A Conversation with Ruth Stone.

from A Conversation with Ruth Stone

J. F. Battaglia
Boulevard
Volume 12, Numbers 1 & 2


JB: What do you think poets will be doing in the 21st century?

RS: I suppose something on computers. Electronic devices have obviously entered the picture.

JB: Many poets compose on computers now because the revisions are so easy.

RS: Yeah. I do think that computers have caused a livelier approach. However, the core is still the brain. And the brain is the result of all the time that you have lived until this point. If those complexities and illuminations are not available in certain ways, and if the depth of illuminations and so-called understanding are not really there, it's going to interfere with the poem—a kind of lack. What I am trying to say is that the computer cannot make you a genius.

JB: Only a writing tool.

RS: It's a wonderful tool. You can take the language from other writers you admire and all kinds of things and throw them in there and mix them up and get possibilities—it certainly can help you manufacture a lot of new stuff. Which is as legitimate as anything else. However, I'm not sure that you don't also need the illumination of a distinctive mind in order to guide it.

Read the complete interview at Poetry Daily.


Source: Modern American Poetry > Online Interviews > Poetry Daily.