WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.020 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.020 --> 00:00:11.953 align:middle line:84% I was rudely editing this last poem 00:00:11.953 --> 00:00:13.370 align:middle line:84% that I'm going to read while Tyler 00:00:13.370 --> 00:00:20.040 align:middle line:84% was speaking because it's crazy, and now it's out of order. 00:00:20.040 --> 00:00:21.230 align:middle line:90% So just give me one second. 00:00:21.230 --> 00:00:25.700 align:middle line:84% So I don't do that crazy thing that I 00:00:25.700 --> 00:00:26.960 align:middle line:90% don't know what's happening. 00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:29.550 align:middle line:90% 00:00:29.550 --> 00:00:30.950 align:middle line:90% OK, I think it's in order now. 00:00:30.950 --> 00:00:33.183 align:middle line:90% 00:00:33.183 --> 00:00:34.850 align:middle line:84% This is the last poem I'm going to read. 00:00:34.850 --> 00:00:36.920 align:middle line:90% It's called "Planet Hulk." 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:40.010 align:middle line:84% And I had written a long poem that I 00:00:40.010 --> 00:00:41.450 align:middle line:90% called confessional poem. 00:00:41.450 --> 00:00:43.040 align:middle line:84% And in that poem, there were a lot 00:00:43.040 --> 00:00:47.690 align:middle line:84% of blanks where I had decided I would stop forever 00:00:47.690 --> 00:00:51.050 align:middle line:84% and ever writing poems that had real people's names in them. 00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:54.800 align:middle line:84% And so I just put in blanks for like my boss who did not 00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:56.480 align:middle line:84% like that I was writing about her, 00:00:56.480 --> 00:00:59.120 align:middle line:84% and my editor who did not like that I was writing about him, 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:01.520 align:middle line:84% and my friends, and I said like mean things 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:04.910 align:middle line:84% about my children and my husband. 00:01:04.910 --> 00:01:08.570 align:middle line:84% And I said stuff about sex and money. 00:01:08.570 --> 00:01:11.750 align:middle line:84% And then at the end of the poem, the last stanza of the poem, 00:01:11.750 --> 00:01:16.490 align:middle line:84% I fill in all the blanks, which, you know-- 00:01:16.490 --> 00:01:20.520 align:middle line:84% I was like, I think I have a problem. 00:01:20.520 --> 00:01:25.485 align:middle line:84% And so this poem refers to that poem, 00:01:25.485 --> 00:01:27.110 align:middle line:84% but I don't think you need to know more 00:01:27.110 --> 00:01:30.420 align:middle line:84% than I've just told you and what you already know about me, 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:33.080 align:middle line:90% which is probably too much. 00:01:33.080 --> 00:01:37.880 align:middle line:84% And you should see the Avengers movie because it's very good. 00:01:37.880 --> 00:01:42.260 align:middle line:84% I have three sons, so I see all the Marvel movies. 00:01:42.260 --> 00:01:46.100 align:middle line:84% And I would like to say that I do mix Marvel and DC briefly 00:01:46.100 --> 00:01:48.980 align:middle line:84% in this poem, and I know that those are not 00:01:48.980 --> 00:01:50.340 align:middle line:90% universes that overlap. 00:01:50.340 --> 00:01:52.100 align:middle line:90% I'm aware of that. 00:01:52.100 --> 00:01:55.670 align:middle line:84% That's probably the only imaginative thing 00:01:55.670 --> 00:01:57.290 align:middle line:90% that I do in any of my poems. 00:01:57.290 --> 00:01:59.900 align:middle line:84% All the rest is just accurate reporting. 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:03.260 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:03.260 --> 00:02:08.823 align:middle line:84% And thank you so much for having me, and I'm loving being here. 00:02:08.823 --> 00:02:11.240 align:middle line:84% I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning with the full terror 00:02:11.240 --> 00:02:12.320 align:middle line:90% of my task. 00:02:12.320 --> 00:02:16.370 align:middle line:90% But right now, I'm really happy. 00:02:16.370 --> 00:02:18.680 align:middle line:90% "Planet Hulk." 00:02:18.680 --> 00:02:22.280 align:middle line:84% "When I opened my eyes, people were showing me the footage. 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:25.490 align:middle line:90% There I was destroying the city. 00:02:25.490 --> 00:02:31.040 align:middle line:84% A bystander went down, a citizen, an onlooker. 00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:33.410 align:middle line:90% Or there was no footage. 00:02:33.410 --> 00:02:36.170 align:middle line:90% The footage was my own mind. 00:02:36.170 --> 00:02:41.000 align:middle line:84% I remembered my hand around a tiny throat, the power of it, 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:45.560 align:middle line:84% the clarity before nothing else made sense. 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:50.180 align:middle line:90% Was I, I asked, really that bad? 00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:51.830 align:middle line:90% No, said one Avenger. 00:02:51.830 --> 00:02:53.270 align:middle line:90% We love you. 00:02:53.270 --> 00:02:57.020 align:middle line:84% No, said an X Man, you are what you are. 00:02:57.020 --> 00:03:01.460 align:middle line:90% No, said Natasha, I needed you. 00:03:01.460 --> 00:03:03.530 align:middle line:90% I just lied. 00:03:03.530 --> 00:03:11.240 align:middle line:84% They all averted their eyes and said, yes, you are that bad. 00:03:11.240 --> 00:03:13.850 align:middle line:90% Of course, they did. 00:03:13.850 --> 00:03:16.730 align:middle line:84% The lullaby's working, Natasha says 00:03:16.730 --> 00:03:22.790 align:middle line:84% as I become small, weak, and feminine again, as I come to 00:03:22.790 --> 00:03:25.490 align:middle line:90% and grope for my glasses. 00:03:25.490 --> 00:03:29.090 align:middle line:84% My editor says, you made an image of me 00:03:29.090 --> 00:03:33.410 align:middle line:84% at one moment in time reductive like all photography. 00:03:33.410 --> 00:03:35.790 align:middle line:84% No, it is not even an image of me. 00:03:35.790 --> 00:03:40.920 align:middle line:84% It is just your projection of me, and it subjectifies. 00:03:40.920 --> 00:03:43.230 align:middle line:84% Will it help if I add that to the poem? 00:03:43.230 --> 00:03:44.950 align:middle line:90% I ask him. 00:03:44.950 --> 00:03:50.580 align:middle line:84% If I say, you are not you; you are my projection of you? 00:03:50.580 --> 00:03:53.070 align:middle line:90% He says nothing. 00:03:53.070 --> 00:03:57.420 align:middle line:84% I speak wearing the wounded look of Mark Ruffalo playing Bruce 00:03:57.420 --> 00:04:02.130 align:middle line:84% Banner, a look that often reads as false. 00:04:02.130 --> 00:04:05.310 align:middle line:84% When I opened my eyes, I saw excitement 00:04:05.310 --> 00:04:07.980 align:middle line:90% on all the wrong faces. 00:04:07.980 --> 00:04:10.710 align:middle line:84% These were the people who loved me. 00:04:10.710 --> 00:04:14.605 align:middle line:84% When I opened my eyes is not the next part of the poem. 00:04:14.605 --> 00:04:17.279 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHS] 00:04:17.279 --> 00:04:18.839 align:middle line:84% These were the people who loved me. 00:04:18.839 --> 00:04:21.209 align:middle line:90% Wow, said Laurel, great poem. 00:04:21.209 --> 00:04:23.970 align:middle line:90% I love it, says the husband. 00:04:23.970 --> 00:04:27.480 align:middle line:84% Whatever was wrong with me was wrong with the husband, 00:04:27.480 --> 00:04:29.790 align:middle line:84% and with Laurel, and with all the people 00:04:29.790 --> 00:04:33.810 align:middle line:84% who shared my perversity which had become indistinguishable 00:04:33.810 --> 00:04:36.390 align:middle line:90% from my poetry. 00:04:36.390 --> 00:04:41.190 align:middle line:84% You have a triangulated reality writing, shame fetish, 00:04:41.190 --> 00:04:42.960 align:middle line:90% Katie said. 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:46.170 align:middle line:90% It might be a kind of edging. 00:04:46.170 --> 00:04:49.740 align:middle line:90% Oh, you who I've exposed. 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:53.580 align:middle line:84% I have stood before you tone deaf and prurient 00:04:53.580 --> 00:04:57.150 align:middle line:90% and asked you to love me. 00:04:57.150 --> 00:05:01.140 align:middle line:84% When I opened my eyes, my body was covered in scars. 00:05:01.140 --> 00:05:06.090 align:middle line:84% Marina Abramovic had carved a star into my stomach. 00:05:06.090 --> 00:05:09.090 align:middle line:84% My face felt slapped 1,000 times. 00:05:09.090 --> 00:05:12.030 align:middle line:90% My back felt raw with lashes. 00:05:12.030 --> 00:05:13.290 align:middle line:90% I was seared. 00:05:13.290 --> 00:05:17.460 align:middle line:84% I was blistered by the gaze of a live camera, 00:05:17.460 --> 00:05:23.700 align:middle line:84% or it was footage of me slapping you, some of you liking it. 00:05:23.700 --> 00:05:27.240 align:middle line:84% Some of you onlookers, bystanders, men, 00:05:27.240 --> 00:05:29.970 align:middle line:90% caught in the crossfire. 00:05:29.970 --> 00:05:32.470 align:middle line:90% And there were casualties. 00:05:32.470 --> 00:05:36.930 align:middle line:84% It was unbecoming, but it was also me. 00:05:36.930 --> 00:05:42.510 align:middle line:84% And in this way and only this way was I furthermore alive. 00:05:42.510 --> 00:05:44.670 align:middle line:84% Just change the ending, says Katie. 00:05:44.670 --> 00:05:47.250 align:middle line:84% The names make it less interesting. 00:05:47.250 --> 00:05:49.500 align:middle line:84% It's not that bad, another person says. 00:05:49.500 --> 00:05:52.710 align:middle line:84% You're taking yourself too seriously. 00:05:52.710 --> 00:05:56.310 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, Sylvia Plath is making small cuts 00:05:56.310 --> 00:05:59.250 align:middle line:84% on my upper arm with a boning knife. 00:05:59.250 --> 00:06:02.220 align:middle line:84% It will hardly show, she whispers. 00:06:02.220 --> 00:06:05.670 align:middle line:84% This isn't my thing, I say, trying to pull away. 00:06:05.670 --> 00:06:09.300 align:middle line:90% But her eye is inescapable. 00:06:09.300 --> 00:06:13.710 align:middle line:84% There's a fine line between self-flagellation and bragging, 00:06:13.710 --> 00:06:15.180 align:middle line:90% says Katie. 00:06:15.180 --> 00:06:19.470 align:middle line:84% I cover myself in bright blood like a flag. 00:06:19.470 --> 00:06:24.690 align:middle line:84% No poets were harmed in the making of this poem, I write. 00:06:24.690 --> 00:06:26.430 align:middle line:90% Do you believe me? 00:06:26.430 --> 00:06:29.020 align:middle line:90% Then stop reading. 00:06:29.020 --> 00:06:33.030 align:middle line:84% So many things were given unto me that I took as givens-- 00:06:33.030 --> 00:06:36.450 align:middle line:84% my sex, my gender, my race, my class. 00:06:36.450 --> 00:06:38.730 align:middle line:90% I never sought to question. 00:06:38.730 --> 00:06:43.420 align:middle line:84% I was born into and became more and more my cis. 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:46.560 align:middle line:84% Cis this, Cis that, as if life were simply 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:50.220 align:middle line:84% a matter of seeing oneself more and more in focus. 00:06:50.220 --> 00:06:56.000 align:middle line:84% As if truth were a word an I, like me, could use. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:59.630 align:middle line:84% Well, you know what they do to Hulk, says the husband. 00:06:59.630 --> 00:07:04.070 align:middle line:84% Hey, Maggie Nelson, could you come kill Sylvia Plath 00:07:04.070 --> 00:07:06.830 align:middle line:84% before she does herself in again? 00:07:06.830 --> 00:07:11.270 align:middle line:84% No one will know who Maggie Nelson is, says Katie. 00:07:11.270 --> 00:07:14.750 align:middle line:84% Eventually, the Avengers send Hulk away. 00:07:14.750 --> 00:07:19.550 align:middle line:84% Veronica, his self-created fail safe self destruct creation 00:07:19.550 --> 00:07:24.710 align:middle line:84% cannot contain him nor can his Homo hero friends. 00:07:24.710 --> 00:07:27.840 align:middle line:84% He is a weapon too dangerous to possess. 00:07:27.840 --> 00:07:30.020 align:middle line:84% So they trick him into a spaceship 00:07:30.020 --> 00:07:33.080 align:middle line:90% and shoot him into the sky. 00:07:33.080 --> 00:07:36.530 align:middle line:84% Banner always falls for feeling needed. 00:07:36.530 --> 00:07:39.320 align:middle line:90% But it's always Hulk they need. 00:07:39.320 --> 00:07:42.800 align:middle line:84% Gamma, gamma, everywhere, but not a drop to drink. 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:45.680 align:middle line:90% My shame is a tsunami. 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:49.260 align:middle line:84% It's time to get up and make breakfast. 00:07:49.260 --> 00:07:53.370 align:middle line:84% David Trinidad suggests I wear a black tourmaline stone 00:07:53.370 --> 00:07:56.040 align:middle line:90% around my neck for protection. 00:07:56.040 --> 00:07:59.040 align:middle line:84% It repels negative energy, he tells me. 00:07:59.040 --> 00:08:01.020 align:middle line:84% This is important when reading poems 00:08:01.020 --> 00:08:03.300 align:middle line:84% about people when those people are present 00:08:03.300 --> 00:08:06.420 align:middle line:90% and the poems might upset them. 00:08:06.420 --> 00:08:10.650 align:middle line:84% Or you could stop writing those kinds of poems, Katie says. 00:08:10.650 --> 00:08:16.020 align:middle line:84% Or you could stop caring about hurting people, says Laurel. 00:08:16.020 --> 00:08:20.850 align:middle line:84% What if I can't get off without hurting someone? 00:08:20.850 --> 00:08:22.920 align:middle line:90% I ask Ariel. 00:08:22.920 --> 00:08:24.870 align:middle line:90% In the poem, I mean. 00:08:24.870 --> 00:08:28.500 align:middle line:84% Everyone knows I am otherwise outside poems rather nice, 00:08:28.500 --> 00:08:31.900 align:middle line:90% on time, considerate, so what? 00:08:31.900 --> 00:08:36.929 align:middle line:84% What if there is no I outside these poems? 00:08:36.929 --> 00:08:42.390 align:middle line:84% By day, I was Penelope waiting and weaving. 00:08:42.390 --> 00:08:47.970 align:middle line:84% By night, I was Penelope waiting and weaving. 00:08:47.970 --> 00:08:52.140 align:middle line:90% But Hulk too also I. 00:08:52.140 --> 00:08:56.490 align:middle line:84% It's our sun that gives Superman his extraordinary powers. 00:08:56.490 --> 00:08:59.670 align:middle line:84% It is the shards of his exploded planet pieces 00:08:59.670 --> 00:09:02.460 align:middle line:84% of the past and home which enfeeble him, 00:09:02.460 --> 00:09:05.730 align:middle line:90% which is to say humanize. 00:09:05.730 --> 00:09:09.570 align:middle line:84% Look how it hurts him to be human. 00:09:09.570 --> 00:09:12.840 align:middle line:84% Hulk, a universe away is less lucky. 00:09:12.840 --> 00:09:19.170 align:middle line:84% He is made of anger, of animal, and is always human. 00:09:19.170 --> 00:09:23.400 align:middle line:84% In some versions, Hulk rarely hurts anyone innocent. 00:09:23.400 --> 00:09:28.530 align:middle line:84% In other versions, he's just a monster. 00:09:28.530 --> 00:09:32.160 align:middle line:84% When I opened my eyes, I saw the footage of my youngest 00:09:32.160 --> 00:09:36.150 align:middle line:90% son saying, I love you so much. 00:09:36.150 --> 00:09:39.040 align:middle line:84% It became a crack in the Earth's core. 00:09:39.040 --> 00:09:42.990 align:middle line:84% And I would throw my body into the molten to stop it up. 00:09:42.990 --> 00:09:46.620 align:middle line:90% But that wouldn't be enough. 00:09:46.620 --> 00:09:49.770 align:middle line:84% There is nothing to save him from this fear. 00:09:49.770 --> 00:09:52.440 align:middle line:90% It is eclipse and kryptonite. 00:09:52.440 --> 00:09:56.940 align:middle line:84% It is the pain of being mortal with a mortal mother. 00:09:56.940 --> 00:09:59.880 align:middle line:84% He is exactly old enough to suspect what 00:09:59.880 --> 00:10:02.880 align:middle line:90% my absence would look like. 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:05.370 align:middle line:90% I love you so much. 00:10:05.370 --> 00:10:09.990 align:middle line:84% He means I cannot yet survive your dying. 00:10:09.990 --> 00:10:15.480 align:middle line:84% His weakness makes him hate me, and this is love. 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:18.570 align:middle line:84% I make the husband sleep in the other room. 00:10:18.570 --> 00:10:22.470 align:middle line:84% We have bodies, and mine is keeping him awake. 00:10:22.470 --> 00:10:26.830 align:middle line:84% The tiny tapping of my massive fingers on the keyboard. 00:10:26.830 --> 00:10:31.320 align:middle line:84% This is art, not a court document, Laurel reminds me. 00:10:31.320 --> 00:10:34.530 align:middle line:84% Poems are the agency of desire in a world 00:10:34.530 --> 00:10:38.220 align:middle line:84% of diverse subjectivities, says Katie. 00:10:38.220 --> 00:10:41.790 align:middle line:90% Not to name is to plagiarize. 00:10:41.790 --> 00:10:46.440 align:middle line:84% But to name is to reduce, belittle, harm. 00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:49.590 align:middle line:84% Just put the poem in a drawer for at least three months. 00:10:49.590 --> 00:10:53.670 align:middle line:84% Don't look at it even for a moment, then revise. 00:10:53.670 --> 00:10:55.470 align:middle line:90% No, says another. 00:10:55.470 --> 00:10:58.710 align:middle line:84% Keep going with your noble enterprise of telling 00:10:58.710 --> 00:11:02.280 align:middle line:90% the truth in arresting forms. 00:11:02.280 --> 00:11:06.960 align:middle line:84% A famous poet writes "perp" in the margins of her drafts, 00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:12.060 align:middle line:84% meaning she's a perp, meaning this poem must be sealed 00:11:12.060 --> 00:11:14.490 align:middle line:84% for perpetuity, which in this case 00:11:14.490 --> 00:11:19.590 align:middle line:84% is 30 years after anyone mentioned in the poem has died. 00:11:19.590 --> 00:11:21.810 align:middle line:84% But every description of anything 00:11:21.810 --> 00:11:23.640 align:middle line:90% is reductive, says Laurel. 00:11:23.640 --> 00:11:26.520 align:middle line:90% That's the limit of language. 00:11:26.520 --> 00:11:29.790 align:middle line:84% My editor says what my mother said, 00:11:29.790 --> 00:11:32.670 align:middle line:84% this isn't the way I understood it. 00:11:32.670 --> 00:11:36.030 align:middle line:84% This isn't how I remember things. 00:11:36.030 --> 00:11:39.270 align:middle line:84% But that doesn't mean the story isn't true 00:11:39.270 --> 00:11:42.780 align:middle line:84% or that one doesn't have a right to tell it. 00:11:42.780 --> 00:11:44.490 align:middle line:90% Does Alice Notley worry? 00:11:44.490 --> 00:11:45.540 align:middle line:90% I wonder. 00:11:45.540 --> 00:11:47.910 align:middle line:90% Did Frank O'Hara? 00:11:47.910 --> 00:11:51.840 align:middle line:84% In the Secret Wars storyline, 2015, 00:11:51.840 --> 00:11:55.590 align:middle line:84% Hulk discovers a secret place called Greenland 00:11:55.590 --> 00:11:59.070 align:middle line:90% filled with hundreds of hulks. 00:11:59.070 --> 00:12:03.420 align:middle line:84% I would put my hand on your back, says Laurel. 00:12:03.420 --> 00:12:05.580 align:middle line:84% I would put my hand on your back, 00:12:05.580 --> 00:12:10.800 align:middle line:84% but not know how else to make you feel better. 00:12:10.800 --> 00:12:16.080 align:middle line:84% No, dears, take me to Greenland instead and let 00:12:16.080 --> 00:12:20.850 align:middle line:84% us destroy each other so poetry can be safe again 00:12:20.850 --> 00:12:23.340 align:middle line:90% for the civilians." 00:12:23.340 --> 00:12:25.220 align:middle line:90% Thank you.