OK, can anyone think of a question?
Yes?
How long have you been writing?
Oh.
Since the Jurassic period I think.
Would you repeat the question that was asked?
Oh, that's hard.
He said, how long have I been writing?
That's the question.
I think I started making up poems when I was about five,
but I started thinking of myself as a poet
when I was maybe about 22.
OK, anybody else?
Yes.
I live in San Diego for about 14 years
and I found from a graphic or a painting type
artistic point of view, it's kind of a [INAUDIBLE]
Oh, no, I didn't hear what you said, so repeat.
--that's why I'm stuck.
It's a disappointing town compared with LA.
You know, LA is bigger, the art is quite
a lot better of course.
And I came in here, this is some years ago--
No, it's still true.
Well, I'm asking you from point of "Written of Living."
Well, there are a number of interesting poets there
and we do have a reading series.
But you know, David Antin has lived there, Jerome Rothenberg,
Eileen Myles, Fanny Howe lived there for quite a while,
though she moved.
Marilyn Chen lives there.
Michael Davidson.
So I have a number of poet friends and it's not New York,
it's not San Francisco, but you know, I'm not alone.
OK, anybody else?
Yeah, in the back.
Where do you get your influences while writing?
Oh, OK.
Well, I think William Carlos Williams
was a big influence on me early on, and then Emily Dickinson.
And I think she kind of gives a lot of permission
to talk to the big issues or talk at them or something,
and not always in a reverential way.
Robert Creeley for sound and line
break, intensity in his work that I like.
And some of my contemporaries too.
Lorine Niedecker, not that she's a contemporary,
but she's another one who comes to mind.
George Oppen.
I don't know if these people are familiar to you, some of them,
I suppose.
OK, anybody else?
I think you're going somewhere, right?
I noticed as I was reading.
Yeah, I think I obviously put some thought into what's
going to go after what.
And I noticed that, as I was reading, although now, I
can't remember what it was, but there was a poem that ended
on one word and then picked up again on the next poem,
picked up with the same word or something so.
Then I was thinking, is that redundant?
Or is that just continuing a thought in a different way?
I don't know.
But, yeah, I think--
you want to get some conversation going
between the poems that are close to each other in the manuscript
if you can.
What in what way?
Well, I love the sound of poetry, you know?
And I like it, I really like it when that happens.
When I do it myself or if I'm reading somebody else's poetry,
I get a great deal of pleasure out of that.
I think, for instance, Fanny Howe, whom I mentioned,
has a terrific ear.
But the broader question, do I think of myself
as a lyric poet?
You know, I never know how to define that term.
If it means somebody interested in sound, then yes .
If it means somebody who writes first-person
poems about emotional experiences,
then yes, no, maybe, you know?
Some people think that a lyric poet--
I heard lyric poetry defined as poetry addressed to a beloved.
If that's the case, well, seldom.
Not never, but seldom.
So it really depends on how that word is defined
and I think it has a lot of different definitions,
but, yeah, sound is very important to me.
Like the poem that's called--
Let's see it, I could find it quickly.
If not, I'll give up in despair.
It's really important you read about that,
because that's the little innocuous
words that turn you on.
Oh, yeah, right.
You're not fooling anybody, they do turn you up.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, yeah!
They're funny, but obviously, yeah extrapolating.
Strap X strap.
It's a great word.
Or this one called the racket, I really
like when it gets to market and then it goes back to racket--
I like market and racket together.
So yeah, I get a kick out of that,
and I think that is sort of the juice of a lot of the juice
of poetry's there somewhere.
Yeah.
What's your curriculum?
That's mapped out for you?
I like that description, so thank you.
But I think the really fancy road at 60
is something that some people complain about of course too,
it's like there's not a whole lot of setup.
There's like you're already right into it right away.
Sort of free-for-all, you know?
And that's true because I get bored with long setups.
So you know, I was sitting on the porch watching blah, blah,
blah, what I thought, blah, blah, blah.
I would just start after that.
Yeah, well, I think we have to defend ourselves
as best we can.
Sometimes, you just have to throw it back somehow.
It gets thrown at you and you have to throw it back
in a different form, So yeah.
I think humor is serious, you know?
I mean, I guess, I think comedians
think that humor is serious too and humor often
addresses philosophical conundrums.
So yeah, I don't I don't mind being funny.
I like to be--
I like it when people laugh.
No, I think it is, I don't know exactly how to answer it.
I mean, it's good--
OK, I don't know if it's a good question,
but it's a good observation.
I am very intrigued by cemeteries.
And both by forming them and by breaking them.
And you know, I'm intrigued by pairs, and by echoes,
and by doubles.
You know, I don't know what to say about that
except that it's true, I am intrigued by those things
and they do keep appearing in my work.
Do your studies influence the way that unfolds in your work?
And that the frequency, how often does that change?
Could you track that, as far as?
Oh, not much.
I think it's probably increased over time.
But maybe, things just increase over time,
so it seems like there's a lot of that now but--
My studies, well, I don't know about my--
I mean, I read, obviously, we all read
and I've read some things about symmetry in nature
that are interesting.
So, you know.
I guess, form in nature or just form generally, intrigues me.
Yeah.
Do I know what this phase is?
What is this phase?
--you're exploring.
Maybe you could say some words about that.
Yeah, I see that.
I do find space interesting-- the space between words,
I guess, the space between ideas, the anxious blank
that god loves was in one poem, you know?
Because emptiness concern, emptiness
makes us uncomfortable, but it also defines things.
It can't have shapes if you don't
have emptiness around them or something
that looks like emptiness, like white space on a page, say.
So yeah, I mean--
I guess, I think silence and space
are sort of an integral part of the work.
Yeah.
Does it feel like it has an integrity?
Were those the choices?
I wanted to have integrity and also be open.
Can I have it both ways?
OK.
You do.
OK.
Anybody else?
In the introduction, you were described as a foreigner
to language culture.
Do you think that that's accurate [INAUDIBLE]??
No, because I'm not older than those people.
Some good number of them are older than me, so, no, I just
was one of the language poets.
Nobody is ever comfortable saying
that, I hear that described so many ways,
like, she is related to language poetry
or sometimes compared to language poetry.
I guess, it's because language poetry, to some extent,
has a kind of a bad boy reputation of some sort,
and so nobody wants to say, you're a language poet.
But I guess, I was, if it means anything to be in that group.
I mean, I probably wasn't a typical one,
and so that's why people want to hedge it maybe.
It's not just that it's kind of "could be,"
a kind of problematic term, which it can, but you know,
I was also maybe not the most--
not the best example for the paradigm.
But you know, I was there with Ron Silliman and Bob Perelman
and Lyn Hejinian in San Francisco
when we were all starting out and being friends,
and so I guess that makes me one of them,
but not a foreigner of them.
OK.
--for one more question.
No?
All right.
Well, thank you for coming and asking me those questions.
[APPLAUSE]