WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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I wonder if you could
tell us what you've

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been reading while
you've been doing this,

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because I hear so
many other things.

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But I'm more interested
in hearing what

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you say than harvesting them.

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Yeah, so obviously,
I was reading

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a lot of stuff about hell
and the different kinds

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of underworlds that
different cultures imagine.

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And interestingly, not
just different cultures,

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but different cultures
at different times.

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So there's this really
interesting thing

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that happens in the Chinese
underworld in the 17th century

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when bureaucracy becomes a big
part of Chinese daily life.

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And so then, all
of a sudden, hell

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looks like a big
bureaucracy, where

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you need to have your papers.

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And so when you die,
the nightmare of dying

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is that you don't have
your papers in order.

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And then you have to
go to this other place.

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And then they send you
to this other place.

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And it's just as bad
as any other hell.

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And then the Mayan underworld
is like a big ball game.

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And it's a bloody one that
ends with human sacrifice.

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But it's a very different
one than the Chinese.

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And so working on this book,
I found myself just fascinated

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by these differences
and try to figure out

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what the story-- what
the differences were

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and the similarities
between, say,

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what the ancient Egyptians
thought happened to us.

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So yeah, that was
one side of things.

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Then I was reading
a lot of novels

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because I was really interested
in just storytelling.

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And so that's a start
to an answer, that.

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Did you hear anything
that I should read or--

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is in process.

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I'm trying to figure
out how to make it work.

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You've heard of Haruki Murakami?

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Yeah, I've never read Murakami.

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But my wife is a
big Murakami fan.

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And then I just look
over her shoulder.

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And she's like, oh my god,
this amazing thing happened.

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And I'm just absorbing
him second-hand.

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Do you know [INAUDIBLE]?

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Yeah, but that's also just like
being alive right now, yeah.

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Did Tyler mention
that you do erasures?

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I don't know, Tyler.

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Did you mention that I do--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Could you help the understand
the appeal of erasures?

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Because they seem
to be quite popular.

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Yeah, it's hard for
me to understand

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the appeal of erasures
because I never,

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ever want to have anything to
do with it again after spending

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seven years doing it.

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But for me, it was--

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and I've spoken to some
classes today about this.

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It came out of a,
just, dissatisfaction

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with my own writing
and with just--

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I felt unable to even
just think about writing

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in any way that made me
anything but extremely

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anxious and depressed.

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And so when you feel like you
have no way of moving forward

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as a writer, sometimes
maybe doing the opposite,

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instead of writing,
erasing, felt

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like a way of trying to
get out of the corner

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that I was in, in
this creative crisis.

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And so that's why I came to it.

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And my guess is
that a lot of people

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who do it or have
done it recently

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may have felt like there are
political reasons why it's

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hard for them to feel
like the writing of poetry

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is justifiable to
themselves or--

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But actually, people have been
doing erasures for a while.

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And there's some really
exuberant erasures too

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and really ecstatic ones.

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The poet Ronald
Johnson, in the '70s,

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did a really, almost, mystical
erasure of Paradise Lost.

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So I think every writer
has their own motivation

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for undertaking any form and--

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does that--

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Yes, thank you.

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I have a related question,
which is about the translation

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section, specifically, but
maybe more broadly as a process

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question.

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If you found yourself going
at those specific poems

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in a single go, or
if you had waves,

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or what the process
is like for you?

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The translation
that's in the book?

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Yeah.

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So there are these
classical Chinese tales.

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And the genre is
called strange tales.

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And it's a venerable
Chinese genre.

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And then that's to
be distinguished

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from the other venerable
Chinese genre of weird tales.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So that tells you
something about,

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we're missing
something if we don't

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have a distinction between
strange and weird tales.

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They've got it.

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And so these strange
tales were collected

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by this Chinese writer
Pu Songling, who

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wrote the most classic,
classically beautiful Mandarin

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in the 16th century, I think.

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And so they're full
of stories of people

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going into the underworld
or having affairs

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with fairies, and ghost
stories, and things

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like-- they're great.

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It's like the Twilight
Zone, but in ancient China.

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And so I came across one
that's only two pages long.

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It was about this
guy named Chen who

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has to go to the
underworld, because he's

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mortified to learn that he
committed war crimes 200

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years before he was born.

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And the only translation of it
is by this French sinologist

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named Léon Wieger.

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And so I began
translating this Chinese--

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I don't speak or
know any Chinese.

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I barely, with Google Translate,
can do some French translation.

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So I started translating
the Chinese tale

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from the French translation.

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And then there were
words like satellite

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that were popping up that I
didn't know what to do with.

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And then when I looked it
up, I found motorized airport

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staircase.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so I thought,
well, that's great.

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Why not put a motorized
airport staircase

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into this ancient
Chinese story and have

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Chen ride around on one?

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And then from there, it just got
cra-- yeah, it was like, well,

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let's send him to ancient Egypt.

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And so really, it's just a
two-page story in the original.

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But I've built it out to
this 20, 30 page adventure.

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Thank you.

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There's probably
time for one more.

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I can't take the
last question, so.

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Excellent.

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Thank you.

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Excellent.

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Thank you.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[INAUDIBLE]

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Yeah.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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[APPLAUSE]

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