Mark Van Doren, part two

In its visiting scholar series WBA wi presents visit with the

poet part to. The visiting scholars program of the

Cleveland public schools was developed under the direction of Superintendent Paul Briggs

and was designed to bring teachers and students into direct personal contact with outstanding

scholars. Our guest today is Mark Van Doren poet

Shakespeare scholar and former professor of English at Columbia University.

In 1039 not a VanDoren was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his

collected poems. He has edited numerous anthologies of poetry the best known of

which is his anthology of world poetry. For many years he

served as literary editor and motion picture critic of the nation. Now in the

second of two interviews with Dr Van Doren he read some of his own poetry

and discusses the Beat poets of today. He is interviewed by Cecilia Evans

of WB only but to Van Doren Could you read some of your own poems for us.

I'd be glad to read one or two. I like nothing better. Here's

one that's a story called The first snow of the year.

The only man listening to the careful steps of his old wife is up she came

up so slowly. Then her slippered progress down the long hall to their door.

Outside the women while they suddenly whirl the first snow of the air

danced around and around with it coming closer and closer peppering the pain.

Now here she was said Oh my dear remember what

his trade took all of her attention having to hold it level. Oh my dear don't you

remember what that time we walked in the white woods.

She handed him it not can felt the glass to make sure the milk in it was warm.

Sat down got up again. Brought comb and brush to tidy his top hair.

Yes I remember. He wondered if she saw now what he did.

Possibly not an afternoon so windless the huge flakes rustled

upon each other filling the wood. The world with cold cold.

They sure were having a long way to go and then their mittens touched and touched

again their eyes trying not to meet didn't meet. They stopped

and in the cold held out their arms till she came into his awkward life as a

girl to a boy that never kissed before. The woods the darkening world

so cold so cold while they used to burn together. He

remembered and wondered if she did how like a hidden heat it was.

While there they stood and trembled and the snow made statues of them.

My dear remember. Yes I do. She

rocked in thought He wants me to say something. But we said nothing

then. The main thing is I'm with him still.

He calls me and I come but slowly. Time makes sluggards

of us all. Yes I do remember the

wild wind was louder but a sweetness in her speaking stung him and he heard

while round and round. The first snow of the year vanished on the lawn.

Oh that's lovely. That's a love poem is going about two very old people.

Yes and as you say the good thing is that they're still together.

Yes well that's just the point. Now I suppose you're

another one I want to read only too really. Another one for

you that I understand as applying to her although that was not so in my own mind as you've written

a number of years before that when I called it at the time a

lullaby it was one of a group of poems I published and I bought him in 1948

a group called Lullaby.

And this one is about an old lady who is rocking in her chair and old widow

whose husband is dead and her children have of course gone away she's all by herself.

It's called a sleep grandmother sleep grandmother sleep

the rocking chair is ready to go and harness bells are hung in a row as

once you heard them in soft smile sleep grandmother sleep

your sons are little and silly again. Your daughters are 5 and 7 and

10 and he that is gone was not gone them sleep.

Grandmother sleep the sleigh comes out of the winter world and carries you all

in Boots in hood to town for candy and white dress. Good

sleep grandmother sleep the rocking chair is always the floor.

But there he nods at the noisy door for you to be dancing one dance more.

Love the repetition of the motif of the poem sleepy grandmother sleep.

Of course I forgot she's already asleep. Unlike many old people she can sleep in

her in her chair. It's like she my grandmother used to. She's

remembering the best time there.

Not to be in her and I want to ask you Is there any one American poet that.

You consider to be the most important. Do you feel as his special

contribution.

Well there's no question in my mind as long as I don't have to.

To confine myself to this very moment there's no question in my

mind that Robert Robert Frost is that poet.

He's a poet of our century. He didn't really become known until about

1915 although he had written before that. But

between 1915 and 1950 63 I believe it

was when he died.

He developed a very great reputation and became the best known

poet of our world and the most popular incinerating

thing here known as the more popular poet but the best. That's unusual

NoHo didn't say truth think that is true of any really great artist.

Really great artist. It's just nonsense to suppose that an artist is good

because he's not popular. Shakespeare is not only the greatest of all poets but he's the most

popular of all boys throughout the world always have that in these people's writings you know

obscure they're not difficult to understand you know. Well I'm not and I'm not never told if

you if you give them your full attention. Of course not. Now they were never of

course trying to be obscure. There are things in

King Lear that can be understood only by someone who was willing to give his

entire soul to the understanding of that tremendous and terrible play. But it's

not obscure and deep now you know.

Obscurity can be a shallow thing. The difficulty is altogether on the surface

the difficulty in King Lear that is so they understand how people could do things like that.

She then the people in that play are so terrible most of them so unspeakably terrible

tragedy and the horrors that grim the horror of his daughter's every two daughters

and of at least one case of the mind of the

son in law and so forth and so on. No it's a

Shakespeare got down in the game to the very bottom of existence there.

Now it is difficult to follow em if you flinch. If you tend

to flinch from. So it's like

exhibitions but there's no verbal difficulty there now. I say let me

say again superficial difficulties.

Do you think sometimes people don't want to give themselves so fully to work

that they don't want to feel the pain in me and see

what is being presented.

Yeah and I could also ask you to stop at the word feel they don't want to feel

period. They're feeling a very painful there's no

feeling that pleasurable in itself. I mean a real feeling. I don't mean feelings or

sentimental people have sentimental people think it's nice to feel but it is like to feel

really if you if you feel anything really is painful

pretty is not a terrible thing to feel in the world it tells you the place of

jealousy all the feelings connected to love working themselves painful

longing and perhaps you know with some part of you

that love will always change in some way.

Yeah and so this is painful to but but feelings are

terribly powerful and terribly important things.

Remember to tell it once said A person who thinks it's nice to feel ought to

try it once.

Meditate on the whole we try not to feel I mean in the real person the real person trying

not to feel guilty. You can't help what he does but he doesn't want to go around trying

looking for feeling to have your brother's keeper. What sort of feeling do you think

the so-called beat poets of today can very well know anger anger

chiefly their anger at a world which they consider to be

bad to constructed and monstrously out of balance and

proportion. A world that is given through cruelty and

destruction as they see you. A

world in which only comes with money so they try

and live gracefully in poverty. I've heard them say that. Do

you think they succeed. Well more or less they live their own

lives. They don't want to hurt anybody they just want to go through the world not

having to. Have an eight hour job.

And I had a job. Doing things that are

nonsense to them sitting in offices and wearing little

suits and so forth they want to live as they say freely and basically well

well this can be silly at times and often icily and they dress outrageously

and they don't and they get awful dirty maybe and they don't cut their hair. But all of that

is a. As a protest as I understand it gets

the nature of our world which which wants

everyone to be like in turn.

What do you think that there is validity in your view of it. Yes I mean and I fand think

there's a great deal you think about our poets who live more conforming lives but in

different times a man like Wallace Stevens. Yeah perhaps yeah.

Who was a businessman and looked and looked and acted like any other businessman.

But Walt Whitman of course in a time cultivated a free and easy way he

dressed just the way he wanted to.

Never have any money and I was interested in and having money

you hardly know how me how I managed to live he did.

But he's good at it but he's a great poet and I mean we don't think any

worse of him because he loafed and invited his soul.

And he was the poet if you want that Definitely definitely.

Over time you know he he wore long hair here and would have wanted to see

her either and it didn't hurt him.

And he wore loose shirts two or three shirts one over the other.

And he liked to be on the fence in a dress he wore big pearl down here you know

the his. Shirt. He basically

himself and go to Cologne. He like to smell good. I know

he did just what he liked. Now you're you know you can't object to this way. Why shouldn't people

do this. They're utterly harmless. And some of the productive Yes of

course. I want Ginsburg who by the way was a student of mine

a few MBA and at that time was not a beat poet or told he was

when you heard if you read the poetry he wrote then you wouldn't believe it

would you have called it traditional poetry. Yes I suppose so.

I know him well I see him from time to time I hear the jump was conceivable soul.

But his poetry is very angry itself by saying he is gentle but

his book is not. And some of the quite terrible the poem

What about Cory about his mother called. I don't know whether you've ever read that and I know I'd like to hear a

very terrible but powerful thing I think about her illness of her

operations and everything of the sort. I mean it's very literal

or very liberal or very biographical was parked there you hardly see how you get better

either. She did of course here and I was in it but I just

go all out. As a as a portrait of a man a woman whom

I've known as well as one I was one.

Mother would you say this was catharsis for Ginsburg. Yes we once had meaning for other people.

I think so I'm I'm afraid more for him than for anybody else. Her quote you

should find might have meaning for others.

Thank you Dr. Van Doren for pointing out some of the meanings to be found in

your poems and those of other writers

you have heard Dr. Mark Van Doren in visit with the poet part to

the visiting scholar series is produced by the Cleveland Board of Education station WABE or we have

them by Charles Siegel engineering by Dennis Beatty your

interviewer was Cecilia EVANS This is Lee factor speaking this is

the Board of Education station WABE O.E. in Cleveland.

This program was distributed by a national educational radio. This is

the national educational radio network.