So, we are going to do a short, like a 10-minute, Q and A.
And we're going to try a new way of getting
this on the recording.
We're recording this reading for Voca.
So, if you are close to me, I'm going to bring you the mic.
And if you are far from me, I'm going to listen
and I'm going to try and repeat your question.
So if you're far from me, keep it very simple
because I'm not that smart.
So, who has a question?
OK.
Oh, no just signing.
Oh, is there a way that we could get some more light or if--
There's a problem with the lighting
and seeing the interpreter.
Why don't we let this guy forward?
There's a free seat right here.
Since I don't have a question--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
OK, who has a question?
Any questions?
All the way here.
I have a question for Joyelle.
I did not expect you to be singing.
So, how did you get into singing your poems?
I mean, I hope that my poems are rhythmic also,
but I never really have sung them.
So did this just like, come up out at home or did someone
suggest it, or how were you inspired to sing?
Do I use this one or this?
No, share that one.
Oh, you got it.
OK, thank you so much for that question.
I mean, I think it's strange if you've gone through,
like, school to learn how to write poems and learn
how to read poems, and you're used
to writing your poems for the page.
But as soon as I started performing my poems,
people would tell me, like, [GASP] you
should be an actress.
And I'd be like, but I'm a poet.
Is there something wrong with me?
Which is a good way to feel for poetry.
You could tell I was in the right game.
So I have three books of poetry.
I have some prose stuff too, so this is my third.
And with each book, it's gotten more performative.
And then, with this one, I really just let
the rhythms and the sound, like, blow through me.
So then it was natural to just let all that sound come through
in the reading.
And finally, with the glock chorus, these are really songs.
So you're right.
There's been a progression from learning how
to kind of negotiate the page--
that's how you learn when you first learn poetry in school--
and then realizing that my sound was really steering me
after all, and to let that come more and more to the surface
and steer the poem until, now, I just sing them.
But you could see--
actually, "Percussion Grenade," the second thing that I read,
was actually kind of like a hinge poem for that.
Because it starts conversationally,
and the voice was just so silly and bombastic that it becomes,
like, a weird occupation of my body with its voice.
So now, that's what I want.
Like, I want there to be a shape and sound that
just has to get out.
And sometimes I recognize, oh, that's a character.
Like in Glock Chorus, it's all characters.
And sometimes it's just the weird shape of the world,
making weird patterns.
We're presenting strange rhymes, or rhymes that I make.
Like, "outrageous microwave us" is probably not a noun.
But I went with it, so, yeah.
So it has been a development thing.
And also, being sensitive to my own poems,
so letting out the strength of my poems was in sound.
And letting that just ride the poems.
And, in a way, the poems ride me to.
It's become very exciting and, for me, unpredictable too.
Because you never know how a performance is going to go.
So now it's gotten scary again, the way
it did when I was in my very first workshop
and I was like, ah.
So that's a good sign, I think.
Keep it scary.
Hi.
I just wanted to thank both you for reading here.
It's just really exciting, hearing young people,
because sometimes you think the best poets are in their 80s.
So thank you for that.
And I had a comment--
I'm in my 80s.
Zach's had a lot of work done.
You've a very young old man, yes.
So I had a comment for Joyelle, and I
had a question for Zachary.
And my comment for Joyelle is I wanted to thank you
for a phrase you gave me.
That was the chopping list.
Because I spent some time in my childhood in Saudi Arabia,
and there, they make shopping lists and chopping lists.
So thank you for that connection.
And I had a question for Zachary.
Listening to you read, it sounds like probably when you started
writing poetry, you probably--
I don't know.
I could be transferring here, but you probably really hated
your early stuff and had a lot of trouble with it
and had to work really hard to get past that.
Is that the question?
I mean, your stuff is wonderful right now.
But I'm just saying it probably was really hard work--
You hated it.
--before you got to that point.
Actually, the very first poem I wrote, I was 20 years old.
And it was about a pig.
It was for a poetry class.
And I couldn't have named more than one poet at that time.
I don't know who that poet would be now.
But that poem, I sent to The New Yorker.
I thought it was the best thing.
I just thought surely they would want it, at the time.
And I sent them one poem.
But my teacher said it was really good.
I haven't sent to The New Yorker since then.
And I haven't heard back from them about that poem.
So that's entirely false, actually.
But shortly after that, yeah, I started to, I feel like,
maybe get confident enough at poetry
to know that what I was doing wasn't very good.
But that was maybe a few years after that.
And then, I taught myself how to like the poems.
Yeah.
There's a hand way in the back.
Did James Tate think it was his poem?
OK, the question was, did James Tate think it was his poem?
Sure, yeah.
I tricked him.
No, yeah, I didn't get to--
I don't know if anybody's had personal conversations
with him, but I didn't get to talk to him very much,
like, two sentences or so afterwards, which is
two of my favorite sentences.
So that's fine.
But we didn't even talk about the poem.
I think he just said, it's nice to see you.
And I was glad to be here or something.
But I like to think that, sure, that he did.
It's a long story but I--
yeah, never mind.
Let's have a beer later.
It involves a broken-down van and some magic.
Hi.
Thank you for reading.
Since I missed the vice presidential debate tonight,
I was hoping you and your opponent
could say a few comments about the economy.
Whoo!
I think Zach already answered that question
with his broken-down van and a lot of magic.
I'm from South Bend, Indiana, and that's about all
we have to work with there.
So that's how we're going to fix this economy.
Yeah, I have no money at all and have no possibility
of probably really making it.
So I'm out of the realm of that conversation.
It doesn't affect me.
I'll make my couple of bucks for the rest of my life
and I'll be fine.
One last question or not?
I can just tell you about--
Or not.
Thank you for your performances.
I enjoyed both of them.
They're very different.
I'm curious what, Joyelle, you were
reading when you wrote "Percussion Grenade" and also
the last one.
And also, I'm curious what you were
reading when you wrote Fjords if you can even remember.
Excuse me, buddy.
I've now snared this man.
Let me think about it a minute.
Well, I read-- to write Glock Chorus,
first I read a book which I mentioned.
And it's called-- what is it called?
The Emerald City, it's a non-fiction book
about how life was lived in the Green Zone.
And you can find it.
It's not precisely called the Emerald City,
but I'm sure if you google "Green Zone Emerald City,"
you'll find it.
And it was made into a really shitty Matt Damon movie, where
it was totally made about Matt Damon, which, it turns out,
is not what the Iraq war is actually about.
Matt Damon totally took the broken-down van and magic
approach to fixing that problem.
And it worked for him.
Thank you, Hollywood.
So that was where some of the anecdotes, like the cat
extermination and some of the other anecdotes
that come into this are.
But basically, I've read some books about mad cow disease
and scrapie and how these vectors work
and how they were discovered and nailed down.
And I read a lot of news.
I read Al Jazeera.
There's so much bad things happening in the world,
and I feel like it's my job to know about them all.
So I spend a lot of time online reading the news
from different news sources, and especially Al Jazeera.
Just sort of seeing the kind of suffering--
I mean, this is a downer after an upbeat reading.
My readings are very upbeat, but they
come from a kind of, like, appalled hysteria
in the face of the stuff.
I have a very medieval worldview that the world
is bad and getting worse.
But it's good if you're, like, a disease because it's
getting better for that.
Like, if you look at it from a-- and so,
sometimes I do look at it from a microbe's point of view.
Or from, like, the prion's point of view,
like the king prion's going to come and take care of it all,
make it all go away.
You know, that's going to happen, not Matt Damon.
So yeah, so I read stuff about gross diseases.
My buddy here, Brent, just gave me
a book on how forensic scientists study
co-mingled human remains.
I'm going to sink my teeth into that later.
The book, you mean.
- The book, yeah, and co-mingled human remains.
I read a lot of Shakespeare and old-fashioned stuff
because I like weird dictions and especially
weird modes of address.
Oh, and I read Just Kids by Patti Smith.
So I read really widely.
But I definitely read a lot of current events
and a lot of, like, pop science so
that I can try to get my head around science
because the vocabulary and the metaphors
and the hope that other species might take over soon
makes me feel good.
That seems to be a good solution to the humanist's problem,
The Anthropocene.
Just a very quick answer, the exact formula for this book
was, I was, as I mentioned before, reading--
I was trying to write my own Memoir
of the Hawk, the Tate book.
And then, later, the post-Spork poems
were more influenced-- or some combination between that
and Anne Carson's Short Talk.
That's one of my very favorite books of all time.
So I wanted to try to do something like that,
and maybe fell a little short with that.
But I love that book.
And I was also listening to three specific bands
over and over again while writing,
which were Wolves in the Throne Room
and Tecumseh and Godspeed You!
Black Emperor.
Can I make another comment?
Yeah.
Another kind of ironical thing is
that I also have been losing my hearing in the last five years.
So while I was writing a lot of this Percussion Grenade,
I was losing my hearing at the same time.
I wear hearing aids now.
They don't work that great.
This is another reason I'm so psyched to see these ladies.
Not only because it's all about me, but because.
Like, look at the amazing poetry performance
these ladies put on.
We sent them our poems and then they figure out
how to perform them.
And they perform them with no text,
and they totally rock it and are amazing.
So, first of all, a hand for them.
[APPLAUSE]
But losing my hearing did two things.
It made me-- is this still on?
Yeah.
It made me think more about what sound is
and how it cuts through and possesses you,
even when you don't have what other people think
of as hearing.
And secondly, since I wear these hearing aids now,
it's like having two little microphones in my ears.
And I have no natural noise in my life anymore.
Every noise I hear is basically digitized.
And so, it's like, I've blasted off, man.
I'm gone.
I'm like Major Tom, like, out there, like, the world is
completely digital to me.
And I'm loving it.
It just makes me feel crazy and magic, so I'm into that.
OK, that's it.
[APPLAUSE]
Please buy the Spork books and the Poetry Center books.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Joyelle.
Thank you, Zachary.