WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.822 align:middle line:90% In the same way-- 00:00:00.822 --> 00:00:02.280 align:middle line:84% I think it's David Lodge that talks 00:00:02.280 --> 00:00:05.070 align:middle line:84% about Irish literature, in which you can define [? outsider ?] 00:00:05.070 --> 00:00:08.160 align:middle line:84% literature in a certain way, where you relegate 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:12.080 align:middle line:84% to a secondary status popular ballads and dialect poems. 00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:14.910 align:middle line:90% 00:00:14.910 --> 00:00:18.450 align:middle line:84% But who makes those decisions about how 00:00:18.450 --> 00:00:20.095 align:middle line:84% you define what is the major condition 00:00:20.095 --> 00:00:21.780 align:middle line:84% and what are the minor conditions? 00:00:21.780 --> 00:00:26.270 align:middle line:90% 00:00:26.270 --> 00:00:28.820 align:middle line:84% Now, one of the things that happens 00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:32.330 align:middle line:84% when you begin to help people who 00:00:32.330 --> 00:00:36.890 align:middle line:84% are in exile, in immigration-- either internally 00:00:36.890 --> 00:00:39.770 align:middle line:84% within a country or externally-- is 00:00:39.770 --> 00:00:44.840 align:middle line:84% you have people confronting many different languages. 00:00:44.840 --> 00:00:46.438 align:middle line:84% Now, in The Dialectical Imagination, 00:00:46.438 --> 00:00:48.230 align:middle line:84% here's what M. Bakhtin, the Russian critic, 00:00:48.230 --> 00:00:50.060 align:middle line:90% says about the novel. 00:00:50.060 --> 00:00:52.790 align:middle line:84% But it really, I think, is about what 00:00:52.790 --> 00:00:54.350 align:middle line:84% the condition of the 20th century 00:00:54.350 --> 00:00:57.770 align:middle line:84% is, and certainly the 21st century. 00:00:57.770 --> 00:00:59.900 align:middle line:84% "The new cultural and creative consciousness 00:00:59.900 --> 00:01:03.680 align:middle line:84% lies in an actively polyglot world. 00:01:03.680 --> 00:01:09.320 align:middle line:84% The world becomes polyglot, once and for all and irreversibly. 00:01:09.320 --> 00:01:11.000 align:middle line:84% The period of national languages, 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:15.350 align:middle line:84% coexisting but closed and deaf to each other, comes to an end. 00:01:15.350 --> 00:01:17.250 align:middle line:84% Languages throw light on each other. 00:01:17.250 --> 00:01:19.610 align:middle line:84% One language can, after all, see itself only 00:01:19.610 --> 00:01:22.070 align:middle line:84% in the light of another language. 00:01:22.070 --> 00:01:24.290 align:middle line:84% The naive and stubborn coexistence 00:01:24.290 --> 00:01:28.460 align:middle line:84% of languages within a given language also comes to an end. 00:01:28.460 --> 00:01:31.160 align:middle line:84% That is, there is no more peaceful coexistence 00:01:31.160 --> 00:01:34.340 align:middle line:84% between territorial dialects, social and professional 00:01:34.340 --> 00:01:37.880 align:middle line:84% dialects and jargons, literary language, generic languages 00:01:37.880 --> 00:01:40.970 align:middle line:84% within literary languages, epochs in languages, 00:01:40.970 --> 00:01:43.770 align:middle line:90% and so forth." 00:01:43.770 --> 00:01:46.813 align:middle line:84% So this idea of a polyglot world, 00:01:46.813 --> 00:01:48.480 align:middle line:84% which is the world that we're living in, 00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:50.600 align:middle line:84% which is obviously-- my kids go to school 00:01:50.600 --> 00:01:52.760 align:middle line:84% where there's 150 first languages-- that's 00:01:52.760 --> 00:01:54.680 align:middle line:84% the condition of our society at this point. 00:01:54.680 --> 00:01:57.830 align:middle line:84% That's the condition of the globe. 00:01:57.830 --> 00:02:03.170 align:middle line:84% And the writers who are attuned to these differences, who've 00:02:03.170 --> 00:02:06.200 align:middle line:84% taken them in as the course of their experience of growing 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:10.370 align:middle line:84% up or becoming educated, are best 00:02:10.370 --> 00:02:14.620 align:middle line:84% able to give back to us what we are living through. 00:02:14.620 --> 00:02:17.320 align:middle line:90% 00:02:17.320 --> 00:02:27.463 align:middle line:84% I'll read to you just a couple of poems on this. 00:02:27.463 --> 00:02:28.630 align:middle line:90% I'll read you three of them. 00:02:28.630 --> 00:02:31.690 align:middle line:90% 00:02:31.690 --> 00:02:33.325 align:middle line:84% Here's "Midsummer" by Derek Walcott. 00:02:33.325 --> 00:02:36.286 align:middle line:90% 00:02:36.286 --> 00:02:40.130 align:middle line:84% Actually, it's number 23 from "Midsummer," 00:02:40.130 --> 00:02:43.780 align:middle line:84% which is that book of [? sort of episodic ?] 00:02:43.780 --> 00:02:46.240 align:middle line:90% short poems that he wrote. 00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:49.450 align:middle line:84% And this is about Walcott's experience 00:02:49.450 --> 00:02:52.540 align:middle line:90% about being a scholarship kid. 00:02:52.540 --> 00:02:55.540 align:middle line:84% Except he comes to this adult in this way. 00:02:55.540 --> 00:02:58.518 align:middle line:84% But one of the things that the scholarship kid does 00:02:58.518 --> 00:03:01.060 align:middle line:84% is when he reads about-- he or she-- reads about the capital, 00:03:01.060 --> 00:03:04.150 align:middle line:84% they have dreams of becoming like the writers 00:03:04.150 --> 00:03:05.560 align:middle line:90% in the capital. 00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:07.442 align:middle line:84% It's like V.S. Naipaul talks about how 00:03:07.442 --> 00:03:09.400 align:middle line:84% when he traveled to England for the first time, 00:03:09.400 --> 00:03:11.800 align:middle line:84% he thought he was going to become Somerset Maugham. 00:03:11.800 --> 00:03:21.790 align:middle line:90% 00:03:21.790 --> 00:03:25.600 align:middle line:84% And not really recognizing that his own subject was not 00:03:25.600 --> 00:03:27.580 align:middle line:84% to become Somerset Maugham, but was 00:03:27.580 --> 00:03:30.260 align:middle line:90% something entirely different. 00:03:30.260 --> 00:03:32.170 align:middle line:90% So here's Walcott. 00:03:32.170 --> 00:03:35.770 align:middle line:84% "With the stampeding hiss and scurry of green lemmings, 00:03:35.770 --> 00:03:38.890 align:middle line:84% midsummer's leaves race to extinction 00:03:38.890 --> 00:03:44.410 align:middle line:84% like the roar of a Brixton riot tunnel by water hoses. 00:03:44.410 --> 00:03:47.320 align:middle line:84% They seethe towards autumn's fire-- 00:03:47.320 --> 00:03:50.680 align:middle line:84% it is their nature, being men as well as leaves, 00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:53.740 align:middle line:90% to die for the sun. 00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:56.620 align:middle line:84% The leaf stems tug at their chains, the branches bending 00:03:56.620 --> 00:04:00.190 align:middle line:84% like Boer cattle under Tory whips that drag every wagon 00:04:00.190 --> 00:04:03.020 align:middle line:90% nearer to apartheid. 00:04:03.020 --> 00:04:06.070 align:middle line:84% And, for me, that closes the child's fairy tale 00:04:06.070 --> 00:04:07.990 align:middle line:90% of an antique England-- 00:04:07.990 --> 00:04:10.120 align:middle line:84% fairy rings, thatched cottages fenced 00:04:10.120 --> 00:04:12.700 align:middle line:84% with dog roses, a green gale lifting 00:04:12.700 --> 00:04:15.730 align:middle line:90% the hair of Warwickshire. 00:04:15.730 --> 00:04:19.450 align:middle line:84% I was there to add some color to the British theater. 00:04:19.450 --> 00:04:21.730 align:middle line:84% 'But Blacks can't do Shakespeare, 00:04:21.730 --> 00:04:24.400 align:middle line:90% they have no experience.' 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:26.260 align:middle line:90% This was true. 00:04:26.260 --> 00:04:28.480 align:middle line:84% Their thick skulls bled with rancor 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:31.120 align:middle line:84% when the riot police and the skinheads exchanged 00:04:31.120 --> 00:04:36.730 align:middle line:84% quips you could trace to the sonnets, or the Moor's eclipse. 00:04:36.730 --> 00:04:40.870 align:middle line:84% Praise had bled my lines white of any more anger, 00:04:40.870 --> 00:04:45.040 align:middle line:84% and snow had inducted me into white fellowships, 00:04:45.040 --> 00:04:48.460 align:middle line:84% like Calibans howled down the barred streets 00:04:48.460 --> 00:04:53.200 align:middle line:84% of an empire that began with Caedmon's raceless dew, 00:04:53.200 --> 00:04:56.170 align:middle line:84% and is ending in the alleys of Brixton, 00:04:56.170 --> 00:05:00.160 align:middle line:90% burning like Turner's ships." 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:03.250 align:middle line:84% And I love what he does in the [? tradition ?] in that, 00:05:03.250 --> 00:05:07.270 align:middle line:84% "Praise had bled my lines of any more white anger, snow inducted 00:05:07.270 --> 00:05:10.540 align:middle line:84% me into white fellowships, while Calibans howled down 00:05:10.540 --> 00:05:14.200 align:middle line:84% the barred streets of an empire that began with Caedmon's 00:05:14.200 --> 00:05:18.280 align:middle line:84% raceless dew and is ending in the streets of Brixton, 00:05:18.280 --> 00:05:21.950 align:middle line:90% burning like Turner's ships." 00:05:21.950 --> 00:05:24.500 align:middle line:84% He's creating a whole different vision 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:27.020 align:middle line:84% of the British, a whole different vision 00:05:27.020 --> 00:05:28.670 align:middle line:90% of Shakespeare. 00:05:28.670 --> 00:05:31.130 align:middle line:84% It's like when Chinua Achebe says-- 00:05:31.130 --> 00:05:33.620 align:middle line:84% he says he was reading Heart of Darkness, 00:05:33.620 --> 00:05:36.950 align:middle line:84% and he's identifying with Marlow and Kurtz. 00:05:36.950 --> 00:05:38.600 align:middle line:84% And there's a passage where they're 00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:40.670 align:middle line:84% looking at the unintelligible savages, 00:05:40.670 --> 00:05:46.250 align:middle line:84% screaming and shouting like caricatures on the shore, 00:05:46.250 --> 00:05:49.040 align:middle line:84% and suddenly Achebe goes, wait a second, that could 00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:51.620 align:middle line:90% be like my great-grandparents. 00:05:51.620 --> 00:05:56.030 align:middle line:84% Do I think my great grandparents were unintelligible savages? 00:05:56.030 --> 00:06:00.800 align:middle line:84% And for Achebe, that moment causes 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:03.350 align:middle line:84% him to question the artistry of Conrad, 00:06:03.350 --> 00:06:06.980 align:middle line:84% and he argues that the novel is less great than it is. 00:06:06.980 --> 00:06:08.420 align:middle line:90% We could argue. 00:06:08.420 --> 00:06:11.630 align:middle line:84% But what is also crucial is that that moment leads 00:06:11.630 --> 00:06:13.800 align:middle line:84% to Achebe writing Things Fall Apart, 00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:16.700 align:middle line:84% which is about the Igbo civilization in Nigeria 00:06:16.700 --> 00:06:19.820 align:middle line:84% just before and just when the Europeans are coming in. 00:06:19.820 --> 00:06:24.710 align:middle line:84% And what we see is no, they were not unintelligible savages. 00:06:24.710 --> 00:06:27.680 align:middle line:84% They had a culture, they had a judicial system, 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:28.895 align:middle line:90% they had an economic system. 00:06:28.895 --> 00:06:32.460 align:middle line:90% 00:06:32.460 --> 00:06:38.370 align:middle line:84% If he had continued to read Marlow the way he was taught, 00:06:38.370 --> 00:06:41.070 align:middle line:84% he would have never written Things Fall Apart. 00:06:41.070 --> 00:06:44.950 align:middle line:90% 00:06:44.950 --> 00:06:48.040 align:middle line:84% For Walcott to come to this realization 00:06:48.040 --> 00:06:50.020 align:middle line:84% is to realize something about himself 00:06:50.020 --> 00:06:53.811 align:middle line:84% and his place in the world, and to reread history differently. 00:06:53.811 --> 00:06:58.230 align:middle line:90% 00:06:58.230 --> 00:07:00.700 align:middle line:84% I was going to read you "Philosophy of the Cool" 00:07:00.700 --> 00:07:02.010 align:middle line:90% by Sekou Sundiata. 00:07:02.010 --> 00:07:04.140 align:middle line:84% Instead, I'll read "How I Got That Name" by Marilyn 00:07:04.140 --> 00:07:06.840 align:middle line:90% Chin, an essay on assimilation. 00:07:06.840 --> 00:07:09.370 align:middle line:90% 00:07:09.370 --> 00:07:12.460 align:middle line:90% "I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin. 00:07:12.460 --> 00:07:17.110 align:middle line:84% Oh, how I love that resoluteness of that first person singular, 00:07:17.110 --> 00:07:20.890 align:middle line:84% followed by that stalwart indicative of 'be' without 00:07:20.890 --> 00:07:24.700 align:middle line:84% the uncertain i-n-g of 'becoming.' 00:07:24.700 --> 00:07:27.670 align:middle line:84% Of course, the name has been changed somewhere between Angel 00:07:27.670 --> 00:07:30.880 align:middle line:84% Island and the sea, when my father, the paper person, 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:34.480 align:middle line:84% in the late 1950s, obsessed with a bombshell blonde, 00:07:34.480 --> 00:07:37.240 align:middle line:84% transliterated Mei Ling to Marilyn. 00:07:37.240 --> 00:07:40.120 align:middle line:90% 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:43.120 align:middle line:84% And nobody dared question his initial impulse-- 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:45.940 align:middle line:84% for we all know lust drove men to greatness, 00:07:45.940 --> 00:07:49.120 align:middle line:90% not goodness, not decency. 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:50.950 align:middle line:84% And there I was, a wayward pink baby, 00:07:50.950 --> 00:07:53.080 align:middle line:84% named after some tragic white woman 00:07:53.080 --> 00:07:56.590 align:middle line:90% swollen with gin and Nembutal. 00:07:56.590 --> 00:07:58.240 align:middle line:84% My mother couldn't pronounce the 'r.' 00:07:58.240 --> 00:08:03.370 align:middle line:84% She dubbed me 'numba one female offshoot' for brevity-- 00:08:03.370 --> 00:08:06.220 align:middle line:84% henceforth, she will live and die in sublime ignorance, 00:08:06.220 --> 00:08:10.030 align:middle line:84% flanked by loving children and the 'kitchen deity.' 00:08:10.030 --> 00:08:14.410 align:middle line:84% While my father dithers, a tomcat in Hong Kong trash-- 00:08:14.410 --> 00:08:16.750 align:middle line:84% a gambler, a petty thug, who bought 00:08:16.750 --> 00:08:20.050 align:middle line:84% a chain of chopsuey joints in Piss River, Oregon 00:08:20.050 --> 00:08:23.140 align:middle line:90% with bootlegged Gucci cash. 00:08:23.140 --> 00:08:25.240 align:middle line:84% Nobody dared question his integrity 00:08:25.240 --> 00:08:29.020 align:middle line:84% given his nice, devout daughters and his bright, industrious 00:08:29.020 --> 00:08:32.830 align:middle line:84% sons, as if filial piety were the standard by which 00:08:32.830 --> 00:08:36.970 align:middle line:90% all earthly men were measured. 00:08:36.970 --> 00:08:38.740 align:middle line:84% Oh, how trustworthy our daughters, 00:08:38.740 --> 00:08:40.510 align:middle line:90% how thrifty our sons. 00:08:40.510 --> 00:08:42.850 align:middle line:84% How we've managed to fool the experts in education, 00:08:42.850 --> 00:08:45.280 align:middle line:90% statistics, and demography-- 00:08:45.280 --> 00:08:51.070 align:middle line:84% we're not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning. 00:08:51.070 --> 00:08:53.890 align:middle line:90% Indeed, they can use us. 00:08:53.890 --> 00:08:57.250 align:middle line:84% But the 'Model Minority' is a tease. 00:08:57.250 --> 00:09:02.080 align:middle line:84% We know you are watching, so we refuse to give you any. 00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:04.570 align:middle line:84% Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots. 00:09:04.570 --> 00:09:06.550 align:middle line:84% The further west we go, we'll hit east. 00:09:06.550 --> 00:09:09.880 align:middle line:84% The deeper down we dig, we'll find China. 00:09:09.880 --> 00:09:12.910 align:middle line:84% History has turned its stomach on a black polluted beach-- 00:09:12.910 --> 00:09:16.000 align:middle line:84% where life doesn't hinge on that red, red wheelbarrow, 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.120 align:middle line:84% but whether or not our lover in the final episode of Santa 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:25.330 align:middle line:84% Barbara will lean over a scented candle and call us 'bitch.' 00:09:25.330 --> 00:09:28.000 align:middle line:84% Oh God, where have we gone wrong? 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:32.110 align:middle line:90% We have no inner resources. 00:09:32.110 --> 00:09:35.470 align:middle line:84% Then, one redolent and spring morning, the Great Patriarch 00:09:35.470 --> 00:09:38.020 align:middle line:84% Chin peered down from his kiosk in heaven 00:09:38.020 --> 00:09:40.420 align:middle line:84% and saw that his descendants were ugly. 00:09:40.420 --> 00:09:43.480 align:middle line:84% One had a square head and a nose without a bridge. 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:47.260 align:middle line:84% Another's profile long and knobbed as a gourd. 00:09:47.260 --> 00:09:51.100 align:middle line:84% A third, the sad, brutish one, may never, never marry. 00:09:51.100 --> 00:09:53.980 align:middle line:84% And I, his least favorite-- 'not quite boiled, 00:09:53.980 --> 00:09:57.100 align:middle line:84% not quite cooked,' a plump pomfret simmering 00:09:57.100 --> 00:09:58.060 align:middle line:90% in my juices-- 00:09:58.060 --> 00:10:02.140 align:middle line:84% too listless to fight for my people's destiny. 00:10:02.140 --> 00:10:05.920 align:middle line:84% 'To kill without resistance is not slaughter,' says 00:10:05.920 --> 00:10:07.390 align:middle line:90% the proverb. 00:10:07.390 --> 00:10:10.510 align:middle line:90% So, I wait for imminent death. 00:10:10.510 --> 00:10:12.940 align:middle line:84% The fact that this death is also metaphorical 00:10:12.940 --> 00:10:16.720 align:middle line:90% is testament to my lethargy. 00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:18.760 align:middle line:84% So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, 00:10:18.760 --> 00:10:21.940 align:middle line:84% married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong, 00:10:21.940 --> 00:10:25.000 align:middle line:84% granddaughter of Jack 'the patriarch' and brooding Suilin 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:29.680 align:middle line:84% Fong, daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong and G.G. Chin 00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:34.120 align:middle line:84% the infamous, sister of a dozen, cousin of a million, 00:10:34.120 --> 00:10:38.500 align:middle line:84% survived by everybody and forgotten by all. 00:10:38.500 --> 00:10:41.830 align:middle line:84% She was neither black nor white, neither cherished 00:10:41.830 --> 00:10:45.760 align:middle line:84% nor vanquished, just another squatter in her own bamboo 00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:48.970 align:middle line:90% grove minding her poetry-- 00:10:48.970 --> 00:10:51.190 align:middle line:84% when one day heaven was unmerciful, 00:10:51.190 --> 00:10:54.376 align:middle line:84% and a chasm opened where she stood. 00:10:54.376 --> 00:10:57.220 align:middle line:84% Like the jowls of a mighty white whale, 00:10:57.220 --> 00:10:59.920 align:middle line:84% or the jaws of a metaphysical Godzilla, 00:10:59.920 --> 00:11:02.440 align:middle line:90% it swallowed her whole. 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:05.830 align:middle line:84% She did not flinch nor writhe, nor fret about the afterlife, 00:11:05.830 --> 00:11:07.420 align:middle line:90% but stayed. 00:11:07.420 --> 00:11:10.720 align:middle line:84% Solid as wood, happily a little gnawed, tattered, 00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:14.350 align:middle line:84% mesmerized by all that was lavished upon her 00:11:14.350 --> 00:11:16.600 align:middle line:90% and all that was taken away." 00:11:16.600 --> 00:11:19.332 align:middle line:90% 00:11:19.332 --> 00:11:21.040 align:middle line:84% And one of the things you can see in this 00:11:21.040 --> 00:11:23.020 align:middle line:84% is she's just turning [? the tradition ?] 00:11:23.020 --> 00:11:24.190 align:middle line:90% in on itself. 00:11:24.190 --> 00:11:29.170 align:middle line:84% And there's all these sort of sly little textual 00:11:29.170 --> 00:11:34.682 align:middle line:84% to Williams's wheelbarrow or Berryman's line, 00:11:34.682 --> 00:11:36.265 align:middle line:84% "My mother said, to admit you're bored 00:11:36.265 --> 00:11:38.380 align:middle line:90% is to have no inner resources. 00:11:38.380 --> 00:11:42.340 align:middle line:84% I conclude, I have no inner resources." 00:11:42.340 --> 00:11:44.650 align:middle line:84% And then bringing a whole another language and history 00:11:44.650 --> 00:11:48.300 align:middle line:90% into the tradition. 00:11:48.300 --> 00:11:50.260 align:middle line:90% One of the things I feel-- 00:11:50.260 --> 00:11:52.840 align:middle line:84% I talked to Marilyn about, is how 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:54.790 align:middle line:84% she needs to write some criticism 00:11:54.790 --> 00:11:58.600 align:middle line:84% to get people to understand the contextual history and way 00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:00.580 align:middle line:90% of writing her poems. 00:12:00.580 --> 00:12:03.460 align:middle line:84% Because she's drawing from the traditional Anglo-American 00:12:03.460 --> 00:12:05.920 align:middle line:84% canon, she studied under Donald Justice, 00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:08.140 align:middle line:84% but actually she retreated from the Writers' Workshop 00:12:08.140 --> 00:12:10.740 align:middle line:84% off to go to the international section of the Writers' 00:12:10.740 --> 00:12:12.490 align:middle line:84% Workshop, because she didn't feel welcome, 00:12:12.490 --> 00:12:16.780 align:middle line:84% like a lot of writers of color who went to the Iowa workshop. 00:12:16.780 --> 00:12:23.260 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] And so she goes back to Du Fu 00:12:23.260 --> 00:12:27.830 align:middle line:84% and Li Po, the classical Chinese texts. 00:12:27.830 --> 00:12:29.590 align:middle line:84% And so if we want to say that in order 00:12:29.590 --> 00:12:32.530 align:middle line:84% to understand and evaluate some of these literature 00:12:32.530 --> 00:12:34.870 align:middle line:84% you have to understand that sources, 00:12:34.870 --> 00:12:37.150 align:middle line:84% well then I have to ask Harold Bloom, for instance, 00:12:37.150 --> 00:12:41.553 align:middle line:84% well, do you know Chinese literature? 00:12:41.553 --> 00:12:43.220 align:middle line:84% How well do you know Chinese literature? 00:12:43.220 --> 00:12:47.110 align:middle line:84% How well do you know this [? content? ?] 00:12:47.110 --> 00:12:51.070 align:middle line:84% And so in a way, and this goes off 00:12:51.070 --> 00:12:57.010 align:middle line:84% the subject of why I think a lot of writers of color 00:12:57.010 --> 00:12:59.855 align:middle line:90% have ended up writing memoirs-- 00:12:59.855 --> 00:13:01.480 align:middle line:84% Garrett Hongo and I talked about this-- 00:13:01.480 --> 00:13:04.390 align:middle line:84% is because the intellectual, cultural, and historical 00:13:04.390 --> 00:13:08.200 align:middle line:84% background for our poetry isn't there in the culture. 00:13:08.200 --> 00:13:12.100 align:middle line:84% If I'm Robert Lowell, and I come from the Lowells of Boston, 00:13:12.100 --> 00:13:16.870 align:middle line:84% and I come from a long line of lovely poets, ambassadors 00:13:16.870 --> 00:13:19.090 align:middle line:84% and presidents of Harvard and I refer 00:13:19.090 --> 00:13:23.860 align:middle line:84% to my family and my family history, everybody knows it. 00:13:23.860 --> 00:13:25.960 align:middle line:84% I don't have to footnote a thing. 00:13:25.960 --> 00:13:28.540 align:middle line:90% It's all mainstream knowledge. 00:13:28.540 --> 00:13:31.780 align:middle line:84% So, I understood almost immediately, 00:13:31.780 --> 00:13:33.400 align:middle line:84% being educated in the culture, how 00:13:33.400 --> 00:13:37.630 align:middle line:90% to read Robert Lowell's poems. 00:13:37.630 --> 00:13:41.057 align:middle line:84% But that's not necessarily true with other people's poems. 00:13:41.057 --> 00:13:44.770 align:middle line:90% 00:13:44.770 --> 00:13:46.930 align:middle line:84% And so I wrote my memoirs in a way 00:13:46.930 --> 00:13:50.080 align:middle line:84% to give that background to understanding what it is I'm 00:13:50.080 --> 00:13:53.060 align:middle line:90% doing in my poetry. 00:13:53.060 --> 00:13:54.310 align:middle line:90% One of the things I realized-- 00:13:54.310 --> 00:13:55.990 align:middle line:84% I was actually looking at my poetry 00:13:55.990 --> 00:13:57.640 align:middle line:84% last night thinking about this lecture 00:13:57.640 --> 00:14:03.040 align:middle line:84% and reading my criticism, and realizing that sometimes I 00:14:03.040 --> 00:14:06.638 align:middle line:84% don't even realize the context of what I'm working on. 00:14:06.638 --> 00:14:08.680 align:middle line:84% Because it's not common knowledge in the culture. 00:14:08.680 --> 00:14:11.230 align:middle line:84% I have to constantly make myself conscious of what actually 00:14:11.230 --> 00:14:13.000 align:middle line:90% is going on in the world. 00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:20.320 align:middle line:90% 00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:25.690 align:middle line:84% I was reading the other day Dana Gioia, 00:14:25.690 --> 00:14:31.930 align:middle line:84% who actually has in new book an interesting essay 00:14:31.930 --> 00:14:38.380 align:middle line:84% about literature in the post-book age. 00:14:38.380 --> 00:14:41.290 align:middle line:84% One of the things I admire about the essay 00:14:41.290 --> 00:14:43.113 align:middle line:84% is he at least acknowledges there's 00:14:43.113 --> 00:14:45.280 align:middle line:84% this whole other phenomenon going on in the country, 00:14:45.280 --> 00:14:48.250 align:middle line:84% of spoken word, of rap, of cowboy poetry, 00:14:48.250 --> 00:14:51.070 align:middle line:90% of popular poetry. 00:14:51.070 --> 00:14:55.210 align:middle line:84% Now, we are in this point in the culture where those things seem 00:14:55.210 --> 00:14:58.270 align:middle line:84% divided between, say, the Academy of American Poets 00:14:58.270 --> 00:15:02.650 align:middle line:84% or the poetry you see in poetry magazines. 00:15:02.650 --> 00:15:05.170 align:middle line:90% What I would suggest is-- 00:15:05.170 --> 00:15:07.000 align:middle line:84% this isn't quite the same parallel, 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:08.950 align:middle line:84% but it's interesting to think about-- 00:15:08.950 --> 00:15:12.010 align:middle line:84% to think about the anthologies in the 50s. 00:15:12.010 --> 00:15:14.620 align:middle line:84% If you go back to the 50s, there were two main anthologies. 00:15:14.620 --> 00:15:17.470 align:middle line:84% One was written by Donald Allen, which is the New American 00:15:17.470 --> 00:15:19.630 align:middle line:84% Poetry, and the other was the New Poets of England 00:15:19.630 --> 00:15:22.970 align:middle line:84% and America, and it's by Donald Hall, Robert Pack, and Louis 00:15:22.970 --> 00:15:25.370 align:middle line:90% Simpson. 00:15:25.370 --> 00:15:29.540 align:middle line:84% And in the Pack, Hall, Simpson are 00:15:29.540 --> 00:15:35.360 align:middle line:84% people like Wilbur and Lowell and Douglas Snodgrass, 00:15:35.360 --> 00:15:38.730 align:middle line:84% and I think Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich. 00:15:38.730 --> 00:15:39.650 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:15:39.650 --> 00:15:41.720 align:middle line:84% And the other one are people like Gary Snyder 00:15:41.720 --> 00:15:45.830 align:middle line:84% and John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg. 00:15:45.830 --> 00:15:46.580 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:15:46.580 --> 00:15:50.420 align:middle line:84% Now in the 50s, those people in the Allen anthology 00:15:50.420 --> 00:15:53.007 align:middle line:90% were looked at as the Indians. 00:15:53.007 --> 00:15:54.590 align:middle line:84% And the people in the other one, we're 00:15:54.590 --> 00:15:56.280 align:middle line:90% looking at the pale faces. 00:15:56.280 --> 00:16:00.290 align:middle line:84% The [INAUDIBLE] was that the people in the Allen anthology 00:16:00.290 --> 00:16:03.270 align:middle line:84% were the raw, and the people in the Hall, Pack, Simpson 00:16:03.270 --> 00:16:05.030 align:middle line:90% anthology were the cooked. 00:16:05.030 --> 00:16:05.780 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:16:05.780 --> 00:16:08.010 align:middle line:84% And the people in the Hall, Pack, Simpson anthology 00:16:08.010 --> 00:16:10.010 align:middle line:84% looked at the people in the [? Hall ?] anthology 00:16:10.010 --> 00:16:12.740 align:middle line:90% as uncouth savages. 00:16:12.740 --> 00:16:16.940 align:middle line:84% But obviously now, you can't do an anthology of that generation 00:16:16.940 --> 00:16:19.670 align:middle line:84% without including all the poets I just named. 00:16:19.670 --> 00:16:21.350 align:middle line:90% And we don't think-- 00:16:21.350 --> 00:16:25.490 align:middle line:84% Ginsberg or Snyder or Denise Leverov, 00:16:25.490 --> 00:16:27.920 align:middle line:84% they're no longer outré or savages-- 00:16:27.920 --> 00:16:29.180 align:middle line:90% or Ashbery-- they're part-- 00:16:29.180 --> 00:16:31.400 align:middle line:84% or O'Hara-- they're of just our tradition 00:16:31.400 --> 00:16:33.630 align:middle line:90% of contemporary poetry. 00:16:33.630 --> 00:16:35.600 align:middle line:84% So the question is, then, when we 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:40.820 align:middle line:84% divide say the Nuyorican Poetry anthology, Poetry Aloud, 00:16:40.820 --> 00:16:44.960 align:middle line:84% and say, the Morrow Anthology of Young American Poets 00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:52.010 align:middle line:84% or the Weingarten anthology from Godine, 00:16:52.010 --> 00:16:54.470 align:middle line:84% and you look at those two anthologies, they're divided. 00:16:54.470 --> 00:16:56.637 align:middle line:84% The poets-- there's little cross-- 00:16:56.637 --> 00:16:58.970 align:middle line:84% actually Jimmy Santiago Baca, who we're gonna talk about 00:16:58.970 --> 00:16:59.750 align:middle line:90% in a second-- 00:16:59.750 --> 00:17:02.900 align:middle line:90% is the one the few crossovers. 00:17:02.900 --> 00:17:05.329 align:middle line:84% But what our argument is that maybe in 20, 00:17:05.329 --> 00:17:09.440 align:middle line:84% 30 years that division is not going to be there. 00:17:09.440 --> 00:17:12.260 align:middle line:90% And we're going to-- 00:17:12.260 --> 00:17:15.410 align:middle line:84% the huge division between spoken word and the academic poetry 00:17:15.410 --> 00:17:17.390 align:middle line:90% is going to seem much less. 00:17:17.390 --> 00:17:19.069 align:middle line:84% Because we're going to have a poetry 00:17:19.069 --> 00:17:22.250 align:middle line:90% that comes out of those things. 00:17:22.250 --> 00:17:28.250 align:middle line:84% One of the poets that I love in this is Sekou Sundiata. 00:17:28.250 --> 00:17:31.070 align:middle line:84% And then the other thing that you have to ask is-- 00:17:31.070 --> 00:17:34.210 align:middle line:84% two questions-- is one, is how we evaluate poetry? 00:17:34.210 --> 00:17:35.780 align:middle line:84% Why is why do we think that poetry 00:17:35.780 --> 00:17:39.275 align:middle line:84% on the page in certain quarters is somehow superior to poetry 00:17:39.275 --> 00:17:39.900 align:middle line:90% delivered oral? 00:17:39.900 --> 00:17:43.160 align:middle line:90% 00:17:43.160 --> 00:17:47.147 align:middle line:84% Why is it popular or, given the traditions of poetry, 00:17:47.147 --> 00:17:48.230 align:middle line:90% we should go back to oral? 00:17:48.230 --> 00:17:50.810 align:middle line:90% 00:17:50.810 --> 00:17:56.434 align:middle line:90% And [INAUDIBLE]. 00:17:56.434 --> 00:17:59.570 align:middle line:90% 00:17:59.570 --> 00:18:04.130 align:middle line:84% So this is "Philosophy of the Cool" by Sekou Sundiata. 00:18:04.130 --> 00:18:06.170 align:middle line:84% "I've been swimming since water, learning 00:18:06.170 --> 00:18:08.420 align:middle line:90% to sing like the songs. 00:18:08.420 --> 00:18:10.880 align:middle line:84% The oldest one I know goes like this, some people 00:18:10.880 --> 00:18:13.160 align:middle line:84% came from the trees, I remember coming out 00:18:13.160 --> 00:18:15.590 align:middle line:84% of the undertow, the ocean of seas. 00:18:15.590 --> 00:18:17.990 align:middle line:84% The electricity, the explosion, billions 00:18:17.990 --> 00:18:22.370 align:middle line:84% of us crashing with the waves, then blown away into memory. 00:18:22.370 --> 00:18:24.740 align:middle line:84% You can still hear us in the piece of a beat 00:18:24.740 --> 00:18:27.380 align:middle line:84% or in that music made from scratch. 00:18:27.380 --> 00:18:31.910 align:middle line:84% The first word still had roots like a James Brown syllable. 00:18:31.910 --> 00:18:35.360 align:middle line:84% A single cell one minute, a slam dunk the next. 00:18:35.360 --> 00:18:38.480 align:middle line:90% Speed was our need. 00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:41.180 align:middle line:84% I remember salt and air, water, slime, and mud, upright 00:18:41.180 --> 00:18:42.710 align:middle line:90% and thumb, fire and iron. 00:18:42.710 --> 00:18:45.350 align:middle line:84% And most of all, the poetry we had then. 00:18:45.350 --> 00:18:48.440 align:middle line:84% It was open verse, later called Africa. 00:18:48.440 --> 00:18:52.340 align:middle line:84% I remember human life beginning female, gamete that I was then, 00:18:52.340 --> 00:18:55.400 align:middle line:84% zygote that I was when I recalled it. 00:18:55.400 --> 00:18:58.970 align:middle line:84% The Earth was yet negative space, 00:18:58.970 --> 00:19:03.350 align:middle line:84% a canvas stretched from hymen to foreskin to drumskin. 00:19:03.350 --> 00:19:05.840 align:middle line:84% And sleep told us in those days to stay awake. 00:19:05.840 --> 00:19:09.680 align:middle line:84% The Blackness begins, the Blackness ends. 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.230 align:middle line:84% Whoever said there was a light at the end never lived 00:19:12.230 --> 00:19:14.180 align:middle line:84% at the end, never had to run up ahead 00:19:14.180 --> 00:19:15.800 align:middle line:90% to see what it's going to be. 00:19:15.800 --> 00:19:20.510 align:middle line:84% Womb to tomb, to womb, to tomb, to womb. 00:19:20.510 --> 00:19:23.960 align:middle line:84% Who so know so, I mean, I've seen Buddha and Krishna 00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:26.420 align:middle line:84% on the D train, and you wouldn't know the river gods, 00:19:26.420 --> 00:19:28.430 align:middle line:84% the prophets, or the turn of the century 00:19:28.430 --> 00:19:31.220 align:middle line:84% if you couldn't read the latest fashion like proverbs 00:19:31.220 --> 00:19:32.630 align:middle line:90% on t-shirts. 00:19:32.630 --> 00:19:35.315 align:middle line:84% The best things in life are toll-free. 00:19:35.315 --> 00:19:37.190 align:middle line:84% I don't like questions, I don't like answers, 00:19:37.190 --> 00:19:39.200 align:middle line:90% I just like to dance. 00:19:39.200 --> 00:19:41.960 align:middle line:84% I don't have to drive, I'm already driven. 00:19:41.960 --> 00:19:44.360 align:middle line:90% What you got is what you love. 00:19:44.360 --> 00:19:46.280 align:middle line:84% Good things come to those who wait, 00:19:46.280 --> 00:19:49.080 align:middle line:84% better things come to those who don't. 00:19:49.080 --> 00:19:50.630 align:middle line:84% Some people look down and find money, 00:19:50.630 --> 00:19:53.660 align:middle line:84% some people look down and lose their souls. 00:19:53.660 --> 00:19:57.320 align:middle line:90% Shit happens, and it floats. 00:19:57.320 --> 00:19:59.870 align:middle line:84% I recall the first ships that appeared like shadows 00:19:59.870 --> 00:20:03.140 align:middle line:84% on the horizon, and we ran out to greet them with our sweet 00:20:03.140 --> 00:20:07.100 align:middle line:84% palm wine and guaguanco, thinking their books 00:20:07.100 --> 00:20:11.360 align:middle line:84% and their homologues could tell us something about love 00:20:11.360 --> 00:20:12.950 align:middle line:90% and beauty. 00:20:12.950 --> 00:20:15.290 align:middle line:84% But it was more than a nation in the middle 00:20:15.290 --> 00:20:17.090 align:middle line:90% of that frigid Atlantic. 00:20:17.090 --> 00:20:18.740 align:middle line:84% The vomit, the sharks, the babies 00:20:18.740 --> 00:20:21.170 align:middle line:84% with umbilical cords around their necks, 00:20:21.170 --> 00:20:24.800 align:middle line:84% the Earthless rhythm with the water pitching to and fro. 00:20:24.800 --> 00:20:27.680 align:middle line:84% I witnessed the birth of rock and roll. 00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:31.430 align:middle line:84% My mama named Lucy, her real name Lucille. 00:20:31.430 --> 00:20:33.800 align:middle line:90% Without the blues, we go under." 00:20:33.800 --> 00:20:37.100 align:middle line:90% 00:20:37.100 --> 00:20:44.120 align:middle line:84% Now, in conclusion, I will say that, invariably, 00:20:44.120 --> 00:20:48.020 align:middle line:84% when I read poems in The New Yorker, I read them and go, eh. 00:20:48.020 --> 00:20:49.277 align:middle line:90% I just go, who cares? 00:20:49.277 --> 00:20:51.860 align:middle line:84% I mean, some of them are good, some are bad, but most of them, 00:20:51.860 --> 00:20:53.750 align:middle line:90% I think who cares? 00:20:53.750 --> 00:20:58.220 align:middle line:84% And the question is what is it that you want from literature? 00:20:58.220 --> 00:20:59.870 align:middle line:84% Kenneth Burke said that literature 00:20:59.870 --> 00:21:02.810 align:middle line:90% should be equipment for living. 00:21:02.810 --> 00:21:04.550 align:middle line:84% OK, that's a very different definition 00:21:04.550 --> 00:21:06.371 align:middle line:90% than an aesthetic definition. 00:21:06.371 --> 00:21:09.200 align:middle line:90% 00:21:09.200 --> 00:21:11.810 align:middle line:84% And it also says that perhaps the equipment that each of us 00:21:11.810 --> 00:21:14.143 align:middle line:84% needs for a living might be different. 00:21:14.143 --> 00:21:20.300 align:middle line:90% 00:21:20.300 --> 00:21:23.140 align:middle line:84% Here's a quotation from Czeslaw Milosz, 00:21:23.140 --> 00:21:26.500 align:middle line:84% and it speaks about what I'm talking about finally. 00:21:26.500 --> 00:21:31.870 align:middle line:84% It is also a question of what you value, what is important, 00:21:31.870 --> 00:21:34.600 align:middle line:84% and what things seem important in one situation 00:21:34.600 --> 00:21:37.000 align:middle line:90% and not in another. 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:40.870 align:middle line:84% "A hierarchy of needs is built into the very fabric of reality 00:21:40.870 --> 00:21:43.090 align:middle line:84% and is revealed when a misfortune touches 00:21:43.090 --> 00:21:46.600 align:middle line:84% a human collective, whether that be war, or the rule of terror, 00:21:46.600 --> 00:21:49.780 align:middle line:90% or natural catastrophe. 00:21:49.780 --> 00:21:52.870 align:middle line:84% Then to satisfy hunger is more important than finding food 00:21:52.870 --> 00:21:55.390 align:middle line:90% that suits one's taste-- 00:21:55.390 --> 00:21:58.270 align:middle line:84% the simple act of human kindness towards a fellow being 00:21:58.270 --> 00:22:02.560 align:middle line:84% acquires more importance than any refinement of mind. 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:04.090 align:middle line:84% The fate of a city, of a country, 00:22:04.090 --> 00:22:06.963 align:middle line:84% becomes a center of everyone's attention, 00:22:06.963 --> 00:22:09.130 align:middle line:84% and there is a sudden drop in the number of suicides 00:22:09.130 --> 00:22:11.020 align:middle line:84% committed because of disappointed 00:22:11.020 --> 00:22:15.070 align:middle line:90% love or psychological problems. 00:22:15.070 --> 00:22:16.810 align:middle line:84% A great simplification of everything 00:22:16.810 --> 00:22:19.720 align:middle line:84% occurs, and an individual asks himself 00:22:19.720 --> 00:22:21.640 align:middle line:84% why he took to heart matters that 00:22:21.640 --> 00:22:24.520 align:middle line:90% now seem to have no weight. 00:22:24.520 --> 00:22:27.370 align:middle line:84% And evidently, people's attitudes towards the language 00:22:27.370 --> 00:22:29.300 align:middle line:90% also changes. 00:22:29.300 --> 00:22:31.390 align:middle line:84% It recovers the simplest function 00:22:31.390 --> 00:22:34.870 align:middle line:84% and is again an instrument serving a purpose-- 00:22:34.870 --> 00:22:36.940 align:middle line:84% no one doubts that the language must 00:22:36.940 --> 00:22:40.420 align:middle line:84% name reality, which exists objectively, 00:22:40.420 --> 00:22:44.650 align:middle line:84% massive tangible, and terrifying in its concreteness. 00:22:44.650 --> 00:22:48.400 align:middle line:90% 00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:50.440 align:middle line:84% All reality is hierarchical simply 00:22:50.440 --> 00:22:53.110 align:middle line:84% because human needs and the dangers threatening people 00:22:53.110 --> 00:22:55.870 align:middle line:90% are arranged on a scale. 00:22:55.870 --> 00:22:57.820 align:middle line:84% No easy agreement can be reached as to what 00:22:57.820 --> 00:22:59.080 align:middle line:90% should occupy first place. 00:22:59.080 --> 00:23:00.580 align:middle line:90% It is not always bread-- 00:23:00.580 --> 00:23:02.980 align:middle line:90% often it is the word. 00:23:02.980 --> 00:23:04.840 align:middle line:84% And death is not always the greatest menace, 00:23:04.840 --> 00:23:07.930 align:middle line:90% often slavery is. 00:23:07.930 --> 00:23:11.650 align:middle line:84% Nevertheless, anyone who accepts the existence of such a scale 00:23:11.650 --> 00:23:16.270 align:middle line:84% behaves differently than one who denies it. 00:23:16.270 --> 00:23:19.900 align:middle line:84% The poetic act changes with the amount of background reality 00:23:19.900 --> 00:23:23.870 align:middle line:84% embraced by the poet's consciousness." 00:23:23.870 --> 00:23:27.010 align:middle line:84% [? Read it ?] [? again, ?] "The poetic act changes with 00:23:27.010 --> 00:23:29.620 align:middle line:84% the amount of background reality embraced 00:23:29.620 --> 00:23:32.080 align:middle line:90% by the poet's consciousness. 00:23:32.080 --> 00:23:34.330 align:middle line:84% In our century, that background is, in my opinion, 00:23:34.330 --> 00:23:36.700 align:middle line:84% related to the fragility of things we 00:23:36.700 --> 00:23:38.950 align:middle line:90% call civilization or culture. 00:23:38.950 --> 00:23:41.920 align:middle line:84% What surrounds us here and now is not guaranteed. 00:23:41.920 --> 00:23:44.150 align:middle line:90% It could just as well not exist. 00:23:44.150 --> 00:23:47.410 align:middle line:84% And so man constructs poetry out of the remnants 00:23:47.410 --> 00:23:50.590 align:middle line:90% found in ruins." 00:23:50.590 --> 00:23:53.230 align:middle line:84% One of the ways that I think I judge poetry 00:23:53.230 --> 00:23:56.780 align:middle line:84% and I think about poetry is not only what is there on the page, 00:23:56.780 --> 00:24:00.423 align:middle line:84% but in terms of technical or formal pleasures, 00:24:00.423 --> 00:24:01.840 align:middle line:84% aesthetic pleasures, what we think 00:24:01.840 --> 00:24:04.870 align:middle line:84% of the aesthetic pleasures one gets from the book. 00:24:04.870 --> 00:24:08.290 align:middle line:84% It is also that sense that Milosz talked about, 00:24:08.290 --> 00:24:11.140 align:middle line:84% the amount of background reality that the poet takes in. 00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:13.980 align:middle line:90% 00:24:13.980 --> 00:24:16.910 align:middle line:84% And then it also is, we have to think about how-- 00:24:16.910 --> 00:24:20.510 align:middle line:84% if poetry has two jobs, in a way, 00:24:20.510 --> 00:24:23.540 align:middle line:84% one is to bring the tradition into the present, 00:24:23.540 --> 00:24:25.190 align:middle line:84% and one is to acknowledge the present. 00:24:25.190 --> 00:24:28.900 align:middle line:90% 00:24:28.900 --> 00:24:35.710 align:middle line:84% Then, at times, the difficulty is 00:24:35.710 --> 00:24:39.190 align:middle line:84% to bring what is present in the present that has not 00:24:39.190 --> 00:24:44.320 align:middle line:84% been present in the tradition, and create a language world. 00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:47.710 align:middle line:84% And that job is inherently more difficult 00:24:47.710 --> 00:24:51.550 align:middle line:84% than writing within the givens of the tradition. 00:24:51.550 --> 00:24:55.300 align:middle line:84% In other words, if I write a poem about a still life 00:24:55.300 --> 00:24:56.980 align:middle line:90% by Van Gogh. 00:24:56.980 --> 00:24:59.110 align:middle line:84% OK, there's a whole tradition of poems about that. 00:24:59.110 --> 00:25:02.120 align:middle line:90% 00:25:02.120 --> 00:25:04.375 align:middle line:84% But certain other experiences that I go through 00:25:04.375 --> 00:25:05.750 align:middle line:84% or people go through in society-- 00:25:05.750 --> 00:25:07.970 align:middle line:90% there are no poems like that. 00:25:07.970 --> 00:25:09.440 align:middle line:84% You have to find those poems, you 00:25:09.440 --> 00:25:11.880 align:middle line:84% have to create a language for this contemporary reality. 00:25:11.880 --> 00:25:14.180 align:middle line:84% And so what I say is when I judge poems, 00:25:14.180 --> 00:25:17.270 align:middle line:84% I also think about it like diving, 00:25:17.270 --> 00:25:20.850 align:middle line:90% the degree of difficulty. 00:25:20.850 --> 00:25:23.420 align:middle line:84% And if you do a simple dive and you may be perfect, 00:25:23.420 --> 00:25:27.950 align:middle line:84% but the degree of difficulty was a one, so the person gets 10. 00:25:27.950 --> 00:25:29.750 align:middle line:84% Where somebody does a more difficult dive 00:25:29.750 --> 00:25:31.940 align:middle line:84% and it's imperfect, so they get an eight. 00:25:31.940 --> 00:25:36.920 align:middle line:84% But the degree of difficulty is three times more, so it's 24. 00:25:36.920 --> 00:25:42.284 align:middle line:84% Now if you don't allow that degree of difficulty in, 00:25:42.284 --> 00:25:44.750 align:middle line:84% if you just keep it on this sort of formal level 00:25:44.750 --> 00:25:47.800 align:middle line:90% then you have one scale. 00:25:47.800 --> 00:25:49.000 align:middle line:90%