Yeah, I apologize.
I forgot the specific name of the poem.
I think it's called "Carp Poem."
I was wondering if you could speak
to your use of religious imagery?
I mean, it's not that far from saying American imagery.
There are certain themes, it's like our mythology, I guess,
which is not to say it's not a question of faith
so much as a question of subject, history, material.
So I find the Bible to be a really interesting book
about all kinds of great stories in it.
And I find the questions of faith
to be endlessly interesting.
And again, we can think about it and then even
connect it to spectacle-- inside faith,
or maintaining one's faith, victim of faith, weak faith.
So those are really--
I mean, I like tensions, what I would say.
As a writer, I like texture, I like struggle.
So if it's a kind of easy thing, or if it's
a thing that I feel like I have figured out,
it won't show up in the poems.
About religion, spirituality, all those things
are constantly-- morality, good versus bad,
those things are always interesting to me.
And as I said, I mean, I've always
tricking my way into writing them in full ways.
And I think that's what that last poem is doing, too.
Yeah, I mean, I think the "Carp Poem," a lot of stuff
is going on in that one.
But certainly, that question of what
is that, what is [INAUDIBLE],, what is faith,
is part of that poem, too.
So, thanks, yeah.
I can hear you if you're shouting.
Oh, yeah.
Come up here.
I'm always really struck by your attention
to form in all of your work.
And I'm wondering about the relationship
in your opinion about spectacle and form,
and how they get to form each other, and also, the amount
in terms of your saying, like, feeling the need
to trick yourself into feeling empathy or spectacle,
like, using metaphor and using language.
And if form plays into that, then how?
Yeah, but the first thing that comes to mind
is just television.
Like, why our sort of relationship to the spectacular
is more intense than it's ever been before?
Because I do think that the television
is a great form for detachment.
So we get to see September 11, or pornography,
or sporting events, but we always
have a kind of removed from it.
Because I find it, like, when I go
to basketball games or football games,
it's never quite as good.
Because I've gotten so used to having the spectacle contained.
And it's not even a commercial so
much as just being able to have it in a box where everything, I
mean, even if someone is showing it to me,
it's all there framed in a really great little context.
Versus to being in the midst of any of those things.
And again, the easiest example would be a sporting event.
Like, there's too much going on.
There's too many places to look, to really have it focused.
So I think maybe four minutes is just me making it up
in response to your question, but I think,
maybe form works that way.
Like, you just want some way to hold it, the intensity,
the energies, the feelings.
So I don't know if that becomes a vote for television.
But certainly, television makes it neat enough
that we almost become a little bit
immune to it, versus to what it really means
to be in the midst of a crisis.
And that's not-- as one of the poems, in the last poem,
and it was really, I was saying this to the students early.
And usually, that's like a line in the poem,
everything will be going on.
But they'll just be like one line
that I'm really committed to.
And this one is like crisis is initiated
by the absence of witness.
So I just kept thinking about that idea,
even though it's not a narrative subject.
But it seems to me when we get to see the crisis,
we feel like, OK, it's not so bad.
We actually have a record of it.
But then, being in the midst of our own crisis, or any kind
of story, and have no record of it,
seems like that's the real crisis.
So I think that's in spectacle, that's in the spectacular.
It assumes a witness to it.
So anyway, so to parallel that to my work,
I think that about form.
I think part of what you're trying to do with form
is figure out some way to hold the crisis,
or the feeling that would be too large otherwise.
And maybe, that's how television works, too.
Yeah.
So I'm really fascinated by the intersection
of poetry and visual art.
So I was wondering if you could speak to how visual
art and poetry intersect, how they can intersect,
and how that potentially connects to the spectacle?
Sure.
Well, that's why I picked the historical poem in particular,
because what I was doing just as the writer was asking myself.
If you guys know the blind and contour drawing,
I mean, the principle is just you put the pen or the chalk
or whatever down, and you just look at your subject.
So it's trying to keep you from looking down
at the paper, which everybody thinks that's what you're
supposed to do, right?
Like, when you're drawing, you're
looking at yourself drawing it.
But of course, if you're doing that,
you're not actually looking, which
is the kind of interesting dynamic.
So for me, that was a huge lesson in the ninth grade.
Like, oh, I can only draw it if I
don't look at what I'm drawing.
So I was trying to think about that parallel verse, first
just to poetry, like, is that what a lyric is?
Where, if you sing it, but don't think too much
about what you're singing, that's
the only way to really sing it, to really let yourself go?
Because otherwise, you can be swept away by it.
So that analogy just gets to be--
it's a series of questions or curiosities
around how they go together.
Because I usually just keep them separate.
I mean, they are different acts.
It's like driving and flying a plane,
they don't necessarily have to be connected.
Even if they're about like movement.
So I don't generally worry too much
about how they're in conversation.
But certainly, one of the driving projects to that book
was to see what does one say to the other?
So hence, like what is black contour drawing?
Like, I don't remember how I get to the story of the knife
stabbing, or even the awe, it was like-- that just comes out
of dozens and dozens of drafts.
At one point, the whole poem was about Cyclops,
and Cyclops in The Odyssey, and how big would his eyeball
be if he was a giant.
What would fit in it?
I was like, oh, if you're big enough
to have an onion fit inside your eye, that's pretty big.
[LAUGHTER]
That was enough.
So I had a whole point about that, whatever his name is,
Polyphemus or something.
And but that just fell to the side.
So that process of surprise, I am often
working out abstractions.
But I'm always trying to route them down
into something like song or story.
So you've got forget, like it's like erasing your tracks as you
move.
Which is why it's always harder the next time you start out.
Because it's evidence of how you got to a poem.
It's usually gone by the time I get the poem right, or almost
right, right enough.
Yeah.
Yeah?
So first of all, thank you for being here.
You're wonderful.
And I really enjoyed the reading.
On this idea of form, I really love just the broad range
of forms that your poems take in your books.
I was wondering if you could talk
when in your writing process the form for the poem
usually appears?
Like is it in multiple drafts, is
the form first for some poems?
I was thinking about where in the drafting process
the form decisions usually manifest for you?
They usually are initially the result of a problem,
like not being able to get out of something.
And say, I don't know if I made these kinds of parameters,
I could do it.
So again, if I think about like "The Poet Ai as Dylann Roof,"
it's a persona poem.
But that's a form.
But it comes from me trying to figure out
how could I write a poem in the voice of Dylann Roof?
And I thought, oh, I could do it if I
pretended to be someone else.
So at that moment, that's a solution
to a very particular problem.
But on the other side, like what I'm working on now,
is still thinking, well what--
I like the idea of a white man with a Black woman
hidden inside of it.
So suddenly, the form becomes usable.
So the thing I'm working on now is Lucian Freud.
So the poem-- and it may not work,
I've been working on it for two months.
But it's like The Poet Ai as Lucian Freud.
So I don't know, y'all.
I know Lucian Freud.
He's the grandson of Sigmund Freud, amazing painter.
He's like somewhere between--
he likes Van Gogh with texture.
He's trying to make the paint like flesh.
And then, like Philip Pearlstein,
which is also somebody that people don't know, but figure
drawing, likes naked people.
He also has a record of 14 kids.
But he probably has more.
[LAUGHTER]
So anyway, and an interesting dude,
I read all these biographies about him.
So what's interesting to me is he
is a complicated not likeable guy, Lucian Freud,
but just a monstrous talent.
So again, I thought, well, what if Lucian Freud had
inside of him, Ai, like, inside of him?
What could I get at if it's Ai pretending to be Lucian Freud?
I can get at it like a crazy stuff about him,
the crazy sex stuff, the crazy violent stuff.
He'd like people to beat him up, people go out of pubs
and pick fights, and then, lay out, you know, crazy stuff.
Some people say he might had Asperger's, which
is interesting, because he's such a phenomenal painter.
And that's where all of his obsession-- anyway,
so I've been taking too much.
So that's what I'm doing now, that's
what I mean, like, I don't actually
care about any of the books.
I only care about that thing that I've been working on.
So to go to your point, though, I only
get to it because I created a device for figuring out
another problem.
And then, I'm saying, oh, can I use
that to get to other kinds of poem?
So what is it like if she's inside of him?
But it can't just be two, because it can't be like,
because I'm saying terrible things about Lucian Freud.
The only two poems are Dylann Roof and Lucian Freud.
So then, I was thinking what other white dudes need to have
Black women inside of them?
I haven't answered that yet.
But I'm working on it.
So I've got three out of her, dude, I'm still serious.
But if I got the three hours, say, you
would see the uses of the form, like why
I've decided to try it.
Two is sort of random, one is like very particular.
So I'm thinking at least three.
But first I got to finish it.
If I don't finish this one, I'll just
stop with the Dylann Roof, which may or may not be done.
But does that answer it?
They start out of, they began with real problems for me,
with real questions, in terms of producing a poem.
I never go in.
Even with sonnets, I never say, oh, I'm
going to write a sonnet.
Usually, I'm working something out.
And I can see the edges of a sonnet.
And then, I'll use that as a solution.
Yeah.
This may be the right place to stop.
And the way to keep going is to come up here and buy a book
from Marc or Kurt.
Books are for sale.
They are 20% off.
Thanks for choosing--