Thank you so much.
Sure, thank you
I think Carl has sort of cast a spell on us.
But in order to have this Q&A, we're
going to have to break the spell.
So if you have someone who could kiss you,
maybe they could do that.
Otherwise, you're on your own, so you can shake yourself.
Maybe they've been thrown into a catatonic state, or something.
Do what you can, and let me know if you have a question.
I'm going to be bringing you the mic.
Or if you're far away, we'll be repeating the question
into the mic so that we can get it
on the recording We are recording
this reading for Voca, and Valentina has a question.
There's such a beautiful rhythm to your poems.
And I wonder if that is a consideration when
you're generating the language, post language, line breakage.
[LAUGHS]
Oh, thank you.
I didn't know if that was the end.
No, I mean, it is.
I mean, in the sense of when I'm--
I guess, when I'm revising, I read the poems out loud a lot
and wonder if there's too much sameness to the rhythm
or something like that.
But I don't think of myself as a formal poet.
Someone was saying recently they thought I was.
And I don't feel that way.
But I listen to music a lot more than I read poetry, actually.
And I don't know.
I would like poems to have muscularity to them
and to sound muscular that in the reading of them
it would feel like something, not like a workout exactly,
but almost like a little bit of a sexual experience perhaps.
And then I try to delineate in that way.
But I know that it doesn't matter
what you do with lineation, because then people just
read the poems however they read them.
But at least for me, I know.
It's always been kind of sad to me
there's nothing in poetry that's like a musical score
system with half notes and quarter notes.
And then you can kind of guarantee that your music will
be played the way you want it.
But anyway.
That was the answer.
Thank you.
Howdy, ask more.
[CHUCKLES]
Hey.
In your last question, you just mentioned
that you listen to a lot of music,
and that inspires you in writing your poems.
Are you a musician yourself?
Well, only in a very wannabe kind of way.
From fourth grade into college, I played the accordion.
[LAUGHTER]
I didn't to.
I wanted to play the saxophone.
And my father found a used accordion
so that's what I was going to play.
And at that time it had its limitations,
you know, "Turkey in the Straw", things like that, the Volga
Boatman song.
And since it's become kind of hip
to have an accordion in the background of your hip hop
music or something.
But so there's that.
But the thing I actually most wanted
to be tied with wanting to be a veterinarian
was a lead singer in a band.
And in my mind I still think it's possible.
[LAUGHTER]
But I doubt it's going to happen.
So I have an affinity for it.
And have I spent a lot of time singing.
Are you good?
Well--
[LAUGHTER]
--I think so.
I think I am.
I think in that limited way and yet inimitable way
that Sade or Billie Holiday might be,
I think that that's what I would aspire to.
I know I could go into any studio
and be like a Justin Bieber and be "Bieberified,"
and I could do that.
But the thing where there could be no musical accompaniment
and people would still think, wow, there's music happening.
So it's part of my sensibility that I can't claim anything.
I'm sorry, last question, I swear.
[CHUCKLES] Do you think that musicians and non-musicians
interpret poetry differently?
And do you ever think about that when you're writing?
I don't think about it when I'm writing.
But I would imagine they might interpret it differently.
Just because if you're a musician who writes lyrics,
for example, I suppose you pay attention to language of poems.
And if you don't, but you write music maybe you'd be sensitive.
Maybe you'd hear rhythms that somebody who wasn't
sensitive to that would hear.
I don't know any musicians so I don't know what they think.
But I would think there'd be a difference.
Would you tell us a little bit about the role
that plants and animals play in your poems.
Plants and animals, well, I can do better with animals.
Well, one, I spent a lot of time with animals and plants
in the world.
I know I live in St. Louis.
But there is actually wildlife.
And everyone thinks it's just an arch and then the airport.
But there's a lot.
And I've always been interested in how humans are
burdened by self-consciousness.
And so an animal doesn't wake up in the morning,
I think, and think, oh, how long will I live?
What is the meaning of life?
Things like that.
But we do.
We think about that.
And we're aware of mortality and limitation.
And I've always been fascinated with how animals just sort of
live free of that constraint.
And also how they don't have any,
they just do what they want.
So they kill.
They mate.
And there's no sort of moral valence to it.
And I'm interested in that, because humans are animals.
And yet, we have all these other impositions upon us
that make us so that we're not supposed to be like animals.
And it's considered bad to be animalistic.
And I think it's the purest form of being.
But obviously, wrong, we can't just go and kill people
left and right, and, you know, mate with them randomly.
So that's part of the fascination
that, in observing them, I think I'm
interested in that intersection between how
what true behavior, animal behavior, is,
but then the socially imposed human behavior,
social, moral codes.
So plants, I don't know.
At the moment, I think they're a pain in the ass,
because I've got a lot of trees in my yard.
And I'm doing all the raking.
So I'm not having a very good relationship with them,
but yeah.