I remember, in my own undergraduate days, trolling around the stacks of our subterranean library, avoiding (probably) writing a paper, and finding, instead, bound volumes of interviews, first published in the pages of The Paris Review, of some of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. It felt like those interviews were giving me a secret education; to read my favorite poets talking at length about their craft, their life in and out of poetry, was to get a glimpse, from the inside out, of the work whose surfaces I was just learning to tease apart in the classroom.
And so I leapt at the chance, when I was approached by a couple contemporary poets I love, Kaveh Akbar and Danez Smith, to join them in hosting regular discussions on Twitter of those Paris Review interviews. Each month, we choose an interview (so far we’ve talked about Claudia Rankine and Anne Carson) and a time and invite poetry-Twitter to join us for an hour-long discussion. The discussions have been lively and chaotic and totally fascinating.
Our next discussion is happening this coming Tuesday (March 27) at 4 PM, and we’re talking about my all-time favorite poet, Elizabeth Bishop. Her interview (conducted near the end of her life and published after she’d died) can be found here. The very nice people at The Paris Review take down the paywall on the interview we’ve chosen each time we do this, so no subscription is needed to read it in the week before our chat.
Which you should do! And then please join us! All are welcome! We use a hashtag to make the conversation easier to find: #ArtofPoetry. My tweet announcing the Bishop conversation is here.
