![]() ![]() What is your overall agenda or literary aim as an essayist? What made me stay the course was finally a propensity to generate questions and try to come up with answers–experimentation, rather than certainty. ![]() I did not despair, but neither did I think when I was starting out in my twenties that I would ever be as successful as I have become. PHILLIP: I was in doubt from the first that I had enough talent or enough to say to be a successful writer, but I figured what the hell, let’s give it a shot. ![]() ![]() During this period, did you ever face any feelings of severe doubt or despair over your ability or progress as an artist, or was it mostly clear to you that you had enough talent and a momentum within the literary world, and you would find your way? You carried with you a creeping sense of insecurity about your ability as a poet, yet that community was receiving you, and you were publishing your writing. Monkey see, monkey do: I started reading and writing poetry. A few fiction writers, not a single nonfiction writer in the batch. PHILLIP: When I was an undergraduate at Columbia, my writer-friends were mostly poets. You say you had no ambitions toward writing poetry until you were a student at Columbia and suddenly doing it, kind of by accident. Your essay, The Poetry Years (from Portrait Inside My Head) looks back at where and how you started writing professionally. Debora Black Table for Two–An Interview with Philip Lopate categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Table For Two: Interviews 6 comments ![]()
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