May 18, 2005
Interview with poet Douglas Worth: A Poet Who Knows His Worth.
Doug Holder
Awhile ago I sent an “Ibbetson Street Press,” care package of publications to a poet on my mailing list. I do this once-in- awhile. It’s sort of like my letter in a bottle set adrift in the vast sea of poets and writers in the Somerville/Cambridge axis. The poet I sent it to was Douglas Worth. This unsolicited missive led to an email exchange. It seemed that Worth’s collection of poetry: “Catch The Light,” was recently released, and he was looking for contact in the often cliquish poetry world. Despite the fact that his poetry has been highly praised by the likes of Richard Wilbur, and Denise Levertov, (a Somerville poet), Worth still feels like an outsider in this rarefied milieu. I felt that there were any number of poets that felt this way so I started a group: “Breaking Bagels With the Bards,” that meets in the basement of “Finagle-a-Bagel,” in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. A number of us poets get together now; to schmooze over bagels, and in the process formed a community of sorts. Needless to say Worth is a regular member. I spoke to Worth on my Somerville Community Access TV show “Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer,” on Somerville Community Access TV.
Doug Holder: Doug why after the many awards, books, grants, and other things you have received, do you still struggle for recognition?
Douglas Worth: I ponder that a lot myself. A major part of it is that while I’ve been bold behind the typewriter; sent manuscripts to Denis Levertov; sent books out for review; sent many manuscripts to publishers; applied for grants; on a personal level of following up I wasn’t as bold. When Richard Wilbur gave me a blurb I wrote him back to thank him of course. Instead of finding his phone number and maybe getting together with him for a cup of coffee; I just thought “WOW!,” wrote him a thank you note, and went on writing. I think some people would cultivate a relationship. I was afraid if I met him for coffee I would be at a loss to say something. Like many writers I express my deeper inner-feelings by writing things, rather than going out schmoozing.
I was never in the university loop. I never taught in colleges. I started the Ph.D program at Columbia, but I just wound down with being in school. So I got a job teaching in a private school. I taught in New York City, and later public schools in Newton. Many poets who are connected tend to be professors of Creative Writing at Iowa, etc... Universities have literary publications where they can send their poems. I never had that. It has been pretty much the writing, teaching and bringing up a family.
DH: Can you talk a bit about your mentor Samuel Hynes who taught at Swarthmore where you spent your undergraduate years?
DW: Hynes was a wonderful teacher. He was also a jet pilot ace in World War ll and Korea. He was a very smart, sensitive and encouraging person. He definitely encouraged my poetry. I enjoyed his courses. Back then you couldn’t take a course in Creative Writing. So I had to do that stuff on the side.
DH: You play the jazz saxophone. How does this compliment your work as a poet?
DW: They are just two wonderful things in my life. They have been loves that go way back. I like the “Cool” jazz element of Paul Desmond and Chet Baker. I loved Desmond’s playing when I was in high school in the 50’s. Desmond had a wonderful sense of humor, and I have a sort of impish sense of humor too. I started to play saxophone in school, but I never actually owned one. After college, where I minored in Music, I had to decide if I would go to NYC and become a jazz musician or go to grad. school for literature. I decided to to do the literary thing.
I don’t like jazz and poetry at the same time, because that distracts me. They are two wonderful modes of expression. And they are not dissimilar. My playing is very lyrical on the sax, as opposed to the “screamers.’ My poetry is lyrical and song-like.
DH: You have eight collections to your credit. Do you have another collection in you?
DW: I hope I have another one or two. Some days I feel like I am washed up. And on other days I feel, well, something is germinating. If something comes at me and starts to write itself; I grab a piece of paper and write it down. My books, I feel, are like long poems. I have a feeling that the next book has to deal with something very important to me; like a different America.
DH: How did you come up with the title “Catch the Light/”
DW: It is my general feeling that so many poets are into the dark, you know: “Life sucks!” It has become fashionable to write darkly, like Sylvia Plath. Poets like that seem to get the awards. It seems that this is not a good place for humanity’s head to be. I want to hold a moment of beauty and connect into a poem. Let’s celebrate life. So it’s about catching the light, rather than the darkness.
DH: In the poem “This Land is your Land,” you subvert the titled folk song, to mean we truly tamed and now own the land we corrupted. Is the degradation of the land often a theme in your work?
DW: I think it is. My last book’s setting was in a park in Newton, Mass., where I walked. Here is this wonderful slice of woods not far from Boston. It’s a celebration of that, but also the tragedy of the industrial wasteland closing in.
DH: In the poem “Moments” you write: “...we suffer, come to think/ of, as our lives, as/ if there were no/ mystery, no miracle,/in the clear fact,/ that we are here,/ living together, that/ we are here at all,/under the familiar mist/ the live kernel/ smoldering/ suddenly blazing/ out of the dark.” Does poetry bring you back to the miracle of life?
DW: It helps me to focus on and acknowledge life. I am more aware.
Doug Holder http://www.authorsden.com/douglasholder
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