Massimo Gezzi: The collection Un mondo che non può essere migliore, edited by Damiano Abeni and Joseph Harrison for the publisher Luca Sossella Editore, which is the first volume, in Italy, composed of poems chosen by the author – comes out exactly fifty years after some of your poems appeared for the first time ever in translation. Even then it was an Italian anthology, namely Poesia americana del dopoguerra edited by Alfredo Rizzardi. What do Italy and Italian readers represent for you?
John Ashbery: I’m not sure how my poems got in the Rizzardi anthology, since I was barely known then, even in America. In the seventies my book Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror attracted a great deal of attention and some literary prizes and was translated into Italian by Aldo Busi. I hoped that it would be followed by translations of my later poetry, but this did not happen until now, though one Italian publisher had taken an option on another book, which was repeatedly renewed, though no book ever appeared. How can I say what Italy and Italian readers represent for me? They are obviously tremendously important, as they would be for anybody. I’m very pleased with the generous selection of work translated by Abeni and Egan. My Italian is such that I can read a newspaper but not really judge the quality of poetry. But from my conversations with the translators and from other comments, I believe they have done an excellent job.
MG: In a 1991 essay, Franco Fortini, an Italian poet and intellectual, distinguished between difficult poetry (in any case understandable by willing readers) and obscure poetry (always incomprehensible, even to the poet). Do you agree with this distinction? Do you think your poetry is more difficult or more obscure?
JA: I can’t see a poet sitting down to write and choosing between writing “difficult” poetry or “obscure” poetry. How does one know what will be “understandable to willing readers,” or, for that matter, “always incomprehensible even to the poet?” Your question “Do I think my poetry is more difficult or more obscure?” is like asking me which poison would I chose to end my life. I never set out to be one thing or the other. However, my literary tastes were formed during what now seems like the distant era of twentieth century modernism, that is, the period of Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Faulkner, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and the Surrealists, to name a few who have undoubtedly helped to shape my sensibility as a writer. Obviously some of these writers are difficult, and I’ve always been attracted to what Yeats called “the fascination of what’s difficult” because it seemed to me that I would be wiser once I had read it. People don’t seem to feel this way very much anymore, at least in America, where “accessibility” is highly esteemed. I have nothing against “accessibility” and I don’t favor “inaccessibility,” but I believe that the best poetry and art often demand a certain amount of effort to be appreciated.