WEBVTT

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Yeah.

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You mentioned leaving
a trail of crumbs

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in the point of reference.

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And I'm wondering if, in
your poems, using often these

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intersects if for
us, you're offering

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familiarity in that way?

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In the tercets?

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Tercets.

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That's a nice way of
thinking about them.

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The question is about
the trail of crumbs

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and whether form, whether a
repeating pattern in the poems

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that I tend to write in a kind
of asymmetrical three line

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stanza with a sort
of two longer lines

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and separated by a
short pivot line.

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And yes, I think that's it.

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They're, sort of,
here's something stable.

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But another way that
comes in, I think is, it--

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it has to do also
with deployments

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of autobiographic reference.

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That is, I think I used to be
very alarmed at the prospect

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of reference to my own life.

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I mean, it just seems to
me a soppy and stupid thing

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for poems to do, which was,
of course, a soppy and stupid

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thing to think.

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But I think that's
one place where

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we can offer a reader a
certain kind of foothold

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and the experience
of recognition,

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not that it, oh, I get, it's
all about her relationship

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with her father,
or I get it, it is

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it's all about her relationship
to her kids, or I get it,

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she had a fight with her
husband that morning.

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But that those-- and
they can be clues.

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We all leave them.

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It might be clues in a
dedication or in an epigraph.

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A dedication might have initials
and birth and death dates,

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which makes you know that
something is functioning

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as elegy in a certain way.

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And those are all ways of--

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God knows if they explain a
poem, that's not good enough.

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I mean, no poem should be able
to be explained away that way.

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But if they give a certain now
and then, sense to a reader

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that the speaker of the poem
is voicing her proximity

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to the subject matter.

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Reader, here are
my stakes in this.

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That's a kind of
legibility, that's

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a kind of I'm an open book.

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Again, if there's enough going--

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nothing else going
on, that can be an act

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I think of social courtesy.

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And that was to discover
that was actually

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a real change for me.

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I'm a slow learner.

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I'm especially slow on
some of the things that

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ought to be obvious to any
functioning human being.

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But that one I was
especially slow on.

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Yeah.

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I was just wondering how--

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I was hearing elements
of Shakespeare and stuff,

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and I was wondering
how it was mentioned.

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That was going to focus
on how Renaissance,

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and so forth thought or really
spoke to you to conjure--

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I thought, Linda, you got
to get organ and shape up,

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consolidate, write
a dissertation

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on 20th century poetry.

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And I couldn't stay away
from the Renaissance.

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I'd done Renaissance,
and I couldn't.

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It's just too gorgeous.

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I mean, I can't.

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I mean, it's too gorgeous.

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I'm glad other people
are drawn to other fields

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because there would be
nobody in them otherwise.

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I mean, if everybody-- but I
can't imagine doing another,

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spending a whole scholarly
life in any other field

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of literary and cultural study.

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It's just to me,
it's completely,

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really fascinating-- I
mean, for me intellectually,

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a lot of what drives a lot
of the questions I have about

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the period is it has to
do with the Reformation,

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has to do with that split in
what was supposed to be whole

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the one true Catholic church.

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And because of that split--
it's fascinating for people

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who do words as their life
because the split was actually

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about representation,
it was about the way

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in which one thing can be
said to stand for another,

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is this the body
of God or is this

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remind us of the body of God.

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And it's both incredibly
moving intellectually.

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But it also is a stirring
vista of human commitment.

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I mean, people, these were
questions people didn't-- they

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weren't just theoretical.

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People got burned at
the stake over them.

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And people felt-- and maybe even
more remarkable and sobering.

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People felt obliged to
burn others at the stake,

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felt it their --

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But I mean, and it's
there's a rich--

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I mean, I have all of
these kinds of theories.

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I also think that one of the
reasons it's such a gorgeous,

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I think it's a really gorgeous
messy period for literature

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and thinking.

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And one of the reasons is that
the Renaissance moved North

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slowly.

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And it was very late in coming.

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England was really late
in getting the news

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and having a Renaissance.

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And so only there,
only in the North

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did you have the Renaissance
and the Reformation in many ways

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very much at odds completely
intersecting with one another.

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So you had a whole
lot of dissonance.

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And that I just think
it's delicious fun.

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I'd go on but--

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Yeah.

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One more.

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One more.

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We've addressed the
Renaissance and you've

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expressed some wonder at what
it would be like to write poems

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in the years.

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What's it like to
write poems now?

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Well, I mean, it is salvific.

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I think it's a life raft.

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I also think it's, I'm so--

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I feel incredibly
lucky to be working

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in this period in this country,
because I think there's

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just fabulous writing all over.

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There is so much gorgeous
poetry being written

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and of so many different kinds.

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I just can't think of
a period comparable.

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They're wonderful, vital,
very distinct aesthetics,

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pitches of voice, and
it's thrilling to me,

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it's thrilling.

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I will say, I mean,
part of what I write,

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and this is slightly
embarrassing,

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but I write poems to get
the world to hold still

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for just that much.

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I mean, it's a world
that does not hold still,

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a world that's going to throw
us out of it any minute.

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And the particular-- the
compression of poetry

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is extremely precious to
me because of the attention

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one can and must lavish
on its local alignments.

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And it's surely mad
delusion to imagine

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one can achieve certain
kinds of articulateness.

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But it's quite a
seductive delusion.

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It's consolation for mortality.

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I mean, on the one
hand, it's driven

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by this gorgeous
ephemeral fleeting world

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and yet it seems just,
again, surely falsely

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but seems to hold it still for
just a second of contemplation

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and praise.

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I think that's what it's
like to write poetry.

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I think it's like
saying, thank you.

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Yeah, so thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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