Reading: If I were writing this by Robert Creeley and Ken Babstock’s Days into Flatspin (I’m not sure they’re compatible to read side by side)
Speaking of Creeley,
One thing he got from Williams, which he pointed to a series of poems by each, was the establishment of a pattern of half-rimes, sound links, throughout a stanza or several stanzas. He “uses assonantal rimes,†“tonal leading of vowels,†which comes from Pound as well as Williams. At the same time, when students asked specifically how he set up a poem: “I have no real knowledge of how I do this.†When on the way out of class a student asked him to ‘fess up, tell us really how he did it, he responded, “When you swim, you don’t think you control the ocean, do you?†[via Ruth Lepson in Jacket Magazine]
It’ll take me a while to adapt to this pace. He has no zingers, no spectacular fireworks and depression. He has contentment with content. There’s understatement and conversationalness that I didn’t come in expecting.
Vid Link: Face to Face with Jeremy Isaacs: An Interview with Allen Ginsberg (1995) who talks mainly about meditation, past lovers and drug use