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A Man of Letters · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Q&A.
0:03
SPEAKER_02: I'm Jay Nordlinger, and our guest is Don Williams, Donald Mace Williams.
0:09
SPEAKER_02: He is a writer.
0:10
SPEAKER_02: Of what?
0:11
SPEAKER_02: Darn near everything.
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SPEAKER_02: He is a poet, a novelist, a journalist, a translator, a writer.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: We've known each other for many years now.
0:23
SPEAKER_02: Hello, Don.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: It's a pleasure to see you via Zoom.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Hello, Jay.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Same here.
0:29
SPEAKER_02: I like that Mace and Donald Mace Williams, M-A-C-E.
0:34
SPEAKER_02: It's so distinctive.
0:35
SPEAKER_02: Mother's maiden name, perhaps?
0:38
SPEAKER_00: No, the name of my dad's best friend.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: His name was Don Mace.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think,
0:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
0:46
Donald Williams is a very ordinary name and would not stand out
0:50
to a reader.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: But Donald Mace Williams, you know, I may be the only one in existence.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: That was quite a tribute to your dad's friend, Don Mace.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: I want to ask you, Don, do you write every day?
1:05
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: No, unfortunately, I don't.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: I should.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not that disciplined.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: And if I do tell myself I need to write,
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to sit down and write,
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SPEAKER_00: it's always trash and I throw it away.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: I have to have an idea in my head first.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: Don, I know you've lived all over.
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Are you essentially a Texan?
1:28
SPEAKER_00: I was born in Texas.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Both of my parents were born in Texas.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: However, they and I lived all over the country.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: I went to five different high schools.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: I worked for nine different newspapers in the news department,
1:46
SPEAKER_00: plus a couple of others in circulation and ad selling.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: But yes...
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In all my moves,
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and I seldom stayed any place on any job more than two years.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: After all my moves, I've always come back to Texas for a while.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: It is my home.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: Are you in Texas now?
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm in Austin.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: Austin's gotten awfully big.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: It certainly has.
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SPEAKER_00: I've only been in Austin two and a half years.
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SPEAKER_00: Before this,
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SPEAKER_00: for 25 years,
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SPEAKER_00: I was in the Texas panhandle near Amarillo,
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SPEAKER_00: which is a very different kind of Texas.
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SPEAKER_00: It's plains and a high altitude comparatively,
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SPEAKER_00: a much cooler,
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SPEAKER_00: breezier climate than this,
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SPEAKER_00: much drier.
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SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
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SPEAKER_00: It is more like the classic Texas, the cowboy Texas than Austin is.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: Austin is darn near chic these days, I think.
2:48
SPEAKER_02: The title of one of your novels is Black Tuesday's Child.
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SPEAKER_02: And that has significant personal significance.
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SPEAKER_02: Am I right?
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: I was born,
3:00
SPEAKER_00: actually,
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SPEAKER_00: this novel,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: of course,
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SPEAKER_00: fiction,
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SPEAKER_00: is not really about me,
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SPEAKER_00: although I'm probably figuring it here pretty often.
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SPEAKER_00: I was born on Black Thursday, the day of the stock market crash in 1929.
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SPEAKER_00: And so I spent the first 10 years of my life in the depression,
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SPEAKER_00: probably not knowing there was a depression.
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but seeing all around me the effects of hard times,
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at least,
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including on my family.
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SPEAKER_02: Did your parents have work or sporadically?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: When they were married,
3:42
SPEAKER_00: excuse me,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm suffering from Austin's allergens,
3:45
SPEAKER_00: as I do the whole year round.
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SPEAKER_00: They were married in Dallas,
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SPEAKER_00: and my father at that time,
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SPEAKER_00: that was 1923,
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SPEAKER_00: I believe,
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SPEAKER_00: was a district sales representative for RCA Victor Radio.
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SPEAKER_00: And he had that job until the Depression started.
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When he lost the job,
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we did a lot of wandering,
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like so many people back then.
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SPEAKER_00: We were in Denver by that time.
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And we went from there to California,
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as so many people did to get away from hard times.
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SPEAKER_00: Found time is just as hard there, I'm sure.
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SPEAKER_00: And then went to Oregon,
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where my father's close friend Don Mace and his wife were
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homesteading in the deep
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SPEAKER_00: coastal woods in Oregon.
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SPEAKER_00: And my dad and mother thought that might be a good way to...
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SPEAKER_00: get by in the depression.
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SPEAKER_00: So we spent several months living in a tent in the Oregon woods.
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SPEAKER_00: And then I was only three, maybe barely four years old.
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SPEAKER_00: And I had a little fundamental tricycle, which was called a kitty car.
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SPEAKER_00: And when I was riding it on the wood floor of Don Macy's tent,
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SPEAKER_00: I tipped it over and fell onto the wood stove and burned my hand.
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SPEAKER_00: Not seriously, you know, but enough to worry people.
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And we were so far from a doctor out there in the woods that I
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think that's why my
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parents left that and went back into the outer world where they
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looked for work and
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SPEAKER_00: couldn't find anything.
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Did you tell me once that you were living in a tent when you
5:36
read Mark Van Doren's
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SPEAKER_02: anthology of poetry?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
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SPEAKER_00: We had lived in a tent in the Oregon woods,
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SPEAKER_00: and we went to the Texas brush country and lived in two tents.
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SPEAKER_00: My older brother and I were in one,
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SPEAKER_00: and my parents in the other,
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SPEAKER_00: and between us was a campfire always.
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SPEAKER_00: This was outside of Uvalde, Texas, which is...
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SPEAKER_00: South Central Texas,
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SPEAKER_00: and of course,
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SPEAKER_00: known for the terrible shootings at the school several years ago.
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SPEAKER_00: That's right.
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SPEAKER_00: We lived in those tents for, I'm not quite sure how long, about a year.
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And then my dad went to the library in the nearby town,
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Uvalde,
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and read up on how to do this.
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SPEAKER_00: went to a river nearby,
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SPEAKER_00: a dry river,
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SPEAKER_00: picked up stones from the bed,
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SPEAKER_00: brought them home,
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SPEAKER_00: dug a deep,
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SPEAKER_00: deep pit,
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SPEAKER_00: put the stones down there,
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SPEAKER_00: and fired them.
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SPEAKER_00: I do not know exactly how.
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SPEAKER_00: And the next day he quenched them with water, and then he had mortar.
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SPEAKER_00: And then he went back to the stream bed,
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SPEAKER_00: got more rocks to build with,
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SPEAKER_00: and he built just a little one-room rock cabin.
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SPEAKER_00: with his own hands and his own rocks and mortar.
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SPEAKER_00: It had a wood floor,
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but the screens were oiled curtains of some kind that could be
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rolled up and down.
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SPEAKER_00: My mother did have a kerosene stove to cook on,
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SPEAKER_00: but there was,
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SPEAKER_00: of course,
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SPEAKER_00: no electricity and no running water.
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We had our own well,
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which my dad dug,
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and had wonderful,
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fresh,
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cold water.
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SPEAKER_00: No air conditioning, no heat.
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SPEAKER_00: My brother and I loved it.
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SPEAKER_00: They're kids.
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We could run around in the woods and pretend that the javelinas
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were going to attack us.
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SPEAKER_00: Once we did that, my brother and I were walking.
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SPEAKER_00: I was five, I guess, and he was nine.
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SPEAKER_00: He either heard or pretended to hear a pack of javelinas.
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He put me up a little tree for safety and bravely stood at the
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bottom of the tree
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SPEAKER_00: with his pocket knife open and ready.
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SPEAKER_00: He could just want to climb the train himself, you know, but he didn't.
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SPEAKER_00: The Hevelinas never showed up.
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SPEAKER_00: My mother also liked it there.
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SPEAKER_00: You might not think she had,
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but she told me later that she thought she would have made a
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good pioneer,
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SPEAKER_00: and that was approximately what she did there.
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SPEAKER_00: She cooked the most wonderful Dutch oven biscuits on that campfire.
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SPEAKER_01: By the way, was your brother bookish as you were?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, not quite as much as I was, I think, but certainly bookish.
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SPEAKER_00: He taught me to read, by the way.
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SPEAKER_00: He taught me phonics.
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I remember walking out under the oaks that are placed in the
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brush country in
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SPEAKER_00: Texas,
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SPEAKER_00: and he was telling me an A,
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SPEAKER_00: if a long A sounds like A,
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SPEAKER_00: It sounds like A,
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SPEAKER_00: but if it's before a consonant and then an E,
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SPEAKER_00: then it sounds like A.
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SPEAKER_00: So I knew the difference between A and A and so forth.
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SPEAKER_00: He went through the whole alphabet that way with me.
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SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that the next day I could read.
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SPEAKER_00: I know I read everything for then all, including poetry.
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SPEAKER_02: What a wonderful teacher.
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SPEAKER_02: So you went to college.
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SPEAKER_02: Where, remind me?
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SPEAKER_00: I started out in Denver University.
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SPEAKER_00: My brother was there just after the war.
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SPEAKER_00: He went there on the GI Bill,
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and I joined him and was a German major because by then I was
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very much interested
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SPEAKER_00: in studying singing,
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SPEAKER_00: taking voice lessons,
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SPEAKER_00: and I wanted to sing Schubert and Schumann and so forth with the right
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SPEAKER_00: pronunciation and understanding.
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SPEAKER_00: So for two years, I was a German major there.
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Don,
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was it slightly controversial to study German right after the
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war like that?
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SPEAKER_00: I don't remember any feeling that it was.
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SPEAKER_02: There was no fuss?
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SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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There were Germans in my class who had come over and fled from
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Hitler,
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including my teacher.
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SPEAKER_00: But I don't remember hearing anything like that.
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But you were mainly interested in Schubert and Schumann and
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Wolf and Brahms and the
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SPEAKER_02: rest of the guys.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, and also in art songs in English and French.
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SPEAKER_00: And, of course, always Italian, you know.
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SPEAKER_00: Beginning voice, you just have to study Italian songs.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's a good thing.
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SPEAKER_02: You must have done the Arie Antique.
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SPEAKER_02: You probably sang and all those others.
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SPEAKER_00: I certainly did.
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SPEAKER_00: My brother was a pianist and he taught piano as a career and played,
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SPEAKER_00: did a lot of accompanying,
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SPEAKER_00: including for me.
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SPEAKER_00: We gave a good number of recitals together over the years.
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SPEAKER_00: He had a master's in piano from Northwestern and taught at Colorado State
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SPEAKER_00: University for a good many years.
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SPEAKER_02: Don, here's an easy one for you, I think.
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SPEAKER_02: Well,
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SPEAKER_02: you've read in a number of languages,
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SPEAKER_02: but are you glad to have been born into the English language?
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
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SPEAKER_02: Isn't it a marvel?
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SPEAKER_02: Isn't it so useful, so protean?
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SPEAKER_00: It is surely the most versatile language.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: It can express anything.
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Maybe not always as well as the languages that have one special
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kind of expression,
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SPEAKER_00: like Italian,
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SPEAKER_00: like French.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe German, although German is certainly expressive.
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But we have the French influence,
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the Latin influence that Romance languages don't have.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: I beg your pardon,
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SPEAKER_00: that German does not have much of,
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SPEAKER_00: and the Scandinavian languages don't have much of.
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And what a great advantage that gives us in a variety of
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expression that's available to us.
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SPEAKER_02: Don,
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SPEAKER_02: when I was introducing you,
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SPEAKER_02: I said,
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SPEAKER_02: I said,
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SPEAKER_02: you're a poet,
12:00
SPEAKER_02: a novelist,
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SPEAKER_02: a journalist,
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SPEAKER_02: and so on.
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SPEAKER_02: I almost unconsciously put poet first.
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SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of I don't know if people think this way now.
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SPEAKER_02: But in the past, people have regarded poetry as highest verse as highest.
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SPEAKER_02: above novels and so on.
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SPEAKER_02: I wonder whether you feel that way.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: Norman Podhore said that,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: he and his crowd,
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SPEAKER_02: they studied with Trilling and the rest.
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SPEAKER_02: Poetry was the high thing.
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And if you weren't quite that good,
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you had to do novels,
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even great ones.
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SPEAKER_02: But, you know, that's just one point of view.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I think it's almost a toss-up.
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SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there's a story about Frost...
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When a young fellow was introduced to him and told Frost,
12:53
he said,
12:53
I'm a poet.
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SPEAKER_00: And Frost said, that's a brag word, son.
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SPEAKER_00: Somebody else called you that.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
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SPEAKER_00: Which kind of seconds what you've been saying.
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SPEAKER_02: Were you or are you a memorizer of poems?
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SPEAKER_00: I memorized some, yes.
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SPEAKER_00: Just almost automatically.
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SPEAKER_00: I've had them in my head since I was very small.
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SPEAKER_00: And...
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've memorized quite a few Frost poems.
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SPEAKER_00: He was the first big influence on me as an attempted writer of poems.
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SPEAKER_00: And just lately, a stanza of Wallace Stevens, which I think is great.
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SPEAKER_02: What poem is that stanza from?
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SPEAKER_00: From the idea of order at Key West.
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SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
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SPEAKER_00: which is just what the title says.
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SPEAKER_00: The story is that he and a young man with a Mexican name,
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SPEAKER_00: Ramón Fernández,
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SPEAKER_00: who didn't really exist,
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SPEAKER_00: were walking on the beach.
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SPEAKER_00: And there was a woman walking on the beach and singing.
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SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say what she was singing.
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SPEAKER_00: I've been curious about that,
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but she must have sung very well to have attracted his
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attention the way she did.
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SPEAKER_00: What she sang was not what she got from the sea.
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SPEAKER_00: It was what she made of what the sea was doing.
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SPEAKER_00: The stanza from Stephen, shall I quote it to you?
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SPEAKER_00: Please, please.
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, blessed rage for order, pale Ramon.
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SPEAKER_00: the maker's rage to order words of the sea,
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words of the fragrant portals dimly starred and of ourselves
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and of our origins in
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SPEAKER_00: ghostlier demarcations,
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SPEAKER_00: keener sounds.
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SPEAKER_00: Stevens had such a powerful voice.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, they talk about Marlowe's mighty line.
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SPEAKER_00: I think you could talk about Stevens's mighty line too.
15:07
He could have been saying almost anything if he said it in the
15:10
way he said it,
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SPEAKER_00: and he would still have been a great poet,
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SPEAKER_00: I think.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, you don't have to agree with him that there is no outer,
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SPEAKER_00: force above us telling us expressing itself.
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SPEAKER_00: We do the expression of it as we take it.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay.
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SPEAKER_00: That's one way to, that's something to think.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I agree, but.
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SPEAKER_02: Tell me about you and your friend Rilke.
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SPEAKER_02: You two have such a close relationship.
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SPEAKER_00: It seems to me that,
15:46
SPEAKER_00: as a matter of fact,
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SPEAKER_00: that Wallace Stevens is the closest thing America or English has,
15:51
SPEAKER_00: in fact,
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SPEAKER_00: to Rilke in the complexity and originality of his way of saying things.
16:01
i did a lot of picking and choosing and i usually picked the
16:04
ones that are not too
16:04
long and too difficult most of them would go on a page but then
16:09
for many years
16:09
rokey wrote mostly poems that did go on a page he was building
16:15
up to his greatly
16:17
SPEAKER_00: admired
16:19
almost final work called the Duino Elegies,
16:23
which I have not tried to translate.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: For one thing,
16:26
SPEAKER_00: they're not rhymed,
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SPEAKER_00: and I translate only things that are metrical,
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SPEAKER_00: and preferably in rhyme,
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SPEAKER_00: just because of the challenge of doing it.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: But I did 100 of his poems,
16:38
and I tried to come as close as I possibly could to his meter
16:45
and his rhyme
16:46
SPEAKER_00: schemes.
16:47
I always made it with the meter,
16:49
I think,
16:50
but not always with the rhyme schemes.
16:52
And when I couldn't do it without awkwardness,
16:56
I just gave up trying to rhyme.
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SPEAKER_00: Or sometimes compromise and use slant rhymes, as he never did.
17:05
SPEAKER_02: What's a slant rhyme, Don?
17:06
SPEAKER_02: Is that an almost rhyme?
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: Let's see.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: Often it's just asinance, like rake and same.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: or it can be consonants also.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I can think of an example.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: No, I know what you mean.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:25
SPEAKER_02: Tell me, would you, about you and Beowulf...
17:30
I discovered Beowulf in my senior year in high school when our
17:36
nice old lady
17:37
SPEAKER_00: teacher gave us a section on Beowulf.
17:41
And the textbook had a passage from Beowulf with the old
17:46
English words at the top.
17:50
And of course,
17:50
I didn't know how to pronounce them,
17:52
but nonetheless,
17:53
they fascinated me.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: They looked so distinctive and powerful.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: The English translation is,
18:01
SPEAKER_00: went then o'er the way of sea,
18:03
SPEAKER_00: by the wind favored the floater foe me necked to a fowl likest.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: I can say it in Old English if you want.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Please.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: But it's such a powerful translation.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: wrenching sound that that language,
18:27
our language back then was full of before the French came along
18:31
and civilized it,
18:32
SPEAKER_00: you know.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: But that's the sound of what I fancied to be the sound stayed in my mind.
18:41
And when I finally got to graduate school,
18:44
I decided I wanted to do some work on Beowulf.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And I did my dissertation on it.
18:51
And you are,
18:52
beg your pardon,
18:53
you are a translator of that work,
18:56
are you not?
18:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: That came along a great deal later.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: And really, I did it so quickly that I should feel guilty, I guess.
19:06
SPEAKER_00: My newspaper backed on, taught me to sit down and work fast.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: And I did 40 pages, 40 lines a night for three months.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
19:18
SPEAKER_02: That's an excellent clip.
19:21
And my knowledge of Old English was so vague and poor because I
19:27
missed a decent
19:30
SPEAKER_00: section on it in college.
19:32
The teacher who knew it died just before the semester,
19:34
before the year started.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: And so I stand in and taught it.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: He knew nothing about it and didn't make me learn anything.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: So to translate it, I used a wonderful, wonderful edition of Franz Kleber
19:48
And with the full glossary,
19:50
even the word the,
19:51
every time it appears,
19:52
you know,
19:52
he tells you.
19:54
And I looked up at least every other word to make sure that I
19:59
knew not just what it
20:01
SPEAKER_00: was in general about,
20:03
but whether it was a verb or a noun and what tense it was if it
20:06
was a verb and
20:08
whether it was nominative or accusative or dative if it was a
20:12
noun and so forth.
20:15
And so I practically wore out the pages turning back to the
20:18
glossary of that book.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed doing that.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I've turned out anything remarkable.
20:30
What I did try to do,
20:31
that not all translators tried to do,
20:34
was to reproduce the cannings.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: For instance, in what I read you a while ago, the floater, foamy-necked.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: That's a ship.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of translators these days translate it that way, a ship.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: That misses the whole flavor, to my mind, of those kennings.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: And Beowulfs is full of kennings like that.
20:56
Over the swan road is the ocean,
20:59
or the whale road,
21:01
and so forth and so on.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: So I tried to repeat all those in my translation.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: And that may be one.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: That may be somewhat distinctive.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: I haven't read all the other translations.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Boy, there are plenty, I'll tell you.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: You have a novel set in medieval England, as I recall.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Sparrow in the Hall.
21:26
And it's set in the sixth century,
21:28
in seventh century,
21:30
that is,
21:33
northeastern England.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: The central character,
21:38
SPEAKER_00: the protagonist,
21:40
SPEAKER_00: is not the usual dashing knight or nobleman or something.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: He is a plain, ordinary farmer.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: A churl,
21:49
SPEAKER_00: which is a bad word in these days,
21:51
SPEAKER_00: but in those days it simply meant farmer,
21:53
SPEAKER_00: ordinary farmer.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I didn't know that.
21:56
SPEAKER_02: So to be churlish was to be farmer-like.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Yes, right, yes.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And at the time I was living in the Texas Panhandle,
22:07
SPEAKER_00: and my wife grew up on a farm there,
22:10
SPEAKER_00: and lots of the people I talked with were farmers.
22:13
And I had the notion that back then a farmer was pretty much
22:19
the same character as
22:20
SPEAKER_00: the farmer these days.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: And so I based the character of my protagonist
22:26
loosely at least,
22:27
on my wife's brother,
22:30
who was a farmer,
22:31
a lifelong farmer.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: A very healthy,
22:35
SPEAKER_00: good-natured,
22:36
SPEAKER_00: sensible man,
22:39
SPEAKER_00: perfectly honorable in every way,
22:41
SPEAKER_00: a most desirable neighbor,
22:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:47
SPEAKER_00: and father and husband and so forth.
22:55
Another element in this book is the conflict between
23:01
Christianity and the old pagan forms.
23:05
And every time there was a new king,
23:07
there was a new shift from one of those to the other.
23:10
And people had to get used to them and decide which they were
23:13
at the current moment.
23:18
SPEAKER_02: Don, do you...
23:19
Do you have a pantheon of poets or a clutch of favorites,
23:26
personal favorites?
23:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't mean to limit you,
23:30
but I just wonder whether you have four or five or six poets
23:34
who really mean a lot
23:36
SPEAKER_02: to you.
23:36
SPEAKER_02: And then I would ask the same of novelists.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Poets, yes, of course.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: I have to say Frost first.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: He...
23:48
I've read every published poem of Frost and memorized a fair
23:54
number of them.
23:55
He was a great influence on me at the beginning,
23:58
and I'm sure the influence still shows.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: I try not to imitate him or to sound just like him,
24:05
SPEAKER_00: but still,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: he was such a master of metrics and rhyme and imagery especially.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: His images are so brilliant, they just jump out at you.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: After that,
24:20
SPEAKER_00: well,
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I read a lot of the Victorian poets,
24:25
SPEAKER_00: and earlier than Victorian,
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Keats and Belton,
24:28
SPEAKER_00: certainly.
24:34
And I read a good many German poets,
24:36
too,
24:37
in my years of studying German in college.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Burtica was one of my favorites and still is.
24:46
SPEAKER_02: I know him through Hugo Wolf.
24:48
SPEAKER_02: That won't surprise you.
24:50
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
24:52
SPEAKER_02: I think he said, what, something like 80 Murica poems, Wolf did?
24:57
SPEAKER_02: He went on quite a jag.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: I know he did a lot.
25:02
And do you know who I've heard sing at least one of those Wolf
25:08
Murica poems and
25:11
SPEAKER_00: tried not to learn the German from?
25:13
SPEAKER_00: John McCormick.
25:15
SPEAKER_02: Yes, he was a great leader singer.
25:16
You could ignore the diction,
25:18
but he was,
25:19
yes,
25:21
an underrated leader singer,
25:22
in my opinion.
25:23
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: Let's see,
25:27
SPEAKER_00: the poem,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: the Murica song that he sang was,
25:31
but tormented when writhing on the floor in guilt and so forth
25:35
and praying God to
25:37
SPEAKER_00: free him from it.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: I can't quite remember the name.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: We can look up.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: We can look up.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: Herr, was trägt der Boden, Herr.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Herr, was trägt der Boden, Herr.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember the next line.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: We can look it up.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: I also read, you asked me what poems, what poets I read.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I read a lot of the Elizabethan and more or less Elizabethan poets.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I liked Herrick very much and Sidney and Marvel and I could go on.
26:14
SPEAKER_02: You have good taste, Don?
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I like.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: My mother and father read poetry,
26:23
SPEAKER_00: and they had,
26:24
SPEAKER_00: I've told you in the past,
26:25
SPEAKER_00: I think,
26:26
SPEAKER_00: they had this wonderful book,
26:30
SPEAKER_00: An Anthology of World Poetry,
26:32
SPEAKER_00: edited by Mark Van Doren,
26:35
SPEAKER_00: which was full of translations that are just so admirably done.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: the metrics and the rhyme and just the whole tone.
26:45
I don't know how close they all were to the original,
26:48
but I know they came across as beautiful.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: That volume is at my bedside,
26:53
SPEAKER_02: and I don't read in it as much as you would and did,
26:56
SPEAKER_02: but it's sitting there.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: It's sitting there.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: It's full of wonderful things.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: It's truly a treasury.
27:03
SPEAKER_02: Don, it's sort of a big portentous question.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: I apologize for it in advance.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: Are we losing our literary culture here in America?
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Of course we are.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course we are.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: Who could disagree?
27:19
I think it's frightening and I think artificial intelligence
27:24
may be the end of this,
27:25
of it all.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: The last poems I've written were often
27:37
about that,
27:38
about artificial intelligence and the fear of what it may do to
27:45
us.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Before, my little books of poetry were mainly
28:02
SPEAKER_00: intimate, I would say, not about world affairs and so forth.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: But starting,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: well,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: after the last election,
28:10
I began to get into politics and world affairs and space
28:18
exploration and artificial
28:20
SPEAKER_00: intelligence somewhat.
28:23
Some of the poems I wrote were still intimate about people and
28:30
nature and that sort of thing.
28:33
No,
28:35
I've liked this new direction of yours,
28:39
poetizing events in the news,
28:40
so to speak.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: I've appreciated that a lot.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether...
28:47
SPEAKER_00: whether those poems are good or not.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: They're in my next book,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: which will probably be my last book of poems,
28:54
SPEAKER_00: which is coming out in August.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, I have had some of them accepted, as a matter of fact.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I was very lucky.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: I wrote three poems called Calls for Help.
29:09
SPEAKER_00: One was about the need of more Navalny's,
29:12
SPEAKER_00: and I think I sent that to you somewhere along the way.
29:15
I know there was about Beowulf and also about Grendel,
29:21
the monster in Beowulf.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: And the gist of the poem was, here comes Grendel advancing on us.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Beowulf, help if you can, if you dare.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: And one was...
29:38
SPEAKER_00: Do you happen to know the Protestant hymn that starts,
29:43
SPEAKER_00: it's called It Came Upon the Midnight Clear?
29:45
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I know it mainly as a Christmas carol, yeah.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly, yeah.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: And it has the lines in it.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Let me see.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Came upon the midnight clear,
29:57
SPEAKER_00: that wondrous song of old,
29:59
SPEAKER_00: of angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold.
30:03
the title of one poem i wrote was of angels bending near the
30:07
earth to touch their
30:08
harps of gold when i was a kid and we sang that song i thought
30:13
those angels were
30:14
bending down to touch the earth with their harps of gold i
30:18
didn't know that touch a
30:19
SPEAKER_00: harp meant to play it to strum it
30:23
And I think that idea has stuck with me in spite of my
30:26
knowledge that it's not
30:27
SPEAKER_00: really what was meant.
30:30
This poem is sort of built on that as if the angels came down
30:34
to touch their harps
30:36
and transmit heavenly ideas to us and pick up earthly ideas
30:42
from us through this
30:44
SPEAKER_00: resonance of their harps.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: And so the poem ends something like this.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Come down again now,
30:53
SPEAKER_00: angels,
30:54
take and give before me in gods who know trillionth try for
31:01
some earth not
31:03
SPEAKER_00: inventing its own death.
31:05
And that was a reference to artificial intelligence,
31:08
of course,
31:08
inventing its own death.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Those three poems were published.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm proud of this, and I'm going to brag about it a little bit.
31:16
SPEAKER_00: They were published at Oxford University in Oxford Magazine.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: Bridget, not quite as good as it sounds, but it does sound good.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: No, as an old friend of mine would say, it's stepping in high cotton.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Maybe,
31:32
SPEAKER_00: but the fact is,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: this magazine is put out by,
31:37
SPEAKER_00: not by Oxford anymore,
31:39
SPEAKER_00: but by Oxford faculty members,
31:41
SPEAKER_00: for Oxford faculty members.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't have much circulation outside that.
31:46
And although they ran by three points,
31:48
I never got one single response comment from anywhere.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, I'm proud of having been in Oxford Magazine.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Sounds so good.
31:59
SPEAKER_02: I think you should be.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: I'm proud for you as well.
32:02
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
32:04
SPEAKER_02: Don, here at the end, maybe something musical.
32:08
I know you love classical music and you love art songs,
32:12
Lida and Melody and the rest.
32:15
SPEAKER_02: Do you have any use for popular music?
32:18
SPEAKER_02: Did you ever like...
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Ever, yes.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: Back in the 40s and 50s.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: I guess 30s, 40s and 50s, really.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: I think, for instance, Night and Day is a great song.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: Cold morning.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Smoke gets in your eyes.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: Oh, my gosh.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Many of those, those were very good songs, you know.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether, you can't compare them to Shuba.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: They were just so different, but they were great.
32:47
After that,
32:48
though,
32:49
rock and roll,
32:50
no,
32:50
I have utterly no interest,
32:52
and I go away.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: I get out of the room when they're on the radio.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: And Don, who are your great composers, Schubert and who else?
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Somebody, an erudite European asked me that, and I said, well...
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: He said, oh, yeah, of course.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, aside from those, he took those for granted.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: So those, of course, Schubert, of course.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: But I have a special fondness for Schumann,
33:27
SPEAKER_00: especially for his piano music,
33:30
SPEAKER_00: because my brother played it so much.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:33
Carnival and Papillon and...
33:38
The symphonic etudes,
33:39
scenes from childhood.
33:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: I love those very much.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: I don't care for later, but...
33:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't think many people do.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, after he began to have his metal troubles.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: That was a different thing.
33:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: Do you know that Schumann was Horowitz's favorite composer?
33:58
SPEAKER_02: People might have thought Scriabin or Rachmaninoff or Chopin.
34:02
And on at least a few occasions,
34:06
Horowitz said that Schumann was the guy he was closest to.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: Really?
34:10
SPEAKER_02: That's very interesting.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Kind of unexpected.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: That's such a marvelous player of Schumann, my goodness.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: just lately I've heard him play something of Schumann's,
34:19
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember what now,
34:21
SPEAKER_00: but he enjoyed it very much.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: My brother,
34:23
SPEAKER_00: a pianist,
34:26
SPEAKER_00: of course admired Horowitz for his wonderful technique and musicianship,
34:32
but he also raised his eyebrows a little bit at what he
34:35
considered Horowitz's
34:38
SPEAKER_00: mischief,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: his playing around with things.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't know quite what he meant,
34:42
SPEAKER_02: I do.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: That was part of the whole show.
34:48
SPEAKER_02: Part of the whole persona.
34:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:51
SPEAKER_02: I'll take him warts and all.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: And even some of the warts were kind of pretty.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: the mischief and the eccentricities and so on.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure.
34:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: Don, I feel, I hope that I'm learning things as I go along.
35:03
SPEAKER_02: Say it again.
35:05
I hope as I go along that I am learning things,
35:08
that I'm sort of learning things day by day.
35:11
Do you feel that you are learning and absorbing as you gain
35:15
more experience?
35:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, sure.
35:19
But yeah,
35:21
especially about the world,
35:23
you know,
35:23
I read the news better than I used to.
35:26
The world news and shake my head over it and I'm quite
35:31
pessimistic about it and
35:33
SPEAKER_00: don't always know what I think about it.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: But Don, shouldn't it be the opposite as we get older?
35:39
SPEAKER_02: Shouldn't we leave the news, the daily behind or let it recede?
35:46
SPEAKER_02: and think of maybe higher things?
35:47
Or do you find that you're getting increasingly drawn into the
35:50
world and its affairs?
35:54
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
35:55
I think I feel that the world is trying to draw me in and that
35:59
I am resisting to a
36:02
SPEAKER_00: certain extent.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
36:05
after I read all the terrible things that are happening in this
36:09
country and
36:10
SPEAKER_00: elsewhere,
36:10
SPEAKER_00: the elsewhere being often because of what we're doing,
36:17
SPEAKER_00: I think that's terrible.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing I can do about it.
36:20
I'm going to accept it and see what happens and hope that it
36:25
doesn't affect my
36:26
SPEAKER_00: children and grandchildren too much.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for your work, Donald Mace Williams.
36:33
I do prize you,
36:35
and you make life better,
36:36
and you lend a sparkle,
36:39
and I appreciate you.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jay.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel very sparkly, and I'm glad you think I am.
36:46
SPEAKER_02: Damn right.
36:47
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
36:49
SPEAKER_02: I am Jay Nordlinger, who has done Q&A with Donald Mace Williams.
36:54
SPEAKER_02: Till next time.
36:55
SPEAKER_02: So long.
36:57
SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Jay.