QUESTIONS FOR ROBERT BONAZZI Interviewed by Mo H Saidi
Robert Bonazzi was born in New York City in 1942 but grew up in Houston. He graduated in 1965 with a BA in English from the University of Houston, where he taught English while completing course work for an MA degree. He did not write a thesis because he had decided against an academic career. He moved to Brooklyn to teach high school English and write. His first book of poems, Living the Borrowed Life, was published by New Rivers Press in 1972. During this same period, he was editor of Latitudes Press (1966-2000), publishing anthologies of fiction that included Russell Banks, Stephen Dixon, Alvin Greenberg, Marvin Cohen, and Charles Baxter, who later published with mainstream publishers. After a year in Mexico City, he rejoined the Texas literary scene. His fifth book of poems, Maestro of Solitude (Wings Press), was a nominee for the poetry award from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2008. His acclaimed biography, Man in the Mirror (Orbis, 1997), sold 80,000 copies and is now an e-book from Wings. As executor for the estate of John Howard Griffin, he has edited a dozen books by the late author—for Wings, Orbis, and publishers in Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, and the UK. He has lived in San Antonio since 2003, and he writes a column, “Poetic Diversity,” for the San Antonio Express-News.
Mo H Saidi: You were born in New York City, but most of your literary activities have occurred since you moved to Texas. Is there something in Texas heat that inspires you to write? Robert Bonazzi: I moved away from Texas several times but always returned. It had nothing to do with the state’s politics or weather, but only with the friendship of writers who live here. My research revealed that most of the information about you is connected with the classic nonfiction book, Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin. You even wrote a book about it. Why were you so impressed by this tale, and what moved you so deeply? I interviewed John Howard Griffin in 1966, and we became friends. While impressed with Black Like Me, I was equally taken with his novels, personal essays, photography, and musicology. He became a mentor who opened a deeper reality. Before he died in 1980, he asked that I put his papers in order. In 1983 I began that two-year project and married his widow, Elizabeth, with whom I worked on Griffin’s unpublished books—until her death in 2000, when I shut down Latitudes Press after 35 years.
When Black Like Me was published, it raised controversy. Do you think changing the color of his skin was an appropriate method of discovering racism in America? What is most significant about Black Like Me is not that Griffin changed skin color but that he had the courage to be truthful about his unexpected racism. In 1959, when he made this journey, the white majority would not heed the warnings of black leaders and thinkers. After the book appeared in 1961, he lectured on racism across Europe and the U.S. and, at the request of friends (Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and activist Dick Gregory), he spoke predominantly to white audiences. Since I believe that racism is a disease, any means of trying to cure it is “appropriate.”
Who are your favorite Texas poets? Of the Texas poets I have published and reviewed, the late Vassar Miller and 88-year-old Robert Burlingame have produced the finest poetry. Among current poets I would count Paul Christensen, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Bryce Milligan.
What caused you to take a 20-year sabbatical from active writing? I never ceased writing from 1977 to 1997 but stopped “submitting” for publication. Maestro of Solitude ( Wings 2007) and The Scribbling Cure (due this fall from Pecan Grove) constitute a selected volume of poems, prose poems, and poetics from 1970 to 2010. I still do not send work to magazines or publishers unless invited.
There’s a dizzying revolution in publishing. What’s your forecast about actual books and magazines versus electronic media? Do you use the current devices or write a blog or have a page on Facebook? I work on a computer, but will not use other electronic devices or seek attention on the global spider web. The escalation of media is reminiscent of the underground papers and independent publishers of the 60s and70s—except it is now global and not merely a Western phenomenon. Nonetheless, both “revolutions” represent a definitive mediocrity in publishing. While great titles are now e-books, I would read them only in book form. I suspect real books will be produced for several decades and that book collectors will be considered literary snobs. I accept this rude change because I relish sparing trees even as I lament the disappearing aesthetics of bookmaking.
Do you think poetry has a future in America? The last American Nobel laureate in literature was Toni Morrison in 1993; why has no American won since then? Poetry will survive as long as our planet survives, but I make no prediction about its quality. Toni Morrison is a marvelous writer and deserves to be a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. I believe most U.S. writers are too-tightly imprisoned by self-promotion and domesticated comfort to create much great literature today.
Are Texas writers read more than authors from Boston or New York City? Texas authors are likely less read than authors from either coast, but the influence of establishment publishers is in the process of being neutralized by the world-wide proliferation of independent imprints and availability of e-books. Thank You.
A Photo Work by Ramin Samandari
John Howard Griffin
Encountering John Howard Griffin A Remembrance by Robert Bonazzi
In the late spring of 1966, I first met Griffin at his studio located in the countryside west of Mansfield, Texas, the town where he had been lynched in effigy six years earlier. I requested an interview for Latitudes, an independent literary journal I had started while doing graduate study at the University of Houston. Griffin had responded by return mail, inviting co-editor Dan Robertson and me to visit. Since we were involved in civil rights initiatives at our respective universities, we had read Black Like Me; but neither had read Griffin’s novels, nor were we aware of his talents as photographer and musicologist. When we entered the cottage, we noticed a kitchen, a darkroom, and a grand piano. But what astonished us were the magnificent black and white portraits that lined the bare white stucco walls—dozens of lively faces, most of them strangers to our eyes—peered back at us. We recognized the images of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk whose autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, we had read as Catholic teenagers. Griffin had recently been appointed by Abbot Dom James of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky (Thomas Merton’s home) to make a series of official portraits of the monk. Then almost 46, Griffin looked younger, resembling a farmer rather than a writer, standing over six feet and weighing a robust 200 pounds. But he did not speak like a farmer or a native Texan, measuring his elegant language in a quiet tenor voice with a slight hint of a French accent. He wore dark sunglasses to protect his eyes from the glaring light of afternoon—eyes that had remained sensitive since recovering his sight, in January of 1957, after a decade of blindness. By evening, he would remove the glasses, revealing warm hazel eyes. Initially, somewhat remote behind dark lenses, he moved about the room identifying “the faces of intelligence,” as he called them. “Merton is one of the most vital human beings I have ever known,” he began in a rush, “and one of the most gifted, since he works splendidly in almost any medium: writing, painting, photography. During my last visit with him, it was like being in a room where lightning constantly struck. I realized as never before that this monk who long ago gave himself to monastic vows, giving up all worldly ambition and what we call freedom, is the most completely free and unfettered person I have ever encountered.” Without intending it, Griffin had described himself, for the room was illuminated with his passionate enthusiasm. He turned next to the portraits of Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher, whom he called his mentor. “Maritain is probably the greatest mind of our times. He wrote this magnificent Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry,” he said, displaying the deluxe French edition like a holy grail, “which you must read, a tremendous book.” We did not know Maritain’s work and asked if it were in English translation. “Yes, I’ll give you a paperback,” he promised, but that was forgotten until a later visit. As he continued along the walls, pointing out the few portraits we recognized—pianists Artur Rubinstein and Lili Kraus, blues legend Josh White, and retired boxing champion Archie Moore—I saw that Griffin wore thick white socks covered by brown knitted house slippers, giving the impression of bulging feet on which he moved ever more cautiously. Finally, after the tour had reduced him to hobbling, he disappeared into the restroom and returned rolling in a wheelchair. We learned that he had had surgery on his feet. He lighted the first of many cigarettes, leaned back, indicating that he was ready to be interviewed. We began by asking about the influence of France, since he had first traveled there as a teenager in search of a classical education. “Let me play you one of my greatest influences,” he declared, switching on a tape recorder on the glass top table. A Mozart piano concerto leaped out and penetrated the sudden silencing of our voices. We listened and wondered aloud: “You mean Mozart?” “Of course, Mozart, the supreme genius; but I mean the pianist.” It was the French virtuoso Robert Casadesus, he informed us, playing with the Cleveland Orchestra under the baton of George Szell. “Robert Casadesus, his wife Gaby, their entire musical family, really, were my greatest influence from France. It was Robert and the legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger who convinced me that my future as an aspiring composer—this when I was 26 and losing the last of my sight—should not be pursued. They felt that my true gifts would be revealed only after I had lost all sight and returned to America.” “They discouraged you from music?” I ventured. He laughed heartily. “No, no, merely from composing, for I had learned all the rules but could breathe no life into the compositions.” Had they not done so, he explained, he might have not traveled on to the Abbey of Solesmes, where he studied Gregorian chant with the Benedictine monk-musicologists who encouraged his fascination for medieval music. It was there he had lost the last of his eyesight and where his ears were opened to the eternal nature of the chants. Due to that experience, he was able to set his first novel, The Devil Rides Outside, in a French monastery and the surrounding village modeled after Solesmes. “But they couldn’t have known any of this,” I countered. “No one could have, least of all myself. But the point is that these masters, Robert and Nadia, cared enough to be truthful, knowing that their example of dedication and integrity would lead me along my own path.” That first electrifying visit lasted eight hours. But our visit fatigued even the youthful interviewers, and by ten that night we had enough sense to take our leave. There would be many other visits after the Griffins had moved twenty miles north to Fort Worth later that year. The Griffins were incredibly generous hosts, feeding all visitors and sending them home with gifts—inscribed books, matted prints, music tapes. He treated everyone as an equal and his humility was authentic. He had his heroes but never posed as one. In fact, he was very uncomfortable with fame. Our conversations and the 178 letters he wrote during our 15 year friendship touched on personal news but the primary focus remained on the creative process. Toward my early writing efforts, he gave unstinting encouragement, offering criticism that was invariably accurate and useful. Even though he was my elder by 22 years and was at the height of his creative powers and public recognition, never did he pull rank or become paternalistic. He always said that nothing is lost on the writer, or should not be, and he was right. Griffin taught us not to obsess on the misery of the moment but to focus on the spiritual horizon beyond mere ego. It was the sort of mentoring he accomplished without fanfare or pride. He chose friendship and that sense of artistic brotherhood he embodied—never the mentor-acolyte relationship. Nonetheless he was a mentor to many of us, because we choose our mentors whether or not they choose us.
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