an interview with Patrick Lane

Ariel Gordon: In an interview CV2 conducted with your partner Lorna Crozier in 2003, the observation was made that the accepted stereotype of the poet is the fool—“flighty, in black, spouting gibberish—and not quite in touch with the real world.”

Is this generalization one of the rigours of writing poetry—or is it the least of the demons a poet will have to face over the length of his or her career?

Patrick Lane: I’m not sure this is the case any more or, at least, I hope it isn’t. I think rather that the public sees the poet as someone who ventures too close to the personal and confessional. The idea of the gibbering poet, flighty, wearing black, is an old cliché and not one the average person would describe one as. If anything, the contemporary poet is closer to what so-called reality TV presents or creative non-fiction aspires to. Today, the poet is more accepted than before, but still a bit suspect, given they’re seen as writing about things in a difficult manner, one that is hard to understand. So, I don’t think it’s a “demon” the poet has to deal with at all.

AG: I’m intrigued by your comparison of the contemporary poet as reality TV participant—could you elaborate on this a bit?

PL: Seen to be closer to. Reality TV purports to reveal real people in real situations, but, of course, they’re not. There is an audience watching and listening. The poet does the same in the contemporary poem, presenting a true account in verse of an experience for a reader, or audience, if they are performing. The reader is never far from a writer’s mind. I think the contemporary world is deeply suspicious of fiction, thus the turning-away from novels and the rise in popularity of non-fiction, especially the so-called creative kind. That adjective “creative” implies a fiction, a subjective creation.

AG: Are there any other myths or stereotypes of the poet that have particularly plagued or irritated you?

PL: The myth of the wild, violent poet who lacks a civilized sensitivity is a persona I’ve had to bear in my life. To some degree I’m responsible for it because of my early life and the stories I circulated about myself and stories that were told about me. It has pursued me for a long time, but less so the past ten years or so. The stereotype of violence in my work has always been there and to some degree is apt enough, but hopefully a close reading of my work would find more than that. It’s not my responsibility, anyway. A writer is caricatured early on, typecast, as it were, and there’s not much they can do about it.

AG: Is there anything you won’t write about?

PL: No, there’s nothing I wouldn’t write about, given what I’ve just said. In my long life I’ve seen almost everything from abuse to murder, from life to death. I agree with whoever said it, that there’s nothing one man would not do to another. I’ve broken a good many of the Christian commandments and a few more they don’t mention. I’m not terribly proud of having done so. I don’t regret the past, I just don’t forget it. Having seen the very worst that the human world can offer, I have to add that I’ve seen the very best as well. I’ve tried to speak of both with integrity.

AG: I suppose I didn’t mean dirty laundry so much as intimate identifiable detail...things about family members that no one who didn’t live with them in the home would know. I guess I’m trying to tease out what precisely is the divide between the private and the public.

Also, why is it verboten to write about one’s parents when they’re still alive and not when they’re dead?

PL: Yes, I know what you meant. The public revelation is always carefully couched in language so as not to offend the intimate relationship. It’s a delicate business. One can write about people when they’re alive, of course. But the real truth of what a writer feels can only be said after they’re dead. Anything said before is compromised by their earthly presence. I’ve never asked anyone’s permission to write about them. I’ve simply been careful not to offend those whom I love.

In answer to a question you haven’t asked, I would like to say that all writing involves essential fictions. Any story that I might tell is a fabricated one that borrows from the imagination as much as it does what most of us like to call the real. I’m a storyteller who has worked primarily with verse, though I have written in fictions and non-fictions as well. My life and the story of that life has been grist for the mill. In the early ’80s, I chose to write in third person in order to distance the narrator from the story. The reader often confuses the omnipresent “I” with confession. It is an egregious error.

AG: Is the confusion you point to a particular problem of what has been called “confessional” poetry? Is there any way around it?

PL: I dislike the term “confessional poetry.” Those who use it are often derisive, referring to such intimate and personal poems negatively. I sometimes wonder what such people think of the Confessions of St. Augustine, assuming they’ve read it. Poetry often tries to demonstrate or make manifest truths that arise from an individual’s experience. Such poems are not necessarily an acknowledgement or an admission of fault or guilt. There is always room for subjectivity. One only has to look at Rumi or Neruda, P. K. Page or Seamus Heaney. The usual examples given of confessional poetry that is excessive are Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Sharon Olds, but they are poets who have articulated in brilliant poetry profound suffering. I have nothing but respect for such work. I’d like to add that I’ve not been overtly political in my writing. My poems and stories present a difficult moral and ethical world to the reader, one I’ve chosen to write about. The reader must then decide what their response will be to the work. That’s a political decision they have to make.