SOURCE: Mackey, Nathaniel, and Edward Foster. “An Interview with Nathaniel Mackey.” Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, no. 9 (fall 1992): 48-61.

In the following interview, which was conducted in August 1991, Foster and Mackey discuss cultural, political, and literary aspects of Mackey's work.

[This interview was conducted in August 1991 and edited the following spring.]

[Foster]: In a recent review of Eroding Witness, Leonard Schwartz defines what he calls the “transcendental lyric,” saying that in your poems you explore “subjective access to modes of being prior to personal experience.” Could you comment on where you feel he is situating your work and how that is distinct from conventional representations of subjectivity in lyric poetry?

[Mackey]: Well, it would be modes of being prior to one's own experience, which I think is probably what that statement is aiming at—to free it of the immersion in the subjective and the...