WEBVTT

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Hannah.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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Thank you both so much.

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You both read from or talked
about writing long sequences.

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And we just wondered if you
could each talk about maybe

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one or all of the sequences.

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How do you go
about writing them?

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For you, what's the process
of sustaining a long form?

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[LAUGHTER]

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No, tell us.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, I'm very much--

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Real quick, do you mind
talking into the microphone?

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Thank you.

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That feels very formal.

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I'm very much a one-page poet,
so it's very, very recent

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that I've even
started attempting

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to go beyond one page.

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And basically, what had
happened was someone told me,

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what if I did let
the Word document be

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the end of the poem?

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And it seems to just
be a very good unit

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to work in, the Word document.

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And so I've been trying to
kind of push against that

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and ignore the Word
document's page limitations

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and actually write in
longhand on paper, which

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I'm not very accustomed to.

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So I don't know--
very practical,

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but maybe don't use
a Word document.

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[LAUGHING]

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Yeah, I had made the semi-joke
earlier in the evening

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that I don't have time to write
a poem that's not very short.

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I write poems on my
lunch break or whatever.

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So in one sense, that's
not entirely true.

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But it's also entirely true.

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But also, I don't know it's
just a different reference.

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I like the long, elegiac poem.

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That's very nice.

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But there's something about
the short series that is--

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I don't know.

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It feels so like a chamber,
chamber music or something.

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It feels very tight, intimate.

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And sometimes, I
want that reference.

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Not always-- sometimes, you
want the public oration.

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But by and large I don't like
that, so I don't do that.

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Yeah I guess that's--

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I don't know.

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So I'm interested in just the
self-discovery about the inner

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music that--

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I mean, only heard
the last poet.

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But it just seemed
like there was

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this music in the just
kind of slowness to it.

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And it just is very different in
my view than American culture.

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And so I'm just wondering about
the nurturing of that energy

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in a day-by-day kind of
experience and if it needed

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to be, or if it's
always been there or--

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does that make sense?

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Yeah.

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I often get this feeling.

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Sometimes, it's on-- no one
here, of course, no one here.

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It's always another.

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Sometimes, you get the
feeling that someone's

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talking because they like
to hear themselves talk.

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And sometimes, I get that
feeling too with writing.

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Someone's writing because
they like their words,

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and they like words.

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And there's nothing
wrong with that I

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don't mean to disparage it.

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Words are beautiful.

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That's cool.

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But I also find words are very
difficult. They're very hard.

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And finding the right
ones is very difficult.

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I'm probably choosing
all the wrong words now.

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And that's what's so
great about a poem,

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in part, is that I can spend
years going back and fixing.

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It's like, no, no, no,
that's not what I meant.

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And I guess in some
ways I can't speak

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too much to the particular views
of American culture, I guess.

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But I think it's tied
in with that perhaps,

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of the difference
between being distrustful

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of this thing that you
are given whether that's

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your language, your body,
your land, or what have you

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and the pace at
which one takes it

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because if you assume that
you're entitled to it, then

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I guess rapid consumption for
the pleasure of the consuming.

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But I don't know.

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That's my impulse to say that.

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It's something.

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I like these guys.

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Not to be a riddle or
anything, but if each of you

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could say something about
where your voice is rooted

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and where you started to
feel and really understand

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your own voice.

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So the question was
understanding of our own voice.

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Is that right?

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Where was it rooted?

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Where do you feel it started?

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OK, well, I mean, I'm
a fairly new poet.

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And I would say-- and
it's only very recently

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that I really started
thinking really

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deliberately about the
voice of the speaker

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and what that might mean.

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And so I think that--

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yeah, I think that a lot of
the times it's very intuitive,

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and that works for
a lot of people.

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But I've had to really
think about really carefully

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and deliberately
separate me, Noah,

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from the speakers in my poem.

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And so I do a lot of
right now persona poems,

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where I have to
very, very carefully

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think, OK, what is
the type of diction?

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What is the type of syntax?

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What kind of vocabulary would
be available to this person that

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maybe isn't in my vocabulary?

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And oftentimes, the poems
that I'm writing right now

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require a lot of research.

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And the research ends up
leading me to the voice.

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So right now I don't think--
and that's not always true.

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But right now it's not that
it comes from me necessarily,

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but that I absorb the
research and the reading

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and then it intermingles with
whatever voice might be me.

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And then that kind
of makes it happen.

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Does that make any sense?

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Maybe not.

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[LAUGHING]

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Yeah, my first response
was to say my lungs,

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but I don't know if
that's very good or not.

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Yeah, I think like with
all three of the things

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I read from, there are
certainly things that

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are consistent across them.

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But there's also
the differences.

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And I think for me, the voice
for each particular project

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emerged out of, as the project
came together, what I found

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the limits allowed me to do.

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It's like-- I don't know--

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minimalist music or something.

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You remove so much, so then
you can pay attention much more

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to a smaller subset of things.

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And I feel like all of this
creation is sort of like that.

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There are these very formal
rules or not very formal rules

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or whatever kind of
things get imposed on it.

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I mean, at the very least
you're writing in English,

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you're writing now,
you're writing for a book,

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and whatever, but then
more and more particular.

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And within that, you find
oh, these things suddenly

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seem very surprising in this
poem that maybe in another poem

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would not seem very surprising.

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And that gives me
a lot of pleasure,

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so then I pursue that
and try and figure out

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how to work that in more.

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And I think that's where
I find a particular voice

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for each project.

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And then whatever is
consistent across that

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is the limitations that
are this fleshy thing

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and what I find
broader, I guess.

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It's good thinking about
more like your voice

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as it appears in
almost every thing

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because I can see what
we have in both of you.

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And probably do you think that
your voice is in flux still?

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Do you feel that
you're really playing

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with a whole lot
of different voices

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and that you're able
just to whip them out?

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Yeah, I think we all are.

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That's kind of a
cop out, I know.

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But I go into a job interview.

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I talk and act a certain way.

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I sit down with friends.

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I talk and act a certain way.

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And I sit down
with other friends,

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and I definitely talk
and act another way.

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And I talked to my
mom a certain way.

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I might stop hanging
out with my mom.

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And I call a friend,
and I'm like, ugh, my--

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and whatever.

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And there's all these
different aspects.

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That wasn't me
flipping off my mom.

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I love my mother.

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But I would never do that in
her presence is the point.

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[LAUGHING]

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But you know what I mean?

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There are all these
different constrictions

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that I'm operating within.

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And it's not like
they're constricting

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on the true me or something.

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At times maybe I want to say
something that I can say.

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But also, I find the pleasure
within those conversations.

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I find the jokes that are
funny when I'm with my mom,

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and I laugh because I
enjoy these mom jokes.

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And then when I'm with my
dad, I enjoy his dad jokes.

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So I think that also
applies to the work as much

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as it applies to my life.

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And the limitations
of each project

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are going to be much more
specific than my whole life.

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But they also apply to my
life, my identity, my location,

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my language.

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Thank you.

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Thank you both so much.

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Maybe another round of
applause for Jos and Noah.

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[APPLAUSE]