Hey, where are you people in the back?
Who are you?
Flailing your arms.
Well, I have a question here.
I'll make my way back.
Yes, yeah.
You're next.
I see the word salvation, here and there, in your poetry.
Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to be an influence on you,
am I correct?
Yes.
Are you in the same kind of, I guess,
the same kinds of concerns that he had, in terms of salvation--
Well--
--quote, unquote.
Well, I'm not-- no.
There are some major differences,
you know, he was a priest.
Yes.
That's a big difference.
[LAUGHTER]
And I'm not--
I don't really have religious background or anything
like that.
The closest is studying Greek and Latin,
and that has fascinated me, with the relationship
between divinity and human experience,
or what we imagine of divinity.
But what I'm interested in with Hopkins is how he seems to me,
he seems to be wrestling often with sexuality.
And so, religion aside, just his ideas of what he thinks
are normal behaviors versus how he feels,
or how he wants to behave, and that wrestling is something
that I do identify with.
I actually feel that most living--
truly living-- human beings wrestle with those things.
I don't think that we're just handed down
a bunch of rules of how to live, and then we
think, fine, that's great.
But also his--
I hope I'm not quite as twisted as he
is in his syntax, and all of that, but I am intrigued by it.
I find it sometimes impenetrable,
but also intriguing that it wasn't so for him.
So I'm afraid to teach his poems.
I usually don't.
I'm afraid someone will ask me about sprung rhythm.
Yeah, give them essay.
Well, then I'll just-- and then I just cry, or--
[LAUGHTER]
--say, class is over.
Yeah.
I'm sure it meant something to him.
I don't what it means.
Thank you.
Sure.
OK, we're back here.
Hi, Cybele
Hi, I just had a quick question.
When you're writing, do you find the form
or does the form find you?
The form finds me.
I just sort of write.
I actually often write in a block of what looks like prose.
And so I just sort of fill up a page and then,
when I start reading things out loud, I feel--
I start hearing the pauses, and draw
slashes where I think the line breaks might exist.
So that happens for a lot of drafts--
all handwritten-- and then when I feel sort of confident,
then I'll go to the computer.
I'm afraid to go to the computer because it's seductive.
And as soon as it's typed on a computer screen,
I think it looks finished and perfect, and I know it's not.
But it's like a tease, or something.
So, yeah, I feel like I just sort of--
I never go in thinking, oh, I'm going
to write this poem that will have stanzas
that are all four lines and they'll
be this length or anything.
But that's OK if you do that, it's just not my method.
Thank you.
Sure.
In your poem, a mind like a swinging gate
opens, you use the line that, horses inside me
uncorralled confuse them.
Yeah.
I love your line.
Can you please unpack that, so I can
get a better developmental understanding of it?
Hold on, what is it?
I don't know it either.
It's something about-- yeah, "all
the horses I've corralled inside me
set free, confused now, because now what?"
Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah.
What does it mean?
Is that what you mean?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no.
I think, well--
I think, to me, what it means is it's almost like horses
as something-- if you've corralled something,
you've sort of organized it inside you.
You've controlled it.
But what about when they've all been set free, now,
and they're confused and wandering all around,
and they don't know what to do?
It's a way of, maybe, talking about losing
control of your demons.
And horses are fine when you've got them
all trained and under control.
It's a whole other deal if you've ever
been among horses that are not in control.
And it's quite dangerous.
So I think I meant something like that.
But what do you do in those moments
when what you thought was under your control
has gotten out of your control, and now what happens?
Hey.
Is this?
I can hear you from here.
Oh, but you can't from that way, because.
They don't allow you to without a mic.
It's rigid here in Tucson.
[LAUGHTER]
Oh.
Mm.
She's very nice.
Is this-- what you mentioned about crawling your instincts
and freed horses play into your use of the word "ritual?"
What do you mean?
Well, OK.
I'll just go with it.
OK, thanks.
[LAUGHTER]
Maybe, because I think that ritual
can be a saving thing sometimes.
It's nice if you have rituals.
They give you pattern, and rules,
and there's systematization to behavior, I suppose.
But then, to me, there's a tension between ritual
and whatever the opposite is.
Chaos, I suppose.
And chaos is fun too.
And I was speaking with the class this morning--
genesis class-- about how both sides--
It seems the trick is calibrating both of them--
the side that wants risk and the side that
realizes that risk can be dangerous
and that we have responsibilities.
And so, yeah, I think ritual versus sometimes without--
beyond the control, things burst free
of our ritualization of things.
And then what happens?
But I'm intrigued by that.
Is this also that faint heartedness you see?
Yes, that's faint heartedness versus risk.
And I feel like I have this real commitment to risk.
Because I feel like there's no growth, as a human being,
but in particular as a writer, without
imaginative restlessness.
And that requires being willing to fall into situations
that you don't know, so you can be stirred into thoughts
that you wouldn't have expected.
At the same time, obviously, risk
can get you in a lot of trouble.
And so there's that other part that needs to behave,
and should do so.
And it can be just a very banal thing should.
Should I go out carousing and drinking on a Friday night?
Well, you could.
How are you going to get back?
Are you going to drive back drunk?
It's wrong to drive drunk, apparently.
It's illegal, let's put it that way.
And so, are you going to do it or are you going to not do it?
And I think-- and yet, I think, well,
sometimes taking chances is the only way you're going to grow,
but you could also die or harm somebody else.
And at the same time, you could stay home every Friday night
and say, well I'm safe and everyone's fine.
That's great too.
Which is also part of what you meant,
I think, you used the term useless, uselessness?
Yeah.
Yeah, I just wonder, I just wonder.
Most of my friends don't agree with me, actually,
they think I'm out of control, and that I'm just trying
to justify reckless behavior.
But it isn't that.
I just feel like there's--
and it can be at any level, it doesn't even
have to be going out partying, doesn't have to be sex.
It could be trying a different restaurant.
And I know people who just always do the same thing.
And it's like, well, it's Friday night, we always
go to the Greek restaurant.
I think, OK.
Why don't we do Italian tonight?
No.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's just, the world's going to explode.
And I think it's fine.
Or heaven forbid that I should say, let's just drive, and see
what restaurant we run into, and decide to go somewhere
we've never been.
And that's forbidden.
So even at that level, I think you can risk--
my students keep asking me, I think
they think I'm asking them to go down
and I don't know what they think I think they should do.
They're scared.
Am I risking enough, am I doing enough?
And you don't have to expose yourself
to danger, just experiment.
That's all.
[APPLAUSE]