In an interview with the literary journal Callaloo, the poet Jay Wright tells a story about giving a poetry reading and then explaining his work in response to a question from a young member of the audience. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Jay Wright on Poetry”
Lately, I’ve been savoring some of the exquisite work of poet Jay Wright, and that sent me back to an interview that he gave in the 1980s to the literary magazine Kalaloo, a journal of African diaspora arts and letters. And he said, a young man hearing me read some of my poems said that I seem to be trying to weave together a lot of different things. My answer was that they are already woven. I’m just trying to uncover the weave. And Grant, I just love that image of it all being out there, but he’s trying to uncover the weave to see what is before him.
Yeah, that’s perfect. So much of life is about that, right? It’s uncovering the mind of the author, that’s what reading is, or uncovering the secrets of a profession by learning its jargon, or a lot of what you and I do on this show is uncovering the histories of migration patterns because the language traveled with them, or the secrets of a family that somebody wants to share in their anecdotes when they talk about funny words that they’ve been passing from generation to generation. Absolutely. All these different woven fabrics in all these different places. That’s a great metaphor.
Love it.
Yes.
Trying to uncover the weave.
Well, if there’s a passage in literature that’s really struck you lately, we’d love to hear about it.
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The address is words@waywordradio.org.
