Episode 136 – J.D. McClatchy

Virtual Memories Show #136:
J.D. McClatchy – A Forest of Things

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“I’m now older than the two most important men in my life were when they died: my father and James Merrill.”

The great poet, essayist, librettist and bon vivant J.D. McClatchy (Sandy, to his friends) joins the show to talk about outliving his idols, adapting my favorite novel (The Leopard!) to opera, having his life changed by a course with Harold Bloom, collecting letters from the likes of Proust and Housman, and marrying Chip Kidd! We also get into his friendship with James Merrill, pop culture’s triumph over high culture, his genetic inability to read comics, why he loathed Ezra Pound as a person and as an artist, how sexual politics has replaced social politics, the experience of teaching the first gay literature course at Yale in 1978 (and getting dropped from the university because of it), how a serious poet writes for the dead, not the living, and more! Give it a listen!

“I think the problem of all young poets — which I shared — was that at the age of 20, 25, I didn’t have anything to write about.”

We also talk about the unique challenges of his various genres (poetry, prose, libretti), the benefits of a career in academia, the notion that the great treasures of western civilization have created us and are needed to sustain us, the true stakes of writing poetry, his commonplace book (being published next spring), his Ouija experience with Anne Sexton, sailing the Atlantic for his 70th birthday, how three Ring cycles equals one San Diego Comic-Con, and why it took him four years to begin writing in a new home. This one’s a great conversation, so go listen!

“The experience of watching kids grow up imaginatively, and grow out of themselves — rather than into themselves — in the first shedding of a false skin, is something I take very seriously in my responsibility as a teacher.”

We mention a few books in this episode. Here they are:

• American Writers at Home – J.D. McClatchy, Erica Lennard
• The Leopard – Giuseppe Lampedusa
• James Merrill: Life and Art – Langdon Hammer
• The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime – Harold Bloom
• Braving the Elements – James Merrill
• The Changing Light at Sandover – James Merrill
• The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
• The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind – Yuval Noah Harari
• Sentenced to Life – Clive James
• Latest Readings – Clive James

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:

• Langdon Hammer
• Willard Spiegelman
• Clive James
• Rachel Hadas
• Jonathan Galassi

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Also, during the episode I promised to show you the official image of What Your Host Feels Like When He’s Reading Poetry, as illustrated by Roger Langridge. Whoomp, here it is:

About our Guest

J.D. McClatchy is the author Plundered Hearts: New and Selected Poems (Knopf, 2014), as well as seven previous collections of poetry and of three collections of prose. He has edited numerous other books, including The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, and has written a number of opera libretti that have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, La Scala, and elsewhere. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where he served as president from 2009 to 2012. McClatchy teaches at Yale University and is the editor of the Yale Review.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at Mr. McClatchy’s Stonington, CT home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. B/W photo of Mr. McClatchy by Geoff Spears; color photo by me.