LS: So you never went through a phase of writing free verse poems? Probably because free verse has been the dominant mode in American poetry for decades, most younger poets I have talked to who write in meter, rhyme, or received forms describe writing in free verse as fledgling poets. I remember being drawn to metrical poetry early on but not quite understanding what it was! My first introduction to meter was certainly not in a creative writing class. I feel that, even when poets begin by attempting to write in meter, their professors steer them toward free verse instead of helping them write well in meter.

 

RSG: The first poem I wrote was an English sonnet, which I proudly showed to my sophomore English prof: “‘Within this burning pain inside my breast?’ C’mon, Gwynn.” I switched to free verse for a time, though I continued to play with meters. When I got to graduate workshop, well, it was the late 60s, and I dabbled with free verse, surrealism, “deep image,” and other then-fashionable modes. But a few years later, when I was on my own, I decided to go back to meter; the first sonnet I was pleased with, “Scenes from the Playroom,” was reprinted in a textbook, and for years I’d get inquiries from freshmen asking me what it was about. “Naughty children,” I’d reply. Anyway, somewhere along the line I figured that I’d better stick to form; it wasn’t hard for me to write metrically and find rhymes. I think I have managed successfully to forget how to write “free verse.” I need Frost’s net.

 

LS: When you write a poem, do you typically have an idea first and let it suggest a form or meter, or do you decide to write a poem in a particular form first and let it shape the content? Do you even have a typical method, or does it depend on the poem?

 

RSG: Most of the above. If you’ve read thousands of sonnets you begin to see the form as a “frame” for certain kinds of experience. You may be right and end up with a passable sonnet, but sometimes your mind runs on outside the frame and you end up with a very different poem. Some kinds of forms — the ballad for narrative, the villanelle for repeated experiences — tend to suggest a vehicle for certain types of subjects. But more often I just start with a line or a tune that pops into my head. In the last decade or so I take a tape recorder when I make long drives, and several of my poems use that oral-first, type-later process.

 

Early in my teaching career, I thought that I’d have to create a certain amount of poetry to validate myself. So I’d spend evenings at my desk — fruitless for the most part — trying to force the process. Now that I’m old and don’t have to rise to anybody’s expectations, I just wait for things to come to me. When they do, I might be consumed by them for a couple of days. Now, of course, I do think more and more that the latest one I finish may be the last. But I keep the door open.

 

I would say that the hardest kind of poem for me is the one that arrives complete, with the last line staring me in the face. Then I have to figure out how to get to that last line, which is not the easiest thing in the world. I love the challenge of translating poetry, for the original author has told you exactly where to go, but in a different language. You want to do credit to that author by thinking that he or she may have done it this way in English.

 

LS: You’ve translated poems by François Villon and others. I like that your Villon translations, for one, stick to the original rhyme scheme. I’ve read other, more cowardly translations . . .

 

RSG: Villon was a starting point for me. In college, I was intrigued by Rossetti’s famous translation and by a Wilbur version of the same poem in Poetry. I bought Galway Kinnell’s selected Villon, and was immediately challenged; Kinnell justified his free verse by saying something like “rhyme and meter are dead hands that were better not applied to any poetry.” Talk about hoisting a battle flag! A kindly professor agreed to let me do some translations as an independent-study project, and I immediately headed for the library and checked out a middle French dictionary that was covered with dust. I ended up translating “Le petit testament” and some of the ballades. Three of the latter were taken by a magazine shortly after I graduated.

 

I’m no linguist, but I have studied Spanish, French, and German. What usually gets me started is reading what you call a “cowardly” translation of a great poem. I wouldn’t use that term, but I do think it’s important that a translator “carry across” some elements of the form of the original, no matter how vexing. For me, Wilbur was our best poet-translator; he knew that Molière and Racine would be pale shadows without their rhymes. David Ives recently had an off-Broadway success with his version of Alexis Piron’s La Métromanie, a farce written in Alexandrine couplets and translated into English heroics.

 

LS: Does it annoy you to constantly be associated with New Formalism?

 

RSG: Not really, but the “movement,” if ever there was one, was pretty brief. It got some attention for overlooked poets, and Dana Gioia put many of them in contact with each other. I was mainly amused by how some critics saw it as somehow aligned with Reaganesque policies. Moi? As a mere name, “New Formalism” sounds more accurate than some other proposed titles, “Expansive Poetry,” for example, as long as you take the “new” strictly in generational terms.

 

LS: You’re also known for your parodies and light verse. Why do you think light verse has fallen out of favor?

 

RSG: One of my first and favorite poetry collections was by John Updike, and most of it was published in The New Yorker. Look at the magazine now. It’s full of very sophisticated cartoons by geniuses like Roz Chast, and the “Shouts & Murmurs” feature gets a laugh from me now and then. But the poetry usually confirms the prejudices of those who don’t “get” poetry. You’d think those thousands of readers would appreciate a poem that doesn’t leave them feeling defeated week after week. As for parody, only pretty good and famous poems should be parodied, but readers don’t know many good and famous poems. Writing a parody of a lyric that was pretty bad in the first place doesn’t make sense. I mean, how could you write a parody of the most recent inaugural poem?

 

LS: Sometimes the distinction between your light verse and so-called serious poetry is a bit blurry. Some of your most memorable poems are darkly satirical. For example, the first stanza of “The Ballad of Just Deserts” from your collection Dogwatch reads,

 

They wear their pants too low.

They move and drive too slow.

They have no place to go.

        They deserve it.

They hang around in a crowd.

Their music is much too loud

And shouldn’t be allowed.

        Oh yes, yes, yes, they deserve it.

 

This reads almost like light verse — Not only is it slyly mocking, but it’s heavily rhymed and playful sounding — yet it’s also unnerving. The subject matter is really intense! Is this still light verse?

 

RSG: I’ve taught a lot of Greek drama over the years, and I like the idea of choral voices, which I’ve used several times. So here I tried to evoke a Chorus of Deplorables, who were united in their privilege and prejudices. Robinson, a poet who has influenced me immensely, uses such choral voices in some of his darkest poems — “Richard Cory” and “Eros Turranos,” for example. Nobody would confuse those poems with light verse; they evoke the katharsis of tragedy, which I think of as a collective “Whew!” when the curtain goes down. Even Oedipus the King is structurally not much different from farce, and the Chorus survives the mayhem.

 

LS: Your dark satires have always reminded me a bit of the songwriter Randy Newman. I’m thinking of songs like “Political Science” and “Sail Away.” Are you a fan?

 

RSG: I did follow him for a time, but I think I’ve told you that I stopped buying Rolling Stone when U2 was on the cover, c. 1980. I also have a strange problem: I simply cannot memorize song lyrics. Poems, I can, but I just black out on songs. This is a little sad because I find that carrying songs around in your head is far superior to having them on a Bluetooth play list. As you know, I thought John Prine one of the great songwriters of my generation, and at rare times I thought our respective takes on things clicked.