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Medusa Dossier: Clayton Eshleman (1999) MEDUSA: Could you talk about your writing habits?What is your writing process and what stimulates you to write a poem? Do you use pencil , pen, typewriter, computer? Do you keep notebooks? Do you havea specific method or ritual that you follow? When and where do you write? Do you have "dry" periods, I mean, times in which you find it difficult to write? CE: As a young poet, living in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 19605,1 forced myself to attempt to write daily, and often in the evening too. I would sit cross-legged on tatami before my low table and typewriter, sometimes staring at the page for hours. To sound like myself,whatever that might be, seemed impossible in those days. Moving from one line to the next seemed to involve crossing a continent. From the late ipyos on, I have worked in a more flexible way, starting poems only when I felt a nudge from my subconscious. These days I write quickly (using a Swintec 2600 electronic typewriter at home, notebooks when traveling), and I set the draft aside immediately , no reworking for at least 6 months, sometimes 2 years. I am one of those bitches who eats her own pups if they are not taken away upon birth. After time has passed, I show drafts to my wife, Caryl, who reads, comments, and even revises passages.Her intercession sometimes offers me detachment, sometimes changes my direction. When I start to revise, I carefully consider her suggestions, and we often work back and forth until I arrive at the finished piece. I do not think of this approach as traditional revision (polishing what has been done). My task This interview waswith Rodrigo Garcia Lopes for the Brazillian magazine Medusa.It appeared in an edited-down version in Samizdat 5, spring 2000. 318 C O M P A N I O N S P I D E R is to explore what is worth keeping from the first draft. I often end up with twenty to thirty pages of worksheets for a two- to three-page poem. Since I write lots of letters, and write essays and reviews as well as poems, and also translate a lot, I am not aware of ever having had a "dry" period. If I am having a problem with one genre, I just move to another. Translating and writing letters is a good way to keep my hand in, as it were, so that writing in some form or other is a daily practice. MEDUSA: I've noticed that you are very critical of the "creative writing school" type of poem. Would you say that this is the dominant one written in America today? Since it seems to be a North American phenomenon , could you explain it for us? Being a professor of creative writing yourself, how do you position yourself concerning this type of workshop poem? How do you feel about these creative writing programs ? Does "professionalism" of poetry represent a "curse" to the vitality and real "diversity" of American poetry (diversityhere in terms of conflict, not bland variety)? CE: Hundreds of creative writing degree programs in America exist today because they are popular at a time in which enrollment in traditional English Department classes is down. Students choose to "express themselves" instead of tackling arcane texts like Paradise Lost or The Fairy Queen, and universities oblige them by these offerings. In this sense, alas, writing workshops have become substitutes for reading. Students sign up for such courses without any sense of how difficult it is to write genuine poetry (which must be based on an enormous amount of background reading). One reason that they do so is that "art" and "creativity" get a lot of media promotional hype here. Drive through any large city and you will find billboards promoting "the 'art' of banking" or "the 'art' of cooking." The Borders Bookstore chain recently , on my local radio station, encouraged people to experience "the 'art' of browsing" in their stores! Students who do well in creative writing courses become candidates for undergraduate or graduate degrees in creativewriting, pointing to a career as a professor-poet or -novelist. And to get tenure-track teaching positions, one must network and publish. There is undoubtedly much more poetry and fiction being published in America today than ever before —stimulated by governmental and private foundations that fund regional small presses—but much of it is chore work done...

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