WEBVTT

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I thought I would pause here.

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If there are any
questions, or something

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like that, or anything, and then
I could read a little bit more.

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Thanks so much for reading.

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So I'm noticing in
your work that there's

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a lot of attention to the
layers of representation.

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It's really obvious
that you're writing

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about an article
that you've read

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or in the poem, "The
Dream of A Raindrop,"

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you talk about seeing the
raindrop in search engine

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images.

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And so can you talk about what
leads you to make that choice?

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Why is it important to show--

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rather than just
imagining the raindrop,

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why show the search engine?

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I'm not sure.

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But again, that's
never stopped me

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from trying to
answer a question.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I do it professionally.

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[LAUGHS]

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Sensory work is very
important to me.

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And from what I
understand, in the west,

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we are particularly
visual-minded.

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And I come from a family
of visual artists.

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So I think there's
a lot of that.

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But I also try
very hard to bring

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in other sensory elements.

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So I don't know,
maybe, intuitively,

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I thought bringing
in a search engine

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where you could
actually imagine seeing

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it, as opposed to me
translating what I see, bring

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that image to you, would add
to the sensory work, actually.

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That sounds pretty good.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Did you mean something
else, though, or no?

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OK.

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Thank you.

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So we're actually in--

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a couple of the students who
are in the honors poetry class.

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So we looked at your book this
week, and we're reading it.

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And we wanted to know
what was your stance

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on post-confessionalism?

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Would you consider
yourself a poet

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that will change the derogatory
meaning into something

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that's powerful?

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A couple of decades ago,
or at least one decade ago,

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someone said that I'm a
postmodern confessional poet.

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And I thought, yes,
that sounds right.

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So that's fine.

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I mean, people are going
to say whatever they want.

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And I have no problem with that.

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I have no, yeah.

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It's-- my work is--

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I have to say that some of that
when I was starting out writing

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poetry, I didn't--

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I wasn't keen on some of
the confessional poets.

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But the early ones, like
Sylvia Plath, although now,

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I love her bee poems.

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But then, there's also
Louise Gluck, or Sharon Olds,

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completely different,
and yet, I believe

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they have that strong
vein in their work.

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Apparently, I haven't-- I
wasn't able to look at the paper

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today.

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Or, oh, no, Harold
was telling me--

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he's here somewhere-- he was
telling me, he was, oh, I know.

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He was reading a
book on Homo sapiens,

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and he was telling me that one
thing that distinguishes Homo

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sapiens from other potential
human beings that would

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take over the world was gossip.

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And I love that.

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I love that the word gossip
is associated with women,

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like intuition.

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And you know, I'll take it.

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I'll take that.

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I'll take confessionalism,
I'll take women's intuition.

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I'll take all those things,
because that's really

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a part of these very important,
deep areas to explore.

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So, yeah, bring on the
word confessionalism,

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capital C and small c.

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I think that's great.

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But thank you for that question.

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When I read your
work it seems to me,

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and this might be wrong,
so feel free to correct me,

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that if you've ever done
paper cut outs, when

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I read your work, I notice
instead of laying off an image,

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it's like removal of something,
so what's left behind.

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And I noticed that sometimes,
at the end of your work,

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that it's like, there's quite
a sharpness and a subtlety,

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like an economy that builds
and then removes and leaves

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something.

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And so that the
path of your poetry

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isn't always a straight line.

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It kind of curves
back at itself,

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but it doesn't allow
for a full circle,

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it sort of means something
missing or unsaid

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that you have to arrive
at with that cut out.

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So I wonder if you could
maybe comment on that?

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Well, I hadn't thought about
the progression of my poems

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in quite that way.

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But I will say when
it comes to closure,

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I'm like a demonic
person about closure.

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I actually teach a
graduate craft seminar

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just on poetic closure.

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I read a book in my
graduate school days,

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I was studying
Japanese literature.

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And it was so pathetic,
my Japanese was so bad.

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But anyway, I got
out of there alive.

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And anyway, sorry, I'm going
off into a memory lane here.

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We did read this amazing
book called Poetic Closure

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by Barbara Herrnstein Smith.

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And that book influences the
way I read, the way I revise,

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and the way I teach.

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The basic idea is the way--

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is you can see all--
when you're revising,

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you can see all the different
kinds of repetition,

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whether it's an image,
a sound, what-have-you.

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And through that repetition, we
psychologically and emotionally

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feel those repetitions.

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We may be very unconscious,
usually unconscious,

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especially in a first
reading, or as one's revising.

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And then, when you
get to the closure,

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you can go in one direction
or another, or well,

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a lot of different
directions, depending

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on what kind of repetition
has been set up.

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And it's so-- it makes me
crazy that so often people

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take the soft landing
in a poem, as opposed

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to really seeing how far you
can go to have the end resonate.

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So that's what I try and do,
that maybe that resonating.

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So what is compelling, what
is moving the poem forward,

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and then, what do
you do with the end?

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It doesn't mean you can't have
a very quiet or anti-closural

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kind of ending.

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But it needs to resonate, not
just this sort of ah ending,

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it makes me nervous.

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Although, you're welcome to say
ah at the end of my readings,

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so.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Yeah.

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So closure is very
important to me.

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And so I appreciate
you noticing that.

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Thank you very much.

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I wonder in the secret
to what you just said,

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what does your poetry
do to change the world?

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If I may quote myself,
which is pretty crummy--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Go ahead.

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I have a poem in
Volatile, where I write--

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it's a
politically-informed poem.

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Its subject matter is
political and social change.

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And I write that I know
poetry cannot change--

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now I can't remember
my own poem--

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but I know poetry
cannot change the world.

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But it fuels the
gut that is able.

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And that's what I
hope my poetry can do,

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even if the poem is not directly
about a political or social

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issue.

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So when I was coming up and
in my more radical days,

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I would be invited to
go to read at benefits

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for, say, a homeless
shelter or what-have-you.

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And a lot of poets would want to
read poems about homelessness,

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or so on, and the
particular subject

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of whatever the benefit was for.

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And I felt that it's more
interesting, in a way,

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to just read your
most powerful poem

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and try and integrate it into
the context of that reading.

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So if I read a love
poem, for example,

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at a benefit for
homeless people,

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well, there's not a
whole lot of privacy

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when you don't have
a home, or when

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you're living in a shelter.

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So reading a love
poem, you could

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see that might be a radical
move, a radical contribution.

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So that's what I hope for.

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There's not just one way to
be a part of social change.

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And I hope that in my small
way I can do that for people.

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Thank you.

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