Did you know that apparently in biology, grasses
are classified in tribes?
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.
So this question's for Layli as well.
So a lot of your poems, they have interesting arrangements
on the pages.
I think there's one that was a big square.
And I was just wondering if those arrangements
came during the writing process or during the 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.
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 an 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
worked with in 100 Chinese Silences
had ever contacted you to apologize or--
[LAUGHTER]
-- make amends for what they had written?
I don't have all the answers for what makes--
I'm still working on that.
Yeah.
And I don't think even in this book that I've presented,
this is A, B, and C of what makes an apology effective.
Or what's that word?
Except that I do also know that a personal apology
is different from a national apology.
And there are different terms and different kinds
of 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 him.
Is this Australian poet named David Gibney,
who I heard him do a reading once
and I heard this poem that he-- he wrote a poem
about being an English teacher in Japan.
And there were a number of--
and so then I wrote this parody of it, I responded to it.
And it was published in an Australian magazine.
So he saw it.
But to his great credit, 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 very gracious about it.
The question about apology, though--
I mean, I think I would piggyback on something
that Layli said, is that I certainly wouldn't want any
of these poets to feel like they need to apologize to me, right,
personally.
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 their limits.