WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.700 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.700 --> 00:00:01.200 align:middle line:90% Good. 00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:03.970 align:middle line:90% Well, good morning, everyone. 00:00:03.970 --> 00:00:06.900 align:middle line:84% I thought I'd begin by saying a few things, 00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:08.862 align:middle line:84% and then I'd be happy to answer some questions. 00:00:08.862 --> 00:00:10.590 align:middle line:90% And I thought -- 00:00:10.590 --> 00:00:13.600 align:middle line:90% I wrote a poem this morning. 00:00:13.600 --> 00:00:16.087 align:middle line:90% I hope you all did. 00:00:16.087 --> 00:00:18.420 align:middle line:84% And so I have the rest of the day to myself pretty much. 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:21.000 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:24.422 align:middle line:84% It was Max Bierbaum who said that the hard part of being 00:00:24.422 --> 00:00:26.880 align:middle line:84% a poet is figuring out what to do with the other 23 and 1/2 00:00:26.880 --> 00:00:28.600 align:middle line:90% hours of the day. 00:00:28.600 --> 00:00:30.630 align:middle line:90% But I thought I'd read you this. 00:00:30.630 --> 00:00:32.310 align:middle line:84% Obviously, I've never read it before, 00:00:32.310 --> 00:00:37.720 align:middle line:84% but it's kind of couched, and it's hard to be reading it now 00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:41.580 align:middle line:84% because it's as if I wrote it tomorrow. 00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:44.790 align:middle line:84% And it's got the title is "Lying in Bed in the Dark I Silently 00:00:44.790 --> 00:00:46.440 align:middle line:90% Addressed the Birds Of Arizona." 00:00:46.440 --> 00:00:49.500 align:middle line:90% 00:00:49.500 --> 00:00:51.600 align:middle line:84% "Oh birds of Arizona, who woke me yesterday 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:53.520 align:middle line:84% morning with the excitement of your chirping, 00:00:53.520 --> 00:00:55.530 align:middle line:90% where do you go to die? 00:00:55.530 --> 00:00:59.760 align:middle line:84% So many of you, and yet never a trace of your expiration, 00:00:59.760 --> 00:01:02.580 align:middle line:84% no lump of feathers happened upon there 00:01:02.580 --> 00:01:06.240 align:middle line:84% on the pavement, another there on the square of lawn. 00:01:06.240 --> 00:01:09.240 align:middle line:84% Are you down in the scrub turning in circles? 00:01:09.240 --> 00:01:11.880 align:middle line:84% Do you tilt and fall on your side? 00:01:11.880 --> 00:01:14.850 align:middle line:84% Do you lie there breathing among the warm rocks? 00:01:14.850 --> 00:01:19.920 align:middle line:84% Lie there breathing, lie there, as the moon rises, 00:01:19.920 --> 00:01:22.680 align:middle line:84% as the members of your flock fall silent, 00:01:22.680 --> 00:01:26.130 align:middle line:84% as the world revolves around the center of your tiny eye?" 00:01:26.130 --> 00:01:29.710 align:middle line:90% 00:01:29.710 --> 00:01:31.685 align:middle line:90% That's done for the day. 00:01:31.685 --> 00:01:32.560 align:middle line:90% Now the other thing-- 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:33.260 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:33.260 --> 00:01:35.140 align:middle line:90% Do not laugh now. 00:01:35.140 --> 00:01:37.510 align:middle line:90% I try to write very quickly. 00:01:37.510 --> 00:01:42.740 align:middle line:84% I don't revise much, and I have no work habits whatsoever. 00:01:42.740 --> 00:01:44.770 align:middle line:84% I'm a very terrible role model for anyone 00:01:44.770 --> 00:01:48.490 align:middle line:84% who's interested in pursuing the craft of poetry, 00:01:48.490 --> 00:01:50.350 align:middle line:90% but it wasn't always like this. 00:01:50.350 --> 00:01:53.980 align:middle line:84% But I try to write quite rapidly and everything in one 00:01:53.980 --> 00:01:56.800 align:middle line:84% sitting pretty much, only because-- not 00:01:56.800 --> 00:01:58.660 align:middle line:84% to make it sound too spiritual, but there 00:01:58.660 --> 00:02:00.530 align:middle line:90% is the word chi for energy. 00:02:00.530 --> 00:02:05.210 align:middle line:84% And I want to get a sense of chi running through the poem. 00:02:05.210 --> 00:02:09.590 align:middle line:84% And the run of meaning and the rhetorical momentum of the poem 00:02:09.590 --> 00:02:12.740 align:middle line:84% is something that's carrying me through to an ending. 00:02:12.740 --> 00:02:19.580 align:middle line:84% And if the poem isn't going well, I usually just pitch it. 00:02:19.580 --> 00:02:22.910 align:middle line:84% General workshop advice holds that you should always 00:02:22.910 --> 00:02:24.200 align:middle line:90% save everything. 00:02:24.200 --> 00:02:26.510 align:middle line:84% I believe in throwing things away. 00:02:26.510 --> 00:02:30.080 align:middle line:84% I think if you save something for a later poem, 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:32.720 align:middle line:84% it'll sound like it's tacked on to the poem 00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:34.370 align:middle line:90% or Scotch-taped onto the poem. 00:02:34.370 --> 00:02:37.430 align:middle line:84% I can tell in a student writing where there's an image that 00:02:37.430 --> 00:02:40.220 align:middle line:84% they saved, and then they put -- use later. 00:02:40.220 --> 00:02:42.140 align:middle line:90% It doesn't work often. 00:02:42.140 --> 00:02:44.840 align:middle line:90% 00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:50.903 align:middle line:84% So apart from my bad work habits, the only thing 00:02:50.903 --> 00:02:51.570 align:middle line:90% I just like to-- 00:02:51.570 --> 00:02:53.340 align:middle line:84% I'll start with a comment, and the comment 00:02:53.340 --> 00:02:57.900 align:middle line:84% is that one of my abiding interests in writing poetry 00:02:57.900 --> 00:03:00.840 align:middle line:84% is to write poems that are reader-inclusive or 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:02.670 align:middle line:90% reader-friendly. 00:03:02.670 --> 00:03:09.420 align:middle line:84% This comes out of probably having read too many poems, 00:03:09.420 --> 00:03:13.950 align:middle line:84% not just written by others but written by me, a long time ago. 00:03:13.950 --> 00:03:17.220 align:middle line:84% Poems that are, as my friend Helen Henry Taylor 00:03:17.220 --> 00:03:20.520 align:middle line:84% so genteelly puts it, deflective of entry, 00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:25.560 align:middle line:84% poems that seem oblivious of my presence as a reader. 00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:28.950 align:middle line:84% So I'm always eager to acknowledge 00:03:28.950 --> 00:03:32.100 align:middle line:84% the presence of the reader perhaps 00:03:32.100 --> 00:03:34.080 align:middle line:84% just out of the loneliness of composition. 00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:37.920 align:middle line:84% I don't like to write feeling completely alone. 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:41.350 align:middle line:90% And I also think poetry-- 00:03:41.350 --> 00:03:46.147 align:middle line:84% if you took all of writing and arranged it on a scale, 00:03:46.147 --> 00:03:47.730 align:middle line:84% and on one end of the scale, you would 00:03:47.730 --> 00:03:50.790 align:middle line:84% have fixed meaning where the meaning is absolutely 00:03:50.790 --> 00:03:53.640 align:middle line:84% certain and clear to everyone universally, 00:03:53.640 --> 00:03:55.470 align:middle line:84% and on the other end, you would have 00:03:55.470 --> 00:03:58.530 align:middle line:84% writing where meaning is fluid, poetry 00:03:58.530 --> 00:03:59.760 align:middle line:90% would be on the fluid end. 00:03:59.760 --> 00:04:01.800 align:middle line:84% I think that's why poetry, for me, 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:04.410 align:middle line:84% calls for the reader's participation. 00:04:04.410 --> 00:04:07.350 align:middle line:84% Because the meaning is fluid, it asks the reader 00:04:07.350 --> 00:04:12.640 align:middle line:84% to come in and participate in the experience of the poem. 00:04:12.640 --> 00:04:19.240 align:middle line:84% And I think that poem is really completed 00:04:19.240 --> 00:04:21.680 align:middle line:90% in the mind of the reader. 00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:24.800 align:middle line:84% On the one end, on the far end over here 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:28.090 align:middle line:84% with examples of a text with a fixed meaning, 00:04:28.090 --> 00:04:30.335 align:middle line:84% you would have, for example, a cookbook. 00:04:30.335 --> 00:04:32.832 align:middle line:90% 00:04:32.832 --> 00:04:35.290 align:middle line:84% It doesn't make any difference who is reading the cookbook. 00:04:35.290 --> 00:04:37.660 align:middle line:84% We all get the same thing out of it. 00:04:37.660 --> 00:04:42.310 align:middle line:84% So if it says add 1 cup of sugar, you don't look at it 00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:44.590 align:middle line:84% and say, well, what's she getting at? 00:04:44.590 --> 00:04:47.340 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:47.340 --> 00:04:48.720 align:middle line:90% What's she driving at? 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:50.940 align:middle line:90% What do you mean sugar? 00:04:50.940 --> 00:04:52.240 align:middle line:90% You just add the sugar. 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:54.858 align:middle line:90% So that's an inflexible text. 00:04:54.858 --> 00:04:56.400 align:middle line:84% Then if you move through other texts, 00:04:56.400 --> 00:04:58.740 align:middle line:84% you come in the middle to law, which is interesting, 00:04:58.740 --> 00:05:02.040 align:middle line:84% because lawmakers are trying to make a stable text. 00:05:02.040 --> 00:05:04.770 align:middle line:84% Whereas lawyers are trying to destabilize the text 00:05:04.770 --> 00:05:06.300 align:middle line:90% and make it fluid. 00:05:06.300 --> 00:05:07.892 align:middle line:84% But on the far end, I think over here, 00:05:07.892 --> 00:05:10.350 align:middle line:84% you have poetry, which is where the meaning is delightfully 00:05:10.350 --> 00:05:10.850 align:middle line:90% fluid. 00:05:10.850 --> 00:05:13.590 align:middle line:90% 00:05:13.590 --> 00:05:17.490 align:middle line:84% I will read one other little poem. 00:05:17.490 --> 00:05:19.230 align:middle line:84% Well, the last three books of mine 00:05:19.230 --> 00:05:21.300 align:middle line:84% start with a poem to the reader and just 00:05:21.300 --> 00:05:25.560 align:middle line:84% as an acknowledgment, a kind of verbal welcome mat. 00:05:25.560 --> 00:05:27.450 align:middle line:84% And I was going to read one from this book, 00:05:27.450 --> 00:05:30.000 align:middle line:84% but maybe I'll read this other one that's a little newer. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:33.040 align:middle line:90% 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:34.530 align:middle line:84% And it's called "August in Paris" 00:05:34.530 --> 00:05:36.960 align:middle line:84% because our August in Paris is like being in the desert. 00:05:36.960 --> 00:05:40.770 align:middle line:84% And there's just nothing going on, but "August in Paris." 00:05:40.770 --> 00:05:43.740 align:middle line:84% "I have stopped here on the Rue des Ecoles just 00:05:43.740 --> 00:05:46.350 align:middle line:84% off the Boulevard St Germain to look over 00:05:46.350 --> 00:05:48.580 align:middle line:84% the shoulder of a man in a flannel shirt 00:05:48.580 --> 00:05:51.630 align:middle line:84% and a straw hat who has set up an easel and the canvas 00:05:51.630 --> 00:05:54.600 align:middle line:84% chair on the sidewalk in order to paint 00:05:54.600 --> 00:06:00.090 align:middle line:84% from a droll angle, a side view of the Church of the Ascension. 00:06:00.090 --> 00:06:03.990 align:middle line:84% But where are you, as you paused to look over my shoulder, 00:06:03.990 --> 00:06:07.200 align:middle line:84% to see what I am jotting in this notebook? 00:06:07.200 --> 00:06:11.250 align:middle line:84% Alone in this city, I sometimes wonder what you look like, 00:06:11.250 --> 00:06:13.590 align:middle line:84% if you are wearing a flannel shirt 00:06:13.590 --> 00:06:18.630 align:middle line:84% or a blue wraparound skirt held together by a pin. 00:06:18.630 --> 00:06:20.040 align:middle line:84% But every time I turn around, you 00:06:20.040 --> 00:06:22.200 align:middle line:84% have fled through a crease in the air 00:06:22.200 --> 00:06:25.320 align:middle line:84% to a quiet room where the shutters are closed 00:06:25.320 --> 00:06:28.140 align:middle line:84% against the heat of the afternoon, where there is only 00:06:28.140 --> 00:06:31.140 align:middle line:84% the sound of your breathing, and every so often, 00:06:31.140 --> 00:06:34.660 align:middle line:90% the turning of a page." 00:06:34.660 --> 00:06:39.270 align:middle line:84% So I'm trying to accomplish a kind of intimacy, I guess, 00:06:39.270 --> 00:06:43.380 align:middle line:84% with -- with the reader in that case, like an exchange, 00:06:43.380 --> 00:06:46.290 align:middle line:84% maybe an exchange of privacy might be one way to put it. 00:06:46.290 --> 00:06:52.170 align:middle line:90% 00:06:52.170 --> 00:06:54.150 align:middle line:84% I kind of alluded to the fact that I 00:06:54.150 --> 00:06:57.390 align:middle line:84% used to write poems that were just as deflective of entry 00:06:57.390 --> 00:07:00.060 align:middle line:84% as any when I didn't know what I was doing. 00:07:00.060 --> 00:07:02.550 align:middle line:84% I spent a long time writing poems that-- 00:07:02.550 --> 00:07:05.670 align:middle line:84% I was really pretending, I think, to be a poet. 00:07:05.670 --> 00:07:08.160 align:middle line:84% I was interested in language, but I didn't quite 00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:11.640 align:middle line:90% have my wheels on. 00:07:11.640 --> 00:07:14.520 align:middle line:84% And I went through a number of phases 00:07:14.520 --> 00:07:19.170 align:middle line:90% of imitative self-disguising. 00:07:19.170 --> 00:07:21.710 align:middle line:84% And I went through a long phase where-- well, 00:07:21.710 --> 00:07:24.960 align:middle line:84% I had a kind of brooding romantic genius phase that I 00:07:24.960 --> 00:07:26.010 align:middle line:90% was in for quite a while. 00:07:26.010 --> 00:07:29.342 align:middle line:90% 00:07:29.342 --> 00:07:30.800 align:middle line:84% Have you rescued any poems you had? 00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:31.300 align:middle line:90% No. 00:07:31.300 --> 00:07:33.950 align:middle line:84% Those were all destroyed, and it yielded very few poems 00:07:33.950 --> 00:07:37.310 align:middle line:90% that anyone would want to read. 00:07:37.310 --> 00:07:40.910 align:middle line:84% So I'm also -- by trying to be clear, 00:07:40.910 --> 00:07:43.730 align:middle line:84% I'm actually trying to create a balance between the clear 00:07:43.730 --> 00:07:45.985 align:middle line:90% and the mysterious, I think. 00:07:45.985 --> 00:07:46.735 align:middle line:90% I think this is -- 00:07:46.735 --> 00:07:49.700 align:middle line:84% I don't know how many are in workshops or write themselves, 00:07:49.700 --> 00:07:52.730 align:middle line:84% but I find that in some workshops, 00:07:52.730 --> 00:07:59.660 align:middle line:84% it's very important, that poems succeed or fail 00:07:59.660 --> 00:08:04.070 align:middle line:84% on the understanding of the poet of the difference 00:08:04.070 --> 00:08:06.260 align:middle line:84% between the clear and the mysterious. 00:08:06.260 --> 00:08:08.030 align:middle line:84% There's a time to be clear in a poem, 00:08:08.030 --> 00:08:09.800 align:middle line:84% and there's a time to be mysterious. 00:08:09.800 --> 00:08:12.080 align:middle line:84% And knowing when to turn the card over, 00:08:12.080 --> 00:08:15.710 align:middle line:84% which cards need to be turned over, is important. 00:08:15.710 --> 00:08:18.365 align:middle line:84% I mean, in a typical workshop, if you've been to workshops, 00:08:18.365 --> 00:08:20.990 align:middle line:84% you know sessions like these, where someone reads a poem, 00:08:20.990 --> 00:08:24.140 align:middle line:84% and there's a kind of a polite silence. 00:08:24.140 --> 00:08:29.073 align:middle line:84% And then someone says, well, "nice title" or something that. 00:08:29.073 --> 00:08:29.948 align:middle line:90% There's more silence. 00:08:29.948 --> 00:08:31.700 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:08:31.700 --> 00:08:34.850 align:middle line:84% Then someone says "it's a really neat image at the end 00:08:34.850 --> 00:08:36.169 align:middle line:90% there", more silence. 00:08:36.169 --> 00:08:38.750 align:middle line:84% Anyway, gradually, it's revealed that no one understands 00:08:38.750 --> 00:08:41.309 align:middle line:84% anything about what the poem is about. 00:08:41.309 --> 00:08:45.950 align:middle line:84% So we turn to the poet for help as a last resort. 00:08:45.950 --> 00:08:48.050 align:middle line:84% And the poet says, well, the poem 00:08:48.050 --> 00:08:51.770 align:middle line:84% was written when my younger brother was in the hospital 00:08:51.770 --> 00:08:54.530 align:middle line:90% and undergoing this surgery. 00:08:54.530 --> 00:08:59.810 align:middle line:84% And suddenly, it becomes at least 58% clear. 00:08:59.810 --> 00:09:01.550 align:middle line:84% But that was a card she didn't turn over. 00:09:01.550 --> 00:09:02.990 align:middle line:90% We needed to know that. 00:09:02.990 --> 00:09:05.323 align:middle line:84% She should have called the poem "Poem Written 00:09:05.323 --> 00:09:07.490 align:middle line:84% While My Brother is in the Hospital Undergoing Major 00:09:07.490 --> 00:09:08.630 align:middle line:90% Surgery." 00:09:08.630 --> 00:09:11.420 align:middle line:84% And that's something to be clear about. 00:09:11.420 --> 00:09:14.480 align:middle line:84% How she feels about this brother, whom she's always 00:09:14.480 --> 00:09:20.990 align:middle line:84% hated, who is now perhaps going to die, must remain mysterious. 00:09:20.990 --> 00:09:25.760 align:middle line:84% If the poem tries to clarify that in 18 or 25 lines, 00:09:25.760 --> 00:09:27.553 align:middle line:84% it's going to be a forced poem, right? 00:09:27.553 --> 00:09:28.970 align:middle line:84% It's going to be a simplification. 00:09:28.970 --> 00:09:32.175 align:middle line:90% 00:09:32.175 --> 00:09:34.550 align:middle line:84% So I'm trying to be clear in the beginning and mysterious 00:09:34.550 --> 00:09:35.390 align:middle line:90% at the end. 00:09:35.390 --> 00:09:38.120 align:middle line:90% That's the formula, I think. 00:09:38.120 --> 00:09:41.060 align:middle line:84% Stephen Dobyns said if you get the reader to accept something 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:43.542 align:middle line:84% small in the beginning of the poem, 00:09:43.542 --> 00:09:45.500 align:middle line:84% the reader will be much more inclined to accept 00:09:45.500 --> 00:09:50.690 align:middle line:84% something more difficult and complex later on in the poem. 00:09:50.690 --> 00:09:53.320 align:middle line:84% So now, we can have some questions.