WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.690 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.690 --> 00:00:02.190 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:02.190 --> 00:00:06.660 align:middle line:84% We have approximately 15 minutes left for question and answers. 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:10.350 align:middle line:84% The mic in the middle of the room is for audience members 00:00:10.350 --> 00:00:11.790 align:middle line:90% to come and ask questions. 00:00:11.790 --> 00:00:14.610 align:middle line:84% I'm going to ask if Tenney and Barbara will come and take 00:00:14.610 --> 00:00:15.720 align:middle line:90% these two seats. 00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:18.210 align:middle line:84% And we'll use this hand-held mic here. 00:00:18.210 --> 00:00:20.730 align:middle line:84% And please don't necessarily restrict 00:00:20.730 --> 00:00:22.620 align:middle line:90% to questions of what you heard. 00:00:22.620 --> 00:00:25.500 align:middle line:84% If there's anything else you want to ask these poets, 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:26.490 align:middle line:90% please do. 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:29.670 align:middle line:84% I think all of these poets have also either are 00:00:29.670 --> 00:00:31.410 align:middle line:90% or have been teachers. 00:00:31.410 --> 00:00:34.740 align:middle line:84% And also all of them have been intensely involved 00:00:34.740 --> 00:00:37.890 align:middle line:84% in poetry communities at different times. 00:00:37.890 --> 00:00:41.580 align:middle line:84% And we would just love to let you 00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:45.180 align:middle line:84% have a chance to question them or say something to them. 00:00:45.180 --> 00:00:49.290 align:middle line:84% And when that period is over we'll have book sales. 00:00:49.290 --> 00:01:02.350 align:middle line:90% 00:01:02.350 --> 00:01:04.970 align:middle line:84% Thank you so much for such a wonderful reading to all three 00:01:04.970 --> 00:01:05.470 align:middle line:90% of you. 00:01:05.470 --> 00:01:07.300 align:middle line:84% I have a question for Charles Bernstein. 00:01:07.300 --> 00:01:12.900 align:middle line:84% I was just curious, what similarities or affinities you 00:01:12.900 --> 00:01:15.420 align:middle line:84% see between the poems that you chose 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:18.345 align:middle line:84% to translate in your latest book and your own work? 00:01:18.345 --> 00:01:20.220 align:middle line:84% I think we kind of saw that in the last poem. 00:01:20.220 --> 00:01:23.790 align:middle line:84% But I'm curious in general, what other similarities 00:01:23.790 --> 00:01:25.530 align:middle line:84% or affinities might have guided you? 00:01:25.530 --> 00:01:30.520 align:middle line:90% 00:01:30.520 --> 00:01:31.840 align:middle line:90% You know I don't really-- 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:34.120 align:middle line:84% the things I've translated are I had 00:01:34.120 --> 00:01:36.880 align:middle line:84% some kind of almost compulsive desire to translate. 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:38.380 align:middle line:84% Because I wanted to read them better 00:01:38.380 --> 00:01:41.082 align:middle line:84% or were dissatisfied with aspects of the translation, 00:01:41.082 --> 00:01:42.790 align:middle line:84% especially there's a few Baudelaire poems 00:01:42.790 --> 00:01:46.840 align:middle line:84% that I didn't read that have been translated many times. 00:01:46.840 --> 00:01:49.540 align:middle line:84% "La Muse Venale", which I translated, the "Venereal 00:01:49.540 --> 00:01:53.320 align:middle line:90% Muse" and [Speaking French] 00:01:53.320 --> 00:01:54.340 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:01:54.340 --> 00:02:00.160 align:middle line:84% I mean, without giving a long talk as I would often. 00:02:00.160 --> 00:02:02.830 align:middle line:84% I could talk about the significance of each 00:02:02.830 --> 00:02:07.360 align:middle line:84% of the poets, certainly the Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 00:02:07.360 --> 00:02:09.400 align:middle line:84% "In the Middle of the Way" has a reverence 00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:11.353 align:middle line:84% a resonance with all the whiskey in heaven. 00:02:11.353 --> 00:02:13.520 align:middle line:84% I didn't necessarily realize when I was translating. 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:18.340 align:middle line:84% It's a very crucial poem in Brazilian modernism. 00:02:18.340 --> 00:02:22.570 align:middle line:84% And I was curious when I was in Rio 00:02:22.570 --> 00:02:25.510 align:middle line:84% once to be walking on the street on the Ipanema beach. 00:02:25.510 --> 00:02:28.440 align:middle line:84% And there I saw a statue of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 00:02:28.440 --> 00:02:30.700 align:middle line:84% I think on the Coney Island beach 00:02:30.700 --> 00:02:36.310 align:middle line:90% we have no statue of Hart Crane. 00:02:36.310 --> 00:02:38.740 align:middle line:84% So I'm not answering your question but just deferring. 00:02:38.740 --> 00:02:40.300 align:middle line:84% I think that there were resonances-- 00:02:40.300 --> 00:02:48.040 align:middle line:84% I mean, "the Hugo" is just overwhelming poem for me. 00:02:48.040 --> 00:02:52.840 align:middle line:84% And I got very interested in that as well. 00:02:52.840 --> 00:02:55.673 align:middle line:84% I can't answer that question in an explicit way. 00:02:55.673 --> 00:02:58.090 align:middle line:84% Because it's easy to talk about Apollinaire and Baudelaire 00:02:58.090 --> 00:02:59.935 align:middle line:84% more easily than some of the other poets. 00:02:59.935 --> 00:03:11.120 align:middle line:90% 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:13.387 align:middle line:90% One thing I wonder. 00:03:13.387 --> 00:03:15.220 align:middle line:84% There are many people in the audience I know 00:03:15.220 --> 00:03:16.900 align:middle line:90% but many people I don't know. 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:21.020 align:middle line:84% And this could be take a long time to articulate, 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:26.020 align:middle line:84% but I'm very interested in the fact that Tenney and Barbara, 00:03:26.020 --> 00:03:30.760 align:middle line:84% and I have been for several years part of a singular poetry 00:03:30.760 --> 00:03:33.820 align:middle line:84% community here in Tucson involved with some of you 00:03:33.820 --> 00:03:34.510 align:middle line:90% in the audience. 00:03:34.510 --> 00:03:38.770 align:middle line:84% Charles, of course in New York and in Buffalo 00:03:38.770 --> 00:03:43.060 align:middle line:84% has been part of a few poetry communities. 00:03:43.060 --> 00:03:46.690 align:middle line:84% And it seems to me there is something 00:03:46.690 --> 00:03:53.620 align:middle line:84% about all of your practice that is very social in orientation. 00:03:53.620 --> 00:03:57.610 align:middle line:84% I think came through so clearly in Tenney's reading 00:03:57.610 --> 00:03:59.590 align:middle line:90% today but in all of yours. 00:03:59.590 --> 00:04:02.020 align:middle line:84% And it's a huge question to address. 00:04:02.020 --> 00:04:06.070 align:middle line:84% But could you say something about your community 00:04:06.070 --> 00:04:10.330 align:middle line:84% of practice at this time or what that has 00:04:10.330 --> 00:04:11.680 align:middle line:90% meant to you over the years? 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:17.968 align:middle line:90% 00:04:17.968 --> 00:04:18.510 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:04:18.510 --> 00:04:22.939 align:middle line:84% I guess I like not to articulate it. 00:04:22.939 --> 00:04:29.430 align:middle line:84% My sense is for me it's usefully sort of lumpy or tessellated 00:04:29.430 --> 00:04:30.630 align:middle line:90% or something like that. 00:04:30.630 --> 00:04:35.770 align:middle line:84% So that, I mean, the commitment to POG is really important. 00:04:35.770 --> 00:04:38.670 align:middle line:84% I feel like I wouldn't be doing the work I'm 00:04:38.670 --> 00:04:40.717 align:middle line:90% doing if it weren't for that. 00:04:40.717 --> 00:04:42.300 align:middle line:84% I don't know exactly what it has to do 00:04:42.300 --> 00:04:46.260 align:middle line:84% with my zen community, or my English department community, 00:04:46.260 --> 00:04:47.550 align:middle line:90% and so on. 00:04:47.550 --> 00:04:50.220 align:middle line:84% And I guess for me and the issue in the book 00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:53.790 align:middle line:84% that you just published for me is sort of what all the, here I 00:04:53.790 --> 00:04:56.880 align:middle line:84% am looking out the window at the trees, thinking about zen stuff 00:04:56.880 --> 00:04:59.820 align:middle line:84% has to do with all the collage stuff from Iraq 00:04:59.820 --> 00:05:02.490 align:middle line:90% or the world of banking. 00:05:02.490 --> 00:05:07.330 align:middle line:84% And it was a question that I didn't really want to solve. 00:05:07.330 --> 00:05:10.720 align:middle line:90% So 00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:12.790 align:middle line:90% Well, I've been part of a-- 00:05:12.790 --> 00:05:15.940 align:middle line:84% well, New York has multiple communities. 00:05:15.940 --> 00:05:18.850 align:middle line:84% But I've been part of two other communities 00:05:18.850 --> 00:05:22.510 align:middle line:84% of poets and artists, one that was in Detroit where I grew up. 00:05:22.510 --> 00:05:26.200 align:middle line:90% And there it was very-- 00:05:26.200 --> 00:05:28.810 align:middle line:84% the artists and the writers were very involved 00:05:28.810 --> 00:05:31.810 align:middle line:90% and we lived kind of-- 00:05:31.810 --> 00:05:34.360 align:middle line:84% I don't know-- a separate life in the Cass Corridor 00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:35.830 align:middle line:90% from the rest of the city. 00:05:35.830 --> 00:05:38.220 align:middle line:90% But it was very inspiring. 00:05:38.220 --> 00:05:40.753 align:middle line:84% A few people are here from there remember it. 00:05:40.753 --> 00:05:41.920 align:middle line:90% And that was very inspiring. 00:05:41.920 --> 00:05:43.240 align:middle line:90% Then I went to New York. 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:46.150 align:middle line:84% And in New York, you could be any place 00:05:46.150 --> 00:05:49.000 align:middle line:84% and have so many poets sitting at a table you don't even 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:50.060 align:middle line:90% know them. 00:05:50.060 --> 00:05:53.710 align:middle line:84% And it's a different kind of inspiration 00:05:53.710 --> 00:05:55.060 align:middle line:90% that you feel around you. 00:05:55.060 --> 00:05:57.850 align:middle line:84% But when I came to Tucson after many years there. 00:05:57.850 --> 00:06:02.020 align:middle line:84% Wow, it was just so great being involved in a small poetry 00:06:02.020 --> 00:06:05.920 align:middle line:84% community that was interested in experimental and off-centered 00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:06.430 align:middle line:90% things. 00:06:06.430 --> 00:06:11.380 align:middle line:84% It was very inspiring and wonderful. 00:06:11.380 --> 00:06:13.990 align:middle line:84% In terms of the poems I read today, 00:06:13.990 --> 00:06:16.300 align:middle line:84% those were definitely about looking 00:06:16.300 --> 00:06:19.030 align:middle line:84% at the world as a community and thinking 00:06:19.030 --> 00:06:21.490 align:middle line:84% about how something far away relates 00:06:21.490 --> 00:06:23.760 align:middle line:90% to something very close. 00:06:23.760 --> 00:06:28.860 align:middle line:84% And so I don't know if I'm answering your question. 00:06:28.860 --> 00:06:33.160 align:middle line:84% Apollinaire writes in the first two lines 00:06:33.160 --> 00:06:35.650 align:middle line:84% of the title poem of this book, which would normally 00:06:35.650 --> 00:06:37.990 align:middle line:84% be translated as shadow or shade, sort 00:06:37.990 --> 00:06:41.990 align:middle line:84% of title of my very first book Shade, relating to this poem 00:06:41.990 --> 00:06:42.490 align:middle line:90% too. 00:06:42.490 --> 00:06:45.400 align:middle line:84% You there, a new close to me souvenirs 00:06:45.400 --> 00:06:47.410 align:middle line:90% of my companions dead at war. 00:06:47.410 --> 00:06:53.020 align:middle line:84% So World War I for Apollinaire and his the dead, fallen dead 00:06:53.020 --> 00:06:54.430 align:middle line:90% of the first world war. 00:06:54.430 --> 00:06:58.180 align:middle line:84% So for him, umbra shadows are the dead 00:06:58.180 --> 00:07:00.220 align:middle line:90% who are always there with him. 00:07:00.220 --> 00:07:04.060 align:middle line:84% And how we can hear the voices of the dead 00:07:04.060 --> 00:07:08.260 align:middle line:84% is one of the most archaic aspects of poetry. 00:07:08.260 --> 00:07:10.300 align:middle line:90% But we hear them in the living. 00:07:10.300 --> 00:07:13.750 align:middle line:84% And to honor the dead, means to honor those living who 00:07:13.750 --> 00:07:21.390 align:middle line:84% are meaningful in their social spaces in the world and to us 00:07:21.390 --> 00:07:21.890 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:07:21.890 --> 00:07:25.230 align:middle line:90% 00:07:25.230 --> 00:07:26.220 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:26.220 --> 00:07:28.300 align:middle line:90% You want to [INAUDIBLE] the mic? 00:07:28.300 --> 00:07:30.350 align:middle line:90% I'm loud enough. 00:07:30.350 --> 00:07:33.590 align:middle line:84% I just think when you think of a community practice [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:33.590 --> 00:08:08.960 align:middle line:90% 00:08:08.960 --> 00:08:09.770 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:08:09.770 --> 00:08:24.080 align:middle line:90% 00:08:24.080 --> 00:08:25.570 align:middle line:90% This will be a non-answer. 00:08:25.570 --> 00:08:27.880 align:middle line:84% It's sort of an oblique response to what you said 00:08:27.880 --> 00:08:29.713 align:middle line:84% and sort of picking up on what Charles said. 00:08:29.713 --> 00:08:31.857 align:middle line:84% And I'm quoting this all over the place. 00:08:31.857 --> 00:08:33.190 align:middle line:90% It's on the back of Barb's book. 00:08:33.190 --> 00:08:37.270 align:middle line:84% And there's this wonderful talk by Norman Fisher on the zen 00:08:37.270 --> 00:08:42.870 align:middle line:84% teacher, Guo Gu and some point in the talk says "We're alive 00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:44.310 align:middle line:90% and we're dead. 00:08:44.310 --> 00:08:46.800 align:middle line:84% We think we're alive now and we'll be dead later 00:08:46.800 --> 00:08:48.120 align:middle line:90% but that's baloney. 00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:50.790 align:middle line:84% Actually in each moment in every breath, we're alive 00:08:50.790 --> 00:08:51.750 align:middle line:90% and we're dead. 00:08:51.750 --> 00:08:54.300 align:middle line:84% And we don't know that and that's why we're suffering." 00:08:54.300 --> 00:08:57.540 align:middle line:84% And for me that has something to do with the space 00:08:57.540 --> 00:09:00.180 align:middle line:84% that poetry might hold open and something 00:09:00.180 --> 00:09:02.970 align:middle line:84% like the sort of space between the living and the dead 00:09:02.970 --> 00:09:06.810 align:middle line:84% that Charles talked about maybe echoing in umbra, so. 00:09:06.810 --> 00:09:07.310 align:middle line:90% Gosh. 00:09:07.310 --> 00:09:08.570 align:middle line:90% I don't know how to-- 00:09:08.570 --> 00:09:10.790 align:middle line:84% I don't know where to go with this. 00:09:10.790 --> 00:09:13.380 align:middle line:84% Readers, I've always been a reader myself. 00:09:13.380 --> 00:09:16.280 align:middle line:84% And so I've been engaged with reading and writing 00:09:16.280 --> 00:09:20.000 align:middle line:84% through my own experience as a child reading. 00:09:20.000 --> 00:09:25.070 align:middle line:84% Readers are having-- reading to my children 00:09:25.070 --> 00:09:28.670 align:middle line:84% that's been a-- as they grew up was a really big influence 00:09:28.670 --> 00:09:29.780 align:middle line:90% on my writing. 00:09:29.780 --> 00:09:33.830 align:middle line:84% And just having the sound of your voice and someone 00:09:33.830 --> 00:09:37.160 align:middle line:84% listening to it and going back and forth with them 00:09:37.160 --> 00:09:38.540 align:middle line:90% and making up stories. 00:09:38.540 --> 00:09:40.040 align:middle line:84% And I don't know what else to say. 00:09:40.040 --> 00:09:44.960 align:middle line:90% 00:09:44.960 --> 00:09:46.000 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:50.470 align:middle line:84% Reading children's books had an enormous impact for me 00:09:50.470 --> 00:09:51.095 align:middle line:90% in the mid 80s. 00:09:51.095 --> 00:09:53.178 align:middle line:84% You could see in the select when I was doing that. 00:09:53.178 --> 00:09:54.610 align:middle line:84% This is just all of a sudden a lot 00:09:54.610 --> 00:09:57.520 align:middle line:84% of things interested me sort of was transformed by that. 00:09:57.520 --> 00:10:00.502 align:middle line:90% 00:10:00.502 --> 00:10:02.320 align:middle line:84% I always think of that Gertrude Stein 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:03.660 align:middle line:84% quote from The Making Of Americans I write for myself 00:10:03.660 --> 00:10:04.360 align:middle line:90% and strangers 00:10:04.360 --> 00:10:09.220 align:middle line:84% I think to me one of the kind of fundamental aspects of writing 00:10:09.220 --> 00:10:11.620 align:middle line:84% is to think of myself as the reader of my work 00:10:11.620 --> 00:10:16.840 align:middle line:84% and the sole judge of what I want and don't like. 00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:19.903 align:middle line:84% So my aesthetic taste rather than how this would work 00:10:19.903 --> 00:10:21.820 align:middle line:84% or how this would go or if it would make sense 00:10:21.820 --> 00:10:22.750 align:middle line:90% to anybody else. 00:10:22.750 --> 00:10:24.770 align:middle line:84% I have no real ability to do that. 00:10:24.770 --> 00:10:27.730 align:middle line:84% And I think in a curiously paradoxical way that 00:10:27.730 --> 00:10:29.200 align:middle line:90% has often been talked about. 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:32.380 align:middle line:84% The more intensely you're aware of your own taste preferences 00:10:32.380 --> 00:10:34.550 align:middle line:84% and judgment and articulate that in poetry, 00:10:34.550 --> 00:10:37.960 align:middle line:84% and this is specific about poetry rather than other forms, 00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:40.570 align:middle line:84% the more that possibility is to have 00:10:40.570 --> 00:10:46.510 align:middle line:84% that potential of other people encountering it, 00:10:46.510 --> 00:10:50.140 align:middle line:84% both as performance and recorded performance 00:10:50.140 --> 00:10:53.155 align:middle line:84% as well as in live performance as well as in book form. 00:10:53.155 --> 00:10:55.902 align:middle line:90% 00:10:55.902 --> 00:10:57.360 align:middle line:84% So for me I just want to say that-- 00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:00.060 align:middle line:84% and I hope this isn't taken wrongly but-- 00:11:00.060 --> 00:11:02.100 align:middle line:84% Charles is one of the key inspirations 00:11:02.100 --> 00:11:04.200 align:middle line:84% I think for a lot of people in that regard. 00:11:04.200 --> 00:11:05.873 align:middle line:84% And the sort of flippant way of saying, 00:11:05.873 --> 00:11:07.290 align:middle line:84% like you read Charles and you say, 00:11:07.290 --> 00:11:09.990 align:middle line:84% shit you can do anything you want at any moment in a poem. 00:11:09.990 --> 00:11:14.070 align:middle line:84% If you want to do it, screw it, do it, right? 00:11:14.070 --> 00:11:17.130 align:middle line:84% But the sense that it's incredibly freeing. 00:11:17.130 --> 00:11:19.440 align:middle line:84% And that weirdly enough, the more 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:23.405 align:middle line:84% you do that, in some sense, the more honed the work becomes 00:11:23.405 --> 00:11:24.780 align:middle line:84% and the more rigorous it becomes. 00:11:24.780 --> 00:11:26.110 align:middle line:90% And that's pretty amazing. 00:11:26.110 --> 00:11:28.470 align:middle line:84% And I think in a way that's one of the lessons of all 00:11:28.470 --> 00:11:31.020 align:middle line:84% of the new American poetry but particularly of language 00:11:31.020 --> 00:11:34.620 align:middle line:84% writing and particularly of Charles's work 00:11:34.620 --> 00:11:37.350 align:middle line:84% and its willingness just to boing all over the place 00:11:37.350 --> 00:11:41.945 align:middle line:84% and be wonderful and it does that. 00:11:41.945 --> 00:11:44.270 align:middle line:90% I know if I can blurt in here. 00:11:44.270 --> 00:11:49.830 align:middle line:84% I feel like in the poem I'm entering a conversation 00:11:49.830 --> 00:11:53.880 align:middle line:90% with people alive and dead. 00:11:53.880 --> 00:11:56.130 align:middle line:84% In the sense that when you put a poem out there, 00:11:56.130 --> 00:11:57.790 align:middle line:84% it's part of the bigger conversation. 00:11:57.790 --> 00:12:00.870 align:middle line:84% But even in an individual poem I may be in a conversation 00:12:00.870 --> 00:12:06.000 align:middle line:84% with Sir Walter Raleigh, who Alice Notley was reading 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:11.370 align:middle line:84% in my house out loud yesterday, and with my old high school 00:12:11.370 --> 00:12:18.240 align:middle line:84% baseball coach, and with perhaps some of these people. 00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:23.920 align:middle line:84% And in a way, that's one of the reasons 00:12:23.920 --> 00:12:27.130 align:middle line:84% I write the work, to enter into and be 00:12:27.130 --> 00:12:29.080 align:middle line:90% a part of that conversation. 00:12:29.080 --> 00:12:31.040 align:middle line:84% People closest to me are part of it. 00:12:31.040 --> 00:12:33.370 align:middle line:84% People I've never known in my life are part of it. 00:12:33.370 --> 00:12:37.960 align:middle line:84% And there's a space in there I think for readers, whether they 00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:40.840 align:middle line:84% be the dedicated readers these people are 00:12:40.840 --> 00:12:43.360 align:middle line:84% or someone coming to the work for the first time 00:12:43.360 --> 00:12:47.080 align:middle line:84% to if they're tuning in they're becoming 00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:48.340 align:middle line:90% a part of that conversation. 00:12:48.340 --> 00:12:50.920 align:middle line:84% I certainly feel as I read other people's work. 00:12:50.920 --> 00:12:52.480 align:middle line:90% I'm becoming a part of it. 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:56.620 align:middle line:90% 00:12:56.620 --> 00:12:58.990 align:middle line:84% Just made me think about one of the theorists 00:12:58.990 --> 00:13:02.590 align:middle line:84% that was most influential to me, Mikhail Bakhtin. 00:13:02.590 --> 00:13:06.880 align:middle line:84% And he talks about how language is just 00:13:06.880 --> 00:13:10.090 align:middle line:84% composed of many different-- just as we learn it-- 00:13:10.090 --> 00:13:13.090 align:middle line:84% of the community of people that we've talked to 00:13:13.090 --> 00:13:14.680 align:middle line:90% and we participate with. 00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:17.980 align:middle line:84% And I've tried in my writing to bring that to the fore. 00:13:17.980 --> 00:13:20.230 align:middle line:84% I mean, he thought it happened more in the novel 00:13:20.230 --> 00:13:22.390 align:middle line:90% than it did in poetry. 00:13:22.390 --> 00:13:24.590 align:middle line:84% But I think we've moved with poetry. 00:13:24.590 --> 00:13:27.280 align:middle line:84% So that it happens more and more in poetry, 00:13:27.280 --> 00:13:30.430 align:middle line:84% especially in all three of our works. 00:13:30.430 --> 00:13:31.270 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:13:31.270 --> 00:13:34.245 align:middle line:90% 00:13:34.245 --> 00:13:35.870 align:middle line:84% Also it's a good question [INAUDIBLE].. 00:13:35.870 --> 00:13:39.310 align:middle line:90% You knocked it out of the park. 00:13:39.310 --> 00:13:41.200 align:middle line:84% So in my work they're like little-- 00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:43.210 align:middle line:84% like everybody's little references 00:13:43.210 --> 00:13:44.860 align:middle line:90% to other poems and poets. 00:13:44.860 --> 00:13:46.510 align:middle line:84% And a lot of them are actually people 00:13:46.510 --> 00:13:48.310 align:middle line:84% who are alive that I've either studied with 00:13:48.310 --> 00:13:51.230 align:middle line:90% or I know reasonably well. 00:13:51.230 --> 00:13:53.470 align:middle line:84% And I guess what occurs to me through that 00:13:53.470 --> 00:13:58.570 align:middle line:84% is, I mean, those moments feel very close and funny, sometimes 00:13:58.570 --> 00:13:59.338 align:middle line:90% but tender a lot. 00:13:59.338 --> 00:14:01.630 align:middle line:84% And that reminds me that even if some of those people I 00:14:01.630 --> 00:14:03.838 align:middle line:84% didn't-- like Kenneth Koch, who I studied with a lot. 00:14:03.838 --> 00:14:06.290 align:middle line:84% And I felt like he knew me in a way but not very well. 00:14:06.290 --> 00:14:08.920 align:middle line:84% But since I heard him in class, there's a certain aspect of him 00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:10.030 align:middle line:90% that I really knew. 00:14:10.030 --> 00:14:12.040 align:middle line:84% And it's really sort of deeply ingrained. 00:14:12.040 --> 00:14:14.710 align:middle line:84% And that however obliquely you knew those people, 00:14:14.710 --> 00:14:16.270 align:middle line:84% that those are-- if you're a writer, 00:14:16.270 --> 00:14:18.400 align:middle line:84% those are among the most intimate relationships 00:14:18.400 --> 00:14:19.360 align:middle line:90% that you have. 00:14:19.360 --> 00:14:21.818 align:middle line:84% And that you really can hear that and feel it 00:14:21.818 --> 00:14:23.110 align:middle line:90% when it comes back in the work. 00:14:23.110 --> 00:14:28.900 align:middle line:90% 00:14:28.900 --> 00:14:29.400 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:14:29.400 --> 00:14:31.320 align:middle line:90% I think I'm supposed to bring-- 00:14:31.320 --> 00:14:34.825 align:middle line:90% Yes, another question, please. 00:14:34.825 --> 00:14:37.420 align:middle line:84% The other day I was reading a speech 00:14:37.420 --> 00:14:40.540 align:middle line:84% given by a guy named Alex Ross, given to the Royal Philharmonic 00:14:40.540 --> 00:14:46.360 align:middle line:84% Society on the issue of clapping when listening to the symphony. 00:14:46.360 --> 00:14:49.163 align:middle line:84% And people clapping between movements and-- 00:14:49.163 --> 00:14:50.830 align:middle line:84% I've always attended the symphony always 00:14:50.830 --> 00:14:54.280 align:middle line:84% but poetry readings I've barely known it they exist or not. 00:14:54.280 --> 00:14:56.560 align:middle line:84% But it seems here today that people were willing 00:14:56.560 --> 00:15:01.516 align:middle line:84% to clap and laugh and during the reading. 00:15:01.516 --> 00:15:04.540 align:middle line:84% It's positively social for something 00:15:04.540 --> 00:15:09.740 align:middle line:84% that seems to me such an asocial activity as writing. 00:15:09.740 --> 00:15:13.430 align:middle line:84% And for such efforts for such a communal activity 00:15:13.430 --> 00:15:17.680 align:middle line:84% is making music, performing the music. 00:15:17.680 --> 00:15:22.795 align:middle line:84% The performance of it becomes so inhibited and strict. 00:15:22.795 --> 00:15:25.520 align:middle line:90% 00:15:25.520 --> 00:15:27.320 align:middle line:84% I just wondered if you have any thoughts 00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:31.160 align:middle line:90% on this general subject of-- 00:15:31.160 --> 00:15:33.920 align:middle line:84% I mean, there's appropriate times to respond 00:15:33.920 --> 00:15:36.790 align:middle line:84% and inappropriate times too perhaps 00:15:36.790 --> 00:15:40.560 align:middle line:84% Well, for me, I don't think of writing is asocial. 00:15:40.560 --> 00:15:43.650 align:middle line:84% And it takes more time than I have to explain that. 00:15:43.650 --> 00:15:46.290 align:middle line:84% But I also have been to readings where there's 00:15:46.290 --> 00:15:47.585 align:middle line:90% been no clapping whatsoever. 00:15:47.585 --> 00:15:48.960 align:middle line:84% And ones that are have-- and I've 00:15:48.960 --> 00:15:52.080 align:middle line:84% come to feel that if I am moved to do that then I'm 00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:53.820 align:middle line:84% one of the people that starts clapping. 00:15:53.820 --> 00:15:55.980 align:middle line:84% And I notice when somebody else starts clapping, 00:15:55.980 --> 00:15:57.030 align:middle line:90% other people want to. 00:15:57.030 --> 00:15:58.842 align:middle line:84% It makes me think people actually 00:15:58.842 --> 00:16:00.675 align:middle line:84% want to but they're not sure if they should. 00:16:00.675 --> 00:16:04.280 align:middle line:90% 00:16:04.280 --> 00:16:05.476 align:middle line:90% You want to say something? 00:16:05.476 --> 00:16:07.420 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:16:07.420 --> 00:16:09.680 align:middle line:90% 00:16:09.680 --> 00:16:11.347 align:middle line:84% I'm pretty old so I remember a time when 00:16:11.347 --> 00:16:12.263 align:middle line:90% people didn't do this. 00:16:12.263 --> 00:16:14.030 align:middle line:84% But now people clap during tennis matches. 00:16:14.030 --> 00:16:17.240 align:middle line:84% So anything goes any place after that, I think. 00:16:17.240 --> 00:16:21.500 align:middle line:84% I was just thinking about how in jazz performances you clap. 00:16:21.500 --> 00:16:24.710 align:middle line:84% And the relationship between poetry performance and jazz 00:16:24.710 --> 00:16:27.020 align:middle line:90% as it came into being. 00:16:27.020 --> 00:16:30.380 align:middle line:84% And so I think that you'll see different types of poetry 00:16:30.380 --> 00:16:34.820 align:middle line:84% readings will invite that and others won't. 00:16:34.820 --> 00:16:36.650 align:middle line:84% I think you make a very important point 00:16:36.650 --> 00:16:38.810 align:middle line:84% that poetry is fundamentally asocial. 00:16:38.810 --> 00:16:42.020 align:middle line:84% Because imaginary poets are also fundamentally 00:16:42.020 --> 00:16:44.570 align:middle line:84% asocial because they don't exist. 00:16:44.570 --> 00:16:47.390 align:middle line:84% And for that reason , I find it particularly disturbing 00:16:47.390 --> 00:16:51.620 align:middle line:84% if people should laugh in a poetry reading since good 00:16:51.620 --> 00:16:53.750 align:middle line:90% poetry can never be funny. 00:16:53.750 --> 00:16:57.590 align:middle line:84% But I'm going to answer your question 00:16:57.590 --> 00:17:01.550 align:middle line:84% with Baudelaire's answer in one of his most famous poems. 00:17:01.550 --> 00:17:05.430 align:middle line:90% "Be always drunk, that's all. 00:17:05.430 --> 00:17:08.579 align:middle line:84% That is the only question, so not 00:17:08.579 --> 00:17:11.970 align:middle line:84% to feel the horrific heaviness of time 00:17:11.970 --> 00:17:15.930 align:middle line:84% weighing on your shoulders, crushing you to the ground. 00:17:15.930 --> 00:17:18.869 align:middle line:90% You must be drunken ceaselessly. 00:17:18.869 --> 00:17:20.099 align:middle line:90% But on what? 00:17:20.099 --> 00:17:27.869 align:middle line:84% On wine, on poetry, or on virtue in your fashion but drunken be. 00:17:27.869 --> 00:17:34.650 align:middle line:84% And if some time on palace steps on the green grass by an abyss, 00:17:34.650 --> 00:17:36.990 align:middle line:84% in mournful solitude in your room. 00:17:36.990 --> 00:17:41.670 align:middle line:84% If some time you awake drunkenness dimmed or done. 00:17:41.670 --> 00:17:44.850 align:middle line:84% Ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, 00:17:44.850 --> 00:17:47.880 align:middle line:84% of the clock, of all that flees, of all that wails, 00:17:47.880 --> 00:17:51.540 align:middle line:84% of all that roils, of all that sings, of all that speaks. 00:17:51.540 --> 00:17:53.310 align:middle line:90% Ask, what hour is it? 00:17:53.310 --> 00:17:56.220 align:middle line:84% And the wind, the wave, the bird, and the clock 00:17:56.220 --> 00:18:00.090 align:middle line:84% will answer, it is the hour to get drunk, 00:18:00.090 --> 00:18:04.590 align:middle line:84% so not to be the slavish martyr of time. 00:18:04.590 --> 00:18:09.150 align:middle line:84% Be drunken, be drunken without stopping on wine, 00:18:09.150 --> 00:18:15.728 align:middle line:84% on poetry, or on virtue in your fashion." 00:18:15.728 --> 00:18:17.680 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:23.830 align:middle line:90% 00:18:23.830 --> 00:18:24.330 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:18:24.330 --> 00:18:26.760 align:middle line:84% I'm going to officially draw this to a close 00:18:26.760 --> 00:18:29.100 align:middle line:84% by saying thanks for attending this reading. 00:18:29.100 --> 00:18:31.530 align:middle line:84% The authors again will be autographing books 00:18:31.530 --> 00:18:35.700 align:middle line:84% in tent C in the Madden Media signing area on the mall just 00:18:35.700 --> 00:18:36.760 align:middle line:90% south of this building. 00:18:36.760 --> 00:18:39.060 align:middle line:84% But they'll be here for a few minutes. 00:18:39.060 --> 00:18:41.882 align:middle line:84% And you can buy books right here. 00:18:41.882 --> 00:18:42.840 align:middle line:90% [RECRODING REPEATS] OK. 00:18:42.840 --> 00:18:47.310 align:middle line:84% We have approximately 15 minutes left for question and answers. 00:18:47.310 --> 00:18:51.000 align:middle line:84% The mic in the middle of the room is for audience members 00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:52.440 align:middle line:90% to come and ask questions. 00:18:52.440 --> 00:18:55.260 align:middle line:84% I'm going to ask if Tenney and Barbara will come and take 00:18:55.260 --> 00:18:58.860 align:middle line:84% these two seats and we'll use this hand-held mic here. 00:18:58.860 --> 00:19:01.380 align:middle line:84% And please don't necessarily restrict 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:03.300 align:middle line:90% to questions of what you heard. 00:19:03.300 --> 00:19:06.150 align:middle line:84% If there's anything else you want to ask these poets, 00:19:06.150 --> 00:19:07.140 align:middle line:90% please do. 00:19:07.140 --> 00:19:10.320 align:middle line:84% I think all these poets have also either are 00:19:10.320 --> 00:19:12.060 align:middle line:90% or have been teachers. 00:19:12.060 --> 00:19:15.420 align:middle line:84% And also all of them have been intensely involved 00:19:15.420 --> 00:19:18.540 align:middle line:84% in poetry communities at different times. 00:19:18.540 --> 00:19:22.230 align:middle line:84% And we would just love to let you 00:19:22.230 --> 00:19:25.830 align:middle line:84% have a chance to question them or say something to them. 00:19:25.830 --> 00:19:29.940 align:middle line:84% And when that period is over, we'll have book sales. 00:19:29.940 --> 00:19:42.970 align:middle line:90% 00:19:42.970 --> 00:19:45.650 align:middle line:84% Thank you so much for such a wonderful reading to all three 00:19:45.650 --> 00:19:46.150 align:middle line:90% of you. 00:19:46.150 --> 00:19:47.950 align:middle line:84% I have a question for Charles Bernstein. 00:19:47.950 --> 00:19:53.550 align:middle line:84% I was just curious, what similarities or affinities you 00:19:53.550 --> 00:19:56.070 align:middle line:84% see between the poems that you chose 00:19:56.070 --> 00:19:58.995 align:middle line:84% to translate in your latest chapbook and your own work? 00:19:58.995 --> 00:20:00.870 align:middle line:84% I think we kind of saw that in the last poem. 00:20:00.870 --> 00:20:04.470 align:middle line:84% But I'm curious in general what other similarities 00:20:04.470 --> 00:20:06.210 align:middle line:84% or affinities might have guided you? 00:20:06.210 --> 00:20:11.470 align:middle line:90% 00:20:11.470 --> 00:20:14.050 align:middle line:84% I don't really-- the things I've translated 00:20:14.050 --> 00:20:17.560 align:middle line:84% I've had some kind of almost compulsive desire to translate. 00:20:17.560 --> 00:20:19.060 align:middle line:84% Because I wanted to read them better 00:20:19.060 --> 00:20:21.762 align:middle line:84% or were dissatisfied with aspects of the translation, 00:20:21.762 --> 00:20:23.470 align:middle line:84% especially there's a few Baudelaire poems 00:20:23.470 --> 00:20:27.490 align:middle line:84% that I didn't read that have been translated many times, "La 00:20:27.490 --> 00:20:29.320 align:middle line:84% Muse Venale", which I translated, 00:20:29.320 --> 00:20:33.970 align:middle line:90% the "Venereal muse" and Amadeus. 00:20:33.970 --> 00:20:34.990 align:middle line:90% So I don't know. 00:20:34.990 --> 00:20:40.840 align:middle line:84% I mean, without giving a long talk as I would often. 00:20:40.840 --> 00:20:42.520 align:middle line:84% I could talk about the significance 00:20:42.520 --> 00:20:47.920 align:middle line:84% of each of the poets, certainly the Carlos Drummond de Andrade 00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:50.940 align:middle line:84% "In the Middle of the Way" has a resonance with all 00:20:50.940 --> 00:20:52.690 align:middle line:84% the whiskey in heaven I didn't necessarily 00:20:52.690 --> 00:20:54.190 align:middle line:90% realize when I was translating. 00:20:54.190 --> 00:20:58.990 align:middle line:84% It's a very crucial poem in Brazilian modernism. 00:20:58.990 --> 00:21:03.220 align:middle line:84% And I was curious when I was in Rio 00:21:03.220 --> 00:21:06.160 align:middle line:84% once to be walking on the street on the Ipanema beach. 00:21:06.160 --> 00:21:09.110 align:middle line:84% And there I saw a statue of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 00:21:09.110 --> 00:21:11.500 align:middle line:84% I think the Coney Island beach we 00:21:11.500 --> 00:21:16.930 align:middle line:90% have no statue of Hart Crane. 00:21:16.930 --> 00:21:19.370 align:middle line:84% So I'm not answering your question but just deferring. 00:21:19.370 --> 00:21:20.950 align:middle line:84% I think that there were resonances. 00:21:20.950 --> 00:21:28.690 align:middle line:84% I mean, "the Hugo" is just overwhelming poem for me. 00:21:28.690 --> 00:21:33.520 align:middle line:84% And I got very interested in that as well. 00:21:33.520 --> 00:21:36.323 align:middle line:84% I can't answer that question in an explicit way. 00:21:36.323 --> 00:21:38.740 align:middle line:84% Because it's easy to talk about Apollinaire and Baudelaire 00:21:38.740 --> 00:21:40.585 align:middle line:84% more easily than some of the other poets. 00:21:40.585 --> 00:21:51.340 align:middle line:90% 00:21:51.340 --> 00:21:51.840 align:middle line:90% Oh. 00:21:51.840 --> 00:21:54.047 align:middle line:90% One thing I wonder. 00:21:54.047 --> 00:21:55.880 align:middle line:84% There are many people in the audience I know 00:21:55.880 --> 00:21:57.560 align:middle line:90% but many people I don't know. 00:21:57.560 --> 00:22:01.680 align:middle line:84% And this could be-- take a long time to articulate, 00:22:01.680 --> 00:22:06.680 align:middle line:84% but I'm very interested in the fact that Tenney and Barbara, 00:22:06.680 --> 00:22:11.000 align:middle line:84% and I have been, for several years, part of a singular 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:14.480 align:middle line:84% poetry community here in Tucson involved with some of you 00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:15.170 align:middle line:90% in the audience. 00:22:15.170 --> 00:22:19.400 align:middle line:84% Charles, of course in New York and in Buffalo, 00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:23.720 align:middle line:84% has been part of a few poetry communities. 00:22:23.720 --> 00:22:27.350 align:middle line:84% And it seems to me there is something 00:22:27.350 --> 00:22:34.280 align:middle line:84% about all of your practice that is very social in orientation. 00:22:34.280 --> 00:22:38.240 align:middle line:84% I think came through so clearly in Tenney's reading 00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:40.220 align:middle line:90% today but in all of yours. 00:22:40.220 --> 00:22:43.160 align:middle line:84% And it's a huge question to address but could you 00:22:43.160 --> 00:22:47.470 align:middle line:84% say something about your community of practice 00:22:47.470 --> 00:22:52.330 align:middle line:84% at this time or what that has meant to you over the years? 00:22:52.330 --> 00:22:58.628 align:middle line:90% 00:22:58.628 --> 00:22:59.170 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:22:59.170 --> 00:23:03.590 align:middle line:84% I guess I like not to articulate it. 00:23:03.590 --> 00:23:10.090 align:middle line:84% My sense is for me it's usefully sort of lumpy or desolated 00:23:10.090 --> 00:23:12.010 align:middle line:90% or something like that. 00:23:12.010 --> 00:23:13.630 align:middle line:84% I mean, the commitment to [INAUDIBLE] 00:23:13.630 --> 00:23:16.430 align:middle line:90% is really important. 00:23:16.430 --> 00:23:19.330 align:middle line:84% I feel like I wouldn't be doing the work I'm 00:23:19.330 --> 00:23:21.377 align:middle line:90% doing if it weren't for that. 00:23:21.377 --> 00:23:22.960 align:middle line:84% I don't know exactly what it has to do 00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:26.890 align:middle line:84% with my zen community or my English department community 00:23:26.890 --> 00:23:28.210 align:middle line:90% and so on. 00:23:28.210 --> 00:23:30.990 align:middle line:84% And I guess for me and the issue in the book 00:23:30.990 --> 00:23:34.480 align:middle line:84% that you just published for me is sort of what all the, here I 00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:37.540 align:middle line:84% am looking out the window at the trees, thinking about zen stuff 00:23:37.540 --> 00:23:40.480 align:middle line:84% has to do with all the collage stuff from Iraq 00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:43.120 align:middle line:90% or the world of banking. 00:23:43.120 --> 00:23:46.930 align:middle line:84% And it was a question that I didn't really 00:23:46.930 --> 00:23:48.370 align:middle line:90% want to solve, so. 00:23:48.370 --> 00:23:51.360 align:middle line:90% 00:23:51.360 --> 00:23:53.430 align:middle line:90% Well, I've been part of a-- 00:23:53.430 --> 00:23:56.610 align:middle line:84% well, New York is multiple communities. 00:23:56.610 --> 00:23:59.490 align:middle line:84% But I've been part of two other communities 00:23:59.490 --> 00:24:03.440 align:middle line:84% of poets and artists, one that was in Detroit where I grew up. 00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:06.840 align:middle line:90% And there, it was very-- 00:24:06.840 --> 00:24:09.450 align:middle line:84% the artists and the writers were very involved 00:24:09.450 --> 00:24:12.480 align:middle line:90% and we lived kind of-- 00:24:12.480 --> 00:24:15.030 align:middle line:84% I don't know-- a separate life in the [INAUDIBLE] 00:24:15.030 --> 00:24:16.500 align:middle line:90% from the rest of the city. 00:24:16.500 --> 00:24:18.840 align:middle line:90% But it was very inspiring. 00:24:18.840 --> 00:24:21.463 align:middle line:84% A few people are here from there remember it. 00:24:21.463 --> 00:24:22.630 align:middle line:90% And that was very inspiring. 00:24:22.630 --> 00:24:23.880 align:middle line:90% And then I went to New York. 00:24:23.880 --> 00:24:26.810 align:middle line:84% And in New York, you could be any place 00:24:26.810 --> 00:24:29.670 align:middle line:84% and have so many poets sitting at a table you don't even 00:24:29.670 --> 00:24:30.730 align:middle line:90% know them. 00:24:30.730 --> 00:24:34.410 align:middle line:84% And it's a different kind of inspiration 00:24:34.410 --> 00:24:35.700 align:middle line:90% that you feel around you. 00:24:35.700 --> 00:24:38.520 align:middle line:84% But when I came to Tucson after many years there. 00:24:38.520 --> 00:24:42.660 align:middle line:84% Wow, it was just so great being involved in a small poetry 00:24:42.660 --> 00:24:46.560 align:middle line:84% community that was interested in experimental and off-center 00:24:46.560 --> 00:24:47.070 align:middle line:90% things. 00:24:47.070 --> 00:24:52.020 align:middle line:84% It was very inspiring and wonderful. 00:24:52.020 --> 00:24:54.660 align:middle line:84% In terms of the poems I read today, 00:24:54.660 --> 00:24:56.940 align:middle line:84% those were definitely about looking 00:24:56.940 --> 00:24:59.670 align:middle line:84% at the world as a community and thinking 00:24:59.670 --> 00:25:02.130 align:middle line:84% about how something far away relates 00:25:02.130 --> 00:25:04.370 align:middle line:90% to something very close. 00:25:04.370 --> 00:25:09.510 align:middle line:84% And so I don't know if I'm answering your question. 00:25:09.510 --> 00:25:13.810 align:middle line:84% Apollinaire writes in the first two lines 00:25:13.810 --> 00:25:16.300 align:middle line:84% of the title poem of this book, which would normally 00:25:16.300 --> 00:25:18.640 align:middle line:84% be translated as shadow or shade, sort 00:25:18.640 --> 00:25:21.490 align:middle line:84% of title of my very first book since Shade 00:25:21.490 --> 00:25:23.140 align:middle line:90% relating to this poem too. 00:25:23.140 --> 00:25:26.050 align:middle line:84% You there, a new close to me souvenirs 00:25:26.050 --> 00:25:28.060 align:middle line:90% of my companions dead at war. 00:25:28.060 --> 00:25:33.670 align:middle line:84% So World War I for Apollinaire is the dead, fallen dead 00:25:33.670 --> 00:25:35.080 align:middle line:90% of the first world war. 00:25:35.080 --> 00:25:38.830 align:middle line:84% So for him, umbra shadows or the dead 00:25:38.830 --> 00:25:40.870 align:middle line:90% who are always there with him. 00:25:40.870 --> 00:25:44.710 align:middle line:84% And how we can hear the voices of the dead 00:25:44.710 --> 00:25:48.910 align:middle line:84% is one of the most archaic aspects of poetry. 00:25:48.910 --> 00:25:50.950 align:middle line:90% But we hear them in the living. 00:25:50.950 --> 00:25:54.430 align:middle line:84% And to honor the dead, means to honor those living who 00:25:54.430 --> 00:25:57.940 align:middle line:84% are meaningful in their social spaces in the world and to us. 00:25:57.940 --> 00:26:02.040 align:middle line:90% 00:26:02.040 --> 00:26:02.540 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:26:02.540 --> 00:26:05.095 align:middle line:90% 00:26:05.095 --> 00:26:06.010 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:26:06.010 --> 00:26:43.850 align:middle line:90% 00:26:43.850 --> 00:26:45.620 align:middle line:84% Who are your readers and listeners 00:26:45.620 --> 00:26:47.000 align:middle line:90% and how do you think about them? 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:47.876 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:26:47.876 --> 00:27:04.730 align:middle line:90% 00:27:04.730 --> 00:27:06.220 align:middle line:90% This will be a non-answer. 00:27:06.220 --> 00:27:08.530 align:middle line:84% It's sort of an oblique response to what you said 00:27:08.530 --> 00:27:10.363 align:middle line:84% and sort of picking up on what Charles said. 00:27:10.363 --> 00:27:12.382 align:middle line:84% And I'm quoting this all over the place. 00:27:12.382 --> 00:27:13.840 align:middle line:84% It's on the back of Barbara's book. 00:27:13.840 --> 00:27:15.790 align:middle line:84% And so there's this wonderful talk 00:27:15.790 --> 00:27:18.760 align:middle line:84% by Norman Fisher on the zen teacher, Georgiou. 00:27:18.760 --> 00:27:23.510 align:middle line:84% And some point in the talk says some, "We're alive 00:27:23.510 --> 00:27:24.950 align:middle line:90% and we're dead. 00:27:24.950 --> 00:27:27.440 align:middle line:84% We think we're alive now and we'll be dead later 00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:28.760 align:middle line:90% but that's baloney. 00:27:28.760 --> 00:27:31.460 align:middle line:84% Actually in each moment in every breath we're alive 00:27:31.460 --> 00:27:32.420 align:middle line:90% and we're dead. 00:27:32.420 --> 00:27:34.940 align:middle line:84% And we don't know that and that's why we're suffering." 00:27:34.940 --> 00:27:38.180 align:middle line:84% And for me that has something to do with the space 00:27:38.180 --> 00:27:40.850 align:middle line:84% that poetry might hold open and something 00:27:40.850 --> 00:27:43.640 align:middle line:84% like the sort of space between the living and the dead 00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:47.540 align:middle line:84% that Charles talked about maybe echoing in umbra, so. 00:27:47.540 --> 00:27:49.220 align:middle line:90% Actually, I don't know how to-- 00:27:49.220 --> 00:27:51.470 align:middle line:84% I don't know where to go with this. 00:27:51.470 --> 00:27:54.030 align:middle line:84% Readers, I've always been a reader myself. 00:27:54.030 --> 00:27:56.930 align:middle line:84% And so I've been engaged with reading and writing 00:27:56.930 --> 00:28:00.650 align:middle line:84% through my own experience as a child reading. 00:28:00.650 --> 00:28:05.720 align:middle line:84% Readers are having-- reading to my children, 00:28:05.720 --> 00:28:09.320 align:middle line:84% that's been a-- as they grew up was a really big influence 00:28:09.320 --> 00:28:10.430 align:middle line:90% on my writing. 00:28:10.430 --> 00:28:14.480 align:middle line:84% And just having the sound of your voice and someone 00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:17.810 align:middle line:84% listening to it and going back and forth with them 00:28:17.810 --> 00:28:19.190 align:middle line:90% and making up stories. 00:28:19.190 --> 00:28:20.720 align:middle line:84% And I don't know what else to say. 00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:25.440 align:middle line:90% 00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:26.660 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:28:26.660 --> 00:28:31.100 align:middle line:84% Reading children's books had an enormous impact for me 00:28:31.100 --> 00:28:31.760 align:middle line:90% in the mid-80s. 00:28:31.760 --> 00:28:34.385 align:middle line:84% You could see in the select when I was doing that this just all 00:28:34.385 --> 00:28:37.070 align:middle line:84% of a sudden a lot of things interested me sort of was 00:28:37.070 --> 00:28:38.180 align:middle line:90% transformed by that. 00:28:38.180 --> 00:28:41.150 align:middle line:90% 00:28:41.150 --> 00:28:42.970 align:middle line:84% I always think of that Gertrude Stein 00:28:42.970 --> 00:28:45.010 align:middle line:84% quote from the Making of Americans [INAUDIBLE].. 00:28:45.010 --> 00:28:49.450 align:middle line:84% I think just to me one of the kind of fundamental aspects 00:28:49.450 --> 00:28:52.270 align:middle line:84% of writing is to think of myself as the reader of my work 00:28:52.270 --> 00:28:57.520 align:middle line:84% and the sole judge of what I want and don't like, 00:28:57.520 --> 00:29:00.553 align:middle line:84% so my aesthetic taste rather than how this would work 00:29:00.553 --> 00:29:02.470 align:middle line:84% or how this would go or if it would make sense 00:29:02.470 --> 00:29:03.400 align:middle line:90% to anybody else. 00:29:03.400 --> 00:29:05.420 align:middle line:84% I have no real ability to do that. 00:29:05.420 --> 00:29:08.380 align:middle line:84% And I think in curiously paradoxical way that 00:29:08.380 --> 00:29:09.880 align:middle line:90% has often been talked about. 00:29:09.880 --> 00:29:13.030 align:middle line:84% The more intensely you're aware of your own taste preferences 00:29:13.030 --> 00:29:15.190 align:middle line:84% and judgment and articulate that in poetry 00:29:15.190 --> 00:29:18.610 align:middle line:84% and the specific about poetry rather than other forms, 00:29:18.610 --> 00:29:21.220 align:middle line:84% the more that possibility is to have 00:29:21.220 --> 00:29:28.420 align:middle line:84% that potential of other people encountering it, both as 00:29:28.420 --> 00:29:30.790 align:middle line:84% performance and recorded performance, 00:29:30.790 --> 00:29:33.805 align:middle line:84% as well as in live performance, as well as in book form. 00:29:33.805 --> 00:29:36.540 align:middle line:90% 00:29:36.540 --> 00:29:38.040 align:middle line:84% So for me, I just want to say that-- 00:29:38.040 --> 00:29:39.630 align:middle line:84% and i hope this isn't taken wrongly. 00:29:39.630 --> 00:29:42.750 align:middle line:84% But Charles is one of the key inspirations 00:29:42.750 --> 00:29:45.570 align:middle line:84% I think for a lot of people in that regard in the sort 00:29:45.570 --> 00:29:48.390 align:middle line:84% of flippant way of saying, like you read Charles and say, shit, 00:29:48.390 --> 00:29:50.640 align:middle line:84% you can do anything you want at any moment in a poem. 00:29:50.640 --> 00:29:54.720 align:middle line:84% If you want to do it, screw it, do it, right? 00:29:54.720 --> 00:29:57.810 align:middle line:84% But the sense that it's incredibly freeing. 00:29:57.810 --> 00:30:00.090 align:middle line:84% And that weirdly enough, the more 00:30:00.090 --> 00:30:04.055 align:middle line:84% you do that, in some sense, the more honed the work becomes 00:30:04.055 --> 00:30:05.430 align:middle line:84% and the more rigorous it becomes. 00:30:05.430 --> 00:30:06.760 align:middle line:90% And that's pretty amazing. 00:30:06.760 --> 00:30:09.120 align:middle line:84% And I think in a way that's one of the lessons of all 00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:11.670 align:middle line:84% of the new American poetry but particularly of language 00:30:11.670 --> 00:30:15.510 align:middle line:84% writing and particularly of Charles's work and its 00:30:15.510 --> 00:30:18.270 align:middle line:84% willingness just to [? boing ?] all over the place and be 00:30:18.270 --> 00:30:22.340 align:middle line:84% wonderful [? when it does that. ?] 00:30:22.340 --> 00:30:24.920 align:middle line:90% I know, if I can blurt in here. 00:30:24.920 --> 00:30:30.470 align:middle line:84% I feel like in the poem, I'm entering a conversation 00:30:30.470 --> 00:30:35.330 align:middle line:84% with people alive and dead in the sense 00:30:35.330 --> 00:30:36.800 align:middle line:84% that when you put a poem out there 00:30:36.800 --> 00:30:38.430 align:middle line:84% it's part of the bigger conversation. 00:30:38.430 --> 00:30:41.540 align:middle line:84% But even in an individual poem, I may be in a conversation 00:30:41.540 --> 00:30:46.640 align:middle line:84% with Sir Walter Raleigh, who Alice Notley was reading 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:52.040 align:middle line:84% in my house out loud yesterday, and with my old high school 00:30:52.040 --> 00:30:58.890 align:middle line:84% baseball coach, and with perhaps some of these people. 00:30:58.890 --> 00:31:04.570 align:middle line:84% And in a way, that's one of the reasons 00:31:04.570 --> 00:31:07.780 align:middle line:84% I write the work, to enter into and be 00:31:07.780 --> 00:31:09.710 align:middle line:90% a part of that conversation. 00:31:09.710 --> 00:31:11.690 align:middle line:84% People closest to me are part of it. 00:31:11.690 --> 00:31:14.020 align:middle line:84% People I've never known in my life are part of it. 00:31:14.020 --> 00:31:17.980 align:middle line:84% And there's a space in there, I think, for readers, 00:31:17.980 --> 00:31:21.490 align:middle line:84% whether they be the dedicated readers these people are 00:31:21.490 --> 00:31:24.010 align:middle line:84% or someone coming to the work for the first time 00:31:24.010 --> 00:31:27.730 align:middle line:84% to if they're tuning in, they're becoming 00:31:27.730 --> 00:31:28.900 align:middle line:90% a part of that conversation. 00:31:28.900 --> 00:31:31.570 align:middle line:84% And I certainly feel as I read other people's work. 00:31:31.570 --> 00:31:33.130 align:middle line:90% I'm becoming a part of it. 00:31:33.130 --> 00:31:37.280 align:middle line:90% 00:31:37.280 --> 00:31:39.650 align:middle line:84% Just made me think about one of the theorists 00:31:39.650 --> 00:31:43.250 align:middle line:84% that was most influential to me, Mikhail Bakhtin. 00:31:43.250 --> 00:31:47.540 align:middle line:84% And he talks about how language is just 00:31:47.540 --> 00:31:50.750 align:middle line:84% composed of many different-- just as we learn it-- 00:31:50.750 --> 00:31:53.750 align:middle line:84% of the community of people that we've talked to 00:31:53.750 --> 00:31:55.340 align:middle line:90% and we participate with. 00:31:55.340 --> 00:31:58.640 align:middle line:84% And I've tried in my writing to bring that to the fore. 00:31:58.640 --> 00:32:00.890 align:middle line:84% I mean, he thought it happened more in the novel 00:32:00.890 --> 00:32:03.050 align:middle line:90% than it did in poetry. 00:32:03.050 --> 00:32:05.250 align:middle line:84% But I think we've moved with poetry. 00:32:05.250 --> 00:32:07.940 align:middle line:84% So that it happens more and more in poetry, 00:32:07.940 --> 00:32:09.980 align:middle line:84% especially in all three of our works. 00:32:09.980 --> 00:32:14.980 align:middle line:90% 00:32:14.980 --> 00:32:16.840 align:middle line:84% Also a good question [INAUDIBLE].. 00:32:16.840 --> 00:32:19.960 align:middle line:90% You knocked it out of the park. 00:32:19.960 --> 00:32:21.850 align:middle line:84% So in my work, they're like little-- 00:32:21.850 --> 00:32:25.010 align:middle line:84% like everybody's-- little references to other poems 00:32:25.010 --> 00:32:25.510 align:middle line:90% and poets. 00:32:25.510 --> 00:32:27.160 align:middle line:84% And a lot of them are actually people 00:32:27.160 --> 00:32:28.960 align:middle line:84% who are alive that have better studied with 00:32:28.960 --> 00:32:31.910 align:middle line:90% or I know reasonably well. 00:32:31.910 --> 00:32:34.120 align:middle line:84% And I guess what occurs to me through that 00:32:34.120 --> 00:32:39.220 align:middle line:84% is, I mean, those moments feel very close and funny sometimes 00:32:39.220 --> 00:32:39.988 align:middle line:90% but tender a lot. 00:32:39.988 --> 00:32:42.280 align:middle line:84% And that reminds me that even if some of those people I 00:32:42.280 --> 00:32:44.530 align:middle line:84% didn't-- like [? Kenneth ?] Cook I studied with a lot. 00:32:44.530 --> 00:32:46.940 align:middle line:84% And I felt like he knew me in a way but not very well. 00:32:46.940 --> 00:32:49.570 align:middle line:84% But since I heard him in class, there's a certain aspect of him 00:32:49.570 --> 00:32:50.680 align:middle line:90% that I really knew. 00:32:50.680 --> 00:32:52.690 align:middle line:84% And it's really sort of deeply ingrained. 00:32:52.690 --> 00:32:55.360 align:middle line:84% And that however obliquely you knew those people. 00:32:55.360 --> 00:32:56.920 align:middle line:84% That those are-- if you're a writer-- 00:32:56.920 --> 00:32:59.020 align:middle line:84% those are among the most intimate relationships 00:32:59.020 --> 00:33:00.040 align:middle line:90% that you have. 00:33:00.040 --> 00:33:02.438 align:middle line:84% And that you really can hear that and feel it 00:33:02.438 --> 00:33:03.730 align:middle line:90% when it comes back in the work. 00:33:03.730 --> 00:33:09.550 align:middle line:90% 00:33:09.550 --> 00:33:10.050 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:33:10.050 --> 00:33:11.970 align:middle line:90% I think I'm supposed to bring-- 00:33:11.970 --> 00:33:15.040 align:middle line:90% Yes, another question, please. 00:33:15.040 --> 00:33:18.070 align:middle line:84% The other day I was reading a speech 00:33:18.070 --> 00:33:21.190 align:middle line:84% given by a guy named Alex Ross given to the Royal Philharmonic 00:33:21.190 --> 00:33:26.987 align:middle line:84% society on the issue of clapping when listening to the symphony, 00:33:26.987 --> 00:33:28.570 align:middle line:84% and people clapping between movements. 00:33:28.570 --> 00:33:31.480 align:middle line:84% And I've always attended the symphony, always, 00:33:31.480 --> 00:33:34.930 align:middle line:84% but poetry readings, I've barely known if they exist or not. 00:33:34.930 --> 00:33:37.210 align:middle line:84% But it seems here today that people were willing 00:33:37.210 --> 00:33:43.510 align:middle line:84% to clap and laugh and during the reading. 00:33:43.510 --> 00:33:46.060 align:middle line:84% Positively social for something that seems to me 00:33:46.060 --> 00:33:50.350 align:middle line:84% such an asocial activity is writing. 00:33:50.350 --> 00:33:54.070 align:middle line:84% And for such efforts for such a communal activity 00:33:54.070 --> 00:33:58.330 align:middle line:84% is making music, performing the music. 00:33:58.330 --> 00:34:03.445 align:middle line:84% The performance of it becomes so inhibited and strict. 00:34:03.445 --> 00:34:06.170 align:middle line:90% 00:34:06.170 --> 00:34:07.970 align:middle line:84% I just wondered if you have any thoughts 00:34:07.970 --> 00:34:11.780 align:middle line:90% on this general subject of-- 00:34:11.780 --> 00:34:17.429 align:middle line:84% I mean, there's appropriate times to respond [INAUDIBLE].. 00:34:17.429 --> 00:34:21.179 align:middle line:84% Well, for me, I don't think of writing as asocial. 00:34:21.179 --> 00:34:24.330 align:middle line:84% And it takes more time than I have to explain that. 00:34:24.330 --> 00:34:26.760 align:middle line:84% But I also have been to readings where 00:34:26.760 --> 00:34:28.292 align:middle line:84% there's been no clapping whatsoever 00:34:28.292 --> 00:34:29.250 align:middle line:90% and ones that are have. 00:34:29.250 --> 00:34:31.139 align:middle line:84% And I've come to feel that if I am 00:34:31.139 --> 00:34:33.420 align:middle line:84% moved to do that then I'm one of the people that 00:34:33.420 --> 00:34:34.469 align:middle line:90% starts clapping. 00:34:34.469 --> 00:34:36.630 align:middle line:84% And I notice when somebody else starts clapping, 00:34:36.630 --> 00:34:37.679 align:middle line:90% other people want to. 00:34:37.679 --> 00:34:39.477 align:middle line:84% It makes me think people actually 00:34:39.477 --> 00:34:41.310 align:middle line:84% want to but they're not sure if they should. 00:34:41.310 --> 00:34:45.020 align:middle line:90% 00:34:45.020 --> 00:34:47.084 align:middle line:90% Did you want to say something? 00:34:47.084 --> 00:34:48.518 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:34:48.518 --> 00:34:50.330 align:middle line:90% 00:34:50.330 --> 00:34:51.997 align:middle line:84% I'm pretty old so I remember a time when 00:34:51.997 --> 00:34:52.913 align:middle line:90% people didn't do this. 00:34:52.913 --> 00:34:54.679 align:middle line:84% But now people clap during tennis matches. 00:34:54.679 --> 00:34:57.890 align:middle line:84% So anything goes any place after that, I think. 00:34:57.890 --> 00:35:02.150 align:middle line:84% I was just thinking about how in jazz performance as you clap 00:35:02.150 --> 00:35:05.390 align:middle line:84% and the relationship between poetry performance and jazz 00:35:05.390 --> 00:35:07.670 align:middle line:90% as it came into being. 00:35:07.670 --> 00:35:11.030 align:middle line:84% And so I think that you'll see different types of poetry 00:35:11.030 --> 00:35:15.470 align:middle line:84% readings will invite that and others won't. 00:35:15.470 --> 00:35:17.780 align:middle line:84% I think you make a very important point that poetry 00:35:17.780 --> 00:35:21.380 align:middle line:84% is fundamentally asocial, because imaginary poets 00:35:21.380 --> 00:35:25.220 align:middle line:84% are also fundamentally asocial because they don't exist. 00:35:25.220 --> 00:35:28.040 align:middle line:84% And for that reason, I find it particularly disturbing 00:35:28.040 --> 00:35:30.860 align:middle line:84% if people should laugh in a poetry reading 00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:34.400 align:middle line:84% since good poetry can never be funny. 00:35:34.400 --> 00:35:38.240 align:middle line:84% But I'm going to answer your question 00:35:38.240 --> 00:35:42.170 align:middle line:84% with Baudelaire's answer in one of his most famous poems. 00:35:42.170 --> 00:35:46.080 align:middle line:90% "Be always drunk, that's all. 00:35:46.080 --> 00:35:49.230 align:middle line:84% That is the only question, so not 00:35:49.230 --> 00:35:52.650 align:middle line:84% to feel the horrific heaviness of time 00:35:52.650 --> 00:35:56.580 align:middle line:84% weighing on your shoulders, crushing you to the ground. 00:35:56.580 --> 00:35:59.520 align:middle line:90% You must be drunken ceaselessly. 00:35:59.520 --> 00:36:00.780 align:middle line:90% But on what? 00:36:00.780 --> 00:36:06.510 align:middle line:84% On wine, on poetry, or on virtue in your fashion, 00:36:06.510 --> 00:36:08.520 align:middle line:90% but drunken be. 00:36:08.520 --> 00:36:15.300 align:middle line:84% And if some time on palace steps on the green grass by an abyss 00:36:15.300 --> 00:36:17.010 align:middle line:90% in mournful solitude. 00:36:17.010 --> 00:36:21.030 align:middle line:84% In your room if some time you awake drunkenness dimmed 00:36:21.030 --> 00:36:24.150 align:middle line:84% or done, ask of the wind of the wave 00:36:24.150 --> 00:36:27.270 align:middle line:84% of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that fleas, 00:36:27.270 --> 00:36:31.290 align:middle line:84% of all that whales, of all that wails, of all that sings, 00:36:31.290 --> 00:36:32.190 align:middle line:90% of all that speaks. 00:36:32.190 --> 00:36:33.960 align:middle line:90% Ask what hour is it? 00:36:33.960 --> 00:36:36.870 align:middle line:84% And the wind, the wave, the bird, and the clock 00:36:36.870 --> 00:36:37.800 align:middle line:90% will answer. 00:36:37.800 --> 00:36:42.270 align:middle line:84% It is the hour to get drunk, so not 00:36:42.270 --> 00:36:45.240 align:middle line:84% to be the slavish martyr of time. 00:36:45.240 --> 00:36:49.800 align:middle line:84% Be drunken, be drunken without stopping on wine, 00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:56.378 align:middle line:84% on poetry, or on virtue in your fashion." 00:36:56.378 --> 00:36:58.330 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:36:58.330 --> 00:37:04.480 align:middle line:90% 00:37:04.480 --> 00:37:04.980 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:37:04.980 --> 00:37:07.410 align:middle line:84% I'm going to officially draw this to a close 00:37:07.410 --> 00:37:09.720 align:middle line:84% by saying thanks for attending this reading. 00:37:09.720 --> 00:37:13.200 align:middle line:84% The authors again will be autographing books in tent C, 00:37:13.200 --> 00:37:16.680 align:middle line:84% in the Madden Media signing area on the mall, just south 00:37:16.680 --> 00:37:17.410 align:middle line:90% of this building. 00:37:17.410 --> 00:37:19.740 align:middle line:84% But they'll be here for a few minutes 00:37:19.740 --> 00:37:22.340 align:middle line:84% and you can buy books right here.