John Hall Wheelock

It's time for the readers all men to act with one by our originally

broadcast over station WNYC in New York and distributed by national

educational radio. The reader's almanac is America's oldest consecutive book program.

Here now is Mr. Bauer.

Tonight I begin the 2090 here the readers Allman hack a program of which have appeared some of the

greatest of American authors as well as many from other countries during that period of

time. These writers appear here when new books by them are published

and we talk intimately about their work. This will be the pattern for another year

when you may expect to meet here a number of authors whose works are significant in contemporary

literature. My choice of guest with whom to open this season was made

obligatory some months ago when scripters announced that they would publish a new book of poems

by John Hall Wheelock one of this country's most distinguished poets

has appeared several times on the almanac and books of his poems have appeared.

The current book his eleventh volume of poetry is called Dear men and

women. Its poems are mature wise beautiful and moving in their

insights and eloquent in language. But I would like to give a

special emphasis to the fact that there are men and women has appeared in the 80th year

of its author's life as a poet in credit. Alan Tate is said

Mike Hardy and Yeats John Hall who has done his best work in old age.

This linking of Mr. Wheelock with some of the best poets who write in English will seem altogether

justified as one reads in this volume. No diminution of power

and feelings here rather there is a calm certainty of expression

as if the wisdom of many years had been summed up here. All else is

fresh and vital. It's a remarkable achievement for any man. We were like

It's good to have you on this program again thank you for coming in from your Long Island home for this special

occasion.

To be sure you did that for something like 46 years if you were on the staff of the

Scrivener publishing house which has been an illustrious career by itself

but now happily you can devote yourself in a degree greater than before to

poetry yet it may be that I put too much emphasis on your age so I

certainly feel that it is worthy of some note. But you are more than

a geriatric phenomenon. I would venture to say that you are now a man

released to do what he most likes to do. I hope that is true.

Yes I hope to go on and this may be my latest but I trust not my last

book.

I certainly trust that too because I want you to come again. Do you attach any particular

importance however to your ADF here. Reza just another milestone.

Well I've been fascinated by the whole experience of growing old. I've

heard a great deal about it. Read about it but to experience it oneself

is something outs again and

I've found myself compelled to make a record as it were of

my experiences. I began to think of myself as.

Getting on at the age of 70 and I wrote a poem then called

Song On reaching 70 and this book is frankly the

book of an old man an old poet who finds

life extremely exciting and worthwhile still

and who has tried to put into words what it feels like to grow

old.

You say that you are fascinated with time and its workings upon you particularly.

Yes I am interested in the whole experience I have as a young man and I often wondered what

it would feel like to be older and to grow old. And I've noticed that

although people never speak of us. And very few poets have spoken of it

because Yates made some human rights references to an aged man it

is but a tattered coat on a stick and wanton savage

Lando wrote some very sad poems about growing old browning some

very optimistic ones Grow old along with me the best is

yet to be. And there have

been other poets all the poet Sophocles who gave a very

discouraging picture of all age. But I have just

tried honestly to record my own feelings.

This is supposed to be peculiarly a time for a new theory. Would you like to reverse that

tendency just a little.

Well I would have I think in age one has something to say

that one cannot of course have in you.

I think it's something that it's very difficult for youth to understand

but today there are a great many people more than in past periods who

are old or elderly and I've had a very remarkable

response to these biomes for instance the series of sonnets of which

the book opens which is the first series of poems I

know of about love in old age married

loved in old age where the Saudi hangs over the couple the

inevitable separation draws nearer. And this has never been written about

in poetry. And then another poem so I have recorded

these things particularly in one called the part called age. A long poem

which begins what was this thing called growing old. All his life he

had heard about it had read about it had seen others grow old.

He remembered his father's words. Some day when I am gone and you are older

perhaps you will understand.

I want to ask you if you if your method of work. I mean on your own

writing has changed to any degree. Now that you had time since leaving it for

time can certainly publishing.

Well of course in the old days I had to do most of my work at night

and on weekends whenever I got a chance.

Fortunately I began early in life the habit of

writing my poems in my head. I did not need to be in a room with a piece of paper and a

pencil. I began this habit in the summer as in vacation

time when I very fond of walking the beach

in trunks in the sun instead of staying at home and working it over

in a room. And so I was forced to make up my poems as I walked along.

And this becomes a habit and it's amazing how much you can carry in your head.

I didn't like to lead you even further into a some discussion of how you write

poetry. What you just said intrigues me but I'd like to go further that

the whole process from inception to finished work to it's fixing into a

final form which means I assume it's a publication. Now how does a

poem start. For example what seed does it grow with you.

Well I think you'll find that most poets agreed on this that the

poem begins. With a rather vague

feeling of something

that you feel very strongly about that needs to be said or that

you'll experience toward it. Life has brought to your attention or that you had a

dream about and it's still very big

and unformed and it presses on you.

And when you get a chance you would try to put it into some shape where other

people can look at it. You'll have the feeling how can you get others

to have it especially when you don't know quite what your

final result is going to be. So by working it out.

It gradually takes shape and sometimes a shade quite

different. As far as the idea and structure are

concerned then you had thought it would have when you began.

I have written something about this in my book.

What is poetry and tried to

explain it in terms of some well-known primes. How the

poet gets the feeling of something that he can't quite.

Define in his mind but it's a very strong feeling that presses on him and he

walks around it like a man who's walking around some animal that he wants to

trap or catch in a net. But he mustn't frighten it. You mustn't think of it too

hard you mustn't concentrate too much on it think a little bit of something

else and gradually take shape and as it takes shape you'll begin

to see what you have there. Like a man who comes up with his net and for the

first time discovers what is in the net and that net of thought and

feeling that you flunk and you may be surprised to find what is there

something so different from what you had expected. Then of course begins the

shaping of that thing and the hard work.

Does that mean with you then committing it to paper.

You well I got into the habit. I think anyone would who

wanted to be out DAWs and moving. And at the

same time of work I got into the habit of being able to work over it

and endure various versions and I remembered all those

versions as I went along. I had this faculty becomes

developed if you'll have to use it. And I did most of my work frankly

during my summer vacations walking along the beach. But I had no

paper or pencil and I would carry these things in my head sometimes for my entire

vacation of a month and not write any of the poems down till I got back to New

York.

Now is there a maturing process perhaps somewhat like the aging of wine

which involves time passing over the poem in this case perhaps with

some attention from you. Pencil in hand perhaps or another

version created in your mind ready to make changes whenever

insights come to you.

Yes I think that the work done on the original

version of the poem is very important indeed. And of course that is hard work

because the impulse the original impulse that was

exciting is rather faded by then also you get very tired of

working over and over something trying to get it right.

But I think that that kind of work is is extremely important it's

amazing what can be made of something that in downcast moods

will seem hopeless to you by hard

intelligent critical work. I think that in the making of a

poem the impulse and the critical frankly have to go together.

How do you know when a poem is finished and ready to go out into the world on its own.

I'm told that painters especially among all kinds of artists have to special problem when is a

painting finished not any longer to be touched up. And I suspect that poets

may have this concern as well.

I think so and I think that as painters well know there comes a

time when if you do any more work on the canvas it's going to spoil a certain quality in it.

And I think the time when you will is reached finally when you

just. Feel it you can't bear to do anything more that you made it

as good as you can and it's getting a little stale in your own.

Your impulses are turning away. I want to do something else.

And that's a good time to drop it. But of course as you know all the poets

go back to their work in later years and make improvements

or at least what they consider improvements I think. Usually it will be found

that a part who has progressed in his own development and

goes back on all the work written in another period of development and rewrites

it in the light of the later period will spoil it. I don't think it

can be done. It's better to leave it alone. Gates is a supreme example of that.

He went back over his early work and rewrote it in the light of his much greater

later accomplishment. And he

spoiled some of the early part of us.

I wonder if it would not be useful and illuminating to our listeners especially

India what you've just been saying. If you were to read a poem from this current volume

there are men and women. And then you might speak of its first growth and development.

It's natural history as it were. What if you do that.

Yes.

I leave the choice altogether to you of course.

Well I have in mind a poem called the poet.

Actually the poet I had in mind in writing this was a friend of mine

who. Died much too young but

it seemed to. As I worked on it.

To sum up many things that I had felt about poetry

and hadn't been articulate about and

learned as it were in the making of the poem. It gradually

became clearer to me and I remember writing this

poem. This was written walking on the beach

taught em against it on the tip of Long Island on the south shore

and was written actually written in my head in one day but

worked over a great deal afterwards.

It's called the poet.

He has an eye that watches in secret an ear that would listen for what can

only be overheard. A mouth to tell us something we have forgotten.

In a word to tell us all over again something we always knew.

Oh if he only could. This is his tormentor and

Supremes challenge for words are clumsy symbols inadequate

and reality is subtle and very great greater by far than we have

guessed is every day reality stranger than any dream

deep in him always the intuition is there that something more than what is seen and

heard is meant something lost with the innocent delight and wonder

that have it will destroy and which to recapture is its

prime despair so-and moonlight on a meadow of cocktail

toward dawn or sunlight falling through still the apple trees. What

nudges him here. What speaks from the silence of the

stars or of the dead. What is it trying to say.

The Cock a funny role where Broadway and Forty-Second meet the somber

flow of bodies through Avenue and street. These are things will bear much

thinking about. They are what they seem and something more.

Oh to discover the formula the device that will give us back forgotten reality

again. So we may share it with others then by the thrall of the

lie and the fall of the wood to reopen the door. If but for an

instance into a lost paradise. Such is the

constant dream that keeps him strong through days of labor sleepless

nights strange miseries and delights. It is the cause of many a

wound he takes the perpetual hope behind its song.

Living He may be widely heard and become well known. Or is fame

wait upon days that are yet to be dead. The branch

he clung to on life's tree will tremble a little for a little

while like a branch from which some nightingale

perhaps has flown.

Mr. Ely got a very impressive poem indeed. Any further

losses that you can give to it commenting upon how it came to be

well trained and have this form of years a life of the.

This this poem actually followed a

statement made in a prose book of mine called what is

poetry in which I had tried to say some of these

things. But I felt not very

successfully so that it rather nagged me to

put them better.

And this feeling pressed on me for a long time

until that summer when I was down on the Long Island

shore and started working on it on my walks along the beach

and it began rather vaguely in that there were

elements in what is poetry in the prose work

that I felt I hadn't succeeded in conveying and I wanted them to be

in the poem so that it grew slowly in that afternoon

and was very much changed in the rewriting later.

Now I'd like to have you eliminate another matter for me and our listeners.

The naming of the volume which is grown one poem at a time and being worked on for a

very considerable period of time. Now this involves giving a title

to a book it involves many considerations I should think. Like getting

a good book title has to be brief and suggestive it has to be in tone of

the major elements of your work. Like I think your present title dear

man and women which has all the virtues and above all it is consonant with all that your poetry

means to as many readers as if it were the text for all that you have written.

Dear men and women. And yet you have to raise one poem above the

others in a way of speaking giving it a preference over others as if

though I suppose this may not be true. As if that poem were your favorite.

Tell me how dare men and women came to be the title of this book.

Well as you know choosing a title for a book of primes can be a very difficult thing.

One of the difficulties is that so many possibilities occur and

they are gradually discarded for one reason or another. But in this

case I had very little difficulty. I had published a

poem called Dear men and women. It came out in The New Yorker

and brought me a much bigger mail than I'd ever had before about any

one point. In fact The New Yorker People were

amazed at the extent of the volume of the mail that came

in to them and they forwarded to me so that when I came to get a

title for the book since it was the book of an older man

and dealt with people many of whom

were no longer living who had been very dear friends of mine

it seemed the right and natural title for the book I had in mind of course

the practical consideration that so many people had read this poem and

that the title would mean something to them so that

I took the title from that poem which stands well toward the

end of the book.

And.

Wanted to put the emphasis on the fact that this is a book

by a man who is getting old and who has

had many and has still fortunately many

good friends whom he feels very strongly about and I felt at the title.

Dear men and women was simple enough and

direct enough not to be sentimental and yet to have some charge of

feeling in it.

But it does seem to me that it is the most felicitously named book of yours

this present one. I think that day human fantasy which is another of your

volumes is perhaps too explicit and perhaps sententious in porn is

old and new is a kind of big graphical note as is porn

111 to 36. The break Dune is imagine even a

story as a reader. But other law dear men and women is warmest its most

immediately felt and appreciated. I would have to call it the happiest title of them

all.

I'm glad you like it I think it's well suited to the book.

Do you have any time to do any editorial work these days. I know that you take a great

deal of pleasure in discovering as we like to say a number of poets in

and bringing them out and by describing your publishing house.

Yes that was that went on for a good many years

eight years I published a

book which presented three complete books by three poets here the two

unpublished and I had the pleasure of presenting them for the

first time in book form in a book which held

each one held three complete books for which I

wrote an introduction. It

was one of the most exciting experiences I

had and also I learned a great deal from it because I had to be steeped in the reading

the work of younger poets who got a great many

submittals and I read them almost carefully and I learned a great deal.

Well my warm thanks to you John Hall Wheelock for this opportunity to talk with you

again. Taking off from this book of beautiful poems and write wisdom dear men and

women just published by Charles Scribner's Sons. What you have said of how poems

come to be complex and subtle texture of ideas and fancy of

music and meaning a wide ranging suggestion and penetration into both the

certain days and the uncertainties of life has been very illuminating to me and I put

it to our listeners as well. Not often does a poet speak so well as you have done

of such complex matters. Thank you for your coming here once more.

You have heard Warren Bauer and John Wheelock in a discussion of Mr. Wheelock book Dear men

and women. This was a program in the series the reader's

almanac on our next program Mr. Bauer's guest will be Jessamyn West.

And the book under consideration will be her novel a matter of time.

The reader's Allman AKh is produced by Warren Bauer and is originally broadcast by station

WNYC New York. The programs are made available to this station by

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radio network.