Ebook Review | ‘Talking All Night: The New York Poets – Interviews, Photographs, Letters’ by Mark Hillringhouse

In an interview with Mark Hillringhouse, poet Anne Waldman responds to a query in regards to the literary scene with a quote that might apply to Hillringhouse’s total new e-book, Talking All Night: The New York Poets – Interviews, Photographs, Letters. Waldman says, “the more poets you talk to, I think you’ll find it’s a much more open situation. Actually, a lot of overlapping amongst the so-called schools.”

Openness was, certainly, what I discovered as I learn via the 16 interviews in Talking All Night: an incredible rush of concepts and opinions, hilarity and tragedy, anecdotes and antidotes, passion horses and bête noir, with all the conversations spurred on by Hillringhouse’s enthusiasm and his full of life and clever questions.

The mission started in earnest when Hillringhouse was a younger aficionado studying books by the New York School poets whereas he labored as a clerk at Brentano’s bookstore within the early Eighties. As he attended poetry readings and workshops and sat in personal poets’ lessons, he roughly “created [his] own MFA.” A big a part of his casual graduate diploma was interviewing the poets he admired, and what a stellar group they’re. Among the luminaries in Talking All Night are John Ashbery, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, and Waldman.

Hillringhouse has additionally included a number of poets not usually related to the New York School. W.S. Merwin, as an example, whom Hillringhouse interviewed on the suggestion of John Asbery, is within the e-book not as a result of Merwin is a part of the New York School however as a result of “New York was important to Merwin, and he lived in the city and taught at different colleges in the city, and gave poetry readings uptown and downtown.” And then there’s the formalist Howard Moss, included, fairly sufficient, as a result of “he was, in his position as poetry editor of The New Yorker for nearly 40 years, at the very epicenter of the New York literary world.”

Talking All Night is an excellent e-book each for paging via, and for taking a deep dive into the work of a favourite poet. Each interview begins with an introduction that not solely gives a number of the highlights of the poet’s publications but additionally describes the usually book-lined residences wherein they reside. And it’s touching to see how a lot of a fan Hillringhouse is of the individuals he interviews. Not solely does he know their work chilly, however he almost at all times brings copies of their books for them to signal.

Granted, the wide-ranging interviews often go off within the weeds, as conversations inevitably will, however Hillringhouse is sort of good at steering his topics again on observe, and he has a present for eliciting greater than informal profundities in the course of the course of an trade. Take, as only one instance, this quote from the top of his interview with Gerald Stern: “Poets are witnesses, living proofs of uniqueness of the individual soul, of the unforgivable sadness of its perishing, or its immortality. Their poems cry out against imprisonment. The more living the poet, the more unbearable the death; the greater the poem, the more it ransoms.”

Finally, it could be remiss to not level out that Mark Hillringhouse can also be an outstanding photographer, and every interview is graced with a black and white portrait that captures at the very least a number of the poet’s essence. There is suave Paul Violi taking pictures pool in a pool corridor, and grumpy James Schuyler, he of the large eyebrows, frowning in his room within the Chelsea Hotel. Movie star-ready W.S. Merwin seems out from the roof of his Waverly Place condominium, and Barbara Guest, in profile in her West 4th Street condominium, seems as if she is gazing into the sunshine of an oncoming poem.

Yes, Talking All Night is a major literary historic doc, nevertheless it’s additionally a enjoyable learn and, extra importantly, a sympathetic window into the lives of the form of artistic rebels our nation so desperately wants lately.

This overview initially appeared within the California Review of Books.