Douglas: I've only got xeroxes of some of the interviews from the two
books, but will risk a quick impression. They books are useful; my
qualification to that judgment would be to specify the _type_ of interview.
The questions are generic ones--"do you write with a pen, typewriter or
wordprocessor", "should poetry be accessible to the general reader", "is
poetry for the page or for performance", etc.--and a list is in fact given
in the appendix "The Discussion Questions". I guess this strategy is
useful for cross-reference between interviews, but on the whole I prefer
interviews whose questions are more intimately tailored to an author's
oeuvre. Perhaps some of the best collections of interviews mix a more
intimate style with a few recurrent questions: I think of North & South's
_Prospect Into Breath_, or (not poetry) Art Taylor's _Notes and Tones_, an
anthology of 1970s interviews with jazz musicians by a noted drummer (one
of the repeated questions is "What do you think of Black Power?").
Perhaps someone who's got the whole books to hand can qualify the foregoing
comments.
all best --N
Nate & Jane Dorward
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109 Hounslow Ave., Willowdale, ON, M2N 2B1, Canada
ph: (416) 221 6865
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