WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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Can we just--

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Yeah.

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Do we-- what's the--

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Marie, would you like
to take a few questions

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from the audience?

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I'd like a few answers
from the audience.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Does anybody have any answers?

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Go ahead.

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We need to have you
so we can record it.

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Yeah.

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I don't have any answers, but
I've always enjoyed-- well,

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I enjoy your work, but I
am particularly fascinated

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with poem, "The Split."

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Could you comment on it?

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That's an old one.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, these guys
don't know the poem.

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Well, is there anyone in this
room who ever felt split?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Yes!

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I did too.

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I did too.

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I mean, when I was a girl,
I had an imaginary friend.

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Anybody here have
an imaginary friend?

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Sure.

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Right?

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She was very bad.

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She did terrible things.

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[LAUGHTER]

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She was.

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And I think in order
to become a writer,

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I had to beckon her
back and integrate her.

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I mean, the great thing
about living a long time--

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and I hope to live for at
least another 60 years-- is

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that it gets better, right?

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Integration occurs if you stay
present to it and work at it,

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you know?

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So that's an old poem and
she's an old friend, Brett.

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And I'm glad you bring her up.

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She's here now, actually.

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Now that you mention it.

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Soon as you brought her up,
she's appeared in the room.

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Glad she's here.

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What is she doing?

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[LAUGHTER]

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She's shaking her fist at
that woman, saying, "damn you!

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Why'd you bring up that poem?"

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[LAUGHTER]

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We were talking today in
the class about how poetry

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is this great art that can--

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it's a way.

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There are many ways, you know?

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Play a violin.

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Make pots.

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Build a house.

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Heal people.

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There's many, many
ways where you

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can move beyond the self
you think you are, which is,

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of course, so
small, and I, I, I,

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I. And poetry can hea-- it
is an act of transformation.

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Jane so beautifully
said that through writing

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into what you don't know
what you're doing, this--

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it's a great, deeply
unconsciously transformative

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art, you know?

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It's-- and saved
my life, you know.

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So when you bring out the
split, I'm rocked kind of back

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to the beginnings when all those
parts of the self are still--

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they've been exiled, you know.

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And it seems like our
job, maybe just as humans,

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is to say, come home.

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Come home, everybody.

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The thief, the liar, the
scared girl, the nervous girl--

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whoever.

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Come on home, you know.

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It's OK.

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And that poem is the beginning,
the first attempt at that,

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I think.

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Anybody else?

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Yeah?

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It's the internal
architecture of my life.

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Not the Catholic church--

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I have very little relationship
with the Catholic Church--

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but with these stories.

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It's a big difference.

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You know, because when people--

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Louise Gluck has a relationship
with the Greek myths, you know,

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and I have a relationship
with these stories.

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They may mean, quite
literally, the world to me.

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They are the stories
through which I can help.

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Like some people, now there's--
who's the guy today in class,

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Middle Earth, you know?

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I mean they're mythic stories.

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They're huge, big,
roomy stories.

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The Jews, of course, know that
the stories are never finished.

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They believe in
Midrash so that you--

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the imagination
works with the Torah

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and continues to write it.

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And I believe that
about these stories.

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So as a girl, I was very lucky.

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I went to a wonderful school
and had brilliant nuns.

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All of them had advanced
degrees and they

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were more radical than we were.

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And I was affiliated with the
Catholic left in the '60s.

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But I don't go to church.

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And I wish the Catholic Church
would give its money back

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to the people of the Earth.

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But my opinion of the Catholic
church doesn't matter,

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but the stories are eternal.

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They're big.

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They're long.

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And every culture has stories
like this, whatever they are--

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the deep, unconscious stories.

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You know, I mean the
Quran shares so many

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of these same stories.

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The Greek myths,
the African stories,

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there's so many of these.

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So it's at that level that
they mean a great deal to me.

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And I have to tell you,
I was ashamed of that

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for a long time.

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I was embarrassed.

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And the person that helped
me be less embarrassed

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was Jane Kenyon,
the wonderful poet,

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Jane Kenyon who is a friend.

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You all know her poems?

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The great, wonderful,
Jane Kenyon.

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She was unembarrassed by her
relationship with these stories

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and I felt liberated by that.

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I was sneakily writing
about them, but embarrassed.

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And Jane really
helped me kind of

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come out of the closet
about it, so bless her.

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Such a great poet.

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Anybody else?

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One more question?

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Down here.

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I wonder if you have
any interest in Keats'

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notion of negative capability?

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Completely.

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The reason I ask is because you
were talking Mary's annunciation

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and her having this
moment becoming

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a part of whatever this thing
is and a banishment of the self.

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And though it wasn't a
literary writing moment,

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I want to associate those.

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So I just wonder what
you think about it.

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Well, you all
remember Keats talked

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about negative
capability, which is being

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able to rest in uncertainty,
without any irritable grasping

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after--

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Fact and reason.

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--fact and reason, which
is what life asks of us.

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Let's just say it, right?

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Whenever we think we know
the answer to something,

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we're done for.

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So that's something we talk
about every day in classes

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with writers and I,
together working.

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I mean, that's the hardest
part about writing.

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I don't really think writing
is self-expression, you know.

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I think it's some other--

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a way of being in deep
receptivity to something else.

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It's a way, again.

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It's a path.

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It's a gate.

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It's a way.

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And negative capability
is the only way

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to walk through that way.

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What else can you do?

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I don't know.

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If you're certain, there's
nothing to be learned.

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Robert Frost, the
great Robert Frost,

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a poet who deeply influences
me and who I adore,

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said, you know, "no
surprise for the writer,

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no surprise for the reader.

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No tears for the writer,
no tears for the reader."

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And Auden said that
great thing, if you

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think what you're doing, then--

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You're doing it wrong.

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--you're doing it wrong.

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You're lost.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So that's the good news.

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We don't have to know
what we're doing.

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And when we do--

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How can you tell if
you're doing it right?

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We never know.

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We serve-- that's what we do.

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But I can't-- I really
want to thank you.

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You're an extraordinary
audience here, group of people,

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and I'm so glad to
have been with you.

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Thank you so much for
coming out tonight.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you, Marie.

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Thank you every--