SOURCE: An interview with William Meredith, in Poems are Hard to Read, The University of Michigan Press, 1991, pp. 215-38.

In the following interview, originally published in Paris Review in 1985, Meredith discusses his creative process, his opinions of other contemporary poets, and influences on his work.

[Hirsch]: You've said that you average about six poems per year. Why so few?

[Meredith]: Why so many? Ask any reviewer. I remember a particularly wicked review of Edna St. Vincent Millay whose new poems weren't as good as they should have been: “This Millay seems to have gone out of her way to write another book of poems.” You're always afraid of that. That could be said, I believe, of certain people's poems. So I wait until the poems seem to be addressed not to “Occupant” but to “William Meredith.” And it doesn't happen a lot. I think if I had a...