Images coming in these images.
They're just so right on.
And how do you do it?
How do you do you it?
Sure, you're magic.
[INAUDIBLE]
Hi Jackie.
Jackie picked me up from the airport.
And we had this really cool conversation.
How do I do it?
I don't know.
I honestly have no idea.
We talked about this a little bit today.
And I said I'd just kind of try to be like an insect
and have antenna open at all time and just be a sponge
and absorb what I hear and also just be
wary of my own confidences about my own work
and be the worst critic of my own work and stuff
and constantly give myself guff about everything.
And yeah, but we talked about a little bit about film too.
I think we both write--
I don't want to speak on your behalf,
but I think we maybe both write in a way
that we isolate stills that we find sort
of evocative of something and then sort of maybe
build around that.
[INAUDIBLE] That's the best answer I've got for that.
What's that Chekhov quote that I'm going to butcher that's
about don't tell me war, show me the light glinting
on the broken glass or something.
You know?
Thank you.
"Don't show me how the moon reflects on the water.
Show me how it reflects on a small glint of glass
on the beach."
I like that the moon became war in my memory.
But exactly, right so trying to-- like in my head,
I'm always trying to find the smallest thing.
That's what I'm like obsessed with.
The actual literally physically smallest object in a scene.
And I do visualize scenes a lot.
I think that's the filmic thing.
But I also think that it's not so much about the images
that you pick, but the attention that one brings
to the images and the kind of gaze that's behind whatever it
is that you're writing about.
And so I think a lot, I think often
about a story I heard about Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist
monk who was holding a session with people.
And he had everyone turn around to the person
next to them and hug and meet each other and say hello.
And then they turned back around.
And then he said, OK, now do it again but
knowing you both will die.
Right, and so what happens--
it's the same action, right, but the quality of attention
is kind of different.
And I find that tuning in with that quality of attention
helps those images come out.
Yeah.
I have a question that I'll ask as I'm making my way to Sam.
This is kind of a process question for you, Solmaz.
I'm thinking about how much textual
matter you're working with.
And some of it, I mean you spoke a little bit
about reading the New York Times article and the way that
became the imaginative research possibility for you.
But is there a kind of physical aspect of that also.
Like are you carrying around any of this?
Do you take it around with you on your day?
Are you living with it?
How do you-- how do you do that?
With a lot of bags.
Yeah, I do.
I mean, not anymore.
I haven't touched this-- it was--
I don't like saying it.
But it was really taxing to deal with that material for as long
as I did.
And so I haven't touched it in about a year.
The last poem I wrote that dealt with any kind of material
like that was the Senate report on torture
that came out in 2014, at the end of 2014.
But no.
I also need to have the thing itself.
I can't look at screens.
So I have to print things out.
And I have to lay them out and weigh them down with stones
and just keep visually like changing my relationship
to them and enact all my--
the visual artist envy and try to find more tactile
ways of being a poet.
Yeah.
I love what you said about scenes and the small object.
But I also heard, and I'd love both of you
to talk about the long poem because I
hear all these long forms and what you're doing.
And I love that.
Would you like to talk about it?
It's-- for me, as a writer and an editor and a publisher,
it's the thing I'm sort of most interested in is poets writing
long poems.
I love short poems too.
But I'm always up for a long poem.
And I want to qualify what I mean by that.
I don't-- like the Iliad is a long poem,
but that's like a book.
You know what I mean?
I mean like a poem that's maybe 30 pages long or something
or 50 or whatever, something that you really
have to invest time in and doesn't
have that instant gratification that poetry sometimes
is associated with.
And for me, what I love about long poems is
the way the turns inside them, like
how a long poem sustains itself or the endurance
within a long poem and the shifts that happen.
One of my favorite long poem writers is Frank Bidart,
and he just has these incredible tonal shifts
that occur within the sections in his long poems.
Alice Notley also comes to mind.
She almost has eight voices in the room at all times.
So it's almost-- it's easier for her
to sustain a poem that goes on for pages and pages.
But yeah, as someone who tries to write long poems
and writes long poems that publishers often won't publish
because they're longer than a page or whatever,
I pay specific attention to where the poem needs its energy
to come from and how it needs to stay
floating and sort of in the air and things like that.
I hope I'm doing that work.
But I'm conscious of it all the time.
And I want there to be space for the voices
to break from their own form and sort of--
I want it to be sort of chaos, sustained
chaos for a long time.
There's that the Rukeyeser quote about a poem
is not the bringing together of things
so much as not allowing things to be torn apart.
And that's how I feel.
So shorter poems feel a little cruel to me
often because I want-- there's so many other things I
kind of want to let in.
So I'm not sure I'm answering the question anymore.
But that's-- what's that?
That's all I wanted.
OK, great.
Yeah.
Sorry.
It's like where is it?
This is a question for Solmaz.
I believe it was in--
Oh I believe it was in Drum, the line that began "una a una."
I understand that was a reference to another poet.
But I was--
I think in our class we were a little confused by it.
Would you mind elaborating on the intention
behind that reference?
Yeah, it's a poem by Leonel Rugama, who
was a Sandinista poet who was killed when he was 20
by Somoza's forces.
And he wrote two poems that are both
called Epitafio or Epitaph.
One of them, apparently he wrote--
he died in a shootout.
And one of them he wrote in--
like in the middle of the shootout,
like right before he was killed.
This is not that one.
But I've always-- I am an admirer of his work
and his self and his spirit.
And there are a number of similar like revolutionary
figures that appear in that poem.
And since I was writing epitaphs,
it was again another one of those moments
of like how do I not allow this actually to be torn apart,
right?
Don't these things somehow belong next to each other?
Shouldn't they be speaking with each other,
and shouldn't his words remain alive for us too?
And what can I do as a poet to make sure
that happens in my way.
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right, we'll do this one last question.
I saw a hand on this side.
I don't want to neglect the north side of the room.
Thanks so much for sharing your words.
This was my first exposure to both of your work.
And I found it really moving.
So thank you.
I found your poems in both cases to be violent and disruptive.
You know, you're talking about torture.
You're throwing a brick through the window of the White House.
And I couldn't help but feel there
was a dissonance between that and between the formal setting
in which you're presenting it.
We're sitting here quietly.
And we're listening for 20 minutes,
and then we're clapping.
And I wonder if you're satisfied with that,
if you feel like there's another venue in which you feel
like your work to be more in line with the content
or if that dissonance, you're happy with it.
And I'd be curious to hear reflect on that.
That's a great question.
Do you want to answer?
I'll try to answer it.
Yeah, I mean if you want to trash this place right now.
OK, I didn't-- Hannah, I didn't advise that.
Yeah, no.
I mean, that's a great question.
And I think that for me specifically, I
think that's part of what I'm sort of railing against
is our sort of norms within poetry culture and publishing
culture and polite culture and proprietary culture.
It's weird to do it within that setting
and be wearing a button up shirt and you know
and all this stuff.
And I often say I think it's great to be inside to critique
your way outward and stuff like that.
And I think if there's anything I want my poems to do,
it's to raise that exact question
and get that sort of question in people's heads
and sort of get the energy in the room
to a spot where people are like, well,
why are we just sitting here in chairs, you know.
And yeah, that's-- I mean, I'm so glad you asked that
because that's exactly what I want.
I feel that way constantly, just like, what am I doing here?
Like why do I write poems?
Why don't I play music or something you know like that.
And being able to write poems and work with language in a way
that gets people a little prickly and a little salty
I think is like what--
that's my MO, kind of.
And yeah, so I would never encourage
you to throw a chair at me while I'm reading.
But if you did it, I would be so proud of you.
Like if someone George Bushed me while I was reading
and hit me with a shoe in the face or something,
I would be like, I've made it as a poet.
Or I've done my work or something.
So yeah.
Yeah, let's hang out after the reading.
I too find that moment really thrilling you
know of questioning well, what does
it mean to just be a passive participant at this moment.
You know, and what does it mean to just hear stories?
You know, and how am I how often in my life
am I doing that also, not just within this room?
And for me, it's just always been
important to make sure that the conversation includes
the narratives that maybe don't belong in the room as neatly
as well.
But what happens with it from there
and what you do with it when you leave
remains a question for me that I'm still wrestling with.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you, all audience.
Thank you, both readers.