Chekhov's Mistress
Poetry Magazine Interview with Samuel Manashe
by Bud Parr
Could you tell me something about how you usually work?
If I’m working on a poem, I’m possessed by it. I have a desk by the window, and I have sun all morning on a winter morning. Well, I can repeat the same lines over and over again while I’m walking in the park in the afternoon. I wake up with them in the middle of the night, and the poem is in the works. But when I’m not working, like on a beautiful day like this — nothing is lacking in this day, even though I’m not working. Shall I recite a short poem?
The friends of my father
Stand like gnarled trees
Yet in their eyes I see
Spring’s crinkled leaf
And thus, although one dies
With nothing to bequeath
We are left enough
Love to make us grieve
Now, the first four lines could have been written at any time, even in antiquity. That poem in its first version was in my first book published in England. But it was then revised. The revision always makes it more concise. But then I remember, I was walking one evening, a balmy evening, and the poem was in the works (the revision) and I had the line “crinkled leaf of spring,” and suddenly when I was walking on a quiet street (there are quiet streets here) I was staggered, I mean physically. Do I dare say, instead of “a crinkled leaf of spring,” “spring’s crinkled leaf”? And for me that made all the difference. I dared!
Love it here.
comments
Loved this interview. (Is that concise enough? I’ll keep working it...). Loved it. Love.
– Mitchell Teplitsky (11/19 at 06:01 AM)
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