Hi, I had the good fortune of reading
an essay you wrote about the poem, "It was the animals"
and you talked a little bit about some of your drafting
for that particular poem.
And I just wondered if you wouldn't
mind talking a little bit about the process of writing.
How you go from your first draft perhaps to a finished product.
Yeah well I'll talk about that one.
I mean it changes depending on what I'm writing
or what's happening in my life, but there's
a poem I wrote called, "It was the animals" and excuse me.
This is like sure.
But it was what happened was my brother,
he came over to my home.
And so this is I pull from my life.
I'm not, I'm not one of those people
who are ashamed of autobiography like everything
I would ever write even if I'm lying is autobiography.
Like it's coming out of my head and I have one head and I have
one set of eyes and one life to pull from.
And so my brother came over and he and this
is very different from my first book
where I was away writing it.
So I had this comfort of space to write through,
but I'm home now.
And he brought a--
this piece of wood and it was tied up
in all of these plastic grocery bags.
And he brought it and he was holding it
like it was like it was a baby you know he had this duffel bag
and it was inside and he brought it.
And you know he set it down on my coffee
or I mean on my dining table.
And he carefully unzipped it and he pulled out
all of these things and it was like layer on layering each bag
and he told me that he had the Ark.
Like that he thought he had the Ark like a piece of the Ark
and he was completely serious.
And you get stuck in that reality
that where you have to be able to still love your brother
and so you're willing I think sometimes to step out
of your own reality.
And even though you couldn't possibly meet him in his,
there seems to be this other space
we create where we're allowed to meet them
so that we can still love them or so you can still be human.
And you still sit here and say, hey, I'm--
I have compassion.
Right?
I'm not bad because I love him.
Right?
You know and so he was really serious about this Ark
and he was telling me like he was worried for me.
Like he was bringing it to save me this piece of the Ark
and it had like it had been like rooted so
there was like this design on it.
And he thought he was reading it like he
kept running his hands over it and reading it.
And I mean I was just I had been writing so my notebook was
there it was open.
And I didn't argue with him I just
like in order for him to be my brother I
couldn't argue with him.
And as soon as you argue then you
know, and so with this poem like this
came from a real life experience.
It was a painful experience and you
know your brother brings over the Ark, it's like wow,
you know and so I wrote this I just
wrote verbatim what he said.
Like as soon as he left my house I
wrote down exactly what our conversation was like.
And it was so, it was so surreal that it was like it was there
floating in my head.
So I didn't like I can't remember exactly what he
said every single thing.
And so I just I wrote that down.
And then I just wrote like a quick sketch of it.
And I didn't really know what to do with it.
It was about 2 and 1/2 pages long.
I don't think it's not in this notebook,
but it's like 2 and 1/2 pages long
and like it usually looks like this.
Like this is what, this is a sketch of one thing right now.
But it was just like that and then like another half page.
And I just left it there because it just unsettled me it
kind of made me sick a little bit.
And maybe what's worse than me writing about my brother
is that he like insisted I take pictures of this.
He's like you've got to take.
You've got to see this.
You've got to.
They're still on my phone.
I mean what are you going, I don't
know what to do with them.
I guess I should have deleted them,
but there's that writer part of me
and this is what the essay was talking about
was that betrayer part of me.
That's like, hey this is my story.
I'm going to tell it, but then you think, well, maybe it's
not my story to tell.
And I think that's one of the tough things about being
a writer writing about family or telling stories is that.
But a lot of the stuff so it was sat in my notebook
and then probably like three or four months later,
I needed a poem for Poetry Magazine
and I didn't have one in it so I was just
going back through my notebook and I saw these pages.
And I go back through my notebooks
and I see what I've sketched out and I just tag them.
And it was strange to see how linear the sketch was
that I wrote out because it was based on our conversation.
And so it was already like naturally narrative.
And so I took that and I just built the Ark around it.
You know like around that painful moment
and I let I put all my emotions into image.
And that's what usually my process
is I try to find the images that can hold and contain
my emotions.
And all of my work happens in revision.
Like it's a rare occasion when I sit down and write a poem.
You know I really rely on a notebook
and I have it like with me everywhere.
You know I wrote stuff driving up here, which
I shouldn't have been doing.
So, but I mean I figure a few less
cacti on the side of the road.
No, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding really I was like, what.
[LAUGHTER]
But yeah like so that's my process
is usually like a quick sketch of something
because I often don't have a lot of time.
And then I rely on my images and then
I build more images on top.
But that's how that poem you know
I actually looked at the pictures again
and I could see that my brother had like pipe
blisters on his fingers.
Like I could see how swollen they were in the pictures.
And the pictures are really weird because it's blurred
because he wouldn't he was moving so much and you know
and he just he thought it was the Ark.
You know and he was so disappointed with me when he
left that I didn't.
And so I just built these.
Built the animals of the Ark around it
you know and I'm so glad that movie Noah hadn't come out
before because that bad movie Noah.
What an opportunity they ruined when they made that movie.
But yeah so I'm glad that I hadn't come out yet.
So I got to make up my own like what
are the animals that I find to be fantastical
and so they were all oxen and actually we
had just come with John and Susan to the Desert Museum.
And so another page in my notebook was about the ocelots
and I had written that their faces were like mathematically
put together.
And so in the poem, their mathematical faces
is what came out.
But yeah so you just I make broken things whole
I think sometimes in the poems.
So that was a long winded answer.
I'm sorry.
I think we probably have time for one more.
Just quick one.
So private time for one more evidence.
About the inner workings of a Polaroid camera.
Are there light bulbs in it?
There's a flash.
So there must be.
You can see that in that little square.
OK.
Right?
I mean you should go home and take one apart but, just don't
call me to get back together.
And there's a baby.
The baby has a question you can't leave the baby out.
You have such amazing images, especially
in reference to your mother.
I'm curious about your family members
having read your poetry especially your brother
if he's ever read your poetry or any family member
and their reactions to it.
Yeah she was talking about the imagery.
Well, we have a joke in my family
now since the book came out as like when my brother was
an asshole will say or you know when
my brother pissed me off like my sisters
are pretty funny about that.
But you know it's strange because I
think that when people see the poems
they think immediately that this is my brother, my real life
brother I'm writing about.
And the I is exactly Natalie, but they're all masks.
Even the I. We talked about this today.
The I in the poems is it's not me,
but it's the way I can get to my emotions and the brother
in here.
Like obviously my brother is in the Halloween costume.
He's not an Aztec, but that's the emotional brother
that I know.
And so I've built him.
And why from the outside I think it's actually
more painful seeming, but from the inside
with my family like with my sister,
my sister was talking about this.
Like my mother when she read this she said, she was upset.
And she said it's just that none of it happened that way.
And then my sister, my little sister immediately said,
what do you mean mom that's exactly how it happened.
And so I think those images that they're not real.
It's not my real brother he can be the Aztec,
he can be those things that let us
feel what we feel for him without tearing down
my real life brother.
And so I think the imagery did a lot of work
to hide to hide me the speaker and even
to hide my family you know, like in the poem like my mother
and father become like a broken Borges and I gouge Saint Lucia.
You know like so I didn't have to write about my mother
and father.
I could write about that experience
that emotional experience, but it is painful for them.
Like there's a poem in the book called,
"No more cake here" when I imagine
a funeral party for my brother.
If my brother were to die like we would have a party.
And of course like I was shocked when I wrote that to find
I could go there emotionally.
But what I meant was that, if we did
get that phone call, what I was exploring
was the idea of finally being able to rest.
And the relief we might feel to never have
to worry about him again.
To never have to wonder if he was OK
or to wonder if he hurt my parents.
So that's what I was exploring.
But I have a little brother who saw that the images in the poem
and he hated it.
Like he couldn't get over it he kept
saying like what do you mean do you wish,
you wish Richie was dead.
Like he couldn't separate it.
And so I think sometimes the images let us--
they let my family see and feel it in a way
that we hadn't because we don't talk about it.
And sometimes the images can be more powerful.
But then sometimes they let us hide behind them as well.
So it's been an interesting thing for me
I think to realize even when I'm hiding
or when an image actually lets me feel it more.
But yeah, that's-- yeah, I don't think I answered that one
either.
Did you expect your brother that you like felt [INAUDIBLE]??
Yeah I mean he's read it.
Like one of the most awful things
is when he like carried the book around with him.
And was like proud of me like not in his right mind,
but proud of me.
Like taking it to people because I had a book and then to
that was a sickening part.
And then like he's read poems.
Like he read the poem When My Brother was an Aztec
and when it came out in a journal,
he-- my father keeps things in this hutch my mother has.
But he took the journal and he again
was like carrying it around and I
guess one time when he sobered up a little,
he must have read it because for a few weeks
he called me peacock shit.
Like he didn't call me Natalie.
He didn't even speak to me other than to say like, peacock shit.
You know and he just be like.
And so you know I know he's read it, but I just
he's just not it doesn't make much sense to him
most of the time I think.
He also says I owe him $6,000 because I wrote
a book about him he says so.
I'm still waiting to make $6,000 off.
Yeah thank you though for your question.
It seems like a good spot.
We'll end on peacock shit.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you and buy a book.
Yeah thank you guys so much.
I appreciate it.
[APPLAUSE]