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poet — translator Clayton Eshleman
the Man Who Translated Vallejo i n t e r v i e w w i t h d o u g h o l d e r “Cesar Vallejo is Peru’s greatest poet. Clayton Eshleman is a rare phenomenon who, as a translator, has unwaveringly dedicated five decades to making the poetry of Vallejo ring true, as evidenced by his massive, ‘The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition / Cesar Vallejo.’” — Tino Villanueva Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938), the Peruvian poet, and one of the great innovators of 20th century. His poetry is distinct, and a step ahead of others in his day. Although in his short lifetime he only published three collections of poetry, his work was revolutionary. Vallejo took the Spanish language to new heights of raw emotionalism. He experimented with grammatical norms, and struck at the dogma and rhetoric of the Catholic Church.
For some reason back in the late 50’s you were adrift. After taking some American poetry courses and creative writing workshops—poetry took its hold on you. What attracted you to this genre as opposed to fiction etc…? While I was a student at Indiana University in the late 1950s, I not only took a course in 20th century American poetry, but met at the same time two poets: Jack Hirschman, who introduced me to 20th century European poetry, and Mary Ellen Solt, who knew William Carlos Williams, and, brought back to Bloomington after a visit to Rutherford, books by Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson, which she immediately showed me. Also in this period, via Colin Wilson’s 1956 book, The Outsider, I discovered the writings of Blake, Lawrence, Kafka, the paintings of Van Gogh—and was offered the editorship of the English Department literary journal, Folio. Up to that point, the magazine had only published student and faculty writing. I wrote to Duncan, Creeley, Louis Zukofsky, and Allen Ginsberg, to ask them for poems. All were interested that something seemed to be happening at Indiana University and sent Folio work. Then I hitchhiked to Mexico the summer of 1959, having also discovered the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Curiously, I did not meet any people writing fiction at Indiana University. On one occasion, I worked on a short story, but as soon as I finished it, I put it aside and forgot about it. Something was simmering right under the surface of me in those days and poetry heated it into a boil. Overnight, I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
You wrote in the afterword in The Complete Poetry: Cesar Vallejo, that Vallejo’s poetry is:”…the imaginative expression of the inability to resolve contradictions of man as an animal, divorced from nature as well as from sustaining faith and caught in the trivia of socialized life.” I can see elements of that in Whitman’s and Eliot’s poetry and the list goes on. What is unique about Vallejo’s take other than the fact he was
You wrote that while translating Vallejo you were struggling with the old “Clayton” who was resisting change. Vallejo was forcing you to break out of the “Presbyterian world of light,” that you were born into. If you hadn’t My life would be less rich than it is today. However, I was also reading all of Blake while I was translating the Poemas humanos in Kyoto, as well as Charles Olson, Charles Baudelaire, and Walt Whitman, and I think I could have found my way under their charge. Your question makes me recall: I once passed out while reading Blake. Years later, Gary Snyder who was also living in Kyoto in the early 1960s told me that he had dropped by for an unexpected visit, seen me sprawled on the tatami next to a copy of Blake’s The Book of Urizen, and, assuming I was napping, went away.
To translate a body of work it seems you have to live with it 24/7; you really have to merge with the artist. Is there a certain kind of madness attached to this? No more madness in translating, and probably much less than there is at the heart of poetry itself. Or let’s call it visionary madness, the
Can you talk about the two small literary magazines you founded: In New York City, 1967, I realized I was part of a very interesting new generation coming into poetry, and that we had no journal to support our work. Caterpillar, which ran from 1967 to 1973 (20 issues),
You have been published by Black Sparrow and New Directions. Do you have any anecdotes about James Laughlin of New Directions or John Martin of Black Sparrow? How important is the small press for translators? New Directions published me in a couple of their Annuals, but they have never published any of my books. I had only the slightest acquaintance with James Laughlin. Black Sparrow, on the other hand, published fifteen of my books and my wife Caryl and I were close friends of John and Barbara Martin for many years. We all had some great times together. Caryl and I moved in almost next door to the Martins in West Los Angeles in 1974, and after they moved to Santa Barbara and then to Santa Rosa we were invited for many weekend visits. Barbara and I liked to cook together. While John’s heart belonged to Bukowski (a poet I have never had a drop of interest in). He published all the poetry I sent him for some thirty years in handsome, responsibly-produced editions. He did the same thing for Kelly and Wakoski. I once pushed him clothed into his swimming pool in Santa Barbara to show how much I cared about him.
Can you talk about your latest collection from Boston’s Black Widow Press Grindstone of Rapport: A Clayton Eshleman Reader? Is this what you would consider the definitive collection of your work? The Grindstone of Rapport, due out this October from Black Widow Press in Boston is in no way a definitive
I feel that I have been moderately successful as a poet. I have always had a publisher, and have been invited to read at hundreds of universities (and had a decent teaching gig at Eastern Michigan University for 17 years: 1986-2003). However, I am not successful in the way that John Ashbery or Adrienne Rich are. My work has always been published by small/alternative presses. I have never been invited to read at, say, the 92nd Street Y in NYC, or at the Dodge Festival, and have never received any of the big grants or prizes, like a MacArthur, Lilly, or Griffin. While it is too complex to go into here, I find it disappointing that my work, along with that of Robert Kelly and Jerome Rothenberg, has never been the subject of much study or scholarship. We seem to be part of a ghost generation, eclipsed between the peaking of the Olson/Duncan generation (right before us) and the Language Poets who, in the 1970s and 1980s, were taken by many to be the new innovative kids on the block. I feel that Robert, Jerry, and myself have made a formidable contribution to American poetry, one that has hardly, really, been considered so far.
Clayton Eshleman 210 Washtenaw Road
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