From an interview with Richard Wilbur

This year I managed to memorise one of Richard Wilbur's longer poems, Lying. Not only one of his longer poems, but also the one to which his wife at first responded, “at last you’ve written a poem that’s unintelligible from beginning to end." She came to change her mind, and though I must admit I still don't understand all of it, it became clearer as I learned it. 

Here are a couple of paragraphs from a 1977 interview with Wilbur, who died in October this year [2017]

INTERVIEWER

How do you compose your poems? Do you write in long hand or on the typewriter? Do you write in bursts or long stretches, quickly or laboriously?

WILBUR

With pencil and paper and laboriously, very slowly on the whole. I do envy people who can compose on the typewriter, though I reject as preposterous Charles Olson's ideas about the relation of the typewriter to poetic form. I don't approach the typewriter until the thing is completely done, and whatever margins the typewriter might offer have nothing to do with the form of a poem as I conceive it. I write poems line by line, very slowly; I sometimes scribble alternative words in the margins rather densely, but I don't go forward with anything unless I am fairly satisfied that what I have set down sounds printable, sayable. I proceed as Dylan Thomas once told me he proceeded—it is a matter of going to one's study, or to the chair in the sun, and starting a new sheet of paper. On it you put what you've already got of a poem you are trying to write. Then you sit and stare at it, hoping that the impetus of writing out the lines that you already have will get you a few lines farther before the day is done. I often don't write more than a couple of lines in a day of, let's say, six hours of staring at the sheet of paper. Composition for me is, externally at least, scarcely distinguishable from catatonia.

INTERVIEWER

What is it that gets you started on a poem? Is it an idea, an image, a rhythm, or something else?

WILBUR

It seems to me that there has to be a sudden, confident sense that there is an exploitable and interesting relationship between something perceived out there and something in the way of incipient meaning within you. And what you see out there has to be seen freshly, or the process is not going to be provoked. Noting a likeness or resemblance between two things in nature can provide this freshness, but I think there must be more. For example, to perceive that the behavior of certain tree leaves is like the behavior of birds' wings is not, so far as I am concerned, enough to justify the sharpening of the pencil. There has to be a feeling that some kind of idea is implicit within that resemblance. It is strange how confident one can be about this. I always detest it when artists and writers marvel at their own creativity, but I think this is a very strange thing that most practiced artists would have in common, the certainty that accompanies these initial, provocative impressions. I am almost always right in feeling that there is a poem in something if it hits me hard enough. You can spoil your material, of course, but that doesn't mean the original feeling was false.

When We Are Married

Haven't mentioned the Varsity course I'm doing on here much, I don't think. When I last wrote about it, I was still doing a week's block course called, Congregations in New Zealand. Well, that got side-swiped by the fact that I was in hospital that week (!), so I reverted to my earlier choice of an online paper called Research Methods, which actually suited me better anyway.
I've been getting along fairly well with the course, and enjoying it, but I also got asked a couple of weeks ago to do a part in a play. It was a very small part, two scenes in which I would have been on the stage for no more than about three minutes in total. Achievable, I thought.
The play is When We Are Married, by J B Priestley. It dates back to the thirties, I think, but is actually set in the late 19th century. It has a cast of fourteen, so it's a big piece actor-wise. Several of the parts are relatively small (though none of them quite so small as what I was to be doing: the local chapel minister.)
Anyway, I went to the first read-through, and did my two bits, and thought this will fit in nicely with my Varsity work. And then yesterday got a call to say that the man playing the photographer in the play had had to pull out due to unexpected work commitments, and would I take over that role?
It's still not a large part, thank goodness (though it's a lot more fun) - he's on for a couple of minutes in the first act, and then doesn't appear again until two thirds of the way through the third act. The two scenes there are a bit more involved, but still not what you'd call huge. But the rehearsal schedule turns out to be very full on. Three nights a week, and we open on the 23rd May. Crikey.
Fortunately, not being in the second act at all, I have a couple of weeks off in the middle of the schedule, but after that it's going to be a fight to get the Varsity work done.
Well, live on the edge, they say. Not quite sure if that applies here, but it feels a bit like it.

What do YOU think?

I get a lot of emails from a survey company called What Do You Think in Australia. All of them require me to click on the ad that’s included in the email in order to get a certain number of points. So far I’m not sure that I’ve achieved anything by clicking, although it claims that I’ve got 190 points in my account. But finding out what I can do with these 190 points has proved a bit of a mission. That’s by the by.
Normally these ads are for things I wouldn’t be bothered with. Occasionally they’re fun, as the one that led to an ad for Nike was recently. But today’s ad is actually worth commenting on. It leads to a site called Domain.com (rather an ironic name to have on the Net, don’t you think?), and I’m sure it’s all intended to make you buy your house through them.
But they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to put something useful together. When you click you’re taken to a reasonably long page which shows you around the average modern home. And the question at the top of the page, which was why I was interested in the ad, is What can you do to be green?
The first time I clicked on the ad it was interactive: as I ran the mouse over the photos, it would bring up boxes telling you how you could save energy, in lighting, heating, water and all. My second attempt just now has lost the interactivity, but it’s still an interesting page, and one well worth looking at. For instance, there’s a myth about showers being more economic than baths. I always knew this, but it’s good to have it confirmed with the statement: ‘Typically, showers are the biggest users of water in the home.’ (Obviously the person who wrote the ad copy has a teenager or two in the house!)
By the way this isn’t a paid post for Domain.com. At the moment nobody’s paying me for posting. Boo hoo!
At present I’m working (in my real life) for a large firm where waste seems barely considered. (Rather ironic, in view of the fact that one of the sections of the firm deals with what we do with waste!) Paper is thrown away at a rate of knots, and lately, with the colder weather arriving, the heat pumps have been going full bore in our office. I’d hate to think what the power bill is. And it would be interesting to know how much money could be saved if people were more energy-conscious in the office.