The Sullen Art of Lewis Turco

 

A Radio Interview by David Ossman

         David Ossman, a California poet and radio literature critic, recorded and produced several radio programs having to do with poetry in the early 1960s. This interview is one of a number Ossman conducted in 1960 and 1961 with contemporary, “new” poets, for a program entitled, “The Sullen Art,” broadcast on WBAI-FM Pacifica Radio in New York City. It is archived in the Canaday Center of the University of Toledo Library, in Collection #32, Box #39, which contains cassette tapes of the WBAI interviews.

         This collection, narrow in its time frame, yet comprehensive in the selection of its speakers, has two main components: a series of interviews conducted for the radio program “The Sullen Art,” and the proceedings of the Berkeley Poetry Conference held in July 1965. From the interviews, Ossman edited another program, “American Poetry, 1961.”

         While at WBAI-Pacifica Radio in New York City, Ossman developed three types of programs devoted to poetry: readings by poets of note; a series of readings by David Allen of poetry both old and new; and a series of interviews with younger poets, illustrated with readings of their works. It was early in 1960 that the idea of “The Sullen Art” was born. Ossman envisioned it as a continuing series of radio programs “inquiring into the sources and future of contemporary poetry.” He took the title for the program from Dylan Thomas’s poem, “In My Craft or Sullen Art,” since Ossman felt that poets, no matter how involved with the affairs of the world, ultimately created their work alone. He also deliberately chose to interview those younger, non-academic poets categorized as “new” or “beat,” sometimes quite erroneously. Ossman set out to show that the new poets were “not a bunch of illiterate, barbaric, slightly-criminal types,” as they had often been characterized in the popular press. In doing so, he interviewed over forty poets — some of whom have since achieved considerable fame. Ossman later published fourteen of the interviews in The Sullen Art: Interviews by David Ossman with Modern American Poets, [New York: Corinth, 1965].

         This interview with Lewis Turco was conducted by David Ossman at the New York City facilities of WBAI-FM Paciifica Foundation on September 26^th, 1961, and broadcast the following October 6^th at 9:30 p.m., but it has not previously been published. Turco was entering his second year as an Instructor at Fenn College (Cleveland State University since 1965). In the following spring of 1962 he would found the Cleveland Poetry Center at the College, an institution that continues to exist in the twenty-first century.

 

Ossman. Lewis Turco was born in Buffalo, New York, graduated from the University of Connecticut, did graduate work at the University of Iowa, the Writers’ Workshop there, and his first book of poetry, titled, perhaps appropriately, First Poems, was published last year by the Golden Quill Press. This book contains poetry written in his early twenties, at least that’s the description given in the Introduction by Donald Justice; also, poems by Lewis Turco have been published in “zillions” of magazines — that’s the only word I can come up with — at least a vast number of magazines that range from The Kenyon Review to Neon.

I’d like to discuss, first of all, the University of Iowa experience, the Writers’ Workshop there which has in recent years become quite a celebrated workshop, perhaps the most celebrated workshop in the country, as distinguished from, let’s say, a summer series like Bread Loaf. It’s certainly the best-known. A book recently has been released of work published there.¹ What was your experience at the Iowa Workshop?

Turco. Well, I didn’t go out to Iowa for the Workshop itself. I’d written to some people before I went out — W. D. Snodgrass being one, Stephen Berg being another — and they said the Workshop wasn’t really what one went out for, it was the contacts, and I must say my experience there proved that statement. The Workshop itself isn’t much; the young poets, young writers there in Iowa City are everything.

Ossman. What is the teaching technique at the Workshop? Is there a teaching technique?

Turco. No, not really. No “technique,” as such. You go into the Workshop; they have mimeographed manuscripts that they pass out to everybody, poems by the students there; you sit around and criticize these poems. When Paul Engle is there, which is not very often (perhaps that’s a good thing), he does most of the talking. When Don Justice has the workshop we have fairly good discussions — we had, I should say, they still have, of course. The discussions sometimes tend to be a bit vicious — there are a number of little schools, and cliques, and coteries in the Workshop. The atmosphere is not, I think, conducive to good writing; it’s the after-hours gatherings that really do the work.

Ossman. Do you think that any workshop atmosphere is conducive to good writing?

Turco. I think, yes. I’ve been teaching creative writing at Fenn College in Cleveland for a year now, and I think I learned a lot about how not to run a workshop by attending the University of Iowa. You don’t want to have the feeling in the workshop that you are God if you’re in charge of it, you don’t want to allow people to get vicious, you want the atmosphere to be one of constructive criticism. I think under these circumstances the workshop can do good work.

Ossman. During the time you were at the Workshop, who were your fellow poets? Can you name a group of people who might be known to the audience?

Turco. I’m sure I can. Of course Paul Engle is in charge of the workshop, Donald Justice is second man, and then among the students there were Vern Rutsala whose poems I’m sure you’ve seen — he writes mainly social criticism, he’s published in quite a number of magazines. There was a chap named Edmund Skellings who had a book out in 1960; Morton Marcus, a young poet; Robert Mezey, who went out to Stanford [University] and who won the Lamont selection this year; Raeburn Miller; a number of others: James Crenner who recently had a poem in the First Appearance Issue of Poetry — there were quite a few people out there.

Ossman. Do you think there’s a common style of writing that evolves from the experience at the Iowa Worksop?

Turco. Surprisingly, no. There are common styles. For instance, Robert Mezey, with Peter Everwine, another young poet, was sort of the mentor of the Neoclassical school out there. They wrote poems that at least had overtones that were similar. And Donald Justice of course wrote poems that were Romantic, and Jim Crenner was captured by Justice’s poetry which I regard very highly myself. And there are little groups that get together, like Vern Rutsala and Morton Marcus who both write poetry of social criticism. I didn’t belong to a group myself; I sort of played the field.

Ossman. People who are on this program almost inevitably say, “I never belonged to a “group.” (laughter). And I suppose if somebody else were there he’d probably say, well, Lew Turco belonged to….

Turco. Very likely, very likely.

Ossman. But that’s just keeping one’s own personality and individuality, which is a fine thing. The book which you published last year from Golden Quill — which is, I believe, a New Hampshire concern — was a selection of the Book Club for Poetry. It’s a fairly good-sized small volume of poetry, and I wonder: how do you feel about it now, one year after its publication and, what, five or six years after writing the poems in it?

Turco. When my First Poems was published all of my friends out in Iowa City pounced on me and said, “You should never have published this book. It’s not anything like your writing now.” I’ve talked to editors who won’t review my book because, they say, “We don’t want to type you according to these early poems” which are, as you said earlier, I believe, formal. I’m a formal poet anyway; I’m not writing this kind of formal poetry anymore, but I feel that the book does stand for several years of my life that were formulative, you know? I’m not ashamed of the book. I think that I’m going to have a better book out very soon, but it’s not the kind of poetry I’m writing now. I suppose you’d say it’s precocious student verse. Or something like that.

Ossman. Do you think it’s advisable for a poet under thirty to assemble poems which were written, let’s say in round numbers, from the age of twenty to twenty-five, who is now writing differently, to publish a book of, as you say, “formulative poetry” —do you think it’s advisable for him to publish, literally, his “first poems”?

Turco. Of course, you can’t really make a general statement about it. It depends on the poet. Robert Mezey is I think two years younger than I am, and his first book won the Lamont Award. He was writing poetry, real poetry, before I was even writing verse. He was — I don’t know — when he was eighteen he was a professional writer. Certainly his first book should have come out. In my case I think that the poems will stand perhaps not on the first or even the second level of poetry being written today, but as I said, I’m not ashamed of my book. Don Justice, of course, with his book two years ago was thirty-five when it came out — I don’t think you can make a general statement. It depends on the poet, how far along he’s gone, when he started writing, how serious he was about it for the first years.

Ossman. That reminds me of Ginsburg whose second book has appeared following — let’s see — five years from Howl, then Kaddish, and now his first poems are going to be published, written between ’45 and ’55, which will be a retrospective volume in that sense.

Turco. Well, I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with that. I can see putting out a first book of first poems, but I think it’s a little bit Narcissistic to go backwards in time and pull out old poems.

Ossman. It seems to me…well, I go back to the word “retrospective” — just as an exhibition might cover a showing of the work of a painter over a particular period, say 1900 to 1910, but I don’t know; for a poet it’s a sort of a very academic question….

Turco. Of course, in the world of publishing it’s a little bit strange sometimes. You’ve heard of Sam Bradley, the Quaker poet?

Ossman. Yes.

Turco. Well, he had two books out, and his second book was accepted first, so his first book is going to come out second. That was accidental. I wonder if I would agree that the second book should live on the reputation of the first book. I don’t know — maybe it’s better than the first book.

Ossman. Let’s talk about the formalism of these poems. I think there are two ways that a real poet starts out. One way is to begin with, let us say, formal training, feeling at home with, or at least reasonably comfortable with the writing of established verse forms: sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, and so on, or metrical forms and / or rhyme. And the other side of the coin is the poet who is unable, even at the beginning, to function within the constrictions of the form. Now eventually they all get up to a point where they’re writing their own poetry, but I wonder — now you obviously come from the side that writes formally.

Turco. Umm, I’m thinking that over — I’m not sure that I agree with you about my starting out formally. I think you’re right when you say people start writing in one of the two ways, either writing freely, which tends to be emotional kinds of verse, or in the forms, experimenting with meters, with rhyme, and so forth. In my creative writing classes I never object to a person who starts in either way. It just seems to me that a person who starts out expressing himself in “free verse” lines is going to take longer to achieve the degree of technical proficiency that the second type will — the man who sets himself specific problems to solve; who, by solving those problems learns something. I have nothing against, as I’ve said, the “non-formal” way of writing, but — I think, and this is only a theory — it’s going to take a longer time for him to achieve this degree of mastery over the language, over the things that go into making up verse. Not necessarily “poetry,” just “verse.” After all, what is poetry? I don’t know, you don’t know. Nobody knows.

Ossman. But, Lewis, I’m wondering what your distinction is between poetry and verse because I make a distinction too.

Turco. Well, I would say that a good man who knows his craft can write competent verse — unfortunately, that’s the kind of thing that’s being written all over the country. Competent verse is not necessarily poetry.

Ossman. Let me stop you there. Now, it seems to me that this competent verse that is being written and widely published all over the country is having something of an ill effect on those poets who are starting formally. I find that the vast number of young poets that I read in magazine after magazine who have talent can’t see, can’t open up, are under the influence, whether directly or indirectly, of the poets who are content with a kind of easy verse. I think this is very bad, and does not bode well for the development of a really rich American verse, let’s say, in the 1960s.

Turco. Well, let me say first of all that there’s damn little “easy” verse being published in this country. “Easy verse” — Edgar Guest: now that’s easy verse.

Ossman. Phyllis McGinley won the Pulitzer Prize, let’s not forget that.

Turco. You have to give Pyllis McGinley a little more credit than that, though, because just to be able to say something as easily as she seems to be saying it takes a tremendous amount of craft, a tremendous amount of skill. No, if you have something beyond the craft it is bound to creep through the façade of form. If you do not, you’re going to stay where you are. Certainly you need something to jar you, everybody does, but just being jarred isn’t enough. The people who keep trying to write real poetry are very few, I will admit, but then they never would have written it anyway. Whether or not there were any influences in the country that you say are keeping them down. You’ve got to be honest with yourself, you’ve got to say, “Look, I’ve written this thing, is it really what I want to say, or is it just saying something very cleverly or very badly, or very “freely,” or whatever. Poetry is actually self-examination put into solid substance, into ways of saying what you really mean, and if you don’t really mean anything, you’re not going to write poetry, whether you’re a Beatnik or a vesifier, or a syllabicist, or a whatever.

Ossman. Well, of course the meaning has to be there and the craft has to be there, I think we all accept that, but I’d like to make mention of another thing, and that’s an article you wrote called, “The House of Mirrors” that was published in the Spring 1961 issue of The Midwest Review in Nebraska. You make several points about new writing today, and go into the barriers against the writing of verse poetry. You say, for example, “One of the unwritten laws of contemporary verse is, “Thou shalt show no sentiment.” Another is, “There is sex, perhaps even gentle descriptions of the love act from which a moral is drawn, but often the lack of emotional involvement leaves the reader with the feeling that this is a scene with which he has no connection. If one is sentimental one runs the risk of being corny.” Another commandment is, “Thou shalt not be funny.” Another, “Thou shalt not stray from iambic pentameter.” These seem to me to be rules that are characteristic of this group of poets that I was talking about and the younger poets who are under their influence. It is not true of the group that you call the “Beatniks” but that I choose to call, for lack of a better term, “The New American Poets” as defined by the anthology of that title. I prefer not to call them all “Beatniks,” there are only three or four “Beat” poets anyway.

Turco. When I said “Beatniks” I wasn’t talking about people like Robert Duncan or Robert Creeley….

Ossman. But these rules do apply to the so-called “academic” poets, but they don’t seem to apply to Creeley, Duncan, [Charles] Olson, and….

Turco. Nor do they apply to James Wright, or Theodore Roethke, nor do they really apply to Richard Wilbur although he’s been accused of it very often. What I said in that article was that, I suppose essentially, that you can, A., either want to be a poet or B. want to be accepted as a poet. There is a grave and great difference between those two statements. If you really want to be a poet you’re not going to remain “influenced” for very long. You’re going to say, “I’ve learned as much as I can from these people, and now I’m going to do what I want to do.

         Or, if you want to be accepted as a poet, you can say, “I’m going to write the kind of verse that everybody who counts is writing,” and simply stay there. Now I say, further, beyond that article, that the people who stay under this influence would probably never have been able to write great poetry, real poetry anyway.

Ossman. But they are published anyway.

Turco. Certainly.

Ossman. Most of the magazines, most of the literary magazines in America, most of the quarterlies anyway, take these poems, and they’re taken immediately.

Turco. They’re not taken immediately — the magazines try to get the best that they can — but you know, that’s another aspect of our poetic culture, the tremendous number of magazines that are being published in this country. You can, I think, get a poem published if you just keep sending it out long enough; you’ll eventually find the right magazine for it. If you run down the list of magazines in the International Guide that Trace magazine puts out, eventually you’re going to find a publisher for your poem — maybe not easily, but you don’t want to get into the kind of magazines that will take that kind of verse anyway, do you, if you’re a real poet? You’ll try to make the big magazines, the good magazines, the ones that you think are good, let’s put it that way.

Ossman. Yes, but I think you have to really pick and choose those magazines. Many poets who are not formal poets cannot get into “big” magazines, like Kenyon Review, let us say, or any number of other quarterlies and reviews. I personally would not send a poem to Kenyon Review because what would be the use? I would get it back.

Turco. You’d be wrong. You’re talking about John Crowe Ransom’s Kenyon.

Ossman. Yes.

Turco. Well, he’s not there anymore. Kenyon has a new editor — Robie Macauley is open to a much wider range of poetry than Ransom was.

Ossman. Maybe I’ll have to revise my practices regarding the Kenyon Review, but there certainly are twenty or thirty others in this category that….

Turco. Let’s talk about The Hudson Review. Do you know Archie [A. R.] Ammons’ verse? I was recently at Bread Loaf [Writers’ Conference] and met Archie Ammons for the first time. He writes a long, loose free verse kind of poetry. Now The Hudson Review likes his work well enough to have published ten or fifteen pages of his poems in last fall’s issue. He’s writing poetry that’s not like any other poetry in the country, I think. It doesn’t approximate Creeley’s work, it doesn’t approximate Ginsberg’s, it doesn’t even approximate Carl Sandburg’s. These magazines are always interested in getting what they consider to be the best poetry available. Unfortunately, there’s damn little really good poetry available.

Ossman. Do you think things are breaking down into a kind of median ground now? It used to be that there were the “little” little magazines that things were published in, then there were the big ones that you didn’t even care about. Do you think things are going toward a center ground? I’ve talked with a number of editors who are trying to put out a magazine which will publish not only Allen Ginsberg or not only Donald Justice but both Donald Justice and Allen Ginsberg. And then I said that this is a thing to be desired, a magazine which will publish all the good work that’s being [written], not just one kind or another. But it seems to me majority of the magazines are devoted to just one kind of poetry or another.

Turco. Unfortunately, the reason for that is that maybe one editor runs the magazine. He has his point of view. I haven’t met an honestly catholic magazine editor, though I’ve met a number of men who say they are, but whose catholicity, rather than small letter catholic is large letter Catholic. And if a magazine isn’t run by one editor, it’s run by a board of editors, and so a poem is run through this board and a truly outstanding poem may be liked by one of the editors, but the other four will vote against it.

         I don’t know what the answer is; I don’t see any reason why there should be any number of magazines that are truly catholic because, if you don’t like The Kenyon Review, if you don’t like the Hudson Review, if you don’t like Neon, if you don’t like some of the other magazines, don’t publish in them. Publish in the ones you do like, that you’re able to get into. Some people publish in The New Yorker — I’m not one of them; some people publish in The Saturday Evening Post — I’m not one of them; some people publish in The Atlantic and in Harper’s and The Ladies’ Home Journal — I’m not one of any of those, nor are a number of excellent poets that I know personally.

Ossman. Well, just to conclude this so that we’ll have some time to hear some of your poetry, perhaps this is advice, but the thing not to do is run down the list of magazines in The International Guide, but to read the magazines…

Turco. Absolutely.

Ossman. …and to say, “This is a magazine that I want to be in because I feel comfortable in this company,” regardless whether it’s Hudson or Neon or Yugen or The Evergreen Review or Partisan.

Turco. That is the attitude that I think more people ought to cultivate.

Ossman. Let’s hear a selection of some recent poetry of yours.

Turco. I’d like to start by reading two brand new poems. The first one was written just the other day. It’s called, “Carnival Evening, on a Painting by Rousseau”² in the Metropolitan Museum.

         A painting: tall trees.  The dark tips rise

out of black lace, like clear sight out of fancy,

         and stand at the verge of the night sky.

 

         The moon is a coin lying deep within

the reversed reflection of a well.

         Nothing moves.  The stars are shavings of the moon's

 

         metal.  Two small clouds wait for the wood

to impale them on darkness: they have impaled

         themselves: the duplicititous forest

 

         looks downward at the brown cabin becalmed in

a meadow.  Lights in the window tell

         their falsehoods too; no one is within.  Lanterns

 

         and lamps shine on urgent imptiness.

There is a promise of motion, of voids soon

         to be filled, but for now (and perhaps

 

         now shall be forever) Pierrette stands hand

in hand with Pierrot, staring, out

         of solitude near the margin of the wood,

 

         across the summerless meadow, her

carnival eyes, and his, transfixed by

         the poor dreams of their beholder.

 

         The next one is called, “The Old Dog Acts Young, A Semi-ballad.” It was written a couple of weeks ago at Bread Loaf.

 

Rumple her skirts, stick out my tongue,

She’s young as the moon, and the moon is young,

         And the world is no kennel for Old Dog Tray,

I’m up on my haunches smelling the bung

         Of the sweet, sweet bitch out getting gay

 

In her first dry heat with an old-bones pup —

Waggle your tail, Bo, sniff it up!

         Your hair is grizzled, your tail is limp,

Your eye rolls bloody in its cup.

         Come on, Bo, admit it, you’re the sparest gimp

 

That ever came down with a case of hots —

She knows it too, but she likes it lots.

         I can teach her whatever she needs to know

While she ties me a bellygripe full of knots,

         But I won’t settle down, not even though

 

When the night comes down and the moon’s a-prowl

There’ll be nothing at all to do but howl

         And lick my scratches and bare my fangs

And sit on that hillside there to scowl

         At the young dogs scouting the woods in gangs.

 

Well, Bo, well, Tray, then live it wild,

You were never a jackass, you’re not a child,

         For a while yet there’s marrow in those bones.

You’re not ready yet to be stacked and piled

         In a lily bed with a bunch of stones,

 

So this is the thing: At any old age

A hound can learn what it’s like to rage

         At the bitchy moon, but she won’t care.

She’s up there alone, and you’re in your cage

         While her musk goes snarling in your hair.

 

The next poem is called, “Letter to W. D. S.,” W. D. Snodgrass. It was written after I read his book, Heart’s Needle.

 

                           Christ, you made me sad

                  with your love tunes gone awry,

         the bitter root twining mossily

among the pages of a songsheet tossed to

 

                           wind down the wind and

                  moulder in a lost cranny

         of some meadow.  I'm not used to loss,

though aware of it, as one is aware of

 

                           cancer.  A woman

                  I knew, wrinkled like blown snow,

         died of a wild part of herself which

ravened its own life.  Her children, grown to seed

 

                           themselves, kept locks on

                  their tongues, but their hearts' faceless

         prisoner snarled at the world behind

portcullises of eyes.  Like those striped lines of

 

                           yours, that scourge of ink

                  and pillory of paper.

         Why did you flay yourself there, in the

marketplace?  Was it because sorrow shown is

 

                           simpler than covert

                  loneliness?  All of us are

         alone.  The world we blow through is cold.

Snow fetters our sorrow.  Still we flute and fife.

 

The next one is called “Clambake.”

 

                           Nor was it the moon,

appointed, pure in outline,

         huge among stars, painted;

                  nor was it the wind.

 

                           Chinese firecrackers,

Chinese lanterns; O the flare

         and the pop!  Acres of

                  summer went well with

 

                           the fields of light made

by the moon tugging at tides.

         And the gale mewled offshore.

                  You could hear the hiss

 

                           of rockets.  The hiss of

the flames on the beach.  The

         surf's hiss too, the kiss of

                  sand.  It was not the

 

                           moon.  Nor was it the

old wind offshore, moaning.

         It was partly thjese, partly

                  their white permanence

 

                           and cold  But it was

the pop too, the flare, the

         flash of flame.  Short.  Slight.  Red and

                  unappointed.  The

 

                           scrim of those quick, quaint

with life.  The scream of bright

         rockets; night's backdrop; summer's

                  curtain.  Clams in a

 

                           bucket.  Fire them, shell

them in the summer dark.

         A heap of shells on the shore

                              looks like the moon's shards.

 

This next one is called, “My Country Wife.” Just for the note, it won the Academy of American Poets Prize at the University of Iowa last year, which goes to prove, I think, that any kind will go.

My country wife bends to rinse.  Her skirt is

         unwrinkled.  Its print of flowers rounds

out her womb like the rug of violets

                  that mounds or dimples the chapel

burying ground.  She would be grotesque where

                           hydrants irrigate gutters.

 

Here, she is a sleight of the moon; the sound

         a mole makes.  She bends and carries.  She

cooks and smiles her meals down my throat.  I need

                  no teeth.  She has done what the bee

does to clover.  The sun moves around.  She

                           stays and stays.  She sweeps and cooks.

 

The next one is called, “Raceway.”

 

I.

                  My raceway of sheets last night became

a cool trotter, unwinding with grace.  Today,

         autumn peeps imponderably out of

                  the soggy drought July had posted

                           on the foothills.  It is August

 

                  here in Saratoga; the races

open tomorrow.  Yesterday a filly

         worked out her own odds, snapping two of her

                  ankles while we watched.  She was done in

                           by a green syringe.  She lounged on

 

                  the turf, staring from one farthest eye,

both her forehooves angled like ballerina

         slippers.  With her, summer has stagggered: it,

                  too, soon will drop and the jockey sun

                           grow gray above the world's brown hide.

 

II.

                           When a thoroughbred loses its

                  pins, there's no more running.  Snort if you

         will, but reason, too, exhausts itself when

cause falters.  Men have run down when barred from the

                  race.  Summer is a fragile courser

 

                           here in the North; our racers are

                  all imports from the southland.  Summer

         will not slow for falling leaves, nor haul our

sleighs: it will linger, pawing its reluctance

                  to leave, but its strength is of only

 

                           short will, meant for one swift effort.

                  Watch the summer run its oval, it's

         a winner now — nothing can stop it!  The

stands urge their encouragement upon open

                  air; shouts fall and rise like the fall wind

 

                  that moves out of the foothills now, sure,

                  pervasive, wild.

                                        Blooded summer shies.

 

Ossman. The final poem, “Raceway,” lends its title to to Lewis Turco’s anticipated book titled Summer’s Raceway,³ which we expect to come out soon. His previous book was published by Golden Quill press; needless to say, Turco can be found in a good many magazines and publications, and will continue to be found there for some time. Thank you very much.

 

Turco. Thank you.

¹Midland: Twenty-Five Years of Fiction and Poetry, Selected from the Writing Workshops of the State University of Iowa, New York: Random House, 1961, on which Lewis Turco worked as Editorial Assistant to the editor, Paul Engle, Director of the Workshop.

²Published as “Pocoangelini 17” in Pocoangelini: A Fantography and Other Poems, Northampton: Despa Press, 1970.

³Summer’s Raceway and Other Poems was the title of Lewis Turco’s M. A. thesis at Iowa in 1962. It was never published. His next collection was The Sketches, published by American Weave Press of Cleveland as the American Weave Award Chapbook for 1962. The other poems included in the interview were collected in Awaken, Bells Falling: Poems 1959-1968, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1968.

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