Yes, questions?
We're open to questions.
We have about five minutes.
You can raise your hands or shout.
Please do raise your hand.
And I'll come to you with this.
Oh you've got a microphone there, cool.
Even get on the mic.
Thank you very much for your reading.
Would you speak a little bit about how
the process of being in recovery has informed your writing?
I think one of the disasters and of course,
maybe overall destruction of the disease of alcoholism
is really a loss of selfhood and loss
of certainty about yourself, about oneself,
in terms of, I guess self-esteem is one of those words,
sense of maybe value, self-worth.
And so I think that even though say,
I wrote even when I was in that time of drinking, using,
I don't think that I felt really the value of what a sober,
stable, balanced person was.
But really upon, I think, recovery
and in that process of recovery, I think that you're a person,
or me, as myself, I'm much more aware of I guess
what self-respect and love of oneself,
not just self, but of others, of responsibilities
that a person has, that I have.
So it's a recovery that's not just personal, I believe.
But because when you're falling apart
and you're living self destructively,
it's as if you lose really, a connection to others.
And so recovery is reconnection and restructuring
and re-strengthening and really reliving yourself,
even the history that you know back through the years.
In a sense, everything, even though you
may not remember everything, but you remember what it was
and how you want it to be.
So I think that in general and in a positive feeling
for what I do as a writer, as a thinker, as a professor, that
having a sense of self-respect and value, that's what works,
really.
Thank you for the question.
Yes?
There's a mic here, mic person.
Yeah, in your epic, are you going
to have both prose and poetry?
And I was thinking in particular,
of more than just a river.
More than just a river--
yeah, that's of course, in verse.
But sometimes I have to say that I
don't know the difference between verse and prose
at moments.
I think they're both work as poetry.
And because I find that my prose is poetry and prose,
I would say they're both.
I did a film treatment for a documentary that was made
called, Surviving Columbus.
And I wrote it as a poem, 110 pages long.
That's a film treatment.
It wasn't the script, but they used it as a script.
And it was both verse and prose forms.
So it worked.
Thank you very much.
I'm here with a group of students, the Native American
Student Association, and a school for the blind.
And one of my students, several of them are poets.
And they want to know why you chose poetry.
With this mid-prose and other things to write,
why did you choose poetry?
Why did I choose poetry?
I think I chose language, really self-expression.
And I think that self-expression and language in general,
is actually more poetry than prose.
Poetry is like natural expression, natural, reflexive,
and self-expression.
And when we're learning to speak,
I think that the beginning of our infantile communications
is murmurs and crying and sort of unstructured speech.
But in any case, it's still communication.
And I would say that's poetry.
I would say that the best and finest of self-expression
as human beings who communicate is really poetry and poetic
in nature.
I like prose as well.
But I still think prose is poetry.
Thank you.
I appreciate your beautiful words.
And I was just curious if you've ever collaborated with dancers
to express your emotions.
Could you explain that a bit more?
Sure.
Just I have a friend who--
it just made me think of this-- who
has a group who has expressed water movement, flow.
I think some folks here have seen the dancing.
Katie Isley-- I don't know if she's here.
But it just made me think when I was listening to your words
that dancers, they could help express another dimension.
I'm just curious if you've ever collaborated or thought
of collaborating with performing arts.
Never with a dancer, but poetry and language in general,
but poetry in specific, requires motion, movement.
And that's what really makes it more real and realistic
in both the reception--
that is when you hear it.
We see motion and we may even be inspired or motivated
to be moving with poems, with the sound of language
and the sound of what the verbs may start or may inspire.
So in that respect, poetry is much like dance.
I like dancing.
When I was a kid, we used to dance.
My dad would get out his drum and sing to us.
And we would dance whatever songs that might be.
It was a family activity.
Thank you.
There's a question way back there.
While reading Sand Creek, I can tell
that justice was one of the big main ideas, themes of the book.
I was wondering what role blame has to do in justice, if any.
What role does blame have in anything?
I think that blame has a limited role.
Blame is like to me, blaming others or putting all faults
onto other people, on other beings that are not really
looking at oneself.
So blame, is also like tactic, sometimes.
And blame is also sort of not willing to accept
responsibility for oneself.
It's easy to blame others.
It's easy to blame people for your misery, for your lack
of say, ability.
And I think that in Sand Creek, I
try to matters in a forthright way
so that it's evident that something is taking place.
But I try not to just simply cite or graphically
put images out there, so that someone must take
the blame for what happened.
That's not the point, I believe.
I think that the best communication really
is an assumption of responsibilities
for our own ways of thinking, ways of feeling,
and ways of acting.
Thank you for the question.
We've got time for one more and for me to run across the room.
Way on across to the other side, there you go.
Thank you for being with us once more.
And Sand Creek is some of the clearly one
of the favorites of many of us.
I'm wondering two things.
One-- and I think they're related--
would you be willing to talk about water?
And two-- would you be willing to read that lovely
transforming little poem from Sand Creek that says something
about this America and mad blood and death.
And then it turns to what's happening at Sand Creek.
Would you be willing to read that for us?
I think it's at the very beginning.
At the beginning, or at the end?
I always forget too.
It's the beginning and the end, maybe.
Because it seems like I have something
at the end with this America.
At the very last poem is this--
"I have always loved America.
It is something precious in the memory in blood and cells,
which insist on story, poetry, song, life, life.
And the poem-- in the day room the Oklahoma boy
sits sunken into the arms of a wooden and leather couch
that has become his body.
The structure of his life and the swirl of his mind
have become lead.
There is beauty in his American face.
But the dread implanted by the explosive in Asia denies it.
The life he now matters by is pushed away without pity
by the janitor's broom, which strikes his shoe.
Only the corners of his eyes and the edge of his shoe
know the quality of the couch he has become.
It is the life he has submerged into, a dream needing a name.
He has become the American--
vengeful and a wasteland of fortunes for now."
And then the very last, of course, is the epilogue poem.
"That dreams shall have the name, after all.
And it will not be vengeful, but wealthy
with love and compassion and knowledge.
And it will rise in this heart, which is our America.
It will rise in this heart, which is our America."
Thank you for asking me about that poem.
Thank you, Simon.
And good night.