WEBVTT

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Maybe.

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Any questions?

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I have questions.

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I have no answers.

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Could you say a little bit
about your creative process?

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I found your images and
material very exciting,

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and I'm looking around--

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Thank you for the question.

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Say a little.

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I was talking to
Janice's students

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about this a little bit today.

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The big thing
about writing poems

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is getting out of the way.

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Getting yourself
out of the way so

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you can see what you don't
already know, because that's

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what the poem is going to be.

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Hopefully, if you're lucky,
it will show you something

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that you didn't know.

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So, for me, the page
is like, not a blank,

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but a space into which I look.

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And as I look, I'm very
attentive to what's

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going on there.

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And it happens.

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And somehow, that attention and
the creation are simultaneous.

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But it seems like
something given.

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It feels that way.

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So the various ways in which we
develop a practice and craft,

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these are ways in which the
form frees us from ourselves,

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and to see and to move in
ways we haven't before,

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and to get rid of the
filters and the ego that

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keeps us trying to look
good and not seeing much.

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And as I told the
students, it's something

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you can describe but
you can't explain.

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Any other questions?

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I don't know if this is really
a question, about how you come

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across colors through
living and how you

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can put them into your work.

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Different hues?

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Like, I have "the red
edge of the universe."

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I've never heard of that.

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So it's like,
that's one more red.

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That's from being
married to a physicist.

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I see red sometimes, but
not usually that way.

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It will take Higgs instruments
and a lot of knowledge

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to see invisible light.

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Actually, when you write you're
not writing with the words

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because words are abstracted.

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What you're writing with
are images, essentially.

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And all the senses are engaged.

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And, of course, one of
the most appealing things

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to bees and to us are the
visible color spectrum

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of light, and the way
different material

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is reflected and give us
this incredible range.

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And aren't we lucky that
we're made in such a way

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that we find that beautiful.

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I don't know what's
built into nature.

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It's not just us.

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Because the peacock wouldn't
work so hard at doing that

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stuff if it wasn't
attractive to the peahen.

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So aesthetic stuff isn't
necessarily just ours.

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And someone had--

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I think Julie and I
were talking about this.

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The scientists who now put
these probes in your brain

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to show you which
part of your brain

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lights up when
certain things happen,

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when you get mad or whatever,
but what they've discovered

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is that the word--

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like the word
"scratchy" or "fuzzy"

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lights up the same place
in your brain as when

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you touch something scratchy
or something soft and fuzzy.

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So they have discovered what
poets and writers always

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knew, that when you
use sensual language,

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it has an effect on you as
if that just happened to you.

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It's wonderful.

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They've also discovered
something we always knew,

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which is they find out that the
part of the brain that responds

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to sound is also the same part
of the brain in which memories

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are stored.

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Well, hey, why do
you rhyme, you know?

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And then "I have
promises to keep

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and miles to go before
I sleep, and miles

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to go before I sleep."

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You can't forget those
lines, even if you want to.

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Right?

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So, yes, sound and
memory come together.

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And for years before there
was written language,

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all the great stories
had rhymes built

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in because that's how you kept
the history of your people

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going, you rhymed them.

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So it's kind of nice to have
this proof because people

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want it to be scientific.

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Because, you know, poets
just make shit up, right?

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We have time for
one more question.

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So, we saw from your poetry that
you draw a lot of inspiration

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from events.

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Are there any people
that particularly

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inspire you to write?

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Everybody.

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No, I'm serious.

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Because the people, some of them
are figures from our stories,

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but those are figures who have
traveled with us through time.

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And so everybody's in them.

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If there's a figure
like, oh, I don't

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know, like a madonna who's
been around for so long.

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I had a Japanese student.

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When she was going back
home from America, I said,

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what are you going
to take with you?

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And she said, Mary.

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And she had gone
to a church where

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they had brought a
figure of Mary who

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had been in the Philippines,
and she cries, the figure.

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So when she came back
from there, I said, well,

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did the figure cry?

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And she said, no, Mary
didn't cry, but I did.

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And I said, why?

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And she said, because of all
the people who believed in her.

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There's this kind
of communal memory

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that these figures carry.

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And so, I'm drawn to them.

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And I'm also drawn
to those individuals

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who are in some way
connected to communal memory.

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Because it's everybody.

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Because we're all
very much the same.

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We have the same experience.

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But it's always different.

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And when these
figures come back,

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they come back
differently because we're

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living in a different time.

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And we have to change the story.

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So we have to use the power
of those long memories.

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But we used to use
that power in order

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to free ourselves from the
oppressive parts of the past

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or the parts that no longer
describe the reality as we

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know it and understand it,
or as we have injured it.

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So that's kind of everybody.

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That's how I feel about it.

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Also, I-- I don't know.

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I was just going
to say thank you.

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OK.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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