Description

Larry McCaffery and Sinda Gregory interview Robert Kelly in New York City. Despite poetry taking up the bulk of Kelly’s published work, the question in the interview focus primarily on his prose. Kelly explains that he always wanted to be a writer, listing it as his profession on his application for a New York Public Library card when he was just 14 and that his writing allows him to write the books he wants to read. Kelly’s one novel, The Scorpions, is discussed, including Robert Duncan’s contention that it had “sinned against the spirit of story” with Kelly discussing the use of the term “story”. Kelly explains the anti-Cartesian tradition that he writes in and its literary history. Throughout the discussion, various Latin American writers, most notably Jorge Luis Borges and their style and content are discussed. Kelly discusses the difference between silence and language and what each one can add to his work. The end of the interview focuses on the idea of “post-modern” writing, what it means and what the future of the term is. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 170 to 195 of Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors, ed. Larry McCaffery, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.