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DONALD JUSTICE: The classic landscapes of dreams are not more pathless, though footprints leading nowhere would seem to prove that a people once survived for little even here. Fragments of a pathetic culture remain. The lost mittens of children and a single bright detasseled snow cap, evidence of some frantic migration.

The landmarks are gone. Nevertheless, there is something familiar about this country. Slowly now, we begin to recall the terrible whispers of our elders falling softly about our ears in childhood never believed till now.

NANCY FUSHAN: Poem, for you, at least in the latest work, as documented in the collection, seems to be poem as memory.

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, the memory provides a lot of experience or what passes as experience once you pass a certain age. And yes, I think it's always been a source for imagination and for art. Not for every writer or every artist, but for a great many in practically any persuasion and practically any century. And I just feel that I'm doing what comes naturally.

NANCY FUSHAN: It does tie, past and present, perhaps even future.

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, I don't know. I find it hard to think about the future. I'd like to, but it's very difficult.

NANCY FUSHAN: You talk of anniversaries, too. What's significant anniversaries for you?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, the poem, as I call that-- and I called my first book The Summer Anniversaries-- came out partly of just realizing that most significant events in my life had happened in the month of August. And so I tried to put a few of them together. Like, I was born in August. I always seemed to be graduating from schools in August, a little later or a little earlier than I should have. And I got married in August. My son was born in August, such-- so it goes.

NANCY FUSHAN: Is it at times difficult to work with memory? The fact is that memory can be ephemeral. It can--

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh yeah. Well, that's a part of the treasure of it, to try to catch it while in its, if you don't mind my saying so, in its evanescence.

NANCY FUSHAN: Is there something about the form, poetry, that lends itself to capturing that?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, I would like to think so, yes. A large part of my intention in writing a poem is to record, to fix something. And the memory lends itself to that temptation anyway very readily.

NANCY FUSHAN: And yet, it's such a terse form. And your poetry especially is very streamlined.

DONALD JUSTICE: At least very short, yes. Well, yes, but I think that's a part of it. I, at least for some temperaments, and maybe I don't have as capacious a memory as Proust anyway, I can't-- seven volumes or whatever, but seven lines might do it for one or two little things.

NANCY FUSHAN: Do you work hard at the imagery, or does it just seem to come?

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh no, I work hard at what I get. I envy my friends who don't have to work quite so hard.

NANCY FUSHAN: In some of the notes for the collection, it did mention that you revised some of the poems especially for this.

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh yes. Well, it's a privilege and a challenge to do a selection or a collection of past work. And you get a second chance. I mean, you've already taken a second, and third, and fourth chance. But now you've got a penultimate chance, as it were, and you don't want to miss it. Or at least, I didn't.

I wanted to try to improve or get right anything that, for years, I might have suspected or known was in error or off somehow. And I changed all too much. As it turns out, now we'd like to change some back. But yes, it was a part of the pleasure of working on this volume to try to mend.

NANCY FUSHAN: Is it also somewhat intimidating to do a volume of your collected works?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, possibly. But these weren't actually collected. I left out quite a few things. And that was also a part of the pleasure of part of the act of revision to say no to certain things that had been done in the past. No, I didn't-- no, not intimidating. No, I found it very interesting [CHUCKLES] in a narcissistic way.

NANCY FUSHAN: [CHUCKLES] When you look at that volume, what progressions do you see in your work?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, I think that the early poems show someone trying to practice what I prefer to call the art rather than the craft, trying to learn how to do certain things. And I would like to think that the last poems show somebody doing certain things. I consider the poems from the first book apprentice work. And in one sense, they're as-- I seem to be trying to prove to myself that, yes, I can do that, or, yes, I can do that.

NANCY FUSHAN: Can I ask you to find an example of that?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, there's a very simple way of thinking of it would be in terms of form. Not very many people, I suppose, are interested in forms or writing in forms now, but I always was from the outset. And one poem after another in the first book is an attempt to exploit something I saw in poetry formerly in-- for instance, there are one or two sonnets, a very easy and standard form. Then there are poems in a variety of meters that I just wanted to get the sound of, get the hang of.

And I mean, it turns out, at least, from my own special point of view, that this was handy and useful for the future because if I came to the point where I wanted to do something similar again, I had a little confidence that I might be able to. Well, I don't know. I mean, looking through those old poems, it just seems to me that every one is an example of the attempt to solve a technical, or formal, or artistic problem.

The second poem that I wrote is called "Women in Love," and it was an attempt to deal with a very artificial form called the villanelle. Now, it turned out I couldn't cope with it. So I made modifications, and boiled it down, and wrote my own quasi-villanelle that suited me. I just wanted to do what I could with it, "Women in Love."

This is a form which requires a lot of repetition of refrains. And I don't know of any villanelle that goes on for all of its 19 lines strongly. I always seem to be seeing weaknesses in them, even those written by masters. And so it seems--

NANCY FUSHAN: Perhaps you could explain what is the villanelle form.

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, it has four-- no, five three-line stanzas and a final stanza of four lines. The first line of the-- it's very complicated. The first line-- that's part of the interest, you see, if you like playing games or if you feel bound by-- driven by compulsion, as some writers do. The first line and the third line repeat in a certain fixed and predictable order. And the second lines of each of the three-line stanzas always rhyme with each other. The final stanza then, which has one extra line, brings both of the refrain lines together side by side in a couplet at the very end.

Well, it sounds as if no one would ever want to write it. And I think the simplest way to solve the problem, if it's a problem that's worth trying to solve at all, is to leave some of it out. Anyway, this is the way this very early poem goes, "Women in Love."

It always comes. And when it comes, they know. That's one of the refrain lines, you see.

To will it is enough to take them there. The knack is this, to fasten and not let go. That's the other refrain line. And then part of the pleasure, if there is any, will be to hear those coming back in new ways.

And their limbs are charmed. They cannot stay or go.

Desire is limbo. They're unhappy there.

It always comes. And when it comes, they know.

Their choice of hell would be the one they know. Dante describes it the wind circling there.

The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.

The wind carries them where they want to go,

And that seems cruel to strangers passing there.

It always comes. And when it comes, they know.

The knack is this, to fasten and not let go.

NANCY FUSHAN: In some ways, that's as nice to read to see on the page as it repeats as it is to hear.

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh I think so. Yes. I write poems principally to be read on the page, but so they will contain their sound on the page. I don't write poems for public exhibition, really. I'm no rock star.

NANCY FUSHAN: When you write, do you sound it to yourself?

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh yes. Absolutely, yes. I'm always mumbling the things over. I can't imagine a poet not doing that.

NANCY FUSHAN: Would you read something from the later part that demonstrates your just using forms as a takeoff point? [CHUCKLES]

DONALD JUSTICE: Yeah. All right. Well, here's a poem that's been put on a broadsheet for this book fair. I was just signing all the copies so I remembered that this one is the one chosen. It's called "In the Attic," and it's a distant echo of an old form that Victor Hugo used called the pantoum.

And it's too complicated to explain, but it involves repetition. It's also in an elaborate pattern. And part of the interest here is to make it seem to come out naturally, of course, instead of forced. And this is a memory poem. In fact, that's the subject of the poem, memory. "In the Attic."

There's a half hour towards dusk when flies,

Trapped by the summer screens, expire

Musically in the dust of sills;

And ceilings sloped towards remembrance.

The same crimson afternoons expire

Over the same few rooftops, repeatedly;

Only being stored up for remembrance,

They somehow escape the ordinary.

Childhood is like that, repeatedly

Lost in the very longueurs it redeems.

One forgets how small and ordinary

The world looked once by dusk light from above,

But not the moment which redeems

The drowsy arias of the flies,

And the chin settles onto palms above

Numbed elbows propped on rotting sills.

NANCY FUSHAN: You have a poem also in that last section, which is dedicated to the poets of a mythical childhood.

DONALD JUSTICE: Yes, yeah.

NANCY FUSHAN: Could you explain that dedication?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, it seems to me that childhood, for certain poets, has been a transcendent experience that changed all the dull and ordinary events of childhood and something magical and large, as if, in looking back, they had lived their own legends or been the heroes of ancient myth. And that's an exaggeration. But there is some of that color in the childhood poems of a handful of poets, and I named a few of them in the dedication.

Wordsworth comes to mind readily in certain poems. Hart Crane does. Rimbaud wrote some magnificent poems about his childhood while he was still practically a child. And I think there are some lovely childhood reminiscences by the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti. There are plenty of others, too, but those are the ones particularly close to my own heart. And so I wanted to-- since I sometimes feel that way about my own childhood, I wanted to join that little band.

NANCY FUSHAN: Is that a feeling that is coming on more and more because of your own age?

DONALD JUSTICE: I don't know whether that's the factor, the precipitating factor, or not, but it very likely may be, yes. Or I was recently in Miami, where I was born, and I-- one of my pleasures was to go around and look at old things that had changed. And the sad truth is, some of them had changed, obviously, far beyond recognition or recall. So the only place they do reside now is in my memory or whatever I might wish to and be able to write about them.

And when I finished that particular poem you're referring to, the last poem in the book called "Childhood," I realized that there might be three people in the world who would remember the things I remembered. And they do. I've talked to them about it. But I can't believe there are very many others. So I feel that it was, in some way, useful for me to have recorded it.

NANCY FUSHAN: Changes in your life. Has the Pulitzer been an object of change?

DONALD JUSTICE: Not that I'm aware of. I hope that it won't be significantly changing my life anyway.

NANCY FUSHAN: Was it a surprise to you?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, when I first heard it, it was something of a surprise. And then it was very nice for it to be confirmed later, since I hadn't heard anything else for some while.

NANCY FUSHAN: You do have a pointed poem to reviewers--

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh yes.

NANCY FUSHAN: --in the book.

DONALD JUSTICE: Yes, I do, but I don't want to name them. [CHUCKLES]

NANCY FUSHAN: [CHUCKLES] Is it that being in Iowa, perhaps, one might get forgotten?

DONALD JUSTICE: Oh. Well, it's not-- in what you might call the world of poetry, I don't feel that I was ever forgotten. In fact, in some cases, I felt I was noticed too much by people who had certain prejudices anyway, such as the reviewers I try to make fun of.

But the world of poetry is, after all, a very small and underpopulated world. And so something like the Pulitzer would probably mean that somebody not belonging to that band of initiates would maybe read something, or see a book, or come across a poem by me in a classroom, or something like that. It would extend the range of the audience. And that's good. I'm glad of that.

NANCY FUSHAN: What are you doing now?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, I want to finish a few poems I've got underway and then try to write a couple of plays. I've always wanted to write plays and never have been able to write very good ones. So I want to try again.

NANCY FUSHAN: I'm not aware of the past plays.

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, no, no. I never went very far with them. But I did have a thing that the Ford Foundation was giving out back in the '60s, a grant which allowed you to be in residence with a theater company, for instance. And that was very interesting to me. But before the year was over, the theater company broke up and the couple of little plays I'd been working on had to be done by others. And I've had a few small productions, but I've never written a play. As I say, that really pleased me.

NANCY FUSHAN: What are the challenges going from poetic form to dramatic form?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, I think that I can see dramatic form, for instance, and I can't see a novel form. The novel form is much too difficult and complicated. But I think that some of the theoretical and formal ways it's possible to think about poetry, it is also possible to think about drama. I don't mean that the forms are the same, of course. And the interests and aims are very different, but it engages a similar part of the brain, I think, really.

NANCY FUSHAN: How?

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, I don't know. It's very difficult to say unless you're actually doing it. And I may be wrong since I've never been able to write a good play, but I feel there's a possibility anyway.

NANCY FUSHAN: Dialogue, for you, doesn't seem to be a problem?

DONALD JUSTICE: No, no. I don't think so. No. That's not the problem, no. Partly the problem is the terribly practical world of the theater.

A poem, you write by yourself. And then maybe one editor prints it in a magazine, and that's about it. And maybe then another editor in a book, and that's about it. But a theater immediately requires the collaboration of how many people, millions at some time seems, and also a lot of money. And so in practical terms, it's much more difficult to get something going then.

NANCY FUSHAN: And some egotistical terms too.

DONALD JUSTICE: Well, probably so, because the writer soon becomes secondary to the desires and whims of others. But that would be worth it, I think.

NANCY FUSHAN: Would you share one last poem?

DONALD JUSTICE: OK, sure. Here's a rather happy little poem called "The Contentment of Tremayne." Tremayne is an imaginary character. Something like me, but not very much. And it's part of a series.

Tremayne stands in the sunlight,

Watering his lawn.

The sun seems not to move at all,

Till it has moved on.

The twilight sounds commence now,

As those of water cease,

And he goes barefoot through the stir,

Almost at peace.

Light leans in pale rectangles

Out against the night.

Tremayne asks nothing more now. There's

Just enough light,

Or when the street lamp catches,

There should be. He pauses;

How simple it all seems for once!--

These sidewalks, these still houses.