sighs.” (Short Talks)
And the difference between love and grief?
AC: “Well you know I wonder, it could be love running towards my life with its arms up yelling let’s buy it what a bargain!” (Short Talks)
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These poem-interviews appear in Systems for the Future of Feeling by Kimberly Grey, just published by Persea Books. To obtain a copy, click here: https://www.perseabooks.com/systems