WEBVTT

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Question in the back.

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Hello.

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I was wondering if maybe
you would each talk

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about the impulse that
you had in creating

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what was for Josh a long poem
and for Jane a series of linked

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short poems.

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I think I don't want to stop.

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Like, I think I want
to just prolong the--

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not this reading.

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[LAUGHTER]

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The reading's over.

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You can go home at any moment.

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But I think that--

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yeah, I think I like the
image, I like to kind of hover,

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and I like to see if I can
sort of stop time in my poems

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and sort of zero in on something
and sort of linger there

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and pretend that I can press
pause on things when you can't.

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And I think they have this kind
of stalled out and yet on-rush

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kind of quality, this moment,
and yet there's like a billion

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of them, and they
just kind of go by.

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And that's just, I guess, one
of the obsessions of mine.

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I think the long poem is
sort of the frame for that.

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But there's no--

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I guess in some ways I don't
know what the impulse is,

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but I think it is to sort of--
there's a stalling quality

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and wanting to hover
there in a certain moment.

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And Jane.

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Well, like Josh, another
way of putting that I think

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is that I'm a lyric
poet and I think

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in very condensed
and associative ways,

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and I wanted to see if
I can include the reader

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in the process of my poetry.

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So the last line
leading into the title

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is a way of you are seeing
how it's constructed.

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So you get to see that
line again and think

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about where it might go.

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And some of the poems ended up
to be quite short as a result.

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Also just to change,
because my recent work

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before this book is a very
long poem, so I needed a--

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I just set myself
a new assignment.

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I just have two questions, one
for Joshua and one for Jane.

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Doesn't matter what order.

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But, Josh, I was wondering
if you could just--

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Joshua, if you could just
speak about the relationship

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between photography and your
work, because no one has

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said anything, and I think
that to me is quite striking.

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And then, Jane, I've noticed
as your work has progressed,

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your sense of humor has
become more and more

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to the forefront of
your work, and kind of

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combined with a certain
immediacy which I love,

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and it touches me in a
very particular way that

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is rare, because
I don't often like

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poems to have humor in them.

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But yours transcend
that, and so I

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wonder if you could
speak about that somehow,

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if that doesn't bother you.

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Thank you.

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Well, I tried to pick some
of the funny ones tonight.

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You can get into some dark
shit in my work, so good luck.

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But I was trying to be a
little bit upbeat, which

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is hard to do in the
same breath that you're

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talking about Stalin
and Nazis and such.

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But I do think that it
is part of my culture

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to mix humor with darkness,
that it's a bit of theater,

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bit of play to try to--

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Music is often used
for that, and I

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do think of humor as
a form of music to me,

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so it breaks up the misery,
breaks up the darkness,

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and gives people a
chance to get involved.

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So I did try to
present some of those,

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but thank you for asking.

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I'm glad I was funny.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It was funny And the
photograph for me, quickly,

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is that, I mean, I'm
obsessed with the image,

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I'm obsessed with
the isolated moment.

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I'm obsessed with the image
as in writing, but also

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in terms of film, in
terms of photography.

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We're visual creatures
if we're lucky enough

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to have that sense.

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And so I did a book that
has photographs in it

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also by my friend Tim Rutili.

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We took Polaroid
photographs for it,

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and it's a book called
Selenography and they sort of--

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they're on facing pages, the
text and the photographs,

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and it was something to, I
guess, counterpoint off of,

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to draw from, to speak to--

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I guess sort of
charge up the way

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that the writing
was sort of working,

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and I guess to sort
of be inspired by it.

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But I think I don't really
need any more images.

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I need to take some out.

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[LAUGHTER]

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OK, I think we have time
for one more question.

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Have we got one here?

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Hi.

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So this is for both of you.

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I've noticed that you guys
use tone very differently,

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and I would like to know,
as you approach a poem,

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how do you think of your tone?

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Do you know exactly
what you're going

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to write when you come in
or is it just something that

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flows with the words?

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I'm not sure what--

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I don't know if you
heard the question.

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She's asking us about
tone and whether we

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enter the poem knowing what
our tone is going to be.

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Do you mean voice,
or do you mean sort

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of the personality of the poem?

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Yes.

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For me, I never know
what it's going to be.

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And if I do know,
I throw that out.

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And I don't know
at the end, either.

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I mean, I was quite surprised
at some of the things,

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just seriously for a
moment, that people

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were laughing at, because
to me, they were just

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sort of not that funny.

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Like my parents thinking they've
been poisoned, for example.

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Married 50 years, thinking
they've been poisoned.

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So I'm not sure about tone.

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I think I'm the last person
to realize what it is.

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I'm thinking of other things
like the music of the vowels

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or how to change what I once
knew into something new that's

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hopefully more interesting.

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So there's a lot of
other processes going on,

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and I don't know that--

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you may yourself be a writer.

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I think it's very difficult when
you say, to know ahead of time

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what.

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I think sometimes-- going to
classes with Jane today too

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sort of taught me that I think
sometimes even after the fact--

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I wrote Swamp Isthmus, which
is what I read from tonight.

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I started about seven years ago.

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And so the tone
to me that I was--

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when I was writing,
which is just roughly

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to say the emotional disposition
of the speaker, or the speakers

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of that book, who
were really different

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than I experienced them
today, talking with them,

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talking about them with
students, or tonight too.

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Like, it really changed.

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It doesn't seem like
it's a static thing.

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I would like to say that I
knew what the feeling of that

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was when I wrote it, and I
think I did know something

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about it when I wrote it.

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But now it seems like kind of
radically different, actually,

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and I don't know
the parts that are

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funnier or sillier or darker
or more fucked up or strange

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or whatever.

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And then reading it tonight,
it felt quite changed

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from that, which I'm glad
about, although it's really

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othering to look
at your own writing

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and not know exactly who these
voices are that are speaking.

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But to me, it's like a
conjuring in that way.

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And you kind of
conjure it across time

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too from what you might
have planned to do

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or what you thought you
were doing at the time.

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It ends up being, for me, quite
different too in the moment.

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Thank you.

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Thank you guys for coming.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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