Richard Yates was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1926. He graduated from the Avon School in 1944, served in the last years of World War II, and until 1952 worked at a variety of jobs, ranging from newspaper rewrite man to freelance ghost writer to publicity writer. He has taught at the New School…
I can remember writing Lie Down in Darkness in total belief, at the age of 23 to 26, that somehow. . .I was contributing my share to the human race – but in such organ-like tones. There was great music droning through my mind as I wrote it, and I think it's a pretty good…
I wanted to begin with perfectly simple things, things that were indivisible, safe from analysis. Without knowing it, I tried for years to write protocol sentences. My mistake was to think that such dregs, even had I reached them, were what I had to say, its "true" form, my "real" meaning. "John joy now." "John…
First of all: this is not going to read like an interview because when Asher and I went to see Backett it was to pay homage, not to pick his brain clean for the delectation of the nation. It was a conversation, not an interrogation. And second: The three of us drank most of a…
I Today the idea of writing poetry is generally an absurdity. Too many of us must come home from a day's routine labor before we can sit down to think and/or feel poetry within us. Flashes come and go during the working day and it is possible we see the world constantly through our poetic…
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