My issues with it are that simply in terms of my own work. It represents 30 years of output. And some of the things, some of the pieces I've used there, when I first wrote them, they seemed probably very menacing, and I hear them now, and they're just kind of pleasant, if that's the word.
Richard MeltzerI mean, what's thematic? How to put it? Going back to, like, 1980, when I started writing poetry. Language itself became an issue. I'd even think about font as an aspect of text, you know, how something looks on a page. A lot of this is the product of a very solitary existence, it's like, language, I mean, you know. A lot of time spent alone in the creation of all of this stuff.
Richard MeltzerNo matter what, I'm never going to get an anthology from an actual publisher, though I could always score another music anthology. But if this is going to be a document of a multiplicity of my writings, it'll do. It feels like a birthday party or something.
Richard MeltzerBasically, I've reached the point where I've lost any direct relationship to any of the editors I used to have. I suspect I'll have to pay to publish this myself, and I think a lot about about putting out fifty copies. I used to think about hogwash like my legacy and silly things like that. But I feel like if I never have another book out, I've done okay, I've had like twelve or thirteen little books, and I won't be upset about this on my death bed.
Richard MeltzerI didn't mind writing incoherently, up until about 1980, occasionally. But after that, I decided, might as well be articulate. And I found, though, that writing poetry affected my prose to the point where I never again wrote in one draft, and my prose just took longer and longer and longer. It took longer and longer to come up with an acceptable text. And that's probably one of the reasons that my output has slowed down.
Richard MeltzerIf I'm very drunk, I can improvise. But generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, almost all of my work is material that was first done on the printed page. And the shorter ones that you might call poems, I had a stretch from '79, '80, for five or six years, where I wrote a lot of poetry as such. Simply because I was asked to.
Richard MeltzerMy issues with it are that simply in terms of my own work. It represents 30 years of output. And some of the things, some of the pieces I've used there, when I first wrote them, they seemed probably very menacing, and I hear them now, and they're just kind of pleasant, if that's the word.
Richard Meltzer