We have time for a short Q and A. And, you want to come back up?
OK.
I'll give you this one, because you're walking around.
And if you have a question, if you could speak it into the mic
so that we can get it onto the recording that we are doing.
And I'll start with the question actually.
I love your reading style.
I think all poems should be read in this style.
And I'm wondering what the inspiration and origins
of your style is?
Life and death.
[LAUGHTER]
OK, next question.
[LAUGHTER]
More an observation than a question,
though love and death may be the answer to all questions.
You'll forgive me--
I'll forgive you.
Many years ago-- thank you--
I was fortunate-- this is a long time ago--
and I was sitting to hear Brodsky.
And you are an echo of him--
I hope so.
--in both the content, and, if anybody has heard
Brodsky read, even in the rhythmic, near chant-like,
Russian bells, if I may say so.
It was really quite--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Do you know what they called Brodsky in Russia
for the way he read?
What?
The called him rabbi on the top of a locomotive.
OK.
Well, you are the second coming.
[INAUDIBLE]
But he was a great Russian poet, no question about it for me.
I don't love his [INAUDIBLE] translations if you [INAUDIBLE]
work as much.
I do love his essays in English however.
They're great essays.
In Russian, he's a great poet.
Thank you, Ilya, for that beautiful reading.
I've been enjoying the book that you edited, a God in the House,
and I'm curious if you can talk about faith and your faith
and its orientation to your poetry.
I'm going to talk about my faith to myself.
I'm not going to do that in public.
But I do want to talk about the difference between the word
faith and the word belief, and why we put that on the cover.
Because belief implies some certain barriers.
It implies times that you believe
and other people who don't believe in are a problem.
And the word faith, for me, and that maybe also Russian-- and I
think some way, I don't know if it's with religion,
but if it's not, please correct me.
But for me it implies more faith in the world,
having faith in something.
That doesn't mean barriers.
So what we were trying to do this book--
and this is not my book in any way, it's a book of interviews.
My friend Katie [INAUDIBLE], who is a novelist, and I,
just had a conversation, where we
thought that not enough writers, those who can speak
about things that matter to us.
And we wanted to bully them into doing that.
And for me, it was-- look, I was born in '77, which means that I
grew up right about the time of fall of USSR. And that was
a time of kitchens, as they called it,
when people were sitting in the kitchen until 4:00 AM,
arguing passionately who is better to die for [INAUDIBLE]
Dostoevsky, and all the big philosophical questions--
what is important in life and all of that.
And I didn't feel that a lot of that
is happening around me where I live in San Diego, California.
So I wanted more of those conversations.
But at the end, when we put the book together,
we realized that we didn't really belong there.
So we took all the questions out and just kept the answers.
And in a way, I thought it was more interesting [INAUDIBLE]
because it was more like a conversation
that every person had with themselves.