I Would Lie to You if I Could: Interviews with Ten American Poets

by Chard deNiord (Editor)

Overview

I Would Lie To You If I Could contains interviews with nine eminent contemporary American poets (Natasha Trethewey, Jane Hirshfield, Martín Espada, Stephen Kuusisto, Stephen Sandy, Ed Ochester, Carolyn Forche, Peter Everwine, and Galway Kinnell) and James Wright’s widow Anne. It presents conversations with a vital cross section of poets representing a variety of ages, ethnicities, and social backgrounds.

The poets testify to the demotic nature of poetry as a charged language that speaks uniquely in original voices, yet appeals universally. As individuals with their own transpersonal stories, the poets have emerged onto the national stage from very local places with news that witnesses memorably in social, personal, and political ways. They talk about their poems and development as poets self-effacingly, honestly, and insightfully, describing just how and when they were "hurt into poetry," as well as why they have pursued writing poetry as a career in which, as Robert Frost noted in his poem "Two Tramps in Mud Time," their object has become "to unite [their] avocation and [their] vocation / As [their] two eyes make one in sight."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822965343
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	07/24/2018
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Chard deNiord is the poet laureate of Vermont and author of six books of poetry, most recently Interstate and The Double Truth. He also edited a book of essays and interviews with seven senior American poets (Galway Kinnell, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, Jack Gilbert, Ruth Stone, Lucille Clifton, Robert Bly) titled Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs: Conversations and Reflections on Twentieth-Century American Poets. deNiord is a professor of English and creative writing at Providence College and a trustee of the Ruth Stone Trust.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 Natasha Trethewey 3

2 Galway Kinnell 33

3 Carolyn Forché 59

4 Jane Hirshfield 105

5 Anne Wright 133

6 Ed Ochester 167

7 Martín Espada 207

8 Stephen Kuusisto 235

9 Peter Everwine 265

10 Stephen Sandy 291

Acknowledgments 347

About the Author 349

Editorial Reviews

Past praise for Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs:
 
"Chard deNiord is master of the immersed conversation. Informed, curious, knowing when to contend and when to unbend, he meets each of his poets on the high ground of their art, and seduces from them their most closely held wisdom. Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs is at once a schooling and a delight." —Sven Birkerts


Past praise for Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs:

"I think it's Chard deNiord's intelligence and empathy as a questioner which help his subjects—some of our best-known and most-respected senior poets—seem to make discoveries about themselves before our eyes. This collection of interviews about what it is to live and think as a poet, along with lucid critical essays, make for a very useful and also very lovely book." —Daisy Fried

From the Publisher