Right here.
Do you write a book, or do you write poems
until you have a book?
There you go.
I write poems until I have a book.
I get going.
And I don't use everything I write when I finally
put a collection together.
But I write.
Like I'm doing now, I'm just writing.
I don't know how it's going to come together.
But I write for a while.
And at some point, I begin to see a common thread
or like a constellating idea.
And then often I'll get a title about halfway through.
And then from there, I begin to look at what I have,
see how they work in relation to one another.
This is an inexact science, by the way.
And then from there, actually, once I get into it,
then it helps me.
It's kind of like an arc.
It's like I get up to this place.
And then it helps me kind of focus.
So that's how it works.
And I mean, that's how it's worked so far.
God knows what it's going to be now.
But I mean, that's what it's been for me.
And it takes me a while.
And sadly, I'm kind of a slow writer.
It takes me-- but that's just how it's been.
Now you have to pass the mic.
I'm really interested in this notion of salvage
that you mentioned.
I wonder if you could say more about that
and if it has any relation to any of your other work?
A lot to do with my work, I think.
I mean, one of the things that I love about language
is that it's sacred in that, if we know anything,
we know that the dead are not silent.
It's like they inhabit our brainwaves all the time
in the form of language memories, which
are put together in sensations into sentences.
But what I love is I go on, as all
of us do when we follow any particular object that we're
interested in or field of study, is
kind of this venture in reading that happens.
And I'm going to be 50 now.
And I've been doing this for 30 years or more, reading poetry.
Writing is a small aspect of me being a writer.
It's like, the greatest joy I have is being a reader.
I write because I read.
And so when I write, I feel like I'm making a reader.
And that reader is just next to me.
It's just beside me.
And it's also all the poets and all the people
and all the things that have brought me
to this space that are also there oscillating
in that sound.
And so I'm always finding relationships
between other poets that I didn't at once
realize as I move through the years
and read more and more and more.
And I find that really moving.
For instance, let's just take a really example,
like Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, all right.
Because we mentioned him, so he's there.
But both incredible poets, right.
The quiet revolution of 1923, because '22
is Ulysses and The Waste Land.
But there's the quiet revolution of 1923,
of William Carlos Williams's Spring and All,
where he basically invents the idiom and the line
that most contemporary poetry lives on.
Whether you've read him or not, he's
in the work of the people you're reading,
whether it's Billy Collins or Adrienne Rich or et cetera.
And that was published in an edition of 300 copies
by Robert McAlmon for Contact Editions.
But it's had this huge influence.
And in some ways, much greater influence
than, let's say, "The Waste Land," which came out in '22.
And so Stevens and Wiliams are stateside poets.
They're not expatriates.
They're both men with jobs.
Stevens is an insurance lawyer, the dean of insurety,
they called him.
And Williams was a baby doctor.
He was a doctor.
And they were both very aware of each other's writing.
And they both had a really healthy rivalry
and a very active love.
And they pushed each other throughout their careers
to write their better work.
And so when each one would publish a book,
it would instigate the other to keep pushing.
And they admired each other, and then they
had issues with each other.
But at the end, like just one example,
because William Carlos Williams, one
of his favorite famous edicts, which
comes from "Spring and All's" not in ideas, but in things.
It's a famous-- not in ideas, but in things.
No-- say, tell me again.
No ideas but in things.
Thank you.
It's in "Paterson."
It is in "Paterson."
It's also in "Spring and All."
Yeah, it's in the text.
It's in three different places.
It's in The American Grain as well.
Yeah.
Can I just finish?
Do you want to add to it?
[INAUDIBLE]
Because I just want to say at the end, so Stevens,
at the end of his life, with his stomach gone,
he writes this poem called, No--
that's why I screwed this up--
No Ideas-- now, I can't remember it.
I'm, like, nervous.
What is it?
No ideas but in things.
No, yeah, no that's not it.
No that's--
No.
Well, I can't remember.
This is like a late Stevens poem.
[INAUDIBLE] Stevens.
Stevens.
I can't remember it now.
I got screwed up by looking out.
No ideas about the thing but the thing itself.
No ideas-- no ideas--
I can't remember it.
What did I just say?
[LAUGHING]
I don't know what's happening.
I'm having an aphasic moment.
I'm having a senior moment.
No ideas about the thing but the thing itself.
And it's this beautiful poem where
he talks about the scrawny cry at 6:00 AM.
And he's no longer the virile poet.
It's at the end of his life.
He writes this poem where he doesn't know.
He can't locate where the sound is coming from.
And for Stevens, this is important about the inside
and the outside, the imagination and reality.
He's lost it.
It's now become frayed.
And the poem is his cry.
And a cry is the word that Stevens uses.
But there he is at the end of his life,
trying to put together a poem.
It's a desperate poem, a magnificent poem.
But who is he thinking about at the end of his life?
He's thinking about William Carlos Williams.
So he could at least locate himself in the work
that he's grown up with.
So this idea that-- it's like so the rescue
is not only just with what is before us.
It's also like in the present what
we get from one another and venerate
and use and recirculate.
Because poetry is definitely not ubiquitous.
So it's always nice to bring in one's contemporaries
into one's work if you're really listening.
So that was kind of a long and then-I-got-lost answer.
[LAUGHING]
Oh, what's happening.
Now I'm really worried.
You think it's funny.
Hey, laugh.
That's OK.
Yeah, it's not ideas about the thing but the thing itself.
Yeah.
Bless you.
Google brain.
I'm so grateful to you for bringing back Spicer--
Hello.
to a broader readership.
And I just would like to hear you talk a little bit more
about Spicer's influence on your own work.
OK.
Is it a good thing we brought Jack Spicer
into a larger audience?
No, I wonder.
Hardly any audience.
Exactly.
That's right.
It's true.
It's so dark and sad, but brilliant and real.
And I think of him like I think of Emily Dickinson-- someone
whose work is fathomless.
I can just keep falling and falling into it.
And it's a lovely thing to take one author.
It was accident in the beginning.
I loved his work, but this job came to me.
And he's an absolute worthy subject
because the work just gets deeper and better and stronger
and talk about the adventure of reading--
the system of puns and relationships to the tradition
are just manifold in so many ways.
But more than that, that he can use that--
which I'm very attracted to--
but it's the fact that he can make
some absolute emotional reality out of it, some absolute need.
And it has a great line at the end,
"get those words out of your mouth and into your heart."
And he goes on to say, if you don't believe in God,
don't quote him.
Credo quia absurdum made pointless wars.
He's a very strange fragmented poet.
Credo quia absurdum-- it's great-- it means,
I believe because it is absurd.
And it was a heresy from the Nicene fathers
back in the third century.
But I love that I believe because it is absurd.
It seems like a useful way to think about being a poet.
But more so, it's the fact that, to me,
even though he could be a foul-mouthed alcoholic,
thumb-pointing, difficult, self-loathing, angry man,
he also wrote the most heartbreaking poetry.
And he's capable of creating--
like, to me, their devotional structures.
And he's always trying to find some form of belief, even
in his unbelief, and that doubt that he has.
But it's also true for Dickinson, who was constantly
critiquing her Christian culture,
as did Melville, as did Emerson, as did Hawthorne.
It's out of this incredible tradition
that we call pragmatism, which he
is a great example and a late example of.
But I've always believed, and I work in him
that he would take his place in the American record
and that he is an original.
And even if he seems far out.
I do think that there's a real deep moral to his work.
There's a deep good, even if he's what they would say
a poète maudit, a poet of evil, in some way.
But, yeah, he's not everybody's taste.
One more question.
Let's see if I can misremember something else.
[LAUGHING]
Hi, everyone.
Thank you for being with us today.
My pleasure.
It really is.
I guess I was wondering about the photos on the cover.
What was your inspiration and where does it
come from, because it seems puzzling to me?
Fair enough.
Actually, the hardcover edition didn't have that image.
It was more of an abstract of a bridge
in that kind of film frame.
What did I do with my book?
Can I just see it?
You see, it kind of moves like a film frame,
because film is a really another really important language,
as it is for all of us because it inhabits our unconscious.
And it's like, film language is equally
important as the language I'm using here today
in which we create social structure, social identity,
and meaning.
It's more like the common text even than the written word,
something I think about.
So I wanted it to run a film frame.
But in the original, it was an abstract bridge,
which is interesting, like from nowhere-- oh, here it is.
It's great because it goes like that.
It's kind of pretty, but it's not what I wanted.
What I wanted was this image, which is of the Watts Towers.
Did you ever hear of the Watts Towers
in the Watts district of LA?
And it was built by an Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia.
And I use him because of my interest--
like, I'd mentioned Jess, who's a West Coast assemblage artist.
Rodia is one of the first outside assemblage
artists of the West Coast who silently, with his time off,
built these incredible structures.
And they're hidden in plain sight.
There they are in this working-class neighborhood.
And why I wanted them was both for the idea of the fact
that they were at the outer national, an outsider artist.
Being an Italian-American, I like the fact
that he was this immigrant, which
is my grandparents' story.
This rhymed in many ways.
My interest in West Coast assemblage,
which I've written about, about these various West Coast
artists which are still a cult to many, but just glorious
and really foundational.
And the other thing that I really like about
is they're towers.
And the idea is that there's other towers.
We get fixated on these two apps and towers.
But there are these other towers that are built.
There's cathedrals.
There's many towers in the world.
And I like the fact that it's just we go on.
And we can go on with a home-made,
with a homespun, this private delight.
We can make something really spectacular.
So that was kind of what I wanted.
And the problem was, when they reprinted it,
they didn't say what they were.
Like, this is a photograph of the Watts Towers.
But does that explain it?
Yeah.
Yes, it does.
But should you judge a book by its cover?
I don't know?
[LAUGHING]
That would be the pedagogical question.
Anyone else?
We done?
Anybody?
No?
We're good?
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]