So we are going to do a short 10 minute Q and A.
And we're going to try a new way of getting
this on the recording.
We were recording this reading for VOCA.
So if you are close to me, I'm going to bring you the mic.
And if you're a far from me, I'm going to listen,
and I'm going to try and repeat your question.
So if you're far from me, keep it very simple--
[LAUGHTER]
--because I'm not that smart.
So who has a question?
There's a hand back there.
There's a hand way back.
No?
OK.
Oh, no.
Just signing.
Oh, is there a way that we could get some more light, or--
Am I getting feedback?
There's a problem with the lighting
and seeing the interpreter.
Why don't we let this guy forward.
There's a free seat right here.
Since I don't have a question, I just
can't see the interpreter--
Oh, he has to go [INAUDIBLE].
OK, what's the question?
He has to go around.
Any questions?
I have a question.
All the way here.
[INAUDIBLE]
I have a question for Joyelle.
I did not expect you to be singing.
So OK.
[LAUGHTER]
How did you get into singing your poems?
I mean, I hope that my poems are rhythmic, also.
But I've never really sung them.
So has this just come up out at home, or did someone
suggest it, or how were you inspired to sing?
[INAUDIBLE] Oh, you got it.
OK, thank you so much for that question.
I mean, I think it's strange if you've gone through like school
to learn how to write poems, and learn how to read poems,
then you're used to writing your poems for the page.
But as soon as I started performing my poems people
would tell me, you should be an actress.
And I'd be like, but I'm a poet.
[LAUGHTER]
Is there's something wrong with me?
Which is a good way to feel for poetry.
You could tell I was in the right game.
So then with each-- so I have three books of poetry.
I have some prose stuff, too.
But so this is my third.
And with each book it's gotten more performative.
And then with this one I really just let the rhythms
and the sound blow through me.
So then it was natural to just let all that sound come through
in the reading.
And finally, with the Glock Chorus these are really songs.
So you're right.
There's been a progression from learning
how to negotiate the page, learning--
that's how you learn when you first learn poetry at school.
And then realizing that my sound was really
steering me after all.
And to let that come more and more to the surface
and steer the poem.
Until now I just sing them.
But you could see actually percussion grenade
the second thing that I read was actually a hinge poem for that.
Because it starts conversationally in the voice
which is so silly and bombastic.
That it becomes like a weird occupation of my body
with its voice.
So now that's what I want.
I want there to be a shape and sound that just has to get out.
And sometimes I recognize, oh, that's a character.
Like in Glock Chorus it's all in characters.
And sometimes it's just the weird shape of the world,
making weird patterns.
We're presenting strange rhymes, or rhymes that I make.
Like outrageous- microwave-us is probably not a noun.
[LAUGHTER]
But I went with it.
So yeah.
So it has been a development thing.
And also, being sensitive to my own poems.
So letting out the strength of my poems
was in sound, and letting that just ride the poems,
and in a way the poems ride me, too.
It's become very exciting, and for me, unpredictable, too,
because you never know our performance is going to go.
So now it's gotten scary again, the way
it did when I was like in my very first workshop.
And I was like--
[GASPS] So that's a good sign, I think.
Keep it scary.
Hi, I just wanted to thank both of you for reading here.
This is really exciting hearing young people,
because as soon as you think the best poets are in their 80s.
So thank you for that, and I had a common--
I'm in my 80s.
[LAUGHTER]
Zach's had a lot of work done.
You're a very young old man.
Yes.
So I had a comment for Joyelle.
And I had a question for Zachary.
And my comment for Joyelle is I want to thank you
for a phrase you gave me.
That was the chopping list.
Because I spent some time of my childhood in Saudi Arabia,
and there they make shopping lists and chopping lists.
So thank you for that connection.
And I had a question for Zachary.
I'm listening to you read.
It sounds like probably when you started writing poetry you
probably--
I don't know.
I could be transferring here, but you probably really hated
your early stuff, and had a lot of trouble with it--
[LAUGHTER]
--and had to work really hard to get past that.
[LAUGHTER]
Is that the question?
I mean, your stuff's wonderful right now.
But I'm just saying it probably was really hard work--
You hated it?
--before you got to that point.
Actually, the very first poem I wrote I was 20 years old.
And it was about a pig.
[LAUGHTER]
It was for a poetry class, and I never--
I couldn't have named more than one poet at that time.
I don't know what, who that poet would be now.
But that poem I sent to the New Yorker.
[LAUGHTER]
I thought it was the best thing.
I just thought, surely, they would want it.
[LAUGHTER]
And I sent them one poem, but my teacher
said it was really good.
[LAUGHTER]
I haven't sent to the New Yorker since then,
and I haven't heard back from them about that poem.
[LAUGHTER]
So that's entirely false actually.
But shortly after that.
Yeah, I started to, I feel like, maybe get
confident enough at poetry to know that what I was doing
wasn't very good.
So then, I mean, but that was maybe a few years after that.
And then I taught myself how to like the poems, but yeah.
There's a hand way in the back.
Go ahead
Did James Tate think it was his poem?
OK, the question was, did James Tate think it was his poem?
Sure.
Yeah.
I tricked him.
[LAUGHTER]
No.
He's an old man.
Yeah, he's-- I didn't get to--
I don't know if anybody's had personal conversations
with him.
But I didn't get to talk to him very much, like two sentences
or so afterwards--
which is the two of my favorite sentences.
[LAUGHTER]
So that's fine, but we didn't even talk about the poem.
I think he just said it's nice to see you.
And glad to be here, or something.
[LAUGHTER]
But I like to think that, sure, that he did.
It's a long story, but I almost--
never mind.
We'll just have a beer later.
[LAUGHTER]
It involves the broken down van and some magic.
[LAUGHTER]
Hi, thank you for reading.
Since I missed the vice presidential debate tonight,
I was hoping you and your opponent
could say a few comments about the economy.
[LAUGHTER]
Woo!
I think Zach already answered that question
with his van, broken down van and a lot of magic.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm from South Bend, Indiana, and that's about all
we have to work with there.
So that's how we're going to fix this economy.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, it doesn't-- Yeah, I have no money at all,
and have no possibility of probably really making it.
So I'm out of the realm of that conversation.
I don't-- it doesn't affect me.
[LAUGHTER]
I'll make my couple of bucks for the rest of my life,
and I'll be fine.
Oh.
[LAUGHTER]
One last question?
Or, not?
I can just tell [INAUDIBLE] or not.
Go ahead.
Or, not.
Thank you for your performances.
I enjoyed both of them.
They're very different.
I'm curious what, Joyelle you were reading when
you wrote percussion grenade.
And also, the last one.
And also, I'm curious, what you were
reading when you wrote Fjords if you can even remember.
Yeah.
Excuse me, buddy.
I've now snared this man.
Let me think about it a minute.
Well, I read-- to write Glock Chorus first
I read a book, which I mentioned.
It's called-- what is it called?
The Emerald City.
It's a non-fiction book about how life
was lived in the green zone.
And you can find it.
It's not precisely called The Emerald City,
but I'm sure if you Google green zone Emerald
City you'll find it.
And it was made into a really shitty Matt Damon movie, where
it was totally made about Matt Damon, which it turns out
is not what the Iraq war is actually.
[LAUGHTER]
Matt Damon totally took the broken down van and magic
approach to fixing that problem.
And it worked for him.
Thank you, Hollywood.
So that was where some of the anecdotes, like the cat
extermination, and some of the other anecdotes from that
come into this are.
But basically, I also read, for--
I read some books about mad cow disease, and scrapie,
and how these vectors work, and how they were
discovered and nailed down.
And I read a lot of news.
I read Al Jazeera.
There's so much bad things happening in the world.
And I feel like it's my job to know about them all.
So I think I spent a lot of time online
reading the news from different news sources, and especially
Al Jazeera.
I'm just seeing the kind of suffering--
I mean, this is a downer after an upbeat reading.
But my readings are very upbeat, but they
come from a kind of like appalled hysteria
in the face of the stuff.
I have a very medieval worldview.
That the world is bad and getting worse.
But it's good if you're a disease, because it's
getting better for that.
[LAUGHTER]
Like, if you look at it from a--
And so sometimes I do look at it from a microbe's point of view,
or from like the Prion's point of view.
Like, the King Prion's going to come and take care of it all,
and make it all go away.
You know, that's going to happen, not Matt Damon.
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah.
So I read stuff about gross diseases.
My buddy here, just Brent just gave me
a book on how forensics scientists study
co-mingled human remains.
I'm going to sink my teeth into that later.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean--
The book, you mean.
The book, yeah.
[INAUDIBLE] I read a lot of Shakespeare
and old-fashioned stuff, because I like weird
dictions and especially in weird modes of address.
Oh, and I read Just Kids by Patti Smith.
So I read really widely, but I definitely
read a lot of current events, and a lot of like pop science
so that I can try to get my head around science--
because not just the vocabulary of the metaphors,
and the hope that other species might take over soon
makes me feel good.
[LAUGHTER]
That seems like a good solution to the human-ous problem,
the Anthropocene.
I just, a very quick answer the exact formula for this book
was I was, as I mentioned before reading,
I was trying to write my own memoir
of the hawk, the Tate book.
And then later the post-Spork poems were more influenced--
or, some combination between that
and Anne Carson's Short Talks.
That's one of my very favorite books of all time.
So I wanted to try to do something like that,
and maybe fell a little short with that,
but I love that book.
And I was also listening to three specific bands,
which were--
over and over again while writing, which
were Wolves in the Throne Room, and Tecumseh, and Godspeed You!
Black Emperor.
Can I make another comment?
Yeah.
Another kind of ironical thing is
that I also have been losing my hearing in the last five years.
So while I was writing a lot of this percussion grenade
I was losing my hearing at the same time.
I were hearing aids now, and they don't work that great.
This is another reason I'm so psyched to see these ladies,
not only because it's all about me--
[LAUGHTER]
But because look at the amazing poetry performance
these ladies put on.
We sent them our poems, and then they
figure out how to perform them.
And they perform them with no text.
And they totally rock it, and are amazing.
So first of all, a hand for them.
[APPLAUSE]
So that losing my hearing is two things, but maybe--
Is this is still on--
Yeah.
It made me think more about what sound is,
and how it cuts through and possesses you,
even when you don't have what other people think
of as hearing.
And secondly, since I wear these hearing aids now,
it's like having two little microphones in my ears.
And I have no natural noise in my life anymore.
Every noise I hear is basically digitized.
And so it's like, I blast it off, man.
I'm going--
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] like out there like the world
is completely digital to me.
And I'm loving it.
It just makes me feel crazy and magic.
So I'm into it.
OK, that's it.
[APPLAUSE]
Please buy the Spork books, the Poetry Center books.
Thank you.
Thank you, Joyelle, [INAUDIBLE].