[APPLAUSE]
So now we're going to open the floor up for questions.
If you want to ask a question, you have to enter the light,
right there.
Get on the main stage.
And then the poets will be answering the questions
from over there, which is in the dark, in the cave,
poet cave over here.
So we'll open it up.
Or no one has to ask any questions.
No one has any que-- it's a big room of people.
OK.
I guess I'll come over here.
No, it's OK.
Sorry to start out with such a prosaic kind of question.
But Abe, before I ask this question,
I have to clarify a line.
Did you have a line in when the man--
whim man mammons that--
blonde as whipped oil?
Did I hear that right?
Yes.
That is such a great metaphor.
And because I haven't read your poems
I'm sure I missed a lot of other ones that are equally great.
And so the reason this is kind of a prosaic craft question is,
and Kim too if you want answers.
Like, so when you come up with a metaphor like that are you
like whipping oil and you're like,
oh my God, this would be such a great image?
Or are you thinking blonde and then-- you know what I mean?
Like do you have a little--
Jeez.
I think that would be the old frost--
the old frost line.
The poem is the ice cube in the hot skillet.
I think that that's just a moment
of hoping to ride the melting of the sound.
So I don't know that I just was doing much of anything there.
But trying to remain comfortable in doubt,
and ride the slalom down the sound at that moment.
But-- so do you want to follow up.
Yeah, I like the slalom thing.
I mean, just sort of the way you answer
the question pretty much tells you the answer I think.
It's like your head moves that way
and you're following your head.
So I think it comes out of the writing.
Really.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
I have a question.
I guess for both of you.
I mean, both of your work seemed to have a real performative
aspect to it and how do you reconcile that
with the form on the page?
And also do you try to do as many readings as possible?
I guess I've got the mic so I'll start.
I'm writing for the page, actually,
and then I try to do what I can when I speak it.
I mean, I think some spoken stuff
is meant sort of for that synergy and that interaction
between what's on the page and the way you perform it.
But I think I'm writing for the page
first and hearing it in my head and then
like I said I try to do what I can with them.
I'm not a performance artist but I
try to animate it as much as I can
and give it to the language.
Yeah.
I guess I'd say more or less the same thing.
Yeah.
I guess.
I think I write poems by walking around and kind of talking
to myself and making people very afraid of who
I might be as I walk around outside talking to myself.
And then secondly, I like that Garcia--
the Lorca line, "My poem is published
when it springs from my lungs."
So I love that second sense of publishing
as well to get out and yap.
Yeah, I love to do as many readings
as I get the chance to do.
Quick question.
Mr. Smith, I was wondering, are your lines long or short?
[LAUGHTER]
They're almost all very short.
There are some long ones but mostly
they're very short and unpunctuated.
Again, I guess because I'm anticipating
freaking out when I read.
So yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Do you or any of the local poets do like home concerts
because it really has to be spoken?
I think.
And so do you do concerts in people's houses like they
do in music or do you basically hang out in coffee houses
and poetry centers?
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I mean, I'm in Alabama and we have a lot of-- we
have a really nice community of writers there.
So sometimes we read for each other a little bit.
And sometimes-- and there are some great readings here
and there in the country.
There's a really nice one this guy Chall
Gray does in Asheville, in North Carolina, where
you can go into his house and do a reading.
So there are some nice house readings here and there.
But yeah I don't know.
I don't know.
What do you know?
I think-- yeah.
I mean, I think it's like any art.
You can hear it in a lot of different venues
and so they're--
obviously, this is a poetry festival, and University venue,
and a lot of readings need to happen there.
And I've done sort of house readings with people.
A lot of times people might get a mix-- sort of a salon
kind of thing where they'll maybe have some music,
and they'll have some poetry, and various things.
So it's like anything else.
It happens in all kinds of places.
Yeah.
For those of us who feel like we're always
stuck in the same place could you both just say a little bit
about the evolution of your work?
What you feel the changes have been?
Well, I think that's a big question
so it's kind of hard to answer specifically.
But I would just say that I at least as a writer
I'm sort of always looking for the next thing.
I'm trying to do what I didn't do before.
I mean, you always end up doing the same thing.
You can't help yourself because you're obsessed.
And so you always write out of the same obsessions I think.
But in terms of style and stuff, I
find that I sort of run through certain writers that inspire me
at a time.
And then I'm looking for somebody else
in some other way of writing that maybe
is a little different from what came before.
And then now that the music is part of my life,
I'm really trying more to put those things together.
And so that's--
I don't know if it's going to change
the actual writing but maybe when I write something
I'm going to be thinking a lot about how to do it in a way
that I can incorporate music into it.
So--
I'd answer more or less the same there.
I mean--
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
Doppelganger.
[INAUDIBLE]
Didn't-- you didn't read that Edgar Allan Poe story
we're the same.
Yeah.
No.
Doppelganger.
No, I think.
Yeah, the same.
And also one thing interesting I think about kind
of the workshop formats.
A lot of us through the years have
gone through an MFA program where you do workshops a lot.
And I don't know the style of my poems
has kind of remained the same.
So there's something that I've taken
from workshops, which is not to listen sometimes,
and to be stubborn.
And sometimes there's glory.
There is a glorious fat fish down in the pothole of that rut
that you keep running rolling down.
And so I guess that's--
though I hope to keep evolving and keep
trying new kind of formats for the writing.
There's also an old kind of stubbornness,
which I don't know.
That's more or less what I would say.
I have a question.
I was really excited to be the moderator for this reading
because it's kind of like an outsider reading.
And I guess you both are kind of outsiders in a way,
like uncategorizable except maybe for the words
like bad and nasty.
And that's why I was really excited about it.
I'm doing the bad and nasty reading.
So maybe I was wondering if you could talk a little bit
about being kind of an outsider not in a specific group
of other poets.
I don't think of myself as bad or nasty.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm just drawn that way.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, I think if that's what you
call bad you need to go out a little bit
and experience the world.
I'm sorry.
I mean, really.
It's like, it's kind of what I have to say.
I'm sorry.
That was kind of nasty to offend the moderator.
So maybe there's a grain of truth there.
But yeah.
I don't-- I think that's sort of other people's overlay.
I'm just trying to be an artist and write what I write.
And a University definitely partly supports me
because I go around the country and I
get paid to give readings.
And I just don't happen to like being in the University
because that's--
as a way to make my living because it doesn't suit me.
So I guess in that sense I'm--
if people want to call that outsider,
I mean, obviously I've gotten inside awards
and I'm here at the festival and all that.
So I don't think I'm such an outsider.
I think people make a big thing of my not working in academia.
It's like, well, so what?
I mean, this is what I want to do.
So I guess that's enough of my answer
and we'll see what my other half has to say.
[LAUGHTER]
All right.
D-I-T-T-O. That's what I--
no.
I mean.
[LAUGHTER]
No, I mean--
I don't-- no-- yeah, more or less the same.
And then also the only thing that kind of drive
drives me to-- beside myself is one reason people
would say I was an outsider is because they
would say that I'm a slam poet or a spoken word artist.
But sometimes I think, well, gosh, I haven't--
not that-- I don't have anything against slams.
I think they can be very rewarding and dynamic venues
but I haven't been to one in over a decade.
And is it OK--
wouldn't it just be all right to be kind of effusive in reading
and then if you're effusive does that mean
you're necessarily wear the helmet of slamdom
at that instant.
I don't know.
But so far I guess I'm still pigeoned
in that kind of outsiders tribe outside of the gleaming ivory
tower.
But I don't know, I think that would
be something that would be exciting for people
to wonder about why that tag goes on to just--
if you're kind of quivering and shouting
does that mean then that you are a slam poet?
I don't know about that.
Well, anyways.
[INAUDIBLE] I guess I'll close it out.
I get the moderator to ask the stupid questions.
That's what you got to do.
[LAUGHTER]
All right.
So I guess we'll close it out.
Thanks for attending this reading.
The authors will be autographing books in tent C, in the Madden
Media signing area, on the mall just south of this building
in about 10 minutes, 5--
10 minutes.
Last but not least, if you are enjoying the festival
and interested in being a friend of the festival,
you can go to the information booths on the mall,
or online, or at our website.
And thanks again for your support.
One more thank you.
Really fast because I don't know if it'll be said.
But I really want to give a big thanks to Cybele over
there who's been like the glue of the poetry festival
committee.
So maybe we'll just--
[APPLAUSE]