They're going to stay with me, just
in case they have an answer.
OK, thank you guys so much.
Yeah, if you got a question, please pass them down
and a volunteer will come by and pick them up.
And oh, Sarah has a question for me already, OK.
All right.
How do you situate your work in relation
to the debate surrounding linearity and nonlinearity?
Do you rebel against the tyranny of the line?
I ask this, especially because of the repetition
of chapter 1 because of your work in digital literature.
I don't rebel against linearity in a few ways.
I really believe in, the book should be read front to back.
That's linearity.
Within a piece, I do, I think complicate the ways the story
threads work together.
But even so, it's not meant to be random.
Therefore, I wouldn't want you to read it haphazardly.
So I think in some ways, I do believe in the flow of time,
and the flow of reading.
And I use those, I think to manipulate the stories.
So it's not rebelling against certain kinds of linearity.
I think I'm playing with the way that you
can work against the flow of time, but still be within it.
Awesome.
Making any sense?
Yes.
OK, how do you think your writing translates
to readings like this?
Why use collaborators?
Yes, well, yeah.
At first, I tried to use videos and other things.
The pieces are very poly-vocal to me.
I mean, this one has a six-person protagonist
for example, so how to manifest that.
If I read it all, I think it would just sound flattened.
So to me, to hear the different voices,
brings alive the fact that there are
six birds telling the story.
So that's a simple one.
OK, I have a boneheaded question.
It's such amazing piece, and includes
so much, like history, biography, autobiography,
ecology, environmentalism, fiction, animal needs,
animal talents.
And I just want to know where it started for you.
What was your--
Now, people are going to laugh at me
because I've told this story in a class I visited today.
This piece is actually a play that I
wrote when I was in college.
And it was probably the year the poor dusky
sparrow went extinct.
And I was really intrigued by what that would feel like,
to be six men with no--
like what that felt like.
So that was where it started, way, way, way, back, then.
The play is unreadable now.
But those six birds, well, actually they're five.
The five birds were really just stuck in my head just
to feel that feeling.
And then, it thought, well, what's different than the rest.
I mean, we're all kind of-- except what
is the difference between dying and really dying,
like extinct dying?
Anyway, I was just fascinated by these poor last birds.
Who do you write for?
Who's your ideal reader?
My own perfectionist self.
If I can stand behind it, then I feel like it's OK.
And then if others don't like it, that's totally cool.
This question is, how do you hold a book together?
Maybe, how do you--
when do you feel it's together?
It takes a while.
That's a complicated question.
The book can get bloated, and then there's
pieces that are too much, and then those have to come out.
Yeah, the book has to function as a whole--
the whole discussion of all of the parts of the book
have to work.
So that's actually a long process.
Once I decide that a certain set is going to become a book,
then really being ruthless about what's going in, why, order,
that kind of thing.
OK, in my poetry.
Two more questions.
Two more questions?
OK.
In my poetry class, you described your writing style
as the only way you can write.
Even though your writing style is unique,
are there any writers who have influenced it?
If yes, who are they?
I think there's writers who gave me permissions.
And that's really important.
And I'm sure all of you know that the thing you really
got to look for in life are the permissions
to do what you want to do.
Certainly, there's historical people,
whose work felt really risky.
I mentioned earlier, like well Virginia Woolf's book,
Three Guineas had a really profound influence on me
when I read it.
I just thought, wow, she went somewhere I couldn't imagine.
And in a way, it was so inspiring how she went there.
I've mentioned this too, but like Bouvard et Pécuchet--
very little known work of Flaubert's which I think is
just one of the best books ever written.
Anne Carson of a contemporary-- in a contemporary mode.
When I was very young, she was really important to me.
She's was one of the first people-- someone
handed me and said, you should read this.
A lot of playwrights have been important to me
because that's where I started with some theater.
You know, I think it's a personal thing.
I mean, I can say some things, but they wouldn't necessarily--
sometimes I say like, oh, I love Milan Kundera, because I really
do love Milan Kundera.
And then say, "Oh, really, I can't see that in your work."
And it's like, it's not really about seeing the thing.
It's really about what gives you the permission.
And he was an early person who gave me the permission
to talk about things at the same-- like rupture
my own narrative surface with thinking.
And that ability to think through text was something he--
it was just a matter of probably luck It happened
that I read him when I did.
But the rupturing of thought into the authorial surface
was something he permitted me to do, I guess.
OK.
And the last question is for Mike, Erin, and Kendra.
How did speaking the voice of encyclopedic erudite birds
change your day?
I speak this way naturally.
Well, we did rehearse yesterday.
And what was going to be scheduled
as a rehearsal was more of like, can you handle these big words?
Which wasn't what she asked us.
It wasn't patronizing like that.
It was more like an internal question that I had asked.
But what was interesting is that there was no--
there was going to be a rehearsal for this.
There was a potential third piece
we were going to read in place of one of these that would have
required a lot of rehearsal.
And so the fact--
personally, I didn't want, except for the really big
sometimes Latin words or Hui Shi.
I didn't look over too much because it was just--
I don't want to sound too mystical because it's not
that mystical-- but like inhabiting
a consciousness on the page.
And again, that sounds way too spiritual or whatever,
but it was more like, OK, let's see
what happens as this happens.
And we'd all encountered the work before in Ander's class.
And so it was kind of-- our second reading
was very high stakes.
I think I told you not to have poetry voice.
Yes, which sounds like, always start
by saying that this is not a ghost story.
Yeah, I said they couldn't have poetry voice, that
was the one thing.
If I could change bodies with a really erudite sparrow,
I would right now.
Though probably not a dusky Seaside Sparrow,
since there aren't any others.
Probably, a white crowned sparrow.
I mean, unless you want it to be extinct, in which case
it would be a perfect fit.
Yeah, I mean I think that having the opportunity to speak
through this other voice is a really important thing for all
of us as writers and readers.
It's a great opportunity to inhabit someone else's mind,
and that's what reading allows us to do.
And that's what having poetry readings like this
allows us to do as listeners.
So yeah, it's just a fantastic thing.
It's fun, not at all nerve wracking.
You guys did a great job.
Thank you guys, all of you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone for being a part of a hybrid writing mini
series.
Please stick around, buy some books and say hi to Thalia.
And see you next week.