The Triumph Is Real: Ursula K. LeGuin Talks Poetry at Interview Magazine

Ursula K. LeGuin talks to Choire Sicha about poetry at Interview Magazine (she's published three collections). The new edition of her classic guide for writers, Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, was published this summer.

CHOIRE SICHA: Can anyone be a writer? I used to have strong opinions about this, and I feel like I've lost them along the way.

URSULA K. LE GUIN: You want strong opinions? Anybody can write. You know, one of my daughters teaches writing at a community college. She teaches kids how to put sentences together, and then make the sentences hang together so that they can express themselves in writing as well as they do in speaking. Anybody with a normal IQ can manage that. But saying anybody can be a writer is kind of like saying anybody can compose a sonata. Oh, forget it! In any art, there is an initial gift that had to be there. I don't know how big it has to be, but it's got to be there.

SICHA: You can't labor your way into being a poet, can you?

LE GUIN: No. You just can't. But that's not to say that being a poet doesn't take a hell of a lot of work.

SICHA: It really doesn't seem that rewarding. Is that a terrible thing to say?

LE GUIN: I think there are writers who don't enjoy writing, and I feel sorry for them. I love it. I don't care how hard the work is. I would rather be writing than not writing, that's all there is to it.

SICHA: Poets are a special class. You're like the wild ponies of the writing world.

LE GUIN: For one thing, the world of poetry that poets have to live in, of who reads them, is so small in the United States. It's not true elsewhere. But here, it's not a very big territory, and so they run around spraying the corners and defending their part of it. Poets get very territorial, and that's too bad; that's a waste of time.

SICHA: They should be enjoying themselves, and it's hard to, I bet.

LE GUIN: And you can't live off it. It's hard to live off of any kind of artistic writing—fiction or poetry. And then you do have to wonder how many people are really reading your stuff, so the reward has to be in the work. But it is. There's nothing more rewarding than looking at a poem you wrote and thinking, "Well, at least I think I did it right."

SICHA: The triumph is private.

LE GUIN: But it's real. It's quite real.

We're into it. Read the full interview at Interview. Photo by Benjamin Reed.