SOURCE: Brown, Rosellen, and Karla Hammond. “An Interview with Rosellen Brown.” Chicago Review 33, no. 3 (winter 1983): 117-25.

In the following interview, Brown shares her views on the politics of feminism and discusses her poems in Cora Fry.

[Hammond]: From an essay that Erica Jong wrote on Some Deaths in the Delta, I understand that you both knew each other at Barnard. Jong speaks of how you both met in Robert Packs' office “clutching manuscripts of sonnets, sestinas, and Popian couplets—(at that time, there were thought to be such things as cooked and raw poetry—and we were both cooking with a vengeance)” (Barnard Alumni Magazine, Winter 1971). What is “cooked” vs. “raw” poetry? Was most of your formal instruction in poetry traditional?

[Brown]: Philip Rahv wrote an essay discussing these types of poetry. “Cooked” meant highly refined poetry forced into form. (This was in the fifties and early sixties...