WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.510 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:02.830 align:middle line:90% Hello, everyone. 00:00:02.830 --> 00:00:04.690 align:middle line:90% I think we'll get started. 00:00:04.690 --> 00:00:07.500 align:middle line:84% My name is Cybele Knowles, and I'm the events coordinator 00:00:07.500 --> 00:00:08.730 align:middle line:90% for the Poetry Center. 00:00:08.730 --> 00:00:11.700 align:middle line:84% And welcome to today's event, which 00:00:11.700 --> 00:00:16.350 align:middle line:84% is our Next Word in Poetry Panel Discussion for 2010. 00:00:16.350 --> 00:00:19.260 align:middle line:84% Next Word in Poetry is an event that we do every year. 00:00:19.260 --> 00:00:21.540 align:middle line:90% It's in its eighth year. 00:00:21.540 --> 00:00:24.600 align:middle line:84% For Next Word, we invite three poets 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:29.760 align:middle line:84% who we feel to be among the most exciting, innovative, and new, 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:33.000 align:middle line:84% and invite them to do a reading, and then 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:36.540 align:middle line:84% also to come back the next day for a public conversation 00:00:36.540 --> 00:00:38.400 align:middle line:90% about their work. 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:43.920 align:middle line:84% Today-- or this year-- we have Akilah Oliver, Philip Jenks, 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:48.570 align:middle line:84% Brandon Shimoda, who have come from Brooklyn, Chicago, 00:00:48.570 --> 00:00:50.850 align:middle line:90% and Seattle, respectively. 00:00:50.850 --> 00:00:53.160 align:middle line:84% They gave a fantastic reading last night. 00:00:53.160 --> 00:00:55.260 align:middle line:84% You were probably mostly all here. 00:00:55.260 --> 00:00:58.620 align:middle line:84% And today, they're going to talk about their work 00:00:58.620 --> 00:01:00.330 align:middle line:90% and how they come to it. 00:01:00.330 --> 00:01:04.800 align:middle line:84% And our moderator is going to be our very own 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:07.920 align:middle line:84% Chris Nelson, graduate student in poetry 00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:13.230 align:middle line:84% here at the U of A. OK, so thank you all for participating. 00:01:13.230 --> 00:01:16.200 align:middle line:84% And Chris-- oh, before I give this to Chris, 00:01:16.200 --> 00:01:18.090 align:middle line:84% I'm going to say, you're probably 00:01:18.090 --> 00:01:23.368 align:middle line:84% wondering why we're using mics on this quiet Friday afternoon. 00:01:23.368 --> 00:01:25.410 align:middle line:84% We don't need this technology to hear each other, 00:01:25.410 --> 00:01:28.620 align:middle line:84% but we're recording this panel for our archive, 00:01:28.620 --> 00:01:30.910 align:middle line:84% and the only thing that will end up on the recording 00:01:30.910 --> 00:01:32.160 align:middle line:90% is what goes through the mics. 00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:34.650 align:middle line:84% So that's why we're using the mics. 00:01:34.650 --> 00:01:38.220 align:middle line:84% If you have questions, try and speak into the mic. 00:01:38.220 --> 00:01:39.810 align:middle line:90% And I'll help you remember. 00:01:39.810 --> 00:01:42.990 align:middle line:90% And that goes for you guys, too. 00:01:42.990 --> 00:01:44.160 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Cybele. 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:46.560 align:middle line:84% So I have some questions that I've written. 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:50.460 align:middle line:84% Cybele has also written some topics that I have here. 00:01:50.460 --> 00:01:53.880 align:middle line:84% But we'd like it to be a somewhat informal dialogue. 00:01:53.880 --> 00:01:59.700 align:middle line:84% So if at any point, you want to ask us to elaborate or go 00:01:59.700 --> 00:02:02.850 align:middle line:84% into a different topic, then just raise your hand 00:02:02.850 --> 00:02:05.820 align:middle line:90% and we'll pass you the mic. 00:02:05.820 --> 00:02:11.039 align:middle line:84% I thought we could start with talking about the dictions 00:02:11.039 --> 00:02:12.330 align:middle line:90% that you use in your works. 00:02:12.330 --> 00:02:17.130 align:middle line:84% Because this is a commonality, I think, in your works, 00:02:17.130 --> 00:02:22.650 align:middle line:84% is that you all sometimes use unusual dictions. 00:02:22.650 --> 00:02:24.960 align:middle line:84% In Brandon's "The Alps," for example, 00:02:24.960 --> 00:02:27.930 align:middle line:84% we have occasionally an antiquated diction 00:02:27.930 --> 00:02:29.850 align:middle line:90% and antiquated spellings. 00:02:29.850 --> 00:02:33.180 align:middle line:84% And in Akilah's "A Toast in the House 00:02:33.180 --> 00:02:37.230 align:middle line:84% of Friends," something that we could maybe call chant-- 00:02:37.230 --> 00:02:41.520 align:middle line:84% a chant sort of diction and repetition. 00:02:41.520 --> 00:02:44.310 align:middle line:84% And in Philip's work, what has sometimes 00:02:44.310 --> 00:02:46.245 align:middle line:84% been called an Appalachian dialect. 00:02:46.245 --> 00:02:49.100 align:middle line:90% 00:02:49.100 --> 00:02:52.460 align:middle line:84% Can you talk about the functions of these unusual addictions 00:02:52.460 --> 00:02:57.504 align:middle line:84% in your work and what your interests are in them? 00:02:57.504 --> 00:02:58.500 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:02:58.500 --> 00:03:00.540 align:middle line:90% I guess this is-- 00:03:00.540 --> 00:03:03.000 align:middle line:84% well, first, I want to thank everyone 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:08.700 align:middle line:84% for being here in the Poetry Center, and Cybele, and Chris, 00:03:08.700 --> 00:03:14.830 align:middle line:90% and Akilah, and Brandon. 00:03:14.830 --> 00:03:17.320 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:03:17.320 --> 00:03:18.580 align:middle line:90% Well, I had to say it. 00:03:18.580 --> 00:03:20.620 align:middle line:90% It's true. 00:03:20.620 --> 00:03:21.430 align:middle line:90% It's real. 00:03:21.430 --> 00:03:22.180 align:middle line:90% I'm not lying. 00:03:22.180 --> 00:03:25.390 align:middle line:90% 00:03:25.390 --> 00:03:32.260 align:middle line:84% In terms of Appalachian dialect, as we say-- 00:03:32.260 --> 00:03:36.025 align:middle line:84% that's how we say it there, is Appalachian. 00:03:36.025 --> 00:03:38.530 align:middle line:90% 00:03:38.530 --> 00:03:41.870 align:middle line:84% And that's neither here nor there. 00:03:41.870 --> 00:03:46.770 align:middle line:84% But well, for one, I grew up in it. 00:03:46.770 --> 00:03:52.860 align:middle line:84% So in a sense, it's not something I use. 00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:55.860 align:middle line:90% It's not a tool. 00:03:55.860 --> 00:03:59.930 align:middle line:90% But then again, it is. 00:03:59.930 --> 00:04:00.930 align:middle line:90% That would be a cop-out. 00:04:00.930 --> 00:04:03.090 align:middle line:84% I could just say that and then walk away. 00:04:03.090 --> 00:04:07.050 align:middle line:84% And it's not a tool, and I don't use it. 00:04:07.050 --> 00:04:08.610 align:middle line:90% It's just there. 00:04:08.610 --> 00:04:12.120 align:middle line:84% But it really is there in my head. 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:16.860 align:middle line:84% If I go home to West Virginia for any period of time, 00:04:16.860 --> 00:04:21.209 align:middle line:84% or talk to my sister on the phone for more than an hour, 00:04:21.209 --> 00:04:25.470 align:middle line:90% that's the voice I speak in. 00:04:25.470 --> 00:04:30.240 align:middle line:84% And I was trained, as were the rest of us, 00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:34.800 align:middle line:84% to not speak in that incorrect language-- 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:38.790 align:middle line:84% that is, not correct, proper English. 00:04:38.790 --> 00:04:43.140 align:middle line:84% In fact, my job now, as a grammarian-- 00:04:43.140 --> 00:04:47.430 align:middle line:84% as a whistle-wolf would term it-- 00:04:47.430 --> 00:04:49.440 align:middle line:84% in composition, is to correct that all 00:04:49.440 --> 00:04:54.730 align:middle line:90% of the time, much to my dismay. 00:04:54.730 --> 00:04:57.540 align:middle line:90% It's one of my jobs. 00:04:57.540 --> 00:05:01.970 align:middle line:84% But I hope that the poems function 00:05:01.970 --> 00:05:08.000 align:middle line:84% to demarcate the absolute legitimacy of any diction-- 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:12.680 align:middle line:84% that there is no one right way to speak. 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:19.100 align:middle line:84% There is no-- I mean, the amplitudes and possibilities 00:05:19.100 --> 00:05:21.890 align:middle line:84% of language are one of the things that 00:05:21.890 --> 00:05:25.895 align:middle line:84% make poetry so great, and that make people so great. 00:05:25.895 --> 00:05:29.780 align:middle line:90% 00:05:29.780 --> 00:05:34.430 align:middle line:84% Oh, and on that part about it not being a tool, 00:05:34.430 --> 00:05:36.650 align:middle line:90% it also functions in rhyme. 00:05:36.650 --> 00:05:40.700 align:middle line:84% So "po'" sounds different than "poor." 00:05:40.700 --> 00:05:43.310 align:middle line:90% 00:05:43.310 --> 00:05:44.690 align:middle line:90% And also in meter. 00:05:44.690 --> 00:05:49.430 align:middle line:84% "I done did this" might add something in there. 00:05:49.430 --> 00:05:50.480 align:middle line:90% "Was," "were." 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:56.330 align:middle line:84% There's all kinds of quote, "incorrect" usages that 00:05:56.330 --> 00:06:01.490 align:middle line:84% come out-- and also, terms that I don't hear other places, 00:06:01.490 --> 00:06:03.920 align:middle line:90% like glister. 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:06.620 align:middle line:84% I don't hear that outside of where I grew up. 00:06:06.620 --> 00:06:12.080 align:middle line:84% But the water just glisters, as one guy put it. 00:06:12.080 --> 00:06:15.230 align:middle line:90% 00:06:15.230 --> 00:06:17.630 align:middle line:90% Anyways, what a great word. 00:06:17.630 --> 00:06:21.305 align:middle line:90% So that's my first effort. 00:06:21.305 --> 00:06:28.190 align:middle line:90% 00:06:28.190 --> 00:06:30.770 align:middle line:84% That was one of the questions that was proposed 00:06:30.770 --> 00:06:32.360 align:middle line:90% to us before coming out. 00:06:32.360 --> 00:06:36.530 align:middle line:84% And I guess, to a certain extent, 00:06:36.530 --> 00:06:40.010 align:middle line:84% I have to confess some naivete in terms 00:06:40.010 --> 00:06:41.880 align:middle line:90% of what I'm actually doing. 00:06:41.880 --> 00:06:45.110 align:middle line:84% So I looked back through the book 00:06:45.110 --> 00:06:47.090 align:middle line:84% that was being referenced to actually find 00:06:47.090 --> 00:06:48.530 align:middle line:90% some of those antiquated words. 00:06:48.530 --> 00:06:53.030 align:middle line:84% And I think in the process of looking at these poems 00:06:53.030 --> 00:06:56.690 align:middle line:84% so often, I don't know what's antiquated 00:06:56.690 --> 00:06:58.130 align:middle line:90% and what's not anymore. 00:06:58.130 --> 00:07:00.800 align:middle line:90% I look at it all as this-- 00:07:00.800 --> 00:07:02.840 align:middle line:84% I guess that continuum sort of collapses, 00:07:02.840 --> 00:07:04.910 align:middle line:84% or again, that history sort of collapses, 00:07:04.910 --> 00:07:07.190 align:middle line:84% and it all becomes really strange. 00:07:07.190 --> 00:07:08.970 align:middle line:84% Or it all becomes really familiar, 00:07:08.970 --> 00:07:10.910 align:middle line:90% which is also fairly strange. 00:07:10.910 --> 00:07:13.730 align:middle line:84% I did find stuff in the book that was really weird. 00:07:13.730 --> 00:07:18.560 align:middle line:84% Actually, I didn't remember how it came to be-- 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:20.570 align:middle line:84% words that I actually didn't remember 00:07:20.570 --> 00:07:23.240 align:middle line:84% generating or encountering at all, but somehow, 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:28.880 align:middle line:84% they made their way into the final thing. 00:07:28.880 --> 00:07:32.690 align:middle line:84% And to kind of take a little bit of what Philip was saying, 00:07:32.690 --> 00:07:34.820 align:middle line:90% that everything is available. 00:07:34.820 --> 00:07:37.250 align:middle line:90% Everything is available. 00:07:37.250 --> 00:07:40.340 align:middle line:84% I guess, to a certain extent, I don't necessarily 00:07:40.340 --> 00:07:43.760 align:middle line:84% see the differences between types 00:07:43.760 --> 00:07:46.610 align:middle line:90% of words or types of diction. 00:07:46.610 --> 00:07:50.450 align:middle line:84% Because, I guess, to frame something as antiquated, 00:07:50.450 --> 00:07:53.300 align:middle line:84% that really is the case in relation to something 00:07:53.300 --> 00:07:55.250 align:middle line:90% that's contemporary. 00:07:55.250 --> 00:07:57.750 align:middle line:84% But if you kind of drop both of those divisions out, 00:07:57.750 --> 00:08:02.210 align:middle line:84% then it's just a bunch of really fabulous weirdness, I think, 00:08:02.210 --> 00:08:04.990 align:middle line:90% that's available to us. 00:08:04.990 --> 00:08:06.310 align:middle line:90% I don't know if that's also-- 00:08:06.310 --> 00:08:07.435 align:middle line:90% or I don't know if that's-- 00:08:07.435 --> 00:08:09.430 align:middle line:84% I think a variety of my answers might 00:08:09.430 --> 00:08:10.870 align:middle line:90% be borderline cop-out, but. 00:08:10.870 --> 00:08:15.850 align:middle line:90% 00:08:15.850 --> 00:08:17.440 align:middle line:90% Well, thanks for opening up. 00:08:17.440 --> 00:08:20.170 align:middle line:84% I think it's a really great question to start with. 00:08:20.170 --> 00:08:22.210 align:middle line:84% I was thinking about four different ways 00:08:22.210 --> 00:08:24.400 align:middle line:84% of thinking about diction and the way, 00:08:24.400 --> 00:08:26.090 align:middle line:90% maybe, that I'm approaching it. 00:08:26.090 --> 00:08:29.500 align:middle line:84% In one of the sections of "A Toast in the House of Friends," 00:08:29.500 --> 00:08:32.230 align:middle line:84% the arriving guard of angels section, 00:08:32.230 --> 00:08:36.490 align:middle line:84% it's a sounding section, and also kind of an homage section. 00:08:36.490 --> 00:08:42.190 align:middle line:84% So there these repeating phrases, "who dat?" 00:08:42.190 --> 00:08:44.470 align:middle line:90% "Who dem come?" 00:08:44.470 --> 00:08:50.470 align:middle line:84% And so it was really purposeful to spell who's that, "that," 00:08:50.470 --> 00:08:55.540 align:middle line:84% as "D-A-T" and "them" as "D-E-M." 00:08:55.540 --> 00:09:03.750 align:middle line:84% And I was really trying to evoke one kind of code-switching 00:09:03.750 --> 00:09:07.050 align:middle line:90% into African-American speech. 00:09:07.050 --> 00:09:09.570 align:middle line:84% And the sound, for me, was really important. 00:09:09.570 --> 00:09:13.440 align:middle line:84% It was more in part to say "dem" than "them," 00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:15.330 align:middle line:84% because I was also kind of thinking, 00:09:15.330 --> 00:09:19.080 align:middle line:84% in the strange kind of maybe non-linear way, 00:09:19.080 --> 00:09:24.090 align:middle line:84% of some connection with retrieval of resistance 00:09:24.090 --> 00:09:27.060 align:middle line:84% or histories of resistance, and reclaiming, I guess, 00:09:27.060 --> 00:09:31.020 align:middle line:84% that kind of coded vernacular, I guess. 00:09:31.020 --> 00:09:33.930 align:middle line:84% And that way, for me, kind of also invoked that, 00:09:33.930 --> 00:09:35.700 align:middle line:90% and it felt kind of powerful. 00:09:35.700 --> 00:09:39.750 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, when I read it, I read it as "who dat?" 00:09:39.750 --> 00:09:42.990 align:middle line:84% And sometimes I read it as "who is that?" 00:09:42.990 --> 00:09:48.060 align:middle line:84% Just depending on, I guess, both the sound that I want to evoke 00:09:48.060 --> 00:09:53.920 align:middle line:84% and also kind of the message exchange with the audience. 00:09:53.920 --> 00:09:58.380 align:middle line:84% And then I was thinking, too, of Harriet Mullins. 00:09:58.380 --> 00:09:59.970 align:middle line:90% Pretty amazing poet. 00:09:59.970 --> 00:10:04.320 align:middle line:84% She has a book called Sleeping with the Dictionary, which 00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:06.600 align:middle line:84% is such a strange, beautiful title. 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:08.040 align:middle line:90% I like it quite a bit. 00:10:08.040 --> 00:10:10.020 align:middle line:90% And in some parts of the book-- 00:10:10.020 --> 00:10:12.240 align:middle line:84% I had passed this manuscript by a friend 00:10:12.240 --> 00:10:14.070 align:middle line:90% of mine, another writer. 00:10:14.070 --> 00:10:17.610 align:middle line:84% And she's a great editor, and very impatient, 00:10:17.610 --> 00:10:20.040 align:middle line:84% and will just mark things, and scribble, 00:10:20.040 --> 00:10:22.230 align:middle line:90% and everything's in red. 00:10:22.230 --> 00:10:27.390 align:middle line:84% And she said, why don't you find some words that do something, 00:10:27.390 --> 00:10:29.580 align:middle line:84% for some specific words that I had. 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:31.710 align:middle line:84% I had this adjective about, I think 00:10:31.710 --> 00:10:33.720 align:middle line:90% it was the "driving rain." 00:10:33.720 --> 00:10:36.310 align:middle line:84% And she said, why don't you find a word that does something? 00:10:36.310 --> 00:10:38.460 align:middle line:84% And I was like, OK, I guess driving is not 00:10:38.460 --> 00:10:41.670 align:middle line:90% doing anything for the rain. 00:10:41.670 --> 00:10:46.380 align:middle line:84% And another-- I guess she's really a fiction writer, 00:10:46.380 --> 00:10:50.880 align:middle line:90% or prose writer, Bhanu Kapil. 00:10:50.880 --> 00:10:54.570 align:middle line:84% Bhanu also likes to talk about bibliomancy. 00:10:54.570 --> 00:10:57.660 align:middle line:84% And she will say, if you're looking for a word-- 00:10:57.660 --> 00:11:00.480 align:middle line:84% I'm not doing a very good Bhanu imitation, but I'm trying. 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:04.410 align:middle line:84% Then just think about what you want to get, and then 00:11:04.410 --> 00:11:08.010 align:middle line:84% put your hand on the book-- or the dictionary-- and open it. 00:11:08.010 --> 00:11:12.270 align:middle line:84% And I got the word gurning from that kind of process. 00:11:12.270 --> 00:11:15.240 align:middle line:84% And then it became the "gurning rain," meaning something 00:11:15.240 --> 00:11:16.230 align:middle line:90% about sheets. 00:11:16.230 --> 00:11:19.930 align:middle line:84% And it became a very-- and it was what I wanted. 00:11:19.930 --> 00:11:21.780 align:middle line:84% And I was like, that's interesting. 00:11:21.780 --> 00:11:22.710 align:middle line:90% Thanks, Bhanu. 00:11:22.710 --> 00:11:25.630 align:middle line:84% Not sure of how often I can get away with that. 00:11:25.630 --> 00:11:30.180 align:middle line:84% But I really appreciate doing that gesture. 00:11:30.180 --> 00:11:33.330 align:middle line:84% And then the other thing, I was thinking about how diction-- 00:11:33.330 --> 00:11:35.820 align:middle line:84% and I hope I'm not leading us into the political question 00:11:35.820 --> 00:11:37.320 align:middle line:90% too soon-- 00:11:37.320 --> 00:11:40.290 align:middle line:84% also reflects, I guess, a kind of political intent. 00:11:40.290 --> 00:11:41.760 align:middle line:90% I was just thinking-- 00:11:41.760 --> 00:11:45.120 align:middle line:84% I spent a little time in Berlin this summer. 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:48.720 align:middle line:84% And there's lots of American expats in Berlin right now. 00:11:48.720 --> 00:11:51.330 align:middle line:84% And every once in a while, people-- like, 00:11:51.330 --> 00:11:53.460 align:middle line:90% several times a day, would say-- 00:11:53.460 --> 00:11:55.260 align:middle line:84% have you heard from anyone in America? 00:11:55.260 --> 00:11:57.818 align:middle line:84% As if we haven't all been on Facebook and email. 00:11:57.818 --> 00:11:58.860 align:middle line:90% And it's like, all right. 00:11:58.860 --> 00:12:02.160 align:middle line:84% But everyone would never say Chicago, the United States, 00:12:02.160 --> 00:12:02.880 align:middle line:90% or Texas. 00:12:02.880 --> 00:12:05.220 align:middle line:84% Everyone would always say America. 00:12:05.220 --> 00:12:08.670 align:middle line:84% And it became this intentional nostalgia, 00:12:08.670 --> 00:12:11.520 align:middle line:84% this intentional connection with this land base. 00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:13.770 align:middle line:84% And we never corrected each other. 00:12:13.770 --> 00:12:15.120 align:middle line:90% Like, you mean North America? 00:12:15.120 --> 00:12:17.130 align:middle line:90% I mean, South, or like, what? 00:12:17.130 --> 00:12:19.650 align:middle line:84% So it's also interesting how that kind of diction 00:12:19.650 --> 00:12:24.570 align:middle line:84% became connected to a kind of nostalgic claim over a place. 00:12:24.570 --> 00:12:26.040 align:middle line:84% And in the United States, I don't 00:12:26.040 --> 00:12:29.100 align:middle line:84% think we would ever really use that term in quite 00:12:29.100 --> 00:12:30.130 align:middle line:90% the same way. 00:12:30.130 --> 00:12:36.150 align:middle line:84% Like, have you heard from Sue in Chicago in America? 00:12:36.150 --> 00:12:38.160 align:middle line:84% So it's really interesting to me how words-- 00:12:38.160 --> 00:12:43.110 align:middle line:84% and also sound, and how they connect to different histories 00:12:43.110 --> 00:12:44.105 align:middle line:90% and memories, as well. 00:12:44.105 --> 00:12:47.600 align:middle line:90% 00:12:47.600 --> 00:12:48.100 align:middle line:90% Great. 00:12:48.100 --> 00:12:48.830 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:12:48.830 --> 00:12:52.570 align:middle line:84% No, I'm actually-- I'm glad you brought up the political poetry 00:12:52.570 --> 00:12:54.610 align:middle line:84% topic right now, because I was wondering 00:12:54.610 --> 00:12:56.620 align:middle line:90% how we would segue into that. 00:12:56.620 --> 00:12:59.360 align:middle line:84% It's such a big thing to take on. 00:12:59.360 --> 00:13:02.120 align:middle line:84% But I would like us to address that topic, 00:13:02.120 --> 00:13:04.180 align:middle line:90% the topic of political poetry. 00:13:04.180 --> 00:13:08.720 align:middle line:84% And there's a few ways we could go about that. 00:13:08.720 --> 00:13:11.440 align:middle line:84% But maybe the easiest way would be 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:15.100 align:middle line:84% to just ask if you consider your poetry, or some aspect 00:13:15.100 --> 00:13:18.970 align:middle line:84% of your poetry, political, and how or why. 00:13:18.970 --> 00:13:29.418 align:middle line:90% 00:13:29.418 --> 00:13:29.918 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:13:29.918 --> 00:13:34.940 align:middle line:90% 00:13:34.940 --> 00:13:37.700 align:middle line:90% Absolutely. 00:13:37.700 --> 00:13:38.690 align:middle line:90% I'd like to-- 00:13:38.690 --> 00:13:41.750 align:middle line:90% I think, sometimes-- 00:13:41.750 --> 00:13:44.040 align:middle line:84% I was looking back and thinking about it. 00:13:44.040 --> 00:13:49.320 align:middle line:84% There are historical accounts of the marginalized, 00:13:49.320 --> 00:13:53.040 align:middle line:84% including going back to the Appalachian component, 00:13:53.040 --> 00:13:54.660 align:middle line:90% but not only-- 00:13:54.660 --> 00:14:00.660 align:middle line:84% in terms of gender, in terms of war, genocide, 00:14:00.660 --> 00:14:03.750 align:middle line:84% the hypothetical antipodes, or "anti-podes," 00:14:03.750 --> 00:14:06.900 align:middle line:84% depending on how you want to say that-- 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:09.720 align:middle line:84% poems in On the Cave You Live In, 00:14:09.720 --> 00:14:19.010 align:middle line:84% or all about a different account of how the '60s felt 00:14:19.010 --> 00:14:22.490 align:middle line:84% in Appalachia, when the war on poverty happened, 00:14:22.490 --> 00:14:27.200 align:middle line:84% and situations where so-called "improved." 00:14:27.200 --> 00:14:31.730 align:middle line:84% Within, a lot of people said, we've had enough of your help. 00:14:31.730 --> 00:14:37.310 align:middle line:84% Because help was often tied to internal colonization. 00:14:37.310 --> 00:14:40.180 align:middle line:90% 00:14:40.180 --> 00:14:43.720 align:middle line:84% I think of the horror of imperialism. 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:46.990 align:middle line:90% And try-- don't try. 00:14:46.990 --> 00:14:50.620 align:middle line:84% I end up writing about it, both internal and external. 00:14:50.620 --> 00:14:57.260 align:middle line:84% I don't think it extends only beyond national borders. 00:14:57.260 --> 00:15:00.500 align:middle line:84% I think it also goes inside them, 00:15:00.500 --> 00:15:03.003 align:middle line:90% and inside each consciousness. 00:15:03.003 --> 00:15:04.920 align:middle line:84% And that's what I tried to do with the "Hydra" 00:15:04.920 --> 00:15:08.710 align:middle line:90% series of poems that I wrote. 00:15:08.710 --> 00:15:14.450 align:middle line:84% So I think we could debate definitions of the political, 00:15:14.450 --> 00:15:14.950 align:middle line:90% right? 00:15:14.950 --> 00:15:18.048 align:middle line:90% 00:15:18.048 --> 00:15:19.340 align:middle line:90% I don't know if I've answered-- 00:15:19.340 --> 00:15:21.220 align:middle line:84% I haven't answered the whole question. 00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:24.580 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:15:24.580 --> 00:15:26.570 align:middle line:84% There's, like, part one and part two. 00:15:26.570 --> 00:15:27.070 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:15:27.070 --> 00:15:28.678 align:middle line:90% Well, 00:15:28.678 --> 00:15:29.470 align:middle line:90% Should we go down-- 00:15:29.470 --> 00:15:30.410 align:middle line:90% Maybe we can hear-- 00:15:30.410 --> 00:15:30.910 align:middle line:90% yeah. 00:15:30.910 --> 00:15:31.810 align:middle line:90% Annie has a question. 00:15:31.810 --> 00:15:32.808 align:middle line:90% We were talking about-- 00:15:32.808 --> 00:15:34.600 align:middle line:84% Annie, can I-- let me give you the mic, OK? 00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:36.550 align:middle line:90% Oh, sorry. 00:15:36.550 --> 00:15:40.000 align:middle line:84% So we were talking about how class, last night, 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.220 align:middle line:90% relates to the political poem. 00:15:44.220 --> 00:15:47.580 align:middle line:84% And there's this question about, is that really 00:15:47.580 --> 00:15:50.280 align:middle line:90% addressed or not? 00:15:50.280 --> 00:15:52.570 align:middle line:84% So you could probably go in at that angle. 00:15:52.570 --> 00:15:56.550 align:middle line:84% But it also brought up the interesting idea 00:15:56.550 --> 00:16:01.290 align:middle line:84% that if you don't read in the cadence of the dialect 00:16:01.290 --> 00:16:06.730 align:middle line:84% that you're adopting when you perform, what does that mean? 00:16:06.730 --> 00:16:08.590 align:middle line:90% What does that mean about class? 00:16:08.590 --> 00:16:12.880 align:middle line:84% And how does that reveal your stance? 00:16:12.880 --> 00:16:14.770 align:middle line:90% So you could talk about that. 00:16:14.770 --> 00:16:17.710 align:middle line:90% Yeah, absolutely. 00:16:17.710 --> 00:16:21.110 align:middle line:90% 00:16:21.110 --> 00:16:23.780 align:middle line:84% One could be reading in the cadence-- 00:16:23.780 --> 00:16:26.300 align:middle line:90% either cadence. 00:16:26.300 --> 00:16:29.210 align:middle line:84% It depends on-- it might be depending 00:16:29.210 --> 00:16:32.480 align:middle line:84% on who the audience is and how I think 00:16:32.480 --> 00:16:37.790 align:middle line:84% I might strike them or communicate with them, 00:16:37.790 --> 00:16:39.590 align:middle line:90% or how I might be feeling. 00:16:39.590 --> 00:16:45.610 align:middle line:84% I might be feeling outside myself, outside that part that 00:16:45.610 --> 00:16:49.540 align:middle line:84% grew up wherever it grew up, in which case, 00:16:49.540 --> 00:16:54.720 align:middle line:84% I'm alienated from myself, which is a political process. 00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:58.590 align:middle line:84% In terms of class, I don't think-- 00:16:58.590 --> 00:17:00.100 align:middle line:84% I think these are great questions. 00:17:00.100 --> 00:17:03.300 align:middle line:84% I don't think that I've found-- maybe someone 00:17:03.300 --> 00:17:04.589 align:middle line:90% else could help me. 00:17:04.589 --> 00:17:08.490 align:middle line:84% I've found poems that confront the institutional power 00:17:08.490 --> 00:17:12.569 align:middle line:84% relations of academia that affect the world, 00:17:12.569 --> 00:17:16.410 align:middle line:84% and affect how we consider-- what we consider political 00:17:16.410 --> 00:17:17.400 align:middle line:90% poetry-- 00:17:17.400 --> 00:17:20.640 align:middle line:84% class, labor Relations within academia 00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:27.150 align:middle line:84% don't seem to occupy a large component of academic poetry. 00:17:27.150 --> 00:17:29.880 align:middle line:90% Maybe people are afraid. 00:17:29.880 --> 00:17:33.990 align:middle line:84% Everyone's up-- look at the economic status 00:17:33.990 --> 00:17:35.730 align:middle line:90% of where we're at. 00:17:35.730 --> 00:17:39.120 align:middle line:84% Everyone's looking over their shoulders. 00:17:39.120 --> 00:17:42.660 align:middle line:84% And the people who aren't within academe 00:17:42.660 --> 00:17:47.130 align:middle line:84% often are marginalized or not listened to. 00:17:47.130 --> 00:17:50.740 align:middle line:84% They're in another category, another class altogether. 00:17:50.740 --> 00:17:54.750 align:middle line:84% And so I'm hoping that what I can do next 00:17:54.750 --> 00:17:59.400 align:middle line:84% is listen to the history of how other laborers and writers-- 00:17:59.400 --> 00:18:05.700 align:middle line:84% which we are-- organized and wrote on class and power. 00:18:05.700 --> 00:18:09.390 align:middle line:84% And that's only going to happen by listening and talking 00:18:09.390 --> 00:18:10.840 align:middle line:90% to others. 00:18:10.840 --> 00:18:12.300 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:18:12.300 --> 00:18:13.470 align:middle line:90% I think I've said enough. 00:18:13.470 --> 00:18:16.380 align:middle line:90% 00:18:16.380 --> 00:18:18.240 align:middle line:90% I think it's-- 00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:19.740 align:middle line:84% I've been thinking a lot about this, 00:18:19.740 --> 00:18:24.330 align:middle line:84% and my thoughts are totally confused. 00:18:24.330 --> 00:18:25.830 align:middle line:84% And they only become more confused 00:18:25.830 --> 00:18:26.913 align:middle line:90% the more I think about it. 00:18:26.913 --> 00:18:31.620 align:middle line:84% But one thing is definitely this idea of historical accounts 00:18:31.620 --> 00:18:35.280 align:middle line:84% of the marginalized, and giving voice 00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:38.700 align:middle line:84% to various communities, and sub-communities, 00:18:38.700 --> 00:18:44.220 align:middle line:84% and sub-sub-communities that are so because of some overriding 00:18:44.220 --> 00:18:46.890 align:middle line:84% structure that makes that the case. 00:18:46.890 --> 00:18:53.970 align:middle line:84% And I really struggled to understand whether or not 00:18:53.970 --> 00:18:59.670 align:middle line:84% giving voice, or allowing some communities to reflect out 00:18:59.670 --> 00:19:05.070 align:middle line:84% into the world, is political, or if the problem is that it still 00:19:05.070 --> 00:19:09.600 align:middle line:84% kind of aligns itself, somehow, in some obverse way, 00:19:09.600 --> 00:19:11.310 align:middle line:84% within the political system itself. 00:19:11.310 --> 00:19:19.170 align:middle line:84% And that poetry is meant to be some other subterranean thing 00:19:19.170 --> 00:19:21.570 align:middle line:84% that functions so far outside that system 00:19:21.570 --> 00:19:26.940 align:middle line:84% that it, I don't know, creates another constellation 00:19:26.940 --> 00:19:29.700 align:middle line:90% altogether. 00:19:29.700 --> 00:19:34.470 align:middle line:84% Because I think that, for me, I'm 00:19:34.470 --> 00:19:37.380 align:middle line:84% really struggling, again, with this idea of political 00:19:37.380 --> 00:19:38.763 align:middle line:84% and politics, which, I don't even 00:19:38.763 --> 00:19:39.930 align:middle line:90% really know what that means. 00:19:39.930 --> 00:19:43.200 align:middle line:84% I mean, I don't know what it means now. 00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:45.420 align:middle line:84% I don't know what it was originally intended to mean. 00:19:45.420 --> 00:19:48.820 align:middle line:84% I don't know what politics was originally intended to do. 00:19:48.820 --> 00:19:53.218 align:middle line:84% I do feel like I know it was intended to do something, which 00:19:53.218 --> 00:19:54.510 align:middle line:90% I think is part of the problem. 00:19:54.510 --> 00:19:58.470 align:middle line:84% I think that anything that has a goal, 00:19:58.470 --> 00:20:02.010 align:middle line:84% or that supposes something or idealizes something 00:20:02.010 --> 00:20:06.090 align:middle line:84% and then sets up some sort of apparatus that 00:20:06.090 --> 00:20:10.230 align:middle line:84% satisfies that goal or that supposition, is not poetry-- 00:20:10.230 --> 00:20:11.700 align:middle line:90% or it has no relation to it. 00:20:11.700 --> 00:20:15.930 align:middle line:84% Because for me, anyway, poetry is something that 00:20:15.930 --> 00:20:18.960 align:middle line:90% has really no goal, I suppose. 00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:23.310 align:middle line:84% It has-- and I don't know what its relationship is to desire, 00:20:23.310 --> 00:20:23.810 align:middle line:90% either. 00:20:23.810 --> 00:20:27.850 align:middle line:84% I think that poetry is some other substance, 00:20:27.850 --> 00:20:30.190 align:middle line:84% or that it creates into a community 00:20:30.190 --> 00:20:35.210 align:middle line:84% that functions outside of those sorts of ideas. 00:20:35.210 --> 00:20:36.250 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:20:36.250 --> 00:20:42.480 align:middle line:84% I think we can argue infinitely about the idea 00:20:42.480 --> 00:20:43.380 align:middle line:90% of political poetry. 00:20:43.380 --> 00:20:46.670 align:middle line:84% I wonder what something like social poetry would mean, 00:20:46.670 --> 00:20:47.670 align:middle line:90% or what something like-- 00:20:47.670 --> 00:20:50.190 align:middle line:90% 00:20:50.190 --> 00:20:52.260 align:middle line:84% to give just an example, and then I'll 00:20:52.260 --> 00:20:54.870 align:middle line:84% pass the microphone-- is, in my writing, 00:20:54.870 --> 00:20:58.440 align:middle line:84% I guess the thing that could be most easily categorized 00:20:58.440 --> 00:21:01.530 align:middle line:84% as political poetry, though not necessarily by me, 00:21:01.530 --> 00:21:07.270 align:middle line:84% would be the poems that address certain historical events. 00:21:07.270 --> 00:21:10.530 align:middle line:84% Think the bombing of Japan during World War II. 00:21:10.530 --> 00:21:14.730 align:middle line:84% And trying to imagine, based on research, 00:21:14.730 --> 00:21:16.470 align:middle line:84% and based on interviews, and talking 00:21:16.470 --> 00:21:19.410 align:middle line:84% with relatives and whatnot, trying 00:21:19.410 --> 00:21:22.200 align:middle line:84% to imagine or somehow rewrite that, 00:21:22.200 --> 00:21:25.740 align:middle line:90% or somehow inhabit that space. 00:21:25.740 --> 00:21:28.940 align:middle line:90% And I don't think that's-- 00:21:28.940 --> 00:21:30.940 align:middle line:84% or, at least, I don't know if that's political-- 00:21:30.940 --> 00:21:32.350 align:middle line:84% if that undertaking is political. 00:21:32.350 --> 00:21:35.380 align:middle line:84% Because I think that what I'm really interested in 00:21:35.380 --> 00:21:36.910 align:middle line:90% is the people. 00:21:36.910 --> 00:21:38.560 align:middle line:84% I'm interested in the environment 00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:40.010 align:middle line:90% and those communities. 00:21:40.010 --> 00:21:43.870 align:middle line:84% And I'm not interested in the governing apparatus 00:21:43.870 --> 00:21:47.650 align:middle line:84% that caused that situation to have happened, 00:21:47.650 --> 00:21:48.880 align:middle line:90% to come into being. 00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:52.420 align:middle line:84% Because then I feel like I'm giving too much credence 00:21:52.420 --> 00:21:55.630 align:middle line:84% to that apparatus and not enough to the people who are kind 00:21:55.630 --> 00:21:59.227 align:middle line:90% of suffering underneath that. 00:21:59.227 --> 00:22:00.310 align:middle line:90% I don't know what that is. 00:22:00.310 --> 00:22:02.800 align:middle line:84% I really don't know what that might be. 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:05.930 align:middle line:84% But it's something I continue to think and kind of sweat 00:22:05.930 --> 00:22:06.430 align:middle line:90% through. 00:22:06.430 --> 00:22:09.350 align:middle line:90% 00:22:09.350 --> 00:22:09.850 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:22:09.850 --> 00:22:11.650 align:middle line:84% I think that that's a really good point 00:22:11.650 --> 00:22:15.190 align:middle line:84% that you make, Brandon, that it's a thinking through process 00:22:15.190 --> 00:22:19.450 align:middle line:84% rather than, for me, political poetry as a conclusion 00:22:19.450 --> 00:22:21.333 align:middle line:90% or a definition. 00:22:21.333 --> 00:22:22.750 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to kind of skip that, 00:22:22.750 --> 00:22:27.340 align:middle line:84% because I'm not sure what the definition of political poetry 00:22:27.340 --> 00:22:28.030 align:middle line:90% is. 00:22:28.030 --> 00:22:30.940 align:middle line:84% But I think that poems can act politically, 00:22:30.940 --> 00:22:34.580 align:middle line:84% or that poems can act in various ways. 00:22:34.580 --> 00:22:38.200 align:middle line:84% So I think, for me, what's key about that is "act." 00:22:38.200 --> 00:22:40.360 align:middle line:90% Is that politics isn't-- 00:22:40.360 --> 00:22:42.560 align:middle line:90% to be political is to act. 00:22:42.560 --> 00:22:45.610 align:middle line:84% So in that sense, we're all political all of the time. 00:22:45.610 --> 00:22:48.250 align:middle line:84% And poems act, so they are also political. 00:22:48.250 --> 00:22:52.240 align:middle line:84% But I was thinking about Haiti, actually, and the situation 00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:55.450 align:middle line:90% that's before the world now. 00:22:55.450 --> 00:22:58.270 align:middle line:84% And it's clearly a human situation, 00:22:58.270 --> 00:23:01.450 align:middle line:84% and it's clearly a political situation. 00:23:01.450 --> 00:23:04.780 align:middle line:84% Like, part of the solution for Haiti right now is political, 00:23:04.780 --> 00:23:08.710 align:middle line:84% and that's why it's not going to be offered to them right now. 00:23:08.710 --> 00:23:12.760 align:middle line:84% Because those politics are not in favor, even 00:23:12.760 --> 00:23:15.100 align:middle line:90% with our present administration. 00:23:15.100 --> 00:23:17.530 align:middle line:84% I love Obama, but the administration 00:23:17.530 --> 00:23:21.400 align:middle line:84% is not about progressive politics, 00:23:21.400 --> 00:23:24.850 align:middle line:84% and in the US's relationship to the Caribbean, 00:23:24.850 --> 00:23:27.670 align:middle line:84% or to places like Haiti, or places like Cuba, 00:23:27.670 --> 00:23:29.890 align:middle line:84% or other nation-states right now that 00:23:29.890 --> 00:23:32.620 align:middle line:84% have a long relationship with the United States 00:23:32.620 --> 00:23:35.650 align:middle line:84% in which they're disempowered and have 00:23:35.650 --> 00:23:37.660 align:middle line:90% a relationship of distress. 00:23:37.660 --> 00:23:39.490 align:middle line:90% That's a political situation. 00:23:39.490 --> 00:23:42.190 align:middle line:84% And I was thinking, what do we do as poets? 00:23:42.190 --> 00:23:44.740 align:middle line:84% And it's the same that we do as people. 00:23:44.740 --> 00:23:47.500 align:middle line:84% I couldn't think of, what would I do as a poet 00:23:47.500 --> 00:23:49.360 align:middle line:90% that I would not do as a person? 00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:51.640 align:middle line:84% That, why would the two be separated? 00:23:51.640 --> 00:23:55.270 align:middle line:84% Why would I ask poets to somehow be the kind of harbingers 00:23:55.270 --> 00:24:00.460 align:middle line:84% of some kind of sublime or progressive message 00:24:00.460 --> 00:24:02.350 align:middle line:84% that I can't be as an individual? 00:24:02.350 --> 00:24:05.140 align:middle line:84% It's almost that division between politics and poetry 00:24:05.140 --> 00:24:06.550 align:middle line:90% for me. 00:24:06.550 --> 00:24:07.720 align:middle line:90% It doesn't quite work. 00:24:07.720 --> 00:24:11.370 align:middle line:90% It's a little artificial. 00:24:11.370 --> 00:24:15.050 align:middle line:84% But I was thinking, too, that for me, part 00:24:15.050 --> 00:24:19.580 align:middle line:84% of what it means to be conscious of a politic when I'm writing 00:24:19.580 --> 00:24:21.500 align:middle line:84% is to be conscious of form, and what 00:24:21.500 --> 00:24:24.140 align:middle line:84% I'm doing outside of traditional form, 00:24:24.140 --> 00:24:27.290 align:middle line:84% and why I'm so often breaking form, 00:24:27.290 --> 00:24:29.990 align:middle line:84% or I'm playing with disjuncture, and I'm 00:24:29.990 --> 00:24:34.640 align:middle line:84% playing with fracturing, and I'm playing with breaking, 00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:38.810 align:middle line:84% both in terms of meaning and in terms of subject. 00:24:38.810 --> 00:24:41.090 align:middle line:84% And for me, that's the world right now-- 00:24:41.090 --> 00:24:43.790 align:middle line:84% that I can go from Haiti on television 00:24:43.790 --> 00:24:47.450 align:middle line:84% to something radically different, and something else, 00:24:47.450 --> 00:24:48.410 align:middle line:90% and something else. 00:24:48.410 --> 00:24:49.970 align:middle line:90% And they're all compatible. 00:24:49.970 --> 00:24:53.000 align:middle line:84% And they're all contained within a technological discourse. 00:24:53.000 --> 00:24:56.930 align:middle line:84% I mean, I can access pretty much any discourse at any given 00:24:56.930 --> 00:25:00.590 align:middle line:90% time, and simultaneously. 00:25:00.590 --> 00:25:05.150 align:middle line:84% One, I think there's this thing with even simple technologies, 00:25:05.150 --> 00:25:07.130 align:middle line:90% like Facebook, that we use. 00:25:07.130 --> 00:25:09.560 align:middle line:84% There are these communication systems 00:25:09.560 --> 00:25:12.380 align:middle line:84% that have collapsed ideological borders. 00:25:12.380 --> 00:25:13.977 align:middle line:90% To me, that's very exciting. 00:25:13.977 --> 00:25:16.310 align:middle line:84% So that we don't have to keep repeating the old politics 00:25:16.310 --> 00:25:17.150 align:middle line:90% that don't work. 00:25:17.150 --> 00:25:20.030 align:middle line:84% We don't have to be, I'm the radical outside of the system, 00:25:20.030 --> 00:25:21.720 align:middle line:90% and I'm the oppressed. 00:25:21.720 --> 00:25:26.360 align:middle line:84% I don't find that those terms to be useful at all anymore 00:25:26.360 --> 00:25:28.490 align:middle line:84% when we're in this age of itinerancy, 00:25:28.490 --> 00:25:31.130 align:middle line:84% and things are moving, and things are shifting. 00:25:31.130 --> 00:25:33.470 align:middle line:84% And I don't have to speak for Haitians. 00:25:33.470 --> 00:25:36.740 align:middle line:84% And I don't-- I know what you meant by giving 00:25:36.740 --> 00:25:37.810 align:middle line:90% the marginalized a voice. 00:25:37.810 --> 00:25:39.560 align:middle line:84% But I don't have to give them their voice. 00:25:39.560 --> 00:25:40.880 align:middle line:90% They already have it. 00:25:40.880 --> 00:25:43.910 align:middle line:84% And they have access, in Haiti as well, to technology. 00:25:43.910 --> 00:25:47.210 align:middle line:84% And so we're getting snippets coming across poetry-- 00:25:47.210 --> 00:25:50.930 align:middle line:84% poetry making work-- coming through, like the Buffalo 00:25:50.930 --> 00:25:52.910 align:middle line:90% listserv and posting it. 00:25:52.910 --> 00:25:55.280 align:middle line:84% People are just instantly posting things. 00:25:55.280 --> 00:25:58.760 align:middle line:84% People are videotaping, even with the limited technology 00:25:58.760 --> 00:26:00.500 align:middle line:90% that's available there. 00:26:00.500 --> 00:26:02.630 align:middle line:84% And things are being-- they're just 00:26:02.630 --> 00:26:06.170 align:middle line:84% crossing these ideological and physical borders. 00:26:06.170 --> 00:26:10.040 align:middle line:84% And to me, that's a form of making meaning 00:26:10.040 --> 00:26:14.730 align:middle line:84% and engaging in the world where we are now. 00:26:14.730 --> 00:26:17.750 align:middle line:84% So I don't have to kind of reconstitute myself 00:26:17.750 --> 00:26:20.900 align:middle line:84% in relationship to terms that don't work for me anymore, 00:26:20.900 --> 00:26:23.810 align:middle line:84% i.e., the oppressed and the oppressor, 00:26:23.810 --> 00:26:26.450 align:middle line:90% or the marginalized and who-- 00:26:26.450 --> 00:26:29.030 align:middle line:84% I mean, who is not marginalized from what? 00:26:29.030 --> 00:26:31.340 align:middle line:84% Or that centers-- or that there is a center, 00:26:31.340 --> 00:26:34.460 align:middle line:84% rather than, there are various centers that are always 00:26:34.460 --> 00:26:37.040 align:middle line:84% circulating and dancing around each other, 00:26:37.040 --> 00:26:39.930 align:middle line:84% and that power is an exchange constantly. 00:26:39.930 --> 00:26:43.370 align:middle line:84% So I'm not trying to minimize the real poverty in Haiti right 00:26:43.370 --> 00:26:48.740 align:middle line:84% now, or even as a working-class poet-- 00:26:48.740 --> 00:26:50.960 align:middle line:84% intellectual-- the privileges that I 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:53.240 align:middle line:90% have in the United States. 00:26:53.240 --> 00:26:55.520 align:middle line:84% I mean, those are real differences. 00:26:55.520 --> 00:26:58.970 align:middle line:84% But at the same time, there's also-- 00:26:58.970 --> 00:27:01.370 align:middle line:84% that they're not real differences, that all of that 00:27:01.370 --> 00:27:03.500 align:middle line:90% becomes relative after a while. 00:27:03.500 --> 00:27:06.090 align:middle line:84% So for me, form becomes really important. 00:27:06.090 --> 00:27:10.700 align:middle line:84% And then if, for me, the world is this place of itinerancy, 00:27:10.700 --> 00:27:12.830 align:middle line:84% there's all of this movement, borders are shifting, 00:27:12.830 --> 00:27:16.730 align:middle line:84% things are constantly being rearranged, 00:27:16.730 --> 00:27:19.130 align:middle line:84% and there's all of these ways to communicate that 00:27:19.130 --> 00:27:20.300 align:middle line:90% almost instantly. 00:27:20.300 --> 00:27:24.650 align:middle line:84% And then they shift again, and then something else is made. 00:27:24.650 --> 00:27:28.230 align:middle line:84% Form, for me, becomes a way of being a part of that. 00:27:28.230 --> 00:27:30.530 align:middle line:84% And if that's-- and to me, that's political. 00:27:30.530 --> 00:27:32.690 align:middle line:84% Those are the politics of my time. 00:27:32.690 --> 00:27:36.970 align:middle line:90% And I'm just trying to be in it. 00:27:36.970 --> 00:27:37.470 align:middle line:90% Great. 00:27:37.470 --> 00:27:39.480 align:middle line:84% Thank you for those thoughtful responses. 00:27:39.480 --> 00:27:41.460 align:middle line:84% I know there's a lot of evocative ideas 00:27:41.460 --> 00:27:43.770 align:middle line:90% there to think about. 00:27:43.770 --> 00:27:45.700 align:middle line:84% Before we move on to a different topic, 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:50.410 align:middle line:84% are there any follow-up or related questions to that? 00:27:50.410 --> 00:27:51.220 align:middle line:90% Yeah, Annie? 00:27:51.220 --> 00:27:54.994 align:middle line:90% 00:27:54.994 --> 00:27:58.190 align:middle line:84% Well, I find myself agreeing with everyone, 00:27:58.190 --> 00:28:00.780 align:middle line:84% but then a question comes to mind, 00:28:00.780 --> 00:28:03.770 align:middle line:84% which is, are we just so privileged that we're 00:28:03.770 --> 00:28:06.740 align:middle line:90% able to reject this-- 00:28:06.740 --> 00:28:12.050 align:middle line:84% someone's desire to call and collect political poetry? 00:28:12.050 --> 00:28:19.100 align:middle line:84% Are we so privileged that we're able to say that doesn't exist? 00:28:19.100 --> 00:28:20.570 align:middle line:90% Is that going on? 00:28:20.570 --> 00:28:23.210 align:middle line:90% I mean-- well, I don't know. 00:28:23.210 --> 00:28:24.590 align:middle line:90% But that's my question. 00:28:24.590 --> 00:28:28.940 align:middle line:84% Is it, we don't know because we don't 00:28:28.940 --> 00:28:32.285 align:middle line:84% have to become revolutionaries in our lives? 00:28:32.285 --> 00:28:37.240 align:middle line:90% 00:28:37.240 --> 00:28:42.040 align:middle line:84% Are we so cushioned, or protected as Americans, 00:28:42.040 --> 00:28:44.510 align:middle line:90% or in our particular-- 00:28:44.510 --> 00:28:47.800 align:middle line:84% I'm saying "our" because, like I said, I agree. 00:28:47.800 --> 00:28:51.620 align:middle line:90% But that question comes to mind. 00:28:51.620 --> 00:28:54.680 align:middle line:84% Because I think that there is this strong 00:28:54.680 --> 00:28:59.230 align:middle line:84% desire to collect that into a movement. 00:28:59.230 --> 00:29:02.150 align:middle line:84% But I also have that same resistance. 00:29:02.150 --> 00:29:04.090 align:middle line:90% So if anybody has any ideas. 00:29:04.090 --> 00:29:10.240 align:middle line:90% 00:29:10.240 --> 00:29:11.230 align:middle line:90% Well, I'm not sure-- 00:29:11.230 --> 00:29:16.890 align:middle line:84% I think that's a great question, Annie, that you can't just 00:29:16.890 --> 00:29:20.880 align:middle line:84% erase privilege, and maybe a certain resistance to claiming 00:29:20.880 --> 00:29:25.590 align:middle line:84% a political space, especially here, in this country, where 00:29:25.590 --> 00:29:29.610 align:middle line:84% it's so easy to disclaim any kind of engaged 00:29:29.610 --> 00:29:30.750 align:middle line:90% political space. 00:29:30.750 --> 00:29:33.210 align:middle line:84% But for me, the question is difficult, 00:29:33.210 --> 00:29:34.500 align:middle line:90% because I don't know what-- 00:29:34.500 --> 00:29:36.660 align:middle line:84% we haven't come up with a definition 00:29:36.660 --> 00:29:38.580 align:middle line:90% of what political poetry is. 00:29:38.580 --> 00:29:41.190 align:middle line:84% I think that poems can function politically, 00:29:41.190 --> 00:29:44.760 align:middle line:84% and that I can function as a political poet. 00:29:44.760 --> 00:29:48.660 align:middle line:84% I can go and read my poems at a fundraiser for something 00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:52.260 align:middle line:84% specific that is a politic or cause that I support. 00:29:52.260 --> 00:29:56.010 align:middle line:84% And then I'm being, consciously, a political poet. 00:29:56.010 --> 00:29:59.250 align:middle line:84% And what I might choose to read at that particular gathering 00:29:59.250 --> 00:30:01.950 align:middle line:84% might be different from what I read last night, because I want 00:30:01.950 --> 00:30:04.590 align:middle line:84% to incite a different kind of relationship with the subject 00:30:04.590 --> 00:30:06.210 align:middle line:90% or with the audience. 00:30:06.210 --> 00:30:09.270 align:middle line:84% So for me, I'm not sure if there's a body of poetry 00:30:09.270 --> 00:30:11.820 align:middle line:84% that I can say, this is political poetry, 00:30:11.820 --> 00:30:14.910 align:middle line:90% and that's not political poetry. 00:30:14.910 --> 00:30:17.760 align:middle line:84% We did a class visit yesterday, and we 00:30:17.760 --> 00:30:18.960 align:middle line:90% talked about slam poetry. 00:30:18.960 --> 00:30:20.460 align:middle line:84% And one of the things that I thought 00:30:20.460 --> 00:30:23.940 align:middle line:84% about afterwards is that, what I didn't mention is that-- 00:30:23.940 --> 00:30:27.990 align:middle line:84% I was always talking about how, one, that's not my genre, 00:30:27.990 --> 00:30:29.460 align:middle line:90% but I do respect it. 00:30:29.460 --> 00:30:33.180 align:middle line:84% And that much of slam poetry, the topics are political. 00:30:33.180 --> 00:30:34.560 align:middle line:90% The topics are contemporary. 00:30:34.560 --> 00:30:35.310 align:middle line:90% They're political. 00:30:35.310 --> 00:30:36.990 align:middle line:90% They're immediate. 00:30:36.990 --> 00:30:40.260 align:middle line:84% And is that, then, a form of political poetry? 00:30:40.260 --> 00:30:42.180 align:middle line:84% But how is it political if it stays 00:30:42.180 --> 00:30:47.320 align:middle line:84% within the arena of the club where it's being performed? 00:30:47.320 --> 00:30:49.950 align:middle line:84% It's performed for a receptive audience 00:30:49.950 --> 00:30:52.050 align:middle line:84% of other political poets, and is not 00:30:52.050 --> 00:30:54.460 align:middle line:84% part of the discourse of the world. 00:30:54.460 --> 00:30:56.430 align:middle line:84% One of my favorite poets who I think 00:30:56.430 --> 00:30:58.440 align:middle line:84% is a political poet is Fanny Howe. 00:30:58.440 --> 00:31:01.200 align:middle line:84% And there's not a lot about Fanny Howe's work 00:31:01.200 --> 00:31:03.270 align:middle line:84% on the surface that you necessarily say, 00:31:03.270 --> 00:31:05.160 align:middle line:90% this is political poetry. 00:31:05.160 --> 00:31:07.500 align:middle line:84% But when I look at a book like The Wedding Dress, 00:31:07.500 --> 00:31:09.480 align:middle line:90% which is a book of essays-- 00:31:09.480 --> 00:31:12.210 align:middle line:84% and especially an essay that I love, 00:31:12.210 --> 00:31:14.670 align:middle line:84% and I use a lot, called "Bewilderment," where she's 00:31:14.670 --> 00:31:17.790 align:middle line:84% taking this ideal of bewilderment from Sufism, 00:31:17.790 --> 00:31:19.860 align:middle line:84% and she's thinking about bewilderment 00:31:19.860 --> 00:31:23.500 align:middle line:84% as this quest and this leading you into the question. 00:31:23.500 --> 00:31:25.710 align:middle line:84% And then she goes out of that and she-- 00:31:25.710 --> 00:31:28.770 align:middle line:84% at some point in that essay, she talks about, 00:31:28.770 --> 00:31:31.892 align:middle line:84% I'm writing this because, if someone who has no voice 00:31:31.892 --> 00:31:33.600 align:middle line:84% could have written this, they would have. 00:31:33.600 --> 00:31:36.390 align:middle line:84% And then she goes right back into these meditations 00:31:36.390 --> 00:31:40.530 align:middle line:84% on just this image of the forest, and the forest 00:31:40.530 --> 00:31:43.650 align:middle line:84% as being this place that where not only is something-- 00:31:43.650 --> 00:31:45.210 align:middle line:84% is the possibility of being lost, 00:31:45.210 --> 00:31:48.000 align:middle line:84% but there's the possibility of rediscovery. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:52.980 align:middle line:84% To me, these are the politics that are at play in my life 00:31:52.980 --> 00:31:54.510 align:middle line:90% right now. 00:31:54.510 --> 00:31:56.550 align:middle line:90% And privilege is relative. 00:31:56.550 --> 00:31:58.200 align:middle line:90% In one place, I'm privileged. 00:31:58.200 --> 00:31:59.430 align:middle line:90% In another place, I'm not. 00:31:59.430 --> 00:32:02.040 align:middle line:84% In one place, I have some semblance of power. 00:32:02.040 --> 00:32:06.390 align:middle line:84% In another place or position in my daily life, I don't. 00:32:06.390 --> 00:32:10.630 align:middle line:84% And I'm always conscious of that exchange. 00:32:10.630 --> 00:32:13.440 align:middle line:84% So for me, if the work is conscious of, 00:32:13.440 --> 00:32:16.200 align:middle line:84% also, those exchanges, to me, it gets really kind of-- 00:32:16.200 --> 00:32:17.830 align:middle line:84% I'm not trying to evade the question. 00:32:17.830 --> 00:32:20.880 align:middle line:84% But I don't think that there is necessarily 00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:23.190 align:middle line:84% a political poetry that functions 00:32:23.190 --> 00:32:27.120 align:middle line:84% outside of what any other poetry does, for me-- that it's 00:32:27.120 --> 00:32:30.060 align:middle line:84% how the poetry is used and who it's addressed to 00:32:30.060 --> 00:32:31.230 align:middle line:90% at any given time. 00:32:31.230 --> 00:32:35.040 align:middle line:84% But I think that there are politics in something 00:32:35.040 --> 00:32:37.395 align:middle line:84% like Fanny Howe's "Bewilderment," 00:32:37.395 --> 00:32:39.270 align:middle line:84% or throughout the other essays of The Wedding 00:32:39.270 --> 00:32:42.480 align:middle line:84% Dress, where the intersections are 00:32:42.480 --> 00:32:45.330 align:middle line:84% between meditations on the spiritual, 00:32:45.330 --> 00:32:47.880 align:middle line:90% meditations on history. 00:32:47.880 --> 00:32:49.830 align:middle line:84% Interestingly enough, she does a lot 00:32:49.830 --> 00:32:53.730 align:middle line:84% of meditation on class and race without renaming it 00:32:53.730 --> 00:32:57.390 align:middle line:84% in the same paradigm that keeps us in the false-- 00:32:57.390 --> 00:32:59.895 align:middle line:84% to me, the false mythologies of class and race. 00:32:59.895 --> 00:33:03.690 align:middle line:90% 00:33:03.690 --> 00:33:06.060 align:middle line:90% Oh, I agree. 00:33:06.060 --> 00:33:06.870 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] to do. 00:33:06.870 --> 00:33:08.940 align:middle line:90% No, I was just saying I agree. 00:33:08.940 --> 00:33:12.070 align:middle line:90% 00:33:12.070 --> 00:33:13.660 align:middle line:84% You are passionate about politics. 00:33:13.660 --> 00:33:15.250 align:middle line:90% I am passionate about politics. 00:33:15.250 --> 00:33:16.750 align:middle line:90% I know you're [INAUDIBLE]. 00:33:16.750 --> 00:33:17.320 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:33:17.320 --> 00:33:22.480 align:middle line:84% And to me, one of the things I really liked about-- 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:26.830 align:middle line:84% or made me think, when you were talking, 00:33:26.830 --> 00:33:31.360 align:middle line:90% is Patricia Hill Collins' work. 00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:33.100 align:middle line:84% In that Black Feminist Thought, there's 00:33:33.100 --> 00:33:36.400 align:middle line:84% that part where she talks about not the either/or, 00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:40.030 align:middle line:84% but the both/and, both privileged and oppressed. 00:33:40.030 --> 00:33:43.990 align:middle line:84% And that we're always in that matrix of domination, 00:33:43.990 --> 00:33:47.320 align:middle line:84% and that there's always a power relationship there. 00:33:47.320 --> 00:33:51.070 align:middle line:84% And where I walk in, in one situation, 00:33:51.070 --> 00:33:54.270 align:middle line:90% I'm completely privileged-- 00:33:54.270 --> 00:33:56.430 align:middle line:84% or not completely, but relatively privileged. 00:33:56.430 --> 00:34:01.050 align:middle line:84% And in another context, totally not. 00:34:01.050 --> 00:34:02.610 align:middle line:90% One thought I have about-- 00:34:02.610 --> 00:34:04.380 align:middle line:90% I mean, another perspective. 00:34:04.380 --> 00:34:09.780 align:middle line:84% Yeah, defining political poetry, that could take a lifetime. 00:34:09.780 --> 00:34:13.170 align:middle line:84% But another thought I have is even-- 00:34:13.170 --> 00:34:19.110 align:middle line:84% I mean, what if a poem, or any set of words, 00:34:19.110 --> 00:34:24.449 align:middle line:84% acts, by not ever addressing anything-- 00:34:24.449 --> 00:34:26.580 align:middle line:84% let's say somebody never addresses 00:34:26.580 --> 00:34:32.159 align:middle line:84% any of these issues whatsoever, consciously or unconsciously. 00:34:32.159 --> 00:34:36.239 align:middle line:90% Is that not a politics? 00:34:36.239 --> 00:34:38.580 align:middle line:90% Is that not also a politics? 00:34:38.580 --> 00:34:41.699 align:middle line:90% Is there a reactionary poetry? 00:34:41.699 --> 00:34:43.590 align:middle line:90% Is that not political poetry? 00:34:43.590 --> 00:34:46.620 align:middle line:84% Is there language that isn't political? 00:34:46.620 --> 00:34:51.310 align:middle line:84% Is there a way of speaking that does not demarcate meaning, 00:34:51.310 --> 00:34:53.639 align:middle line:90% and as such, hegemony? 00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:57.980 align:middle line:90% 00:34:57.980 --> 00:35:01.370 align:middle line:90% Somebody can go and give-- 00:35:01.370 --> 00:35:06.560 align:middle line:84% marvelous, great, mainstream poets who I adore-- 00:35:06.560 --> 00:35:08.810 align:middle line:90% adore their work. 00:35:08.810 --> 00:35:10.380 align:middle line:90% But is it not also-- 00:35:10.380 --> 00:35:14.570 align:middle line:84% is there not also a politics there? 00:35:14.570 --> 00:35:18.020 align:middle line:84% Not just what one makes an issue, 00:35:18.020 --> 00:35:24.040 align:middle line:84% but when one makes a non-issue by not speaking it. 00:35:24.040 --> 00:35:27.370 align:middle line:90% I don't know what the answer is. 00:35:27.370 --> 00:35:29.380 align:middle line:84% It's easier to ask the rhetorical question 00:35:29.380 --> 00:35:31.855 align:middle line:90% than to provide the answer. 00:35:31.855 --> 00:35:35.220 align:middle line:90% 00:35:35.220 --> 00:35:38.240 align:middle line:90% So with that-- 00:35:38.240 --> 00:35:39.890 align:middle line:90% I can say something. 00:35:39.890 --> 00:35:42.170 align:middle line:90% I love definitions. 00:35:42.170 --> 00:35:44.660 align:middle line:90% I'm not afraid of them. 00:35:44.660 --> 00:35:48.170 align:middle line:84% I mean, I guess, when I think of political poetry-- 00:35:48.170 --> 00:35:49.610 align:middle line:90% good political poetry-- 00:35:49.610 --> 00:35:52.790 align:middle line:84% I think of poems, which I feel like you all right, 00:35:52.790 --> 00:35:58.490 align:middle line:84% where you can see people, or the speaker, whatever-- 00:35:58.490 --> 00:35:59.600 align:middle line:90% yourselves-- 00:35:59.600 --> 00:36:05.870 align:middle line:84% both as prisoners of history and as, like, human consciousness, 00:36:05.870 --> 00:36:07.910 align:middle line:90% or human processors. 00:36:07.910 --> 00:36:11.360 align:middle line:84% And what I like about all of your poems 00:36:11.360 --> 00:36:14.960 align:middle line:84% is that I feel like you go back and forth between that. 00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:17.660 align:middle line:84% So there's the wedding, but then there's 00:36:17.660 --> 00:36:21.980 align:middle line:84% the bomb, and that they are connected. 00:36:21.980 --> 00:36:27.070 align:middle line:84% There's a personal story of loss, 00:36:27.070 --> 00:36:29.560 align:middle line:84% but then there's also racial politics. 00:36:29.560 --> 00:36:33.780 align:middle line:90% And there's just-- 00:36:33.780 --> 00:36:36.030 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:36:36.030 --> 00:36:38.310 align:middle line:84% There's poverty, but there's also 00:36:38.310 --> 00:36:42.800 align:middle line:84% this kind of almost religious consciousness. 00:36:42.800 --> 00:36:43.670 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:36:43.670 --> 00:36:46.190 align:middle line:84% That's what I like in your work, and that's 00:36:46.190 --> 00:36:49.280 align:middle line:84% why I would call you political poets, is that you see-- 00:36:49.280 --> 00:36:54.230 align:middle line:84% you can see us, as prisoners of history, 00:36:54.230 --> 00:36:55.730 align:middle line:90% with a lot of compassion. 00:36:55.730 --> 00:37:03.528 align:middle line:90% 00:37:03.528 --> 00:37:04.570 align:middle line:90% That was kind of intense. 00:37:04.570 --> 00:37:08.560 align:middle line:84% Should we-- should we do a different topic now? 00:37:08.560 --> 00:37:12.800 align:middle line:90% 00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:16.220 align:middle line:84% You've all used photographs or artwork in conjunction 00:37:16.220 --> 00:37:18.860 align:middle line:90% to some of your poems. 00:37:18.860 --> 00:37:22.880 align:middle line:84% In Brandon's, The Alps, art and empty frames, 00:37:22.880 --> 00:37:27.730 align:middle line:84% maybe where pictures might go or might have been. 00:37:27.730 --> 00:37:29.800 align:middle line:84% I'm curious if you can talk about why 00:37:29.800 --> 00:37:32.650 align:middle line:84% you bring visual images into some of your poems. 00:37:32.650 --> 00:37:36.200 align:middle line:90% 00:37:36.200 --> 00:37:39.650 align:middle line:84% I'll start by saying that this book, The Alps, 00:37:39.650 --> 00:37:42.170 align:middle line:84% actually started out as only images. 00:37:42.170 --> 00:37:45.808 align:middle line:84% It was-- for people who haven't actually 00:37:45.808 --> 00:37:47.350 align:middle line:84% seen the book, in the middle, there's 00:37:47.350 --> 00:37:51.180 align:middle line:84% this 30 or so-page section that has 00:37:51.180 --> 00:37:55.650 align:middle line:84% these blank squares followed by these really short lyric poems. 00:37:55.650 --> 00:38:00.530 align:middle line:84% And the blank squares are 3 inch-by-3 inch, 00:38:00.530 --> 00:38:02.900 align:middle line:84% and they represent images that actually existed. 00:38:02.900 --> 00:38:04.190 align:middle line:90% There were about 300 of them. 00:38:04.190 --> 00:38:09.290 align:middle line:84% And I was gathering images of the Alps, and life in the Alps, 00:38:09.290 --> 00:38:13.760 align:middle line:84% from old issues of National Geographic, and books, 00:38:13.760 --> 00:38:15.980 align:middle line:84% and photographs from my family, and just cutting them 00:38:15.980 --> 00:38:18.230 align:middle line:90% into 3 inch-by-3 inch squares. 00:38:18.230 --> 00:38:22.670 align:middle line:84% And that was going to be the Alps. 00:38:22.670 --> 00:38:25.280 align:middle line:84% I had originally planned it as an installation that was just 00:38:25.280 --> 00:38:27.860 align:middle line:84% going to be mounted on a wall in a straight line, 00:38:27.860 --> 00:38:31.880 align:middle line:90% and curve around the ceiling. 00:38:31.880 --> 00:38:33.620 align:middle line:84% The fact that it's a book, I think, 00:38:33.620 --> 00:38:37.850 align:middle line:84% is to a certain extent, proof of the failure 00:38:37.850 --> 00:38:41.330 align:middle line:90% of that visual idea. 00:38:41.330 --> 00:38:44.270 align:middle line:84% Lot of the work I used to do was visual. 00:38:44.270 --> 00:38:48.410 align:middle line:84% And growing up, and then in undergraduate school, 00:38:48.410 --> 00:38:52.850 align:middle line:84% and then after undergraduate school, 00:38:52.850 --> 00:38:55.130 align:middle line:84% I was primarily doing visual work. 00:38:55.130 --> 00:38:58.550 align:middle line:84% And slowly, I was adding text to that. 00:38:58.550 --> 00:39:03.140 align:middle line:84% And ultimately, the text took over. 00:39:03.140 --> 00:39:05.510 align:middle line:84% Again, part of that was because I 00:39:05.510 --> 00:39:07.340 align:middle line:84% wasn't actually a very good artist-- 00:39:07.340 --> 00:39:08.930 align:middle line:84% or at least, I didn't feel like I was. 00:39:08.930 --> 00:39:14.480 align:middle line:84% So the text was emerging from that failure. 00:39:14.480 --> 00:39:17.760 align:middle line:84% Became increasingly interested in what the text was doing. 00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.500 align:middle line:84% And then the poems broke out of that. 00:39:19.500 --> 00:39:21.410 align:middle line:84% And they started to become actual poems 00:39:21.410 --> 00:39:23.900 align:middle line:90% that I could call poems. 00:39:23.900 --> 00:39:26.510 align:middle line:84% This project is a way to sort of work that into it. 00:39:26.510 --> 00:39:29.240 align:middle line:84% And obviously, there's a few photographs 00:39:29.240 --> 00:39:32.880 align:middle line:84% that still remain throughout the book. 00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:35.420 align:middle line:84% The blank squares were, one, a way 00:39:35.420 --> 00:39:38.740 align:middle line:90% to still sort of include that. 00:39:38.740 --> 00:39:41.030 align:middle line:84% This project in particular was, I 00:39:41.030 --> 00:39:49.010 align:middle line:84% invited 20 or so people to respond to 20 or so images, 00:39:49.010 --> 00:39:50.330 align:middle line:90% I guess. 00:39:50.330 --> 00:39:53.840 align:middle line:84% And literally, I gave them these images. 00:39:53.840 --> 00:39:56.750 align:middle line:84% Everyone except for one person was a poet. 00:39:56.750 --> 00:40:00.230 align:middle line:84% And I asked them to literally tell me what they saw. 00:40:00.230 --> 00:40:04.160 align:middle line:84% If it was a picture of a girl running down a slope of ice, 00:40:04.160 --> 00:40:06.080 align:middle line:84% they would write that, in whatever words 00:40:06.080 --> 00:40:07.580 align:middle line:90% they wanted to use. 00:40:07.580 --> 00:40:11.360 align:middle line:84% I had, maybe, 50 pages of responses that I whittled down 00:40:11.360 --> 00:40:13.340 align:middle line:90% into these really small poems. 00:40:13.340 --> 00:40:15.470 align:middle line:84% So all of the words in that section 00:40:15.470 --> 00:40:18.380 align:middle line:84% were written by these other people. 00:40:18.380 --> 00:40:20.180 align:middle line:90% And it was sort of a way-- 00:40:20.180 --> 00:40:22.970 align:middle line:84% I was sort of being dictatorial in that, and that I took 00:40:22.970 --> 00:40:25.538 align:middle line:84% their words and just kind of wrang whatever life I 00:40:25.538 --> 00:40:26.330 align:middle line:90% wanted out of them. 00:40:26.330 --> 00:40:30.350 align:middle line:84% But it was also a way to invite this community of people 00:40:30.350 --> 00:40:33.110 align:middle line:84% that I really admired to take part in the book 00:40:33.110 --> 00:40:34.430 align:middle line:90% by way of these images-- 00:40:34.430 --> 00:40:37.670 align:middle line:84% that we were all communally looking at these things 00:40:37.670 --> 00:40:39.080 align:middle line:84% together, and thinking about what 00:40:39.080 --> 00:40:41.930 align:middle line:84% it was that we were looking at, and that all of that energy 00:40:41.930 --> 00:40:45.380 align:middle line:84% would somehow make its way into the pages of this thing. 00:40:45.380 --> 00:40:48.020 align:middle line:84% The visual is always very important to me. 00:40:48.020 --> 00:40:51.170 align:middle line:84% Whether or not that manifests in the writing 00:40:51.170 --> 00:40:53.450 align:middle line:84% or in the format of the poems themselves, 00:40:53.450 --> 00:40:55.680 align:middle line:84% it's something I'm always thinking about. 00:40:55.680 --> 00:40:59.730 align:middle line:90% 00:40:59.730 --> 00:41:00.640 align:middle line:90% Can I ask a question? 00:41:00.640 --> 00:41:02.850 align:middle line:84% Do you mean "rang," R-A-N-G, or W-R-A-N-G? 00:41:02.850 --> 00:41:03.913 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:41:03.913 --> 00:41:10.330 align:middle line:90% 00:41:10.330 --> 00:41:12.670 align:middle line:84% The images that I have in the house-- 00:41:12.670 --> 00:41:17.020 align:middle line:84% A Toast in the House of Friends are graffiti pictures that 00:41:17.020 --> 00:41:21.280 align:middle line:84% are documentations my son took of his graffiti work, 00:41:21.280 --> 00:41:21.820 align:middle line:90% which is-- 00:41:21.820 --> 00:41:24.850 align:middle line:84% I didn't know it at the time, because I wasn't really that 00:41:24.850 --> 00:41:26.710 align:middle line:84% aware of the whole graft culture, 00:41:26.710 --> 00:41:29.290 align:middle line:84% is really very common, is that writers 00:41:29.290 --> 00:41:31.270 align:middle line:90% will document their art. 00:41:31.270 --> 00:41:35.350 align:middle line:84% And they will put it online, or just have all these photographs 00:41:35.350 --> 00:41:36.310 align:middle line:90% or scrapbooks. 00:41:36.310 --> 00:41:38.830 align:middle line:84% Because by nature, it's public art, and it's illegal, 00:41:38.830 --> 00:41:41.410 align:middle line:84% so it's going to be erased sooner or later. 00:41:41.410 --> 00:41:44.440 align:middle line:84% It has a short kind of physical life. 00:41:44.440 --> 00:41:46.180 align:middle line:84% So I came across all of these photographs 00:41:46.180 --> 00:41:47.410 align:middle line:90% he had after he died. 00:41:47.410 --> 00:41:50.110 align:middle line:84% And I was starting to think about graffiti 00:41:50.110 --> 00:41:56.560 align:middle line:84% as elegiac, in a way, so that the photographs. 00:41:56.560 --> 00:41:59.110 align:middle line:84% And the book, for me, became a conversation 00:41:59.110 --> 00:42:04.450 align:middle line:84% with this idea about the public elegy, and that graffiti, 00:42:04.450 --> 00:42:09.400 align:middle line:84% both by, I guess, its messiness, and because it's insurgent, 00:42:09.400 --> 00:42:13.930 align:middle line:84% and it's illegal, that it really represents these bodies that 00:42:13.930 --> 00:42:15.400 align:middle line:90% are really political bodies-- 00:42:15.400 --> 00:42:19.780 align:middle line:84% these bodies that are usurping political space and are-- 00:42:19.780 --> 00:42:21.490 align:middle line:90% so it's really controversial. 00:42:21.490 --> 00:42:24.460 align:middle line:84% But then I was thinking about the unintelligibility of it, 00:42:24.460 --> 00:42:25.510 align:middle line:90% too-- 00:42:25.510 --> 00:42:28.720 align:middle line:84% that I had to learn how to read different scrawls-- 00:42:28.720 --> 00:42:29.530 align:middle line:90% not scrawls. 00:42:29.530 --> 00:42:33.220 align:middle line:84% Different fonts, I guess, and styles, et cetera. 00:42:33.220 --> 00:42:35.740 align:middle line:90% They're all so individualized. 00:42:35.740 --> 00:42:38.680 align:middle line:84% And so then I began to just think about public naming. 00:42:38.680 --> 00:42:41.590 align:middle line:84% They're all-- and basically, graffiti is someone's name. 00:42:41.590 --> 00:42:44.590 align:middle line:84% They're all somebody's name or their tag. 00:42:44.590 --> 00:42:48.140 align:middle line:84% And that's exactly what it is, whether it's a small scrawl 00:42:48.140 --> 00:42:53.260 align:middle line:84% or it's a huge kind of multicolored, almost mural-like 00:42:53.260 --> 00:42:53.770 align:middle line:90% thing. 00:42:53.770 --> 00:42:56.062 align:middle line:84% So I was just thinking, wow, that's really interesting, 00:42:56.062 --> 00:42:59.800 align:middle line:84% that there's this temporal nature 00:42:59.800 --> 00:43:01.810 align:middle line:90% that it's going to disappear. 00:43:01.810 --> 00:43:03.460 align:middle line:90% And then it also moves. 00:43:03.460 --> 00:43:05.890 align:middle line:84% And I was thinking, well, why do people paint trains? 00:43:05.890 --> 00:43:09.640 align:middle line:84% Because, well, that's how you move your art, 00:43:09.640 --> 00:43:11.470 align:middle line:84% because the trains will move right along 00:43:11.470 --> 00:43:12.640 align:middle line:90% with the graffiti on it. 00:43:12.640 --> 00:43:15.610 align:middle line:84% So that particular section is pretty contained. 00:43:15.610 --> 00:43:17.530 align:middle line:84% I haven't done a lot of collaboration 00:43:17.530 --> 00:43:19.510 align:middle line:84% with visual images, but I'd like to do more. 00:43:19.510 --> 00:43:26.010 align:middle line:90% 00:43:26.010 --> 00:43:30.930 align:middle line:84% I've been asked questions about visual nature of my work. 00:43:30.930 --> 00:43:35.880 align:middle line:84% And at first, I was eager to deny that there was any. 00:43:35.880 --> 00:43:41.520 align:middle line:90% And it's kind of ridiculous. 00:43:41.520 --> 00:43:43.470 align:middle line:84% My First Painting Will be The Accuser. 00:43:43.470 --> 00:43:45.570 align:middle line:90% It's in the title. 00:43:45.570 --> 00:43:48.240 align:middle line:90% And my sister did the artwork. 00:43:48.240 --> 00:43:53.340 align:middle line:84% But quite aside from that, the "How Many of You 00:43:53.340 --> 00:43:57.580 align:middle line:90% Are You" volume is-- 00:43:57.580 --> 00:44:03.480 align:middle line:90% that chapbook is, to me, I did-- 00:44:03.480 --> 00:44:09.360 align:middle line:84% I took the photographs in West Virginia, in Morgantown. 00:44:09.360 --> 00:44:14.590 align:middle line:84% And actually, I did that for a political science project 00:44:14.590 --> 00:44:19.015 align:middle line:84% that I was doing as just attendant work, kind 00:44:19.015 --> 00:44:22.360 align:middle line:90% of in the vein-- 00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:26.410 align:middle line:84% or not that I am equal to it, but Let Us Now 00:44:26.410 --> 00:44:28.990 align:middle line:90% Praise Famous Men. 00:44:28.990 --> 00:44:35.050 align:middle line:84% In an attempt to kind of update that, think about that. 00:44:35.050 --> 00:44:40.520 align:middle line:84% And then I put those photographs aside and carried on. 00:44:40.520 --> 00:44:45.850 align:middle line:84% And then a poetry project came out of that. 00:44:45.850 --> 00:44:48.610 align:middle line:90% I don't know if-- 00:44:48.610 --> 00:44:53.890 align:middle line:84% I don't think of the visual as separate 00:44:53.890 --> 00:45:03.640 align:middle line:84% from any other material, sensory material, or any materiality 00:45:03.640 --> 00:45:05.450 align:middle line:90% of the world. 00:45:05.450 --> 00:45:10.120 align:middle line:84% So I don't know if I think of language as not being adequate 00:45:10.120 --> 00:45:13.510 align:middle line:84% to the task, so perhaps it can never 00:45:13.510 --> 00:45:15.310 align:middle line:90% apprehend the world fully. 00:45:15.310 --> 00:45:18.445 align:middle line:90% Nothing can, in that sense. 00:45:18.445 --> 00:45:21.730 align:middle line:90% 00:45:21.730 --> 00:45:30.410 align:middle line:84% But it's just one more amazing way 00:45:30.410 --> 00:45:33.990 align:middle line:90% of conversing with the world. 00:45:33.990 --> 00:45:38.240 align:middle line:84% And in this case, it was a weird project, 00:45:38.240 --> 00:45:42.950 align:middle line:84% because they weren't photos that someone else took. 00:45:42.950 --> 00:45:48.110 align:middle line:84% So it was me looking at photos that I had 00:45:48.110 --> 00:45:50.580 align:middle line:90% taken at another point in time. 00:45:50.580 --> 00:45:53.990 align:middle line:84% So that it was also me looking at my own perspective 00:45:53.990 --> 00:45:56.900 align:middle line:84% and like, yeah, which was kind of a freak-out. 00:45:56.900 --> 00:45:58.790 align:middle line:84% It was, like, a mirror of a mirror of a-- 00:45:58.790 --> 00:46:01.455 align:middle line:90% you know? 00:46:01.455 --> 00:46:04.190 align:middle line:84% And I don't know where that's going, really. 00:46:04.190 --> 00:46:10.530 align:middle line:84% But that's one way in which the visual works there. 00:46:10.530 --> 00:46:11.030 align:middle line:90% Great. 00:46:11.030 --> 00:46:13.970 align:middle line:90% Thank you for those answers. 00:46:13.970 --> 00:46:17.480 align:middle line:84% Do you have any interests or activities outside of poetry 00:46:17.480 --> 00:46:20.420 align:middle line:84% that you feel are essential to your poetry, 00:46:20.420 --> 00:46:22.820 align:middle line:84% or augment it in an important way? 00:46:22.820 --> 00:46:25.775 align:middle line:84% Like, Philip, I know you're in a musical band, the Howling Hex. 00:46:25.775 --> 00:46:28.150 align:middle line:90% 00:46:28.150 --> 00:46:28.650 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:46:28.650 --> 00:46:32.100 align:middle line:90% 00:46:32.100 --> 00:46:33.300 align:middle line:90% No, absolutely. 00:46:33.300 --> 00:46:36.910 align:middle line:84% I mean, the music and form-- well, 00:46:36.910 --> 00:46:40.670 align:middle line:84% the poetry started my involvement with the band. 00:46:40.670 --> 00:46:45.340 align:middle line:84% But now, the music has always informed-- 00:46:45.340 --> 00:46:49.473 align:middle line:84% sound is-- I mean, if I'm going to give anything primary, 00:46:49.473 --> 00:46:50.890 align:middle line:84% of all of the sensory apparatuses, 00:46:50.890 --> 00:46:55.570 align:middle line:84% sound has always been, to me, the most amazing. 00:46:55.570 --> 00:47:04.540 align:middle line:84% And music, there's so much going on to just listen, sometimes, 00:47:04.540 --> 00:47:07.850 align:middle line:90% or to make it. 00:47:07.850 --> 00:47:11.080 align:middle line:90% I don't know if there's-- 00:47:11.080 --> 00:47:15.380 align:middle line:84% meditation's another one, I would 00:47:15.380 --> 00:47:22.500 align:middle line:84% say, for me, which is just getting clear on things, which 00:47:22.500 --> 00:47:23.730 align:middle line:90% I don't know if I ever do. 00:47:23.730 --> 00:47:26.670 align:middle line:90% But that's it for me. 00:47:26.670 --> 00:47:29.600 align:middle line:90% 00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:31.350 align:middle line:90% The idea of music-- 00:47:31.350 --> 00:47:32.970 align:middle line:90% this is not about me. 00:47:32.970 --> 00:47:36.230 align:middle line:84% But the idea of music, I've been really excited 00:47:36.230 --> 00:47:41.270 align:middle line:84% about this musicologist James Currie. 00:47:41.270 --> 00:47:45.590 align:middle line:84% There's actually a local artist who 00:47:45.590 --> 00:47:49.420 align:middle line:84% puts together this online magazine 00:47:49.420 --> 00:47:52.480 align:middle line:84% space, collaborative space, called Trickhouse. 00:47:52.480 --> 00:47:57.490 align:middle line:84% And if you don't know it, it's fantastic. trickhouse.org. 00:47:57.490 --> 00:47:59.530 align:middle line:84% The most recent issue has this interview 00:47:59.530 --> 00:48:01.630 align:middle line:84% with this musicologist, James Currie, 00:48:01.630 --> 00:48:03.250 align:middle line:90% who I've never heard of before. 00:48:03.250 --> 00:48:06.460 align:middle line:84% And I don't know very much about the theory of music. 00:48:06.460 --> 00:48:09.580 align:middle line:84% But, Philip, it's something you should definitely check out. 00:48:09.580 --> 00:48:12.550 align:middle line:90% 00:48:12.550 --> 00:48:17.320 align:middle line:84% He talks about-- in very rich, elaborate, and very complex 00:48:17.320 --> 00:48:19.750 align:middle line:84% language, he talks about our relationship to music. 00:48:19.750 --> 00:48:24.250 align:middle line:84% And I sort of read it, also, as a relationship to poetry, which 00:48:24.250 --> 00:48:27.020 align:middle line:84% is something totally different, but there are some resonances 00:48:27.020 --> 00:48:27.520 align:middle line:90% there. 00:48:27.520 --> 00:48:30.790 align:middle line:90% 00:48:30.790 --> 00:48:33.640 align:middle line:84% He wrote this very long essay called "Music After All." 00:48:33.640 --> 00:48:37.030 align:middle line:84% And then he talks a little bit about how 00:48:37.030 --> 00:48:39.700 align:middle line:84% our relationship to music actually takes us away 00:48:39.700 --> 00:48:45.040 align:middle line:84% from the human, how it brings us into this actually really 00:48:45.040 --> 00:48:48.430 align:middle line:84% wonderful, generative realm of personality 00:48:48.430 --> 00:48:50.620 align:middle line:84% in which we can function in a way that's 00:48:50.620 --> 00:48:52.300 align:middle line:90% free from being human. 00:48:52.300 --> 00:48:55.352 align:middle line:84% And that's actually a really awful paraphrase 00:48:55.352 --> 00:48:56.560 align:middle line:90% of what he's actually saying. 00:48:56.560 --> 00:49:01.310 align:middle line:84% But it's something that I started to think of in relation 00:49:01.310 --> 00:49:01.810 align:middle line:90% to poetry. 00:49:01.810 --> 00:49:06.340 align:middle line:84% Because I'm constantly wondering why I'm writing. 00:49:06.340 --> 00:49:08.140 align:middle line:84% And when I read, and something hits me 00:49:08.140 --> 00:49:13.278 align:middle line:84% in a certain way, and that bolt of energy courses 00:49:13.278 --> 00:49:14.320 align:middle line:90% through me, what is that? 00:49:14.320 --> 00:49:15.403 align:middle line:90% I don't know what that is. 00:49:15.403 --> 00:49:16.720 align:middle line:90% Is that me being human? 00:49:16.720 --> 00:49:21.260 align:middle line:84% Is that connecting, again, in a political way, or a social way, 00:49:21.260 --> 00:49:23.290 align:middle line:90% or what's happening there? 00:49:23.290 --> 00:49:26.845 align:middle line:84% I recommend reading that interview as a starting place. 00:49:26.845 --> 00:49:33.030 align:middle line:90% 00:49:33.030 --> 00:49:34.200 align:middle line:90% Ditto about music. 00:49:34.200 --> 00:49:36.520 align:middle line:90% It's very important to me. 00:49:36.520 --> 00:49:38.640 align:middle line:84% Other than that, I just basically write and read. 00:49:38.640 --> 00:49:42.030 align:middle line:84% I enjoy bowling, and Project Runway. 00:49:42.030 --> 00:49:46.650 align:middle line:84% And television, unfortunately, has become something 00:49:46.650 --> 00:49:48.300 align:middle line:90% I enjoy quite a bit lately. 00:49:48.300 --> 00:49:49.530 align:middle line:90% And tennis. 00:49:49.530 --> 00:49:53.050 align:middle line:90% So those are my interests. 00:49:53.050 --> 00:49:53.550 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:49:53.550 --> 00:49:56.280 align:middle line:90% Oh, we have-- yes, I have. 00:49:56.280 --> 00:49:59.550 align:middle line:84% Both-- can I speak for us in this circumstance? 00:49:59.550 --> 00:50:02.220 align:middle line:84% Brandon and I have also agreed that The Hills 00:50:02.220 --> 00:50:05.970 align:middle line:84% is an important influence on our poetics-- 00:50:05.970 --> 00:50:08.490 align:middle line:90% the television show. 00:50:08.490 --> 00:50:12.060 align:middle line:84% Much based-- my theory is because there's 00:50:12.060 --> 00:50:15.810 align:middle line:84% great spaces of silence, or at least spaciness. 00:50:15.810 --> 00:50:19.587 align:middle line:90% 00:50:19.587 --> 00:50:21.670 align:middle line:84% Well, we have time for a couple of more questions. 00:50:21.670 --> 00:50:25.583 align:middle line:84% Are there any from the audience that-- 00:50:25.583 --> 00:50:27.000 align:middle line:84% anything you'd like to talk about? 00:50:27.000 --> 00:50:32.270 align:middle line:90% 00:50:32.270 --> 00:50:34.910 align:middle line:84% Do the poets have questions for each other? 00:50:34.910 --> 00:50:42.420 align:middle line:90% 00:50:42.420 --> 00:50:42.920 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:50:42.920 --> 00:50:46.390 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:50:46.390 --> 00:50:49.120 align:middle line:84% You mentioned the mainstream poets that you admire. 00:50:49.120 --> 00:50:51.490 align:middle line:90% Who might some of those be? 00:50:51.490 --> 00:50:52.360 align:middle line:90% Mainstream poets. 00:50:52.360 --> 00:50:55.090 align:middle line:84% Which-- who are some of those you admire? 00:50:55.090 --> 00:50:56.650 align:middle line:90% Living or dead? 00:50:56.650 --> 00:50:57.400 align:middle line:90% Either way. 00:50:57.400 --> 00:50:58.870 align:middle line:90% Oh, OK. 00:50:58.870 --> 00:50:59.500 align:middle line:90% Oh, good. 00:50:59.500 --> 00:51:00.620 align:middle line:90% Phew. 00:51:00.620 --> 00:51:03.220 align:middle line:90% That makes it much easier. 00:51:03.220 --> 00:51:06.610 align:middle line:84% Well, most anything in the Norton Anthology is-- 00:51:06.610 --> 00:51:07.690 align:middle line:90% no. 00:51:07.690 --> 00:51:08.660 align:middle line:90% I'll narrow it down. 00:51:08.660 --> 00:51:10.473 align:middle line:90% That's not fair. 00:51:10.473 --> 00:51:11.140 align:middle line:90% That's not fair. 00:51:11.140 --> 00:51:14.760 align:middle line:90% 00:51:14.760 --> 00:51:20.280 align:middle line:84% I've caught some heat from the experimental-- 00:51:20.280 --> 00:51:22.362 align:middle line:90% some of them. 00:51:22.362 --> 00:51:26.130 align:middle line:84% Poets have to fight about something, right? 00:51:26.130 --> 00:51:28.245 align:middle line:90% For liking Robert Lowell. 00:51:28.245 --> 00:51:31.950 align:middle line:90% 00:51:31.950 --> 00:51:34.470 align:middle line:84% It's really getting dangerous out there. 00:51:34.470 --> 00:51:35.785 align:middle line:90% And I like Robert Lowell. 00:51:35.785 --> 00:51:36.285 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:51:36.285 --> 00:51:39.810 align:middle line:90% 00:51:39.810 --> 00:51:43.260 align:middle line:84% I think that he's tremendously skilled. 00:51:43.260 --> 00:51:47.760 align:middle line:84% And yet his notebooks, there's a sense of the naturalness 00:51:47.760 --> 00:51:52.260 align:middle line:84% of a voice, but at the same time, 00:51:52.260 --> 00:51:55.560 align:middle line:84% is tremendously skilled at this practice. 00:51:55.560 --> 00:51:57.900 align:middle line:84% And there's something horrifying about his work. 00:51:57.900 --> 00:52:00.690 align:middle line:90% I'm not talking about his life. 00:52:00.690 --> 00:52:03.270 align:middle line:90% And yeah. 00:52:03.270 --> 00:52:05.970 align:middle line:90% So that's one. 00:52:05.970 --> 00:52:09.210 align:middle line:90% Emily Dickinson, I like her. 00:52:09.210 --> 00:52:12.740 align:middle line:90% 00:52:12.740 --> 00:52:16.197 align:middle line:84% Everything, when I-- every time I go to her poems, 00:52:16.197 --> 00:52:17.405 align:middle line:90% there's something else there. 00:52:17.405 --> 00:52:20.360 align:middle line:90% 00:52:20.360 --> 00:52:22.600 align:middle line:84% I don't know if she's mainstream, though, even 00:52:22.600 --> 00:52:24.250 align:middle line:90% though she is canonized. 00:52:24.250 --> 00:52:28.160 align:middle line:90% 00:52:28.160 --> 00:52:29.690 align:middle line:90% Those are a couple. 00:52:29.690 --> 00:52:30.620 align:middle line:90% I could keep going. 00:52:30.620 --> 00:52:32.890 align:middle line:90% George Meredith. 00:52:32.890 --> 00:52:34.300 align:middle line:90% George Meredith is great. 00:52:34.300 --> 00:52:35.980 align:middle line:90% Modern Love? 00:52:35.980 --> 00:52:36.970 align:middle line:90% I love that. 00:52:36.970 --> 00:52:39.880 align:middle line:90% I love Modern Love. 00:52:39.880 --> 00:52:40.420 align:middle line:90% Anyway. 00:52:40.420 --> 00:52:41.490 align:middle line:90% All right, I'll stop. 00:52:41.490 --> 00:52:43.620 align:middle line:84% I could keep going, but [INAUDIBLE].. 00:52:43.620 --> 00:52:52.270 align:middle line:90% 00:52:52.270 --> 00:52:56.860 align:middle line:84% I'm wondering, both in the creation of work 00:52:56.860 --> 00:53:03.460 align:middle line:84% and how you relate to your work after the fact, 00:53:03.460 --> 00:53:09.435 align:middle line:84% after it's an existent poem or collection of poems, how-- 00:53:09.435 --> 00:53:12.220 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to think how I can phrase this. 00:53:12.220 --> 00:53:14.680 align:middle line:90% I'm interested in that kind of-- 00:53:14.680 --> 00:53:19.390 align:middle line:84% the double life of a poem, how it exists both on the page, 00:53:19.390 --> 00:53:25.840 align:middle line:84% in a concrete form, and how it exists in a performance space, 00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:27.160 align:middle line:90% during a reading. 00:53:27.160 --> 00:53:30.310 align:middle line:84% And trying to narrow down my question. 00:53:30.310 --> 00:53:32.590 align:middle line:84% I guess, if you could speak to that somehow, 00:53:32.590 --> 00:53:34.780 align:middle line:84% what your relationship is to your work 00:53:34.780 --> 00:53:37.990 align:middle line:84% as it exists on the page, and also 00:53:37.990 --> 00:53:43.300 align:middle line:84% as it exists as you're reading, in that performance 00:53:43.300 --> 00:53:44.320 align:middle line:90% aspect of it. 00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:51.625 align:middle line:90% 00:53:51.625 --> 00:53:54.660 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:53:54.660 --> 00:53:56.710 align:middle line:84% I guess that's a big question that I'm 00:53:56.710 --> 00:53:58.030 align:middle line:90% not totally sure about, but-- 00:53:58.030 --> 00:53:58.990 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:53:58.990 --> 00:53:59.650 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:53:59.650 --> 00:54:00.280 align:middle line:90% But good. 00:54:00.280 --> 00:54:03.585 align:middle line:90% No, I mean-- but very good. 00:54:03.585 --> 00:54:06.162 align:middle line:90% 00:54:06.162 --> 00:54:07.620 align:middle line:84% A lot of the stuff I write is not-- 00:54:07.620 --> 00:54:12.540 align:middle line:84% I have no intention of it ever being read out loud. 00:54:12.540 --> 00:54:15.180 align:middle line:84% And in fact, I read something in the class 00:54:15.180 --> 00:54:17.763 align:middle line:84% yesterday that I had never read aloud. 00:54:17.763 --> 00:54:19.680 align:middle line:84% And I hadn't even thought about whether or not 00:54:19.680 --> 00:54:21.240 align:middle line:90% it was meant to be read aloud. 00:54:21.240 --> 00:54:22.710 align:middle line:90% It was something that-- 00:54:22.710 --> 00:54:25.283 align:middle line:84% on the page, anyway, it's visually oriented. 00:54:25.283 --> 00:54:25.950 align:middle line:90% You can read it. 00:54:25.950 --> 00:54:27.180 align:middle line:90% It's composed of language. 00:54:27.180 --> 00:54:33.630 align:middle line:84% But I actually struggle with the idea of readings. 00:54:33.630 --> 00:54:36.960 align:middle line:84% I mean, oddly, I think that I'm not 00:54:36.960 --> 00:54:40.950 align:middle line:84% sure what I'm supposed to do and what 00:54:40.950 --> 00:54:42.600 align:middle line:90% the writing is supposed to do. 00:54:42.600 --> 00:54:46.890 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, I feel like I should just kind of move aside and let 00:54:46.890 --> 00:54:50.280 align:middle line:84% it sort of live its life and succeed and fail 00:54:50.280 --> 00:54:55.410 align:middle line:84% on its own terms while I do something else in another room. 00:54:55.410 --> 00:54:59.010 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, I feel like I need to coach it, 00:54:59.010 --> 00:55:03.180 align:middle line:84% or I need to eat it and expel it in front of a bunch of people. 00:55:03.180 --> 00:55:06.765 align:middle line:84% And then it becomes the audience's problem. 00:55:06.765 --> 00:55:09.270 align:middle line:90% 00:55:09.270 --> 00:55:10.290 align:middle line:90% I don't really know. 00:55:10.290 --> 00:55:12.180 align:middle line:84% But I think, for me, there are certainly 00:55:12.180 --> 00:55:15.060 align:middle line:84% things that are not meant to be read, 00:55:15.060 --> 00:55:18.275 align:middle line:84% and some things that I write, and as I'm writing them, 00:55:18.275 --> 00:55:20.070 align:middle line:90% I'm thinking-- 00:55:20.070 --> 00:55:22.380 align:middle line:90% I write very much by sound. 00:55:22.380 --> 00:55:27.870 align:middle line:84% So I think, when I find myself in a space and a poem 00:55:27.870 --> 00:55:29.370 align:middle line:90% where I don't know-- 00:55:29.370 --> 00:55:31.440 align:middle line:84% I kind of don't know how to get myself out, 00:55:31.440 --> 00:55:33.360 align:middle line:90% I kind of lapse into sound. 00:55:33.360 --> 00:55:34.890 align:middle line:84% I lapse into music, and that sort of 00:55:34.890 --> 00:55:36.750 align:middle line:90% resolves some of those problems. 00:55:36.750 --> 00:55:39.120 align:middle line:90% And whatever the sounds-- 00:55:39.120 --> 00:55:42.443 align:middle line:84% language starts to kind of form itself around those sounds. 00:55:42.443 --> 00:55:44.610 align:middle line:84% And then I can kind of make my way out of that poem. 00:55:44.610 --> 00:55:47.010 align:middle line:84% So sometimes, I am very aware that it's something 00:55:47.010 --> 00:55:49.170 align:middle line:90% that can be performed. 00:55:49.170 --> 00:55:53.085 align:middle line:90% 00:55:53.085 --> 00:55:55.210 align:middle line:84% Frances, did you have a question you wanted to ask? 00:55:55.210 --> 00:55:58.090 align:middle line:90% 00:55:58.090 --> 00:56:00.130 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:56:00.130 --> 00:56:01.918 align:middle line:84% I really appreciate your resistance 00:56:01.918 --> 00:56:04.210 align:middle line:84% to trying to talk about political poetry without having 00:56:04.210 --> 00:56:05.230 align:middle line:90% a shared definition. 00:56:05.230 --> 00:56:07.300 align:middle line:84% I think that it is hard to create 00:56:07.300 --> 00:56:10.780 align:middle line:84% a meaningful conversation about something until we all are 00:56:10.780 --> 00:56:12.070 align:middle line:90% talking about the same thing. 00:56:12.070 --> 00:56:15.160 align:middle line:84% And like Cybelle, I love definitions. 00:56:15.160 --> 00:56:19.270 align:middle line:84% And I want to float one and see if it rings true 00:56:19.270 --> 00:56:21.670 align:middle line:84% for you or you have any resistance to it, which 00:56:21.670 --> 00:56:24.100 align:middle line:84% is that political poetry is a matter of scope. 00:56:24.100 --> 00:56:27.203 align:middle line:84% That when you have a very narrow scope, 00:56:27.203 --> 00:56:29.620 align:middle line:84% you're in the realm of the personal, or the Robert Lowell. 00:56:29.620 --> 00:56:31.690 align:middle line:84% And then when you have a very universal scope, 00:56:31.690 --> 00:56:34.420 align:middle line:84% you might be in your Emily Dickinson, nonpolitical realm. 00:56:34.420 --> 00:56:36.430 align:middle line:84% But then there's a realm in the middle 00:56:36.430 --> 00:56:40.300 align:middle line:84% that is about the polity, or looking at and reflecting 00:56:40.300 --> 00:56:42.580 align:middle line:84% on the polity either your local communities, 00:56:42.580 --> 00:56:45.610 align:middle line:84% or your national communities, or increasingly, 00:56:45.610 --> 00:56:47.140 align:middle line:84% our global communities, for which 00:56:47.140 --> 00:56:48.820 align:middle line:90% we have some responsibility-- 00:56:48.820 --> 00:56:51.640 align:middle line:90% 00:56:51.640 --> 00:56:54.700 align:middle line:84% or for which we're participants in some way. 00:56:54.700 --> 00:56:59.590 align:middle line:84% And if you think that this could be one definition that 00:56:59.590 --> 00:57:02.110 align:middle line:84% is potential for political poetry, 00:57:02.110 --> 00:57:05.350 align:middle line:84% that it's in that middle zone between the personal 00:57:05.350 --> 00:57:10.240 align:middle line:84% or the universal, where we're actually discussing something 00:57:10.240 --> 00:57:12.370 align:middle line:84% for which we have some representation, 00:57:12.370 --> 00:57:14.182 align:middle line:90% but not all representation. 00:57:14.182 --> 00:57:16.960 align:middle line:90% 00:57:16.960 --> 00:57:18.810 align:middle line:84% I do like what you said about scope. 00:57:18.810 --> 00:57:22.860 align:middle line:84% That does bring another dimension to it. 00:57:22.860 --> 00:57:25.440 align:middle line:84% And representation, too, seems to have something 00:57:25.440 --> 00:57:27.520 align:middle line:90% to do with politics. 00:57:27.520 --> 00:57:28.500 align:middle line:90% I like that definition. 00:57:28.500 --> 00:57:29.100 align:middle line:90% I'll take it. 00:57:29.100 --> 00:57:31.500 align:middle line:84% But I'm not-- for me, the problem 00:57:31.500 --> 00:57:33.510 align:middle line:84% comes in with the personal and the political. 00:57:33.510 --> 00:57:36.960 align:middle line:84% And I guess I'm harkening back to the old feminist 00:57:36.960 --> 00:57:40.650 align:middle line:84% saying the personal is political. 00:57:40.650 --> 00:57:43.590 align:middle line:84% I'm wondering if a Sexton poem is not political 00:57:43.590 --> 00:57:45.000 align:middle line:90% because it's personal. 00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:48.615 align:middle line:84% But it's political in that sense that women's interior lives, 00:57:48.615 --> 00:57:52.380 align:middle line:84% or sexuality of women, has been marginalized 00:57:52.380 --> 00:57:56.770 align:middle line:84% and not thought of as being a place for public discourse. 00:57:56.770 --> 00:57:59.520 align:middle line:84% So then when it's put there, that becomes political. 00:57:59.520 --> 00:58:02.190 align:middle line:90% So I think it can work-- 00:58:02.190 --> 00:58:05.490 align:middle line:84% that scope can go back and forth between the personal 00:58:05.490 --> 00:58:06.750 align:middle line:90% and the universal. 00:58:06.750 --> 00:58:10.560 align:middle line:84% And maybe context, too, becomes a part 00:58:10.560 --> 00:58:11.820 align:middle line:90% of what makes it political. 00:58:11.820 --> 00:58:16.360 align:middle line:90% 00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:19.030 align:middle line:90% I agree. 00:58:19.030 --> 00:58:19.901 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:58:19.901 --> 00:58:27.120 align:middle line:90% 00:58:27.120 --> 00:58:28.800 align:middle line:90% Oh. 00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:29.670 align:middle line:90% I don't know-- 00:58:29.670 --> 00:58:33.930 align:middle line:84% I noticed you wrote down Paul Celan here in your notes. 00:58:33.930 --> 00:58:37.300 align:middle line:84% As maybe a way to think about somebody who, at least for me, 00:58:37.300 --> 00:58:38.580 align:middle line:90% is I guess if-- 00:58:38.580 --> 00:58:40.920 align:middle line:84% I would classify him as a political poet, 00:58:40.920 --> 00:58:42.300 align:middle line:90% in a lot of ways. 00:58:42.300 --> 00:58:44.400 align:middle line:84% As well as a million other things. 00:58:44.400 --> 00:58:46.020 align:middle line:84% And also, as somebody whose writing 00:58:46.020 --> 00:58:47.730 align:middle line:84% has been important for me and trying to 00:58:47.730 --> 00:58:50.880 align:middle line:90% think about poetry in general. 00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:56.157 align:middle line:84% And his poems are very personal, I mean, I would say, 00:58:56.157 --> 00:58:57.990 align:middle line:84% in the same way that Emily Dickinson's poems 00:58:57.990 --> 00:58:59.948 align:middle line:84% are very personal-- in a totally different way. 00:58:59.948 --> 00:59:03.510 align:middle line:84% But I gain more, I guess, political knowledge, 00:59:03.510 --> 00:59:08.520 align:middle line:84% to a certain extent, from those very exquisitely personal poems 00:59:08.520 --> 00:59:10.920 align:middle line:84% than I do from anything that's more universal. 00:59:10.920 --> 00:59:16.500 align:middle line:84% And I think maybe because the very specifically personal 00:59:16.500 --> 00:59:20.760 align:middle line:84% is more universal to me, I can make sense of things 00:59:20.760 --> 00:59:23.430 align:middle line:84% when things are much more particular in the way 00:59:23.430 --> 00:59:25.110 align:middle line:90% that they are with Paul Celan. 00:59:25.110 --> 00:59:26.340 align:middle line:90% That's a gloss. 00:59:26.340 --> 00:59:29.590 align:middle line:84% I mean, there's so much more that could be said, but. 00:59:29.590 --> 00:59:31.500 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:59:31.500 --> 00:59:35.640 align:middle line:84% To go to the Amiri Baraka/Leroy Jones 00:59:35.640 --> 00:59:39.150 align:middle line:84% split that seems to be going on and on and on. 00:59:39.150 --> 00:59:40.305 align:middle line:90% Who was the better poet? 00:59:40.305 --> 00:59:43.410 align:middle line:90% It's the same guy. 00:59:43.410 --> 00:59:47.880 align:middle line:84% And is the Leroy Jones stuff, like, the early stuff, 00:59:47.880 --> 00:59:49.860 align:middle line:90% is that not political? 00:59:49.860 --> 00:59:52.170 align:middle line:84% And is the later stuff somehow more 00:59:52.170 --> 00:59:55.140 align:middle line:84% effective as political work because it's more 00:59:55.140 --> 00:59:56.280 align:middle line:90% outwardly that-- 00:59:56.280 --> 00:59:58.420 align:middle line:90% it's more about politics? 00:59:58.420 --> 00:59:59.880 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:59:59.880 --> 01:00:02.893 align:middle line:84% I don't think that's been really resolved. 01:00:02.893 --> 01:00:04.560 align:middle line:84% Does the question of aesthetics and what 01:00:04.560 --> 01:00:10.095 align:middle line:84% makes it good come into question about political poetry or not? 01:00:10.095 --> 01:00:11.510 align:middle line:90% Question? 01:00:11.510 --> 01:00:13.370 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:00:13.370 --> 01:00:15.800 align:middle line:90% First, a comment. 01:00:15.800 --> 01:00:18.290 align:middle line:84% I also really like Robert Lowell's notebooks. 01:00:18.290 --> 01:00:20.960 align:middle line:90% 01:00:20.960 --> 01:00:25.118 align:middle line:84% It's so clear, and natural, and easy, and everything. 01:00:25.118 --> 01:00:27.410 align:middle line:84% And I feel it's a lot more effective, and it's really-- 01:00:27.410 --> 01:00:28.400 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:33.238 align:middle line:84% But I wanted to ask about alienation. 01:00:33.238 --> 01:00:34.280 align:middle line:90% It was mentioned earlier. 01:00:34.280 --> 01:00:37.670 align:middle line:90% 01:00:37.670 --> 01:00:40.070 align:middle line:84% And there's some talk about meaning, and what you say 01:00:40.070 --> 01:00:41.240 align:middle line:90% has meaning. 01:00:41.240 --> 01:00:44.120 align:middle line:84% But the problem is, when you are alienated, 01:00:44.120 --> 01:00:47.060 align:middle line:84% what you say has no meaning whatsoever. 01:00:47.060 --> 01:00:50.785 align:middle line:84% And I really was trying to figure out 01:00:50.785 --> 01:00:52.160 align:middle line:84% how to make this into a question, 01:00:52.160 --> 01:00:53.570 align:middle line:90% but I wasn't sure how. 01:00:53.570 --> 01:00:55.220 align:middle line:90% I was just curious about it. 01:00:55.220 --> 01:01:00.100 align:middle line:84% How do you break through that problem 01:01:00.100 --> 01:01:03.930 align:middle line:90% and actually make meaning? 01:01:03.930 --> 01:01:07.210 align:middle line:90% 01:01:07.210 --> 01:01:09.482 align:middle line:90% No, it's a great question. 01:01:09.482 --> 01:01:11.440 align:middle line:84% I'm going to be thinking about that long after. 01:01:11.440 --> 01:01:14.220 align:middle line:90% 01:01:14.220 --> 01:01:16.740 align:middle line:84% And I don't pretend to have anything 01:01:16.740 --> 01:01:18.780 align:middle line:90% like an adequate answer. 01:01:18.780 --> 01:01:22.130 align:middle line:90% 01:01:22.130 --> 01:01:23.450 align:middle line:90% Disclaimer. 01:01:23.450 --> 01:01:29.660 align:middle line:84% But I think that one way to relate to alienation 01:01:29.660 --> 01:01:36.300 align:middle line:84% is depiction, is description and detail. 01:01:36.300 --> 01:01:41.870 align:middle line:84% I can observe myself as the alienated-- 01:01:41.870 --> 01:01:45.260 align:middle line:90% as an alien, almost. 01:01:45.260 --> 01:01:50.480 align:middle line:84% I can almost observe myself, in my life, or life, 01:01:50.480 --> 01:01:53.300 align:middle line:84% from the standpoint of alienation, 01:01:53.300 --> 01:01:57.400 align:middle line:84% sometimes more readily than I can when I'm content. 01:01:57.400 --> 01:02:02.650 align:middle line:84% I have a harder time writing when I'm completely satisfied. 01:02:02.650 --> 01:02:05.660 align:middle line:84% When I'm completely satisfied, I'm in the world, 01:02:05.660 --> 01:02:08.980 align:middle line:90% and every breath is natural. 01:02:08.980 --> 01:02:11.320 align:middle line:84% It just-- there's not much to say 01:02:11.320 --> 01:02:12.910 align:middle line:90% when I'm completely content. 01:02:12.910 --> 01:02:15.550 align:middle line:90% I'm just being. 01:02:15.550 --> 01:02:18.640 align:middle line:84% But when there's an alien thing, it's 01:02:18.640 --> 01:02:21.520 align:middle line:84% almost as if it were other, which it's not. 01:02:21.520 --> 01:02:24.385 align:middle line:84% It's still-- I don't know if that makes sense-- 01:02:24.385 --> 01:02:27.530 align:middle line:90% 01:02:27.530 --> 01:02:28.160 align:middle line:90% or nonsense. 01:02:28.160 --> 01:02:31.442 align:middle line:90% 01:02:31.442 --> 01:02:33.460 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] who do I hand this to? 01:02:33.460 --> 01:02:37.520 align:middle line:90% 01:02:37.520 --> 01:02:38.900 align:middle line:84% Brandon or Akilah, would you like 01:02:38.900 --> 01:02:43.630 align:middle line:84% to address the topic also, or no? 01:02:43.630 --> 01:02:45.020 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:02:45.020 --> 01:02:47.250 align:middle line:90% I have a beginning of a thought. 01:02:47.250 --> 01:02:51.000 align:middle line:90% 01:02:51.000 --> 01:02:53.443 align:middle line:84% It's a really important question for me. 01:02:53.443 --> 01:02:55.110 align:middle line:84% And it's something that I think can only 01:02:55.110 --> 01:02:59.100 align:middle line:90% be resolved in writing. 01:02:59.100 --> 01:03:02.650 align:middle line:84% And the thing that I think about specifically 01:03:02.650 --> 01:03:06.820 align:middle line:84% is, I also write a lot about my grandfather, who was an "enemy 01:03:06.820 --> 01:03:08.770 align:middle line:84% alien" during World War II-- and just 01:03:08.770 --> 01:03:12.940 align:middle line:84% to use the very essence of that word. 01:03:12.940 --> 01:03:14.420 align:middle line:90% And he was Japanese. 01:03:14.420 --> 01:03:17.650 align:middle line:84% He was put into a federal prison after Pearl Harbor 01:03:17.650 --> 01:03:19.240 align:middle line:90% and so he wasn't-- 01:03:19.240 --> 01:03:23.320 align:middle line:90% he was classified as an alien. 01:03:23.320 --> 01:03:27.550 align:middle line:84% And he dealt with that in ways that I'm still 01:03:27.550 --> 01:03:29.425 align:middle line:84% trying to understand, throughout his life. 01:03:29.425 --> 01:03:31.990 align:middle line:90% 01:03:31.990 --> 01:03:36.790 align:middle line:84% He wasn't able to be a-- he came to the States in 1919. 01:03:36.790 --> 01:03:39.640 align:middle line:84% He didn't become a citizen until 1955-- 01:03:39.640 --> 01:03:41.050 align:middle line:90% not because he didn't want to. 01:03:41.050 --> 01:03:43.990 align:middle line:90% He just wasn't able to. 01:03:43.990 --> 01:03:48.670 align:middle line:84% And a lot of what I write about is just trying to understand-- 01:03:48.670 --> 01:03:51.070 align:middle line:84% understanding that, and understanding 01:03:51.070 --> 01:03:57.670 align:middle line:84% the ways in which his voice was not able to carry through. 01:03:57.670 --> 01:04:00.310 align:middle line:84% When he was in the prison, he was 01:04:00.310 --> 01:04:02.350 align:middle line:84% subjected to a variety of hearings 01:04:02.350 --> 01:04:05.230 align:middle line:84% at which his which the interpreters were 01:04:05.230 --> 01:04:08.400 align:middle line:90% Korean men who didn't speak-- 01:04:08.400 --> 01:04:11.530 align:middle line:84% who didn't understand Japanese or English very well at all. 01:04:11.530 --> 01:04:15.240 align:middle line:90% So his voice meant nothing-- 01:04:15.240 --> 01:04:16.630 align:middle line:90% absolutely nothing. 01:04:16.630 --> 01:04:18.990 align:middle line:90% And he was a photographer. 01:04:18.990 --> 01:04:23.130 align:middle line:84% So he converted all of that energy, I think, 01:04:23.130 --> 01:04:28.470 align:middle line:84% into his vision, and able to create some kind of life 01:04:28.470 --> 01:04:31.422 align:middle line:84% and some kind of voice through visual means. 01:04:31.422 --> 01:04:32.880 align:middle line:84% But there are still a lot of things 01:04:32.880 --> 01:04:37.113 align:middle line:84% that I'm still trying to figure out about his postwar life 01:04:37.113 --> 01:04:38.280 align:middle line:90% and how he chose to live it. 01:04:38.280 --> 01:04:41.400 align:middle line:84% He became very Americanized as a way 01:04:41.400 --> 01:04:45.420 align:middle line:90% to avoid further persecution. 01:04:45.420 --> 01:04:50.610 align:middle line:84% And he raised his three children as the model Americans-- 01:04:50.610 --> 01:04:53.700 align:middle line:84% his three Japanese children as Americans. 01:04:53.700 --> 01:04:57.120 align:middle line:84% He had to, I suppose, out of a certain necessity. 01:04:57.120 --> 01:04:59.298 align:middle line:84% But it's something I struggle with. 01:04:59.298 --> 01:05:00.840 align:middle line:84% And that, for me, again, is something 01:05:00.840 --> 01:05:04.110 align:middle line:84% that only can be resolved, if at all, 01:05:04.110 --> 01:05:05.760 align:middle line:84% just by continuing to think about it, 01:05:05.760 --> 01:05:07.604 align:middle line:84% and thinking about it in the writing itself. 01:05:07.604 --> 01:05:15.510 align:middle line:90% 01:05:15.510 --> 01:05:17.910 align:middle line:90% Well, we are out of time. 01:05:17.910 --> 01:05:20.610 align:middle line:84% But I want to thank you for your insights, 01:05:20.610 --> 01:05:24.330 align:middle line:84% and for the conversation, and for your work, 01:05:24.330 --> 01:05:26.220 align:middle line:90% and for the wonderful reading. 01:05:26.220 --> 01:05:29.640 align:middle line:84% And thank you all for joining us, and your great questions. 01:05:29.640 --> 01:05:32.390 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:05:32.390 --> 01:05:38.000 align:middle line:90%