Hannah.
[INAUDIBLE]
Thank you both so much.
You both read from or talked about writing long sequences.
And we just wondered if you could each talk about maybe
one or all of the sequences?
How do you go about writing them.
For you, what's the process of sustaining a long form?
[INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE]
Well, I'm very much a quick--
Do you mind talking into the microphone?
Oh, thank you.
Wow.
That feels very formal.
I'm very much a one-page poet, so it's very, very recent
that I've even started attempting
to go beyond one page.
And basically, what had happened was
someone told me, what if I didn't let the Word document be
the end of the poem.
[LAUGHTER]
And it seems to just be a very good unit to work in.
The Word document [INAUDIBLE] And so, I've
been trying to push against that and ignore the Word document's
page limitations, and actually write in longhand on paper,
which I'm not very accustomed to.
So, I don't know.
Very practical, but maybe don't use a Word document.
Yeah.
I had made the semi-joke earlier in the evening
that I don't have time to write a poem that's not very short.
I write poems on my lunch break or whatever.
So in one sense, that's not entirely true,
but it's also entirely true.
But also, I don't know.
It's just a different reference, right?
I like the long elegiac poem.
That's very nice.
But there's something about the short series
that it's, I don't know.
It feels so like chamber music or something.
It feels very tight, intimate.
And sometimes, I want that reference.
Not always.
Sometimes you want the public oration,
but by and large, I don't like that, so I don't do that.
Yeah, I guess it's--
mm-mm.
[LAUGHTER]
So, I'm interested in just the self-discovery about the inner
music that--
I only heard the last poet, but it just
seemed like there was this music in the kind of slowness to it.
It just is very different, in my view, than American culture.
And so, I'm just wondering about the nurturing
of that energy in a day-by-day kind of experience.
And if it needed to be, or if it's always been there, or--
does that make sense?
Yeah.
I often get this feeling, sometimes, that someone--
no one here, of course, no one here.
It's always another, right?
Sometimes you get the feeling that someone's
talking because they like to hear themselves talk, right?
And sometimes, I get that feeling, too, writing.
Someone's writing because they like their words
and they like words.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I don't mean to disparage it.
Words are beautiful.
It's cool.
But I also find words very difficult. They're very hard.
And finding the right ones is very difficult.
Probably choosing all the wrong words, now, you know.
And that's what's so great about a poem,
in part, is that I can spend years going back and fixing,
and saying, no, no, no.
That's not what I meant.
And I guess in some ways--
I can't speak too much to the particular music
of American culture, I guess.
But I think it's tied in with that, perhaps,
of the difference between being distrustful
of this thing that you are given,
whether that's your language, your body, your land, what
have you.
And the pace at which one takes it.
Because if you assume that you're entitled to it,
then I guess rapid consumption for the pleasure
of the consuming--
but, I don't know.
That's my impulse-- so yeah.
Exactly.
Right.
I like these things.
Not to be a meddler or anything, but if you could say something
about where your voice is rooted in writing.
Where are you starting to feel and really understand
your own voice?
So, the question was understanding of our own voice.
Is that right?
Where it was rooted.
Where do you feel [INAUDIBLE]
OK.
Well, I'm a fairly new poet, I would say,
and it's only very recently that I really
started thinking really deliberately
about the voice of the speaker and what that might mean.
And so, I think that--
yeah.
I think that a lot of times, it's very intuitive
and that works for a lot of people.
But I've had to really think about, really carefully
and deliberately separate me, Noah,
from the speakers in my poem.
And so, I do a lot of, right now,
persona poems where I have to very, very carefully
think, OK, what is the type of diction?
What is the type of syntax?
What kind of vocabulary would be available to this person, that
maybe isn't in my vocabulary?
And oftentimes, the poems that I'm writing right now
require a lot of research, and the research ends up
leading me to the voice.
So right now, I don't think-- and that's not always true.
But right now, it's not that it comes from me, necessarily,
but that I absorb the research and the reading
and then it intermingles with whatever voice might be me.
And then that kind of makes it happen.
Does that make any sense?
Yes.
Maybe not.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
My first response was to say my lungs,
but I don't know if that's very good or not.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
I think, with all three of the things I read from,
there are certainly things that are consistent across them.
But there's also the differences.
And I think for me, the voice for each particular project
emerged out of, as the project came together, what I found
the limits allowed me to do.
It's like, I don't know, minimalist music or something,
right?
Like you remove so much, so then you can pay attention much more
to a smaller subset of things.
And I feel like all of this creation is sort of like that.
There are these very formal rules, or not very
formal rules, or whatever kind of things get imposed on it.
At the very least, you're writing in English,
you're writing now, you're writing for a book,
and whatever.
But then, more and more in particular.
And within that, you find, ooh, these things suddenly
seem very surprising in this poem that maybe in another poem
would not seem very surprising.
And that gives me a lot of pleasure.
So then I pursue that and try and figure out
how to work that in more.
And I think that's where I find a particular voice
for each project.
And then, whatever is consistent across that
is the limitations that are this fleshy thing.
And what I find broader, I guess--
I was thinking about more your voice
as it appears in almost every thing, because I can
see [INAUDIBLE] both of you.
And-- probably, do you think that your voice is influenced
still?
Do you feel that you're really playing with a whole lot
of different voices?
And that you're able just to play with the moment or--
Yeah.
I think we all are, right?
That's kind of a cop-out, I know.
But I go into a job interview, I talk and act a certain way.
I sit down with friends, I talk and act a certain way.
And I sit down with other friends,
and I definitely talk and act another way.
And I talk to my mom a certain way and then
I stop hanging out with my mom and I call a friend
and I'm like, Uh, my, uh, and whatever.
And there's all these different affects.
That wasn't me flipping off my mom.
I love my mother.
But I would never do that in her presence [INAUDIBLE]
Sorry, mom.
[LAUGHTER]
But you know what I mean?
There are all these different constrictions
that I'm operating within.
And it's not like they're constricting
on the true me or something.
At times, maybe I want to say something that I can't say.
But also, I find the pleasure within those conversations.
I find the jokes that are funny when I'm with my mom,
and I laugh at those.
I enjoy these mom jokes.
And then when I'm with my dad, I enjoy his dad jokes.
So, I think that also applies to the work as much
as it applies to my life.
And the limitations of each project
are going to be much more specific than my whole life,
but they also apply to my life, right?
My identity, my location, my language.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you both so much.
Another round of applause for Jos and Noah.
[APPLAUSE]