WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.350 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.350 --> 00:00:02.430 align:middle line:90% Yes? 00:00:02.430 --> 00:00:06.150 align:middle line:84% Well, sort of following on that, in a way, since you made 00:00:06.150 --> 00:00:10.800 align:middle line:84% both references to, I guess, what 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:13.950 align:middle line:84% you'd call the traditional canon to Babylon, 00:00:13.950 --> 00:00:16.470 align:middle line:84% and so forth, and Shakespeare, and also 00:00:16.470 --> 00:00:21.270 align:middle line:84% a more contemporary canon, which is to say Hollywood movies, 00:00:21.270 --> 00:00:24.305 align:middle line:90% maybe speak a little bit about-- 00:00:24.305 --> 00:00:26.430 align:middle line:84% this is brought to mind, because I made a reference 00:00:26.430 --> 00:00:29.400 align:middle line:84% in a class the other day to the original sin and, of course, 00:00:29.400 --> 00:00:32.700 align:middle line:84% promptly realized that no one class knew 00:00:32.700 --> 00:00:35.430 align:middle line:90% what I meant by original sin. 00:00:35.430 --> 00:00:40.200 align:middle line:84% And so what are the advantages and disadvantages of-- 00:00:40.200 --> 00:00:42.150 align:middle line:84% are there advantages and disadvantages 00:00:42.150 --> 00:00:45.750 align:middle line:90% to losing that shared canon? 00:00:45.750 --> 00:00:47.500 align:middle line:90% Is there a new canon? 00:00:47.500 --> 00:00:51.900 align:middle line:84% Oh, far better minds than mine have 00:00:51.900 --> 00:01:00.030 align:middle line:84% been trying to address this question for some time. 00:01:00.030 --> 00:01:06.630 align:middle line:84% And on the one hand, we live in a wonderful, richly larger 00:01:06.630 --> 00:01:11.520 align:middle line:84% world than the one in which many of us 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:14.880 align:middle line:84% were trained, which took for granted that there were 00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:19.380 align:middle line:84% a certain number of stamped with approval texts and so forth. 00:01:19.380 --> 00:01:27.090 align:middle line:84% Although, I had to acquire those later as well. 00:01:27.090 --> 00:01:29.910 align:middle line:84% They weren't books around my house. 00:01:29.910 --> 00:01:31.420 align:middle line:90% So it was all magical to me. 00:01:31.420 --> 00:01:35.010 align:middle line:90% But yeah, I mean, I think it's-- 00:01:35.010 --> 00:01:43.350 align:middle line:84% well, one sees in contemporary poetry in America vast amounts 00:01:43.350 --> 00:01:49.680 align:middle line:84% of it, really saturated with reference 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:58.350 align:middle line:84% to other books, books that have played large roles 00:01:58.350 --> 00:02:00.210 align:middle line:90% in human imagination over time. 00:02:00.210 --> 00:02:02.340 align:middle line:84% The Bible is the most conspicuous. 00:02:02.340 --> 00:02:05.790 align:middle line:84% I don't remember a time when more people were 00:02:05.790 --> 00:02:13.530 align:middle line:84% using bits from the Bible, or structures 00:02:13.530 --> 00:02:17.530 align:middle line:84% from the Book of Common Prayer, or the contemplative orders. 00:02:17.530 --> 00:02:22.530 align:middle line:84% So I think you see a lot of longing for that commonality. 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:28.890 align:middle line:84% But frankly, a lot of longing for the formal advantage 00:02:28.890 --> 00:02:33.870 align:middle line:84% that those invocations can provide 00:02:33.870 --> 00:02:38.370 align:middle line:84% when one is looking to structure in query 00:02:38.370 --> 00:02:40.260 align:middle line:90% or to structure a book. 00:02:40.260 --> 00:02:44.070 align:middle line:84% It's fabulous to be able to deploy 00:02:44.070 --> 00:02:49.680 align:middle line:84% the foundational patterns or skeletal patterns 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:54.270 align:middle line:84% of other known habits of mind, whether it's 00:02:54.270 --> 00:03:00.120 align:middle line:84% the chart of chemical elements or the books of the Bible. 00:03:00.120 --> 00:03:03.840 align:middle line:84% And so I think that's partly behind it. 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:14.880 align:middle line:84% And it is certainly an issue that readers 00:03:14.880 --> 00:03:27.510 align:middle line:84% have to be generous as they read, more generous than was 00:03:27.510 --> 00:03:29.520 align:middle line:84% called upon when everybody could take 00:03:29.520 --> 00:03:32.190 align:middle line:84% for granted a certain kind of commonality. 00:03:32.190 --> 00:03:35.880 align:middle line:84% And I think writers need to be generous with their readers 00:03:35.880 --> 00:03:36.540 align:middle line:90% as well. 00:03:36.540 --> 00:03:37.920 align:middle line:90% But I don't think it's-- 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:40.050 align:middle line:84% on the one hand, you see, well, there 00:03:40.050 --> 00:03:42.930 align:middle line:84% might have been an era when we could 00:03:42.930 --> 00:03:44.490 align:middle line:84% take for granted people would know 00:03:44.490 --> 00:03:47.670 align:middle line:84% the basic stories of the Bible or some 00:03:47.670 --> 00:03:49.840 align:middle line:84% of the basic plots in Shakespeare, some of them. 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:51.810 align:middle line:84% But on the other hand, I certainly 00:03:51.810 --> 00:03:54.540 align:middle line:84% don't know the basic tenets of Islam. 00:03:54.540 --> 00:04:01.050 align:middle line:90% And when I was reading-- 00:04:01.050 --> 00:04:06.930 align:middle line:84% or I don't know much about jazz, the history of jazz. 00:04:06.930 --> 00:04:09.120 align:middle line:84% So when I'm reading Yusef Komunyakaa or when 00:04:09.120 --> 00:04:13.573 align:middle line:84% I'm reading Agha Shahid Ali, I am doing a lot of-- 00:04:13.573 --> 00:04:15.240 align:middle line:84% I'm reading other things simultaneously. 00:04:15.240 --> 00:04:16.829 align:middle line:90% I'm looking stuff up. 00:04:16.829 --> 00:04:20.760 align:middle line:84% And I'm grateful to them when they give me little clues, 00:04:20.760 --> 00:04:22.740 align:middle line:84% whether it's in apparatus or internal 00:04:22.740 --> 00:04:26.550 align:middle line:84% to the poems about where I should go first to just begin 00:04:26.550 --> 00:04:31.380 align:middle line:84% to get an orientation for things I'm embarrassed not 00:04:31.380 --> 00:04:34.080 align:middle line:90% to know better than I do. 00:04:34.080 --> 00:04:34.940 align:middle line:90% And I think that's-- 00:04:34.940 --> 00:04:37.680 align:middle line:84% I mean, that probably is a change. 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:40.530 align:middle line:84% And, in fact, it's a change in what 00:04:40.530 --> 00:04:43.620 align:middle line:90% I call somewhat stealthily-- 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:47.820 align:middle line:84% I guess, it sounds academic, though, I am-- 00:04:47.820 --> 00:04:51.870 align:middle line:84% the rhetorical contract that is the social life of poems, 00:04:51.870 --> 00:04:55.230 align:middle line:84% that social aspect, the part of poetry 00:04:55.230 --> 00:04:59.850 align:middle line:84% that it makes no sense except as a feature of life 00:04:59.850 --> 00:05:01.100 align:middle line:90% of among people. 00:05:01.100 --> 00:05:04.490 align:middle line:84% And I think it is simply the case 00:05:04.490 --> 00:05:09.920 align:middle line:84% that there are just many different orders of shared 00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:15.440 align:middle line:84% imagination that exist in the world now and we, I think, 00:05:15.440 --> 00:05:22.640 align:middle line:84% have to be aware that much of what we're interested in 00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:27.770 align:middle line:84% will have to suffer us as apprentices 00:05:27.770 --> 00:05:32.630 align:middle line:84% and flipped around that if, as I think 00:05:32.630 --> 00:05:35.510 align:middle line:84% is often the case, if when we write, 00:05:35.510 --> 00:05:41.510 align:middle line:84% our writing is partly haunted with the music, 00:05:41.510 --> 00:05:48.410 align:middle line:84% and memory, and figures, and strictures of that 00:05:48.410 --> 00:05:50.930 align:middle line:84% which we have read or heard and which 00:05:50.930 --> 00:05:57.980 align:middle line:84% has made a deep impression that we best leave a trail of crumbs 00:05:57.980 --> 00:06:02.420 align:middle line:84% for readers who might not have come to this moment 00:06:02.420 --> 00:06:07.490 align:middle line:84% by the same paths we came, and who will need to, 00:06:07.490 --> 00:06:11.690 align:middle line:84% at some level, trace a new path to it. 00:06:11.690 --> 00:06:21.200 align:middle line:84% I think that's-- there probably are losses in not having 00:06:21.200 --> 00:06:24.750 align:middle line:84% a single shared body of reference. 00:06:24.750 --> 00:06:26.360 align:middle line:90% It's not just canonical text. 00:06:26.360 --> 00:06:28.230 align:middle line:90% It's all kinds of other things. 00:06:28.230 --> 00:06:34.880 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, again, if we are 00:06:34.880 --> 00:06:38.150 align:middle line:84% like Blanche DuBois rely upon the kindness of strangers 00:06:38.150 --> 00:06:43.100 align:middle line:84% and remember to be strangers who can offer some kindness, 00:06:43.100 --> 00:06:47.270 align:middle line:84% I think it's a wonderful prospect 00:06:47.270 --> 00:06:50.180 align:middle line:84% that we have before us as well where, at some level, 00:06:50.180 --> 00:06:55.490 align:middle line:84% we can all come either new or as if new 00:06:55.490 --> 00:06:59.780 align:middle line:90% to culture that is our own. 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:01.880 align:middle line:84% And it makes for a new kind of a sort 00:07:01.880 --> 00:07:05.810 align:middle line:90% of mosaic of shared reference. 00:07:05.810 --> 00:07:09.960 align:middle line:84% I don't know what it's going to look like in 50 years. 00:07:09.960 --> 00:07:13.010 align:middle line:84% I don't know what it's going to mean to write poetry 00:07:13.010 --> 00:07:18.440 align:middle line:84% in 50 years exactly, how one will touch the common chords 00:07:18.440 --> 00:07:19.550 align:middle line:90% of recognition. 00:07:19.550 --> 00:07:21.362 align:middle line:84% Because the other aspect of that question-- 00:07:21.362 --> 00:07:22.820 align:middle line:84% I'm going on far too long, but it's 00:07:22.820 --> 00:07:24.445 align:middle line:84% a really, really interesting question-- 00:07:24.445 --> 00:07:32.990 align:middle line:84% is that when one allows, perhaps, one's own language 00:07:32.990 --> 00:07:36.680 align:middle line:84% or a contemporary idiom to be, one 00:07:36.680 --> 00:07:39.320 align:middle line:84% allows for a certain kind of bleed through 00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:43.490 align:middle line:84% of other language, or it allows that surface 00:07:43.490 --> 00:07:50.160 align:middle line:84% to be punctured by other things that come to mind, or enter 00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:53.960 align:middle line:90% the audible field. 00:07:53.960 --> 00:07:58.130 align:middle line:84% Part of what's at stake and part of the way a poem is musically 00:07:58.130 --> 00:08:05.630 align:middle line:84% scored is that those enter as aspects of recognition. 00:08:05.630 --> 00:08:09.260 align:middle line:84% And though they can be recuperated on purpose 00:08:09.260 --> 00:08:14.150 align:middle line:84% by people who didn't go to Sunday school 00:08:14.150 --> 00:08:19.070 align:middle line:84% and hear them for years, and years, and years, 00:08:19.070 --> 00:08:21.950 align:middle line:84% the familiarity is, of course, not the same. 00:08:21.950 --> 00:08:30.470 align:middle line:84% And the sense of the kind of give away, 00:08:30.470 --> 00:08:36.140 align:middle line:84% the homeliness of certain light motifs or touchstones 00:08:36.140 --> 00:08:39.409 align:middle line:90% is not the same. 00:08:39.409 --> 00:08:41.570 align:middle line:84% And since that's part of what one 00:08:41.570 --> 00:08:45.440 align:middle line:84% might want to be scoring into poetry, 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:48.890 align:middle line:84% I guess that has to be thought of in a whole new way. 00:08:48.890 --> 00:08:52.880 align:middle line:84% How can we make something new function 00:08:52.880 --> 00:08:58.040 align:middle line:84% as though it were familiar or how to code it 00:08:58.040 --> 00:09:03.080 align:middle line:90% as nursery food in a way. 00:09:03.080 --> 00:09:06.920 align:middle line:84% I mean, that's a whole other set of questions. 00:09:06.920 --> 00:09:09.150 align:middle line:90% It's a great question. 00:09:09.150 --> 00:09:15.057 align:middle line:84% It's a great set of problems to contemplate, and fascinating. 00:09:15.057 --> 00:09:17.140 align:middle line:84% Some of the rest of you probably have better ideas 00:09:17.140 --> 00:09:18.015 align:middle line:90% about that than I do. 00:09:18.015 --> 00:09:19.130 align:middle line:90% Yeah?