WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.760 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.760 --> 00:00:08.400 align:middle line:84% An odd poem, it's from a series called Baudelaire series 00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:09.855 align:middle line:90% in a book of mine called Sun. 00:00:09.855 --> 00:00:18.060 align:middle line:84% And this series was part of maybe an endless exploration 00:00:18.060 --> 00:00:21.450 align:middle line:84% on my part of the various voices that 00:00:21.450 --> 00:00:25.080 align:middle line:84% passed to me to constitute something 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:29.340 align:middle line:90% like the voice of my work. 00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:31.650 align:middle line:84% Going back to the figure of Baudelaire 00:00:31.650 --> 00:00:38.340 align:middle line:84% as, in one way born out of pure lyric for himself 00:00:38.340 --> 00:00:43.830 align:middle line:84% is the staging point for the modern lyric self-consciousness 00:00:43.830 --> 00:00:45.880 align:middle line:90% in a way. 00:00:45.880 --> 00:00:48.690 align:middle line:84% And so, through these pages, pass 00:00:48.690 --> 00:00:55.080 align:middle line:84% in a very non-linear and non-narrative way. 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:58.800 align:middle line:84% Voices like Baudelaire's, like Rilke, Paul Celan, 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:00.540 align:middle line:90% and there are others. 00:01:00.540 --> 00:01:11.700 align:middle line:84% In any case, this rather strange poem tries to get to that point 00:01:11.700 --> 00:01:14.730 align:middle line:84% beneath, I suppose, representation, 00:01:14.730 --> 00:01:17.320 align:middle line:90% where the language bubbles up. 00:01:17.320 --> 00:01:21.630 align:middle line:84% And I just thought to read it because the phrase came 00:01:21.630 --> 00:01:26.100 align:middle line:84% last summer when I was asked to give a talk here along 00:01:26.100 --> 00:01:28.890 align:middle line:90% with my reading. 00:01:28.890 --> 00:01:31.170 align:middle line:84% And they needed the topic way ahead of time, 00:01:31.170 --> 00:01:33.000 align:middle line:84% as if I knew what I could possibly 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:36.550 align:middle line:90% be talking about in January. 00:01:36.550 --> 00:01:37.980 align:middle line:84% I said, well, persons of the poem 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:40.380 align:middle line:84% but I realize that comes from one of my poems. 00:01:40.380 --> 00:01:41.440 align:middle line:90% The persons of the poem. 00:01:41.440 --> 00:01:43.710 align:middle line:84% And they said, what poem is that? 00:01:43.710 --> 00:01:45.670 align:middle line:84% And I couldn't think of the title 00:01:45.670 --> 00:01:49.140 align:middle line:84% and then I realized, the other day, I was looking for the poem 00:01:49.140 --> 00:01:51.400 align:middle line:84% but it was because it didn't have a title. 00:01:51.400 --> 00:01:51.900 align:middle line:90% So. 00:01:51.900 --> 00:01:54.701 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:54.701 --> 00:02:00.170 align:middle line:84% And, of course, begins with this phrase snatched out 00:02:00.170 --> 00:02:08.470 align:middle line:84% of the air, which resonates with particular irony at the moment. 00:02:08.470 --> 00:02:11.440 align:middle line:90% Ideas aren't worth anything. 00:02:11.440 --> 00:02:13.480 align:middle line:90% "Ideas aren't worth anything." 00:02:13.480 --> 00:02:19.930 align:middle line:84% That, of course, also brings us back to in one way, 00:02:19.930 --> 00:02:23.290 align:middle line:84% language precedes idea in poetry. 00:02:23.290 --> 00:02:25.390 align:middle line:84% We can't help that the language starts speaking 00:02:25.390 --> 00:02:27.430 align:middle line:84% and whatever ideas we have about the poem 00:02:27.430 --> 00:02:32.270 align:middle line:84% are hopelessly superseded by that. 00:02:32.270 --> 00:02:35.410 align:middle line:84% And it brings me back to the famous quotation 00:02:35.410 --> 00:02:39.820 align:middle line:84% of Stephane Mallarme, the French poet, 00:02:39.820 --> 00:02:44.620 align:middle line:84% when his very good friend Edgar Degas showed up 00:02:44.620 --> 00:02:46.090 align:middle line:90% with some of his sonnets. 00:02:46.090 --> 00:02:51.130 align:middle line:84% And Mallarme read the sonnets, and he said, 00:02:51.130 --> 00:02:56.350 align:middle line:84% but my dear, Degas, poems are made of words, not ideas. 00:02:56.350 --> 00:02:58.180 align:middle line:90% Anyway. 00:02:58.180 --> 00:02:59.950 align:middle line:90% "Ideas aren't worth anything. 00:02:59.950 --> 00:03:02.920 align:middle line:84% We mirrored each other for an afternoon. 00:03:02.920 --> 00:03:05.440 align:middle line:90% The sky is rich with waste. 00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:07.930 align:middle line:84% Waiting is the name of this tune. 00:03:07.930 --> 00:03:11.140 align:middle line:84% Electrons was the name for this tune. 00:03:11.140 --> 00:03:12.520 align:middle line:90% Ideas aren't worth anything. 00:03:12.520 --> 00:03:14.740 align:middle line:90% Today's space is splendid. 00:03:14.740 --> 00:03:16.630 align:middle line:90% The mountains have come loose. 00:03:16.630 --> 00:03:19.330 align:middle line:90% Let's un-make something. 00:03:19.330 --> 00:03:21.500 align:middle line:90% Ideas aren't worth anything. 00:03:21.500 --> 00:03:25.810 align:middle line:84% This is a hazardous bed, called perilous night. 00:03:25.810 --> 00:03:29.020 align:middle line:84% Some blues, some indigos, some reds. 00:03:29.020 --> 00:03:31.390 align:middle line:90% Other colors I forget. 00:03:31.390 --> 00:03:33.140 align:middle line:90% Ideas aren't worth anything. 00:03:33.140 --> 00:03:37.720 align:middle line:84% This is a trace to dry in tomorrow's sun. 00:03:37.720 --> 00:03:39.160 align:middle line:90% Ideas aren't worth anything. 00:03:39.160 --> 00:03:42.730 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, my blood seems to come in jets. 00:03:42.730 --> 00:03:46.480 align:middle line:84% The persons in the poem say this, between liquid spirits 00:03:46.480 --> 00:03:47.680 align:middle line:90% and sense. 00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:50.170 align:middle line:90% A broken jar says this. 00:03:50.170 --> 00:03:52.270 align:middle line:84% I'm writing your letters back to you, 00:03:52.270 --> 00:03:56.230 align:middle line:84% which is a sound, at least, to mirror another sound, where 00:03:56.230 --> 00:03:59.280 align:middle line:90% no other paintings can be found. 00:03:59.280 --> 00:04:02.050 align:middle line:90% Imitate me says the elm. 00:04:02.050 --> 00:04:04.720 align:middle line:84% Give me an azure sky, huge and round. 00:04:04.720 --> 00:04:06.880 align:middle line:84% Give me something in words, for a change. 00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:09.410 align:middle line:90% Something that fits on a page. 00:04:09.410 --> 00:04:12.370 align:middle line:90% The best paintings are on stone. 00:04:12.370 --> 00:04:15.580 align:middle line:84% Ideas aren't worth anything, said the person with two heads, 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:17.649 align:middle line:90% one above and one below. 00:04:17.649 --> 00:04:19.420 align:middle line:90% Let's think about this. 00:04:19.420 --> 00:04:22.510 align:middle line:84% Let's consider the lace and necklace, or the turquoise 00:04:22.510 --> 00:04:26.290 align:middle line:84% on a Turkish door, or the source of each color at a table 00:04:26.290 --> 00:04:28.330 align:middle line:90% by a wall. 00:04:28.330 --> 00:04:31.210 align:middle line:84% If we're really mirrors in a poem, 00:04:31.210 --> 00:04:33.910 align:middle line:90% what will we call the soul? 00:04:33.910 --> 00:04:37.150 align:middle line:84% I want to continue on your paper like a person in the room 00:04:37.150 --> 00:04:39.370 align:middle line:84% and like the ladder and like the moth, say 00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:41.500 align:middle line:90% the persons of the poem. 00:04:41.500 --> 00:04:44.320 align:middle line:90% The tale is told out of school. 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:47.620 align:middle line:84% Your eyes are tired, so keep them closed. 00:04:47.620 --> 00:04:49.750 align:middle line:90% Once an image, broken arm. 00:04:49.750 --> 00:04:56.290 align:middle line:84% So it begins there I suppose, in the welter of languages 00:04:56.290 --> 00:05:01.990 align:middle line:84% coming together to make possibly a new language, 00:05:01.990 --> 00:05:06.790 align:middle line:90% a new logic in juxtaposition. 00:05:06.790 --> 00:05:10.270 align:middle line:84% There's Jasper Johns and John Cage 00:05:10.270 --> 00:05:11.860 align:middle line:84% and a number of other people I noticed 00:05:11.860 --> 00:05:13.930 align:middle line:90% are sort of accessed in there. 00:05:13.930 --> 00:05:16.740 align:middle line:90% Jasper Johns, they had a-- 00:05:16.740 --> 00:05:19.810 align:middle line:90% 00:05:19.810 --> 00:05:24.280 align:middle line:84% John Cage had a piece of music called "Perilous Night" 00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:28.450 align:middle line:84% that was named after a piece by Jasper Johns, 00:05:28.450 --> 00:05:30.016 align:middle line:84% unless it was the other way around. 00:05:30.016 --> 00:05:32.500 align:middle line:90% Anyway. 00:05:32.500 --> 00:05:34.490 align:middle line:84% And it was a kind of sexual in-joke. 00:05:34.490 --> 00:05:38.980 align:middle line:90% 00:05:38.980 --> 00:05:41.620 align:middle line:84% This poem is one in a sequence called Baudelaire series, 00:05:41.620 --> 00:05:43.210 align:middle line:90% in a book of mine called Sun. 00:05:43.210 --> 00:05:46.180 align:middle line:84% The sequence, like the book, as a whole is in part 00:05:46.180 --> 00:05:49.030 align:middle line:84% an attempt to interrogate those multiple voices that 00:05:49.030 --> 00:05:52.570 align:middle line:84% echo through us as the poem comes to be. 00:05:52.570 --> 00:05:56.920 align:middle line:84% Voices from the street, from books, from fantasy, 00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.050 align:middle line:90% from wherever. 00:05:59.050 --> 00:06:02.050 align:middle line:84% It puts things in motion, however enigmatically 00:06:02.050 --> 00:06:07.360 align:middle line:84% and without true closure and waits to hear from them. 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:11.290 align:middle line:84% Persons of the poem, we might guess, first of all, very 00:06:11.290 --> 00:06:15.430 align:middle line:84% simply, that there is the writer and there is the reader. 00:06:15.430 --> 00:06:19.210 align:middle line:84% Always remembering that the writer may also be the reader. 00:06:19.210 --> 00:06:23.500 align:middle line:84% And the reader, in a certain real sense, the writer. 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:26.320 align:middle line:84% Yet both are shadow figures with shifting, 00:06:26.320 --> 00:06:30.280 align:middle line:84% indeterminate, and multiple identities. 00:06:30.280 --> 00:06:33.130 align:middle line:84% As Octavio Paz notes, it is the reader 00:06:33.130 --> 00:06:38.320 align:middle line:84% who makes the poem present by listening or by opening a book. 00:06:38.320 --> 00:06:40.930 align:middle line:84% The reader gives the poem a present, 00:06:40.930 --> 00:06:44.230 align:middle line:84% which more often than not is a radically different present 00:06:44.230 --> 00:06:46.930 align:middle line:90% than the poem once had. 00:06:46.930 --> 00:06:49.180 align:middle line:84% And then, of course, there is the entire theater 00:06:49.180 --> 00:06:51.610 align:middle line:90% of voices that concerns us here. 00:06:51.610 --> 00:06:54.160 align:middle line:84% And that manifests itself in multiple ways 00:06:54.160 --> 00:06:57.070 align:middle line:84% as the words converse among themselves 00:06:57.070 --> 00:06:59.680 align:middle line:90% on doing our intentions. 00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:02.500 align:middle line:84% We'll look at a few of the ways in the course of the talk. 00:07:02.500 --> 00:07:04.590 align:middle line:84% And I'd like, time permitting, also 00:07:04.590 --> 00:07:08.110 align:middle line:84% to examine some literal instances of collaboration 00:07:08.110 --> 00:07:11.650 align:middle line:84% as I've experienced them, and to consider how voices converge 00:07:11.650 --> 00:07:14.600 align:middle line:90% there and modify one another. 00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:17.080 align:middle line:84% We'll be working necessarily an outline, given 00:07:17.080 --> 00:07:20.380 align:middle line:84% time constraints, offering no more than an opening 00:07:20.380 --> 00:07:24.670 align:middle line:84% into a much larger field of discussion and contention. 00:07:24.670 --> 00:07:27.610 align:middle line:84% My remarks will be speculative and informal, 00:07:27.610 --> 00:07:30.100 align:middle line:84% and I encourage anyone with questions or thoughts 00:07:30.100 --> 00:07:33.220 align:middle line:90% to join in. 00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:36.820 align:middle line:84% As for the craft of poetry, I'm not at all sure 00:07:36.820 --> 00:07:38.740 align:middle line:84% that I can offer anything more than might 00:07:38.740 --> 00:07:40.960 align:middle line:84% be useful to learn from the handbooks 00:07:40.960 --> 00:07:42.970 align:middle line:90% or from the classroom. 00:07:42.970 --> 00:07:46.360 align:middle line:84% Poetry in that sense begins where quote, creative writing, 00:07:46.360 --> 00:07:47.680 align:middle line:90% ends. 00:07:47.680 --> 00:07:50.170 align:middle line:84% Since the laws of form, as opposed 00:07:50.170 --> 00:07:53.740 align:middle line:84% to rules or norms of procedure, can only 00:07:53.740 --> 00:07:56.830 align:middle line:90% be derived from the poem itself. 00:07:56.830 --> 00:07:59.860 align:middle line:84% It is probably in the writing classroom of a few years 00:07:59.860 --> 00:08:03.640 align:middle line:84% back that Keats' voice that is deep within us, 00:08:03.640 --> 00:08:06.790 align:middle line:84% from one of his letters I guess, was 00:08:06.790 --> 00:08:10.330 align:middle line:84% reduced to the notion of finding one's voice. 00:08:10.330 --> 00:08:12.760 align:middle line:84% The romantic quest thereby diminished 00:08:12.760 --> 00:08:16.090 align:middle line:84% to a neo-romantic focus on the little self, 00:08:16.090 --> 00:08:19.300 align:middle line:90% of the small speaking subject. 00:08:19.300 --> 00:08:24.460 align:middle line:84% For Keats, on the contrary, that voice was of the poem itself, 00:08:24.460 --> 00:08:27.610 align:middle line:84% not as a fetish object but as one containing 00:08:27.610 --> 00:08:30.640 align:middle line:84% a personal subjectivity in all its dimensions 00:08:30.640 --> 00:08:33.340 align:middle line:90% and tones and folds. 00:08:33.340 --> 00:08:37.059 align:middle line:84% That is, a consciousness that contains the subject 00:08:37.059 --> 00:08:38.980 align:middle line:90% and transcends it. 00:08:38.980 --> 00:08:42.490 align:middle line:84% It is a product of listening, as much as utterance, 00:08:42.490 --> 00:08:48.450 align:middle line:84% and is somewhat more elusive and less notable than craft. 00:08:48.450 --> 00:08:50.970 align:middle line:84% In relation to the above, I now recall a not so 00:08:50.970 --> 00:08:56.040 align:middle line:84% casual aside by the poet, George Oppen, in conversation years 00:08:56.040 --> 00:08:57.540 align:middle line:90% ago. 00:08:57.540 --> 00:09:00.630 align:middle line:84% "I never wanted to be given to the voice I was born with". 00:09:00.630 --> 00:09:03.310 align:middle line:90% 00:09:03.310 --> 00:09:06.770 align:middle line:84% In an interview some years back, on the contrary I think, 00:09:06.770 --> 00:09:12.490 align:middle line:84% George spent his life sloughing off the voice 00:09:12.490 --> 00:09:18.620 align:middle line:84% that, in a certain way, his social position 00:09:18.620 --> 00:09:19.970 align:middle line:90% imposed upon him. 00:09:19.970 --> 00:09:25.000 align:middle line:84% And finding a voice more attuned to things of the world. 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:30.510 align:middle line:90% 00:09:30.510 --> 00:09:34.740 align:middle line:84% In an interview some years back, Joseph Brodsky 00:09:34.740 --> 00:09:37.980 align:middle line:84% remarked characteristically against the grain 00:09:37.980 --> 00:09:41.520 align:middle line:84% of the Baroque nature of much contemporary practice, 00:09:41.520 --> 00:09:45.480 align:middle line:84% referring back to the turmoil of the religious wars in Europe 00:09:45.480 --> 00:09:49.650 align:middle line:84% and the emergence of the borough with its tortuous, destabilized 00:09:49.650 --> 00:09:51.000 align:middle line:90% subjectivity. 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:54.780 align:middle line:84% Its contentiousness, it's often oneiric, 00:09:54.780 --> 00:09:57.540 align:middle line:84% surreal imagery, extreme imagery. 00:09:57.540 --> 00:09:59.670 align:middle line:84% He compared that period to the wars 00:09:59.670 --> 00:10:03.780 align:middle line:84% and displacement and genocidal upheavals of our time. 00:10:03.780 --> 00:10:05.550 align:middle line:84% It's an interesting thought in regard 00:10:05.550 --> 00:10:07.740 align:middle line:84% to some of the writers I'll mention here 00:10:07.740 --> 00:10:09.540 align:middle line:84% and in relation to certain assumptions 00:10:09.540 --> 00:10:12.840 align:middle line:84% about modernist theory and practice. 00:10:12.840 --> 00:10:16.020 align:middle line:84% I'll begin with a couple of unlikely juxtapositions. 00:10:16.020 --> 00:10:18.560 align:middle line:84% The interesting thing about that.