Did you know that apparently in biology, classes
are classified in tribes?
Yes.
Someone just shared that with me tonight,
I thought that was so beautiful.
So yeah, thank you.
I just learned that tonight, yeah.
Because that works really fantastically with your work.
So I thought that was just really--
Yeah, that was really interesting.
[INAUDIBLE]
So this question is for Layli as well.
So a lot of your poems stand like interesting arrangements
on the pages, I think there's one of those big square.
And I was just wondering if those arrangements
came during the writing process, or during editing process.
It depends.
I would say, mostly during the writing process.
And occasionally, the form, the shape actually comes first.
If you can believe that.
So sometimes I'll wake up, and I will see a shape that I
want to make on the page.
[LAUGHTER]
It's just there, and it's interesting.
And I want to work with it, and I don't necessarily
have the language yet.
And so that's sometimes a little backwards from this tradition
of what is it?
Form is never more than extension of content, right?
So that's something that we take as a given,
but in fact, sometimes I work a little bit in reverse.
Thank you.
This is a question for both Timothy and Layli,
about apologies.
Layli, I was wondering if you would share with us
a little bit of your thoughts about what
makes an effective apology, as you had spoken about thinking
about that subject?
And Timothy, I was curious if any of the poets whose work you
work with in the 100 Chinese Silences
had ever contacted you to apologize or make amends
for what they had written?
I don't have all the answers for what makes--
I'm still working on that.
And I don't think even in this book
that I've presented, this is A, B, and C what
makes an apology effective, or what's the word,
except that I do also know that, a personal apology is
different than a national apology.
And there are different terms, and different kinds--
trust, and agreements and so on--
that need to be honored or restored.
And so I think maybe I'll just leave it at that.
Well, actually to my knowledge, only one
of the poets who I parody has ever responded in any way
to my parodying of them.
It's this Australian poet named David Gibney, who
I heard him do a reading once and I heard this poem
that he wrote a poem about being an English teacher in Japan.
And so then I wrote this parody of it, he responded to it
and it was published in an Australian magazine,
so he saw it.
But to his great credit, he actually
he sent me a very kind email saying, "I saw your poem,
I found it to be really funny, I really enjoyed reading it.
Thanks for pointing out some of the things that
happened in my poem."
So yeah, he was he was very gracious about it.
The question about apology though,
I think I would piggyback on something that Layli said,
that I certainly wouldn't want any of these poets
to feel like they needed to apologize to me very
personally.
That this isn't really about, Oh you insulted me individually
and that's why I wrote this poem.
That it's much more about calling attention
to a particular kind of structure
that runs throughout modern poetry.
Throughout the kind of poetry that I myself write,
that's part of the structure of that poetry.
And so I think it's not so much a question
of somehow feeling bad about having done that,
or making amends or having done that.
But to be aware about how pervasive those structures are.
And to in the future of poetry take those questions
into account.
So I think that apologies have their place,
but they also have had their limits.