Fires. Essays, Poems, Stories

kinds of changes you mean. And I don't think it should have to do any of these things, either. It doesn't have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it, and the different kind of pleasure that's taken in reading something that's durable and made to last, as well as beautiful in and of itself. Something that throws off these sparks—a persistent and steady glow, however dim.
    Mona Simpson & Lewis Buzbee Summer 1983
    AFTERWORD
    When I was asked if I'd like to write a Foreword to this book, I said I didn't think so. But the more I thought on it, it seemed to me a few words might be in order. But not a Foreword, I said. Somehow a Foreword seemed presumptuous. Forewords and Prefaces to one's own work, in fiction or poetry, ought to be reserved for literary eminences over the age of fifty, say. But maybe, I said, an Afterword. So what follows then, for better or worse, are a few words after the fact
    The poems I've chosen to include were written between 1966 and 1982. Some of them first appeared in book form in Near Klamath, Winter Insomnia, and At Night the Salmon Move. I've also included poems that were written since the publication, in 1976, of At Night the Salmon Move— poems which have appeared in magazines and journals but not yet in a book. The poems have not been put into a chronological order. Instead, they have been more or less arranged into broad groups having to do with a particular way of thinking and feeling about things—a constellation of feelings and attitudes—that I found at work when I began looking at the poems with an eye toward collecting them for this book. Some of the poems seemed to fall naturally into certain areas, or obsessions. There were, for instance, a number of them that had to do in one way or another with alcohol; some with foreign travel and personages; others strictly concerned with things domestic and familiar. So this became the ordering principle when I went to arrange the book. For example, in 1972 I wrote and published a poem called "Cheers." Ten years later, in 1982, in a vastly different life and after many poems of a different nature entirely, I found myself writing and publishing a poem called "Alcohol." So when the time came to make a selection of poems for this book, it was the content, or obsession (I don't care for the word "theme") which most often suggested where the
    poems would go. Nothing particularly noteworthy or remarkable about this process.
    One final word: in nearly every instance the poems that appeared in the earlier books have been slightly, in some cases ever so slightly, revised. But they have been revised. They were revised this summer, and I think they've been made better in the process. But more about revision later.

The two essays were written in 1981, and I was asked to write them. In one case, an editor at the New York Times Book Review wanted me to write on "any aspect of writing" and the little piece "On Writing" was the result. The other came about through an invitation to contribute something to a book on "influences" called In Praise of What Persists which was being put together by Steve Berg of American Poetry Review, and Ted Solotaroff at Harper and Row. My contribution was "Fires"—and it was Noel Young's idea that we call this book after that title.
    The earliest story, "The Cabin," was written in 1966, was collected in Furious Seasons, and was revised this summer for publication here. Indiana Review will publish the story in their Fall 1982 number. A much more recent story is "The Pheasant," which will be published this month in a limited edition series by Metacom Press and will appear later this fall in New England Review.
    I like to mess around with my stories. I'd rather tinker with a story after writing it, and then tinker some more, changing this, changing that, than have to write the story in the first place. That initial writing just seems to me the hard place I have to get to in order to go on and have fun with the story. Rewriting for me is not a chore—it's something I like to do. I think by nature I'm more deliberate and careful than I am spontaneous, and maybe that explains something. Maybe not. Maybe there's no connection except the one I'm making. But I do know that revising the work once it's done is something that comes naturally to me and is something I take pleasure in doing. Maybe I revise because it gradually takes me into the heart of what the story is about I have to