by Sarah Montante
"…And consciousness is the only sword which makes Evil tremble."
Ellen Hinsey teaches writing and literature at Skidmore College's program
in Paris and at the French graduate school, the Ecole Polytechnique. She is
the author of The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan University Press,
2002) and Cities of Memory, which was awarded the Yale Series Prize
in 1995. This interview was conducted between New York and Paris by Sarah
Montante, a freelance writer, editor and poet living in New York.
SM: Your poems maintain a control and distance that are
the antithesis of confessional poetry. Why have you chosen to maintain a
narrative distance in your poems?
EH: Joseph Brodsky in his essay "Footnote to a Poem"
hypothesizes that every elegy contains an element of self-portrait. I
believe, in essence, one can make the same claim for each individual poem,
whether the confessional "I" is used or not. Each poem is a confession of
sorts, be it of a personal, philosophical or spiritual nature. In this
sense, The White Fire of Time, which arose out of certain personal
events, is a kind of spiritual autobiography. At the same time it seeks to
go beyond the 'individual' and embrace the shared and collectively
experienced.
SM: Adam Zagajewski has suggested that your poems represent a "…quest for
essential things, a pursuit that goes courageously against the current of
contemporary American poetry." Do you think of yourself as working outside
or against it in any way?
EH: I don't feel that I am working outside of American
poetry, but if there is a special orientation to my work, it might be to
recover for American poetry zones of thought and expression which have
fallen into a sort of disuse. The last thirty years have seen certain
developments in American poetry following the discoveries made by Lowell in
Life Studies and in similar works. Yet this reflects only one part of
the tradition of American poetry, or poetry in English. On the other hand, I
am interested in how in certain world poetry the helix of individual
experience, metaphysical contemplation and spiritual exploration has not
been broken. For me, this is poetry's essential matter.
SM: Do you see writing poetry as an act of community or an act of the
individual mind?
EH: This is a very interesting question, and one which
touches on our concept of the "individual". Poetry, strictly speaking, could
not exist without both elements–that is, neither the writing of it, nor the
reading of it–in that poetry always emerges out of a collective
participation in language and human experience. In this way poetry as an
"act of the individual mind" is incomprehensible. Moreover, this is the
source of poetry's power–this fusion. Poetry is the point where the
individual and the mythic (which is community in a metaphoric sense) merges
with music and "the instant". This moment of fusion is when something which
is both of and beyond the writer escapes into the world–and enters into its
own life and energy.
SM: You are interested in the Vita Contemplativa, or, "the
meditative life." How is it relevant to our present life?
This was one of the conceptual premises of the book, one
of its "organizing principles." Some years ago in an interview I talked
about the idea of "radical reflection," which in my mind means not the
adherence to a certain set of beliefs but the power of reflection in
itself. The process of honing and developing our abilities to think and
inhabit a space of meditation. In Hannah Arendt's The Life of the Mind,
she poses the question whether the activity of thinking as such could
be among the activities which can condition individuals against "evil
doing". This is a way that pure "reflection" becomes one of the most radical
of acts.
SM: The White Fire of Time deals with some essential questions about
human limitations, human desire and human struggle. What significance does
the work take on in our current political climate?
EH: This touches on your previous question: since we live
in a world where "reaction" progressively dominates, the loss of this space
of true reflection is less and less felt–we don't even know it has
disappeared! But reflection is essential for distinguishing between real
social and political tensions, and the rhetoric which bombards us daily, and
to which, if we are not careful, we can become captive. In a political
climate such as ours, this becomes a critical task, in which poetry also
plays a role. With regard to human limitations, at the start of this new
century, we are confronted by the fact that nothing has changed! There are
no easy answers, and distractions in the form of newer technologies or war
are not a solution.
SM.: The White Fire of Time was chosen as the December Poets for Peace
Book of the month selection. Can poetry confront current events directly?
Can it influence peace?
EH: Contrary to a generally held view, poetry is a very
powerful tool, because poetry is the conscience of a society. Over the last
century poetry has played an essential role for peace during the first and
second world wars, as well as during the Vietnam anti-war and civil rights
movements. No individual poem can stop a war–that's what diplomacy is
supposed to do. But poetry is an independent ambassador for conscience: it
answers to no one, its crosses borders without a passport, and it speaks the
truth. That's why, despite talk about its marginalization, it is one of the
most powerful of the arts.