>> Whenever you're ready. >> I'm recording this whole time. >> I feel like I'm already. >> You recording this whole time? >> He's sneaky little. >> Welcome to the Poets Alon. >> What? >> What? >> What? >> What? >> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> Welcome to season two of the Poets Alon, a podcast where we talk the poets over drinks we prepared, especially for them. I am Luther all about Crow's Hughes. >> I'm Gabrielle Beats. >> And I'm Dujie Tahat. >> This week we're talking with Jericho Brown about the self, the church and the rhymes versus line jaw. Our drink for this episode is The Busy Izzy, a high ball that's made with Sherry, Barry Brin, Pineapple and Lemon Juice, which were designed by the legendary Tom Bullet, the first African-Americans to publish a bartending manual back in when in 1917. >> That was a long time ago. Jericho Brown is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the recipient of a Whiting Award. His first book, Please, won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield Wolf Book Award. His third collection is The Tradition, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. Brown's poems have appeared in all sorts of amazing places, including The New York Times, The Paris Review, Time Magazine, and several volumes of the best American poetry. He is several, not just one. He is currently an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. But before we jump into that conversation, we just wanted to say thank you for listening to our first season. >> Thank you. >> And coming back to join us for the second one, which is going to be frankly amazing. Like, can we just say? >> It's going to be so good. >> I mean, amazing. >> So good. And episodes to come will be answering your questions per our usual format. So please tweet those at us, email us, you know, the drill. We thought it would be fun to start off season two by just shouting out some books that made us mad in 2019. So. >> This one's the start. >> Are you a worse hard damage? >> That was what I'm going to mind too. >> No, it's still fucking me up. >> No, like honestly, how dare she be so smart? And so emotionally devastating in her first book. >> Yeah, I have to rethink my entire manuscript now. That's why I'm mad. It's literally, I'm like, now I have to redo mine. >> Yeah, you're like, for me, it was more like, well, mine's never going to be this good. So guess that's fine, but I'm mad. >> Also Diana Koi wins Ghost of. Really fucking me up. >> What would we call this? Does that make like, like, their visual? >> Yeah, so she has this series of poems based on photographs that her brother cut himself out of and she writes poems that take up the shape of the picture that was left. >> They're concrete poems. >> Yeah, so there's like a big absence in the middle. Have you heard her read them where she like reads across the gas? >> Yeah, that's when she read for, I think for the verses. >> On the verses, I'm cast. >> Yeah, wow. >> Unpreparely. >> It's sonically so amazing. >> Yeah, I think that series of poems in particular did make me mad because I'm a poet who thinks a lot about like the visual and poetry and I just know I could not pull that off. It's such a technical feat the way she writes those poems. >> It seems so simple and obvious in some way that's like, right, like you write a poem to fill that empty space. >> Yeah, like anyone could try it, but to actually write a good poem. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. And to do it consistently, like so sustained, like, you know, there are like multiple pictures of that book that just like shaps gas. >> Yes. What about you, Lou? >> First, I thought of "Argyas by Sharon Olds" naturally. >> That one didn't make me mad though. >> Maybe. >> I think because I'm used to her being such a genius. >> I was mad. I was. >> What made you mad about it? >> I was just like, so now I have to look at what my mom is well, like. >> [LAUGH] >> Is that what we're doing now, Sharon? >> Like, really? Like, it's just so good. I think, I mean, she's already been known for like, you know, the starkness of her poems. >> You know what starkness? >> Not starkness. How would you describe them? >> Maybe audacious. >> I don't think she's audacious. I think she's very frank and very stark. >> Right. >> I think frank is right. >> Me too. I think, I think just to feel it re-desodacious. I don't think Sharon Olds is audacious. >> Okay. >> But just the way she says to me how she says things, that are both beautiful and also like. Yeah, that's really frank. Am I really like, knife in my gut? >> Yeah, I feel it. >> Yeah, I feel it. Yeah, I can feel her poem. That's the big difference then. A lot of other works. But this book in particular feels like a finality. Like I feel like a final like a real work. >> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, what made me mad about that book is that it looks like a collected, but it's all new poems. And I'm like, how dare you, after such a robust career, after so many books, you're just going to casually drop this book that is so many pages and full of so many good poems. Like you'd expect there to be so much kind of dead weight in a book that large, but that's just so good. I disagree with all of the books that make you all mad. I honestly Tane and Bambricks book made me kind of mad, because Vantage shout out. Because it's like I had the experience reading it of like having read an entire really amazing novel, but in like an hour of reading. And I'm just like, how, how'd she do that? And like we're almost exactly the same age, but she's already had like all these wild experiences and written about them in like the most perfect way. >> Yeah. >> Mad. >> Yeah, that's a pretty, yeah, that's like a really unique book. >> Yeah. >> Because of that, yeah. You definitely don't need the narrative, but it does read kind of like a memoir. >> Yeah, but you get the narrative more kind of impressionistically. Like I just had the experience when I finish it that I've read a full novel, but reading it doesn't feel like reading a novel. >> Right, right, right, yeah. It's not as like involved and like, yeah. >> It's not like super chronological or anything. >> Right. >> Exiles of Eden by LaDan. >> Oh, that book is amazing. >> On the low. >> You'll have to be keeping that close to the chest because I have not read that. >> That's like, I'm made. >> Neither of you have told me to read it. >> Oh my god. >> And now I'm mad about that. >> Well, that book made me mad. That actually made me mad. >> Wait, tell me about it because I haven't read it. I mean, I know about it, but I haven't read it. >> It is so sharp. I just don't know. Like it's really intelligent. And I think like there are a lot of, I've been writing a lot of one stands of poems. And I think that that book made me want to try like one stands of poems. Or just like there's so much packed into single stanzas. They're like really smart and well crafted and like are kind of making an argument and are making the reader constantly sort of complicit in what's going on. >> There's moments in the book where there's actual pictures and photographs that she has taken herself. There's this wonderful poem that like, wouldn't the poo. Like I wouldn't the poo illustration. But it's blue my mind. >> Yeah. >> It's like a, it's like a, it's like a more sad. >> Yeah, it's kind of sad. I think that's what she does a lot. It's like play on this like a, idea of sadness and also, yeah, she's very, very sharp. >> She's very sharp in her language and in her image. >> And critique. >> And critique. >> Like using those things to like critique, right? Because there was like a, because I think like in the illustration when the poo gets like in some mud, right? >> Yeah. >> And it's like when you the poo in black face. >> Yeah. >> Sort of the illustration. >> Yeah. >> Right. And there's in like a ton of, like you're right, like it's not like she needs to explicate that at all. But it's like, oh shit. >> Wow. Is this another first book? >> This is the second book. >> This book is of the kitchen, the water's testimony. And people have described her first book as like a duanday book, which I agree with. And so. >> What does that mean to you? >> I mean, it just a book for me that is, it hits the gut in a very like simple way. Like it plays on like, it plays a lot of like, well, it's not outside to one day now. But it plays a lot of like domestic things in the home and external and like that. But it hits the gut in a way where it's not over exaggerated. And the way she talks, her language is very wonderful in the same way. Which might not be duanday, duand describing it, but that's what I think of duanday when I think of that word is gut. >> Yeah. >> Definitely does that. >> Yeah. >> Another book I would add at this to in 2019 was Jake Skietz debut book. Eyes battle dark with a mouth full of flowers. I'm still fucking fantastic title. >> You just mad at the title. >> Honestly, truly. >> And the book covers amazing duand.
Yeah, but the book itself so fucking beautiful Let's feel with desire and longing and all the good shit that I love to But the way that Jake skis like blints in culture and You know how much personality and it's kind of everydayness of violence So I think I haven't seen before and it's all beautiful So it feels like it shouldn't be beautiful It's like talking about blood and dying but in this beautiful way where I feel like I'm being tricked, but it's not like Prettying the violence in some sort of way at all. No, it's just like you talk about people dying and it's like You know so-and-so dialects week and this week I'm drinking beer, but it's so beautiful outside That's like the type of shit is like That's true. It is beautiful outside and so-and-so did die last week You are just drinking beer like here we are I feel like you do that sort of magic in your poem slew. Yeah, yeah But not like Jake skis I'm like Jake skis I'm with the humana jigskis Oh my gosh, I feel like we could go on and on and on and on and on because 2019 had so many incredible books that made me angry without good. They were But we should definitely get into this conversation with Jericho Brown ASAP Conclude cheers So we often start our interviews asking how you arrived at poetry how I arrived at poetry. Yeah As if it's a destination. Yeah, well I was in a car I really was in a car because my mother used to drop us up at the library in my sister Because she had things she had to do she was in improvisational genius and that helped to figure out that Not being able to afford child care wasn't gonna stop her It was gonna help her in some way and so she there was this educational opportunity for her kids Through the library and she knew I Mean the wonderful thing about going to the library to in terms of my mother She knew we were afraid of her so she wasn't worried about us like tearing the library up or anything I don't think you could leave kids in the library anymore. They'd like destroy the thing But we were really scared of our mother, you know, so we were good in the library and I fell in love with poems Because they were short They made me feel accomplished. I could go one page after another there wasn't all this damn text on the page I remember the first time I finished a book of poetry. I don't remember the book What I remember is the reaction from my mother she picked us up from the library and every day when she would pick us up She would say what did you do in the library today? And I said I read a book mommy not really thinking about it, but I did feel sort of good about getting to the end of a book And she said she made this face That nobody can see because this is a podcast She's saying we're like the next five minutes in the car My baby That's like why is my mom was singing out of her nose like what is going on? And so my baby So and I wanted that to happen to me a lot, you know I was like oh my mom's not like hitting me up so I'm like here It's like the secret and it's funny because I thought I was cheating Mm-hmm. I realized at that moment so funny You find out so much about yourself if you just look at your your childhood closely enough right like My mom asked me what I was doing what I did in the library. I told her I read a book She got excited about it. I was happy about this excitement and almost immediately I began to wonder what I had done wrong like how I had gotten had made that happen because certainly I must have made that happen in some sort of Clendestine you like I must have done something wrong You got away with it. Yeah exactly You know, which is the American condition, but we can talk about that later. So I So after I said it I felt like I was doing something Sneaky when I would read books of poetry because Because I didn't say it was a book of poetry. I had mentioned that I was only reading One fourth of the page Do you see what I didn't say that it was you know a 60 something page book rather than a two or three hundred page But did you see what I'm saying? Yeah, and I was very conscious of that as a kid But it also became my goal when I went to the library. I was like all their shorter the pages like the number of pages of shorter and The page itself is shorter. So I'm gonna read a bunch of books of poetry and it was a lot of fun for me because I don't know how And I wish more people had this I Wish more people approached poetry in the same way But I wasn't under the impression that I needed to know what the hell was happening in the poem Like I didn't think poems were about that kind of sense making I thought that the goal was to get through the poem and sort of enjoy it as I go And I so I would notice things as I would go So I became a very very I mean six seven eight years old very young reader of Contemporary poetry. I mean I was reading old stuff too. What would happen is the librarians? Thank God for the librarians who work Our biggest leaders whether they knew it or not they They were giving me the books of poetry by the poets they had heard of so I was reading Shakespeare I was reading Milton. I was reading Dickinson. I was reading Whitman But I was also reading Sylvia Plath Robert Loll and Sexton. I was reading Langston Hughes Phyllis Wheatley I was reading Rita Dove you see what I mean? So I mean which is really weird because you know he really shouldn't be given depressed 10-year-old poems by Anne Sexton with titles like wanting to die But they didn't know that so it was the best thing that ever happened They weren't poor they were librarians, but they weren't poetry readers They were like oh this must be good Because we've heard of this person, so then they would give them to me You know they knew I would sit in sitting one place and read it. Yeah, so yeah, I think that's how I arrived and then Or other arrivals happened along the way so they you know like in Cattle Parish where I'm from in Louisiana Your junior year you spend the entire Year of your English class Writing one research paper And I missed the day that the assignments were handed out you could pick your subject when I came back There was one subject left and it I promised a guy I came back to school the next day everyone had picked all the subjects the only subject left was the confessional poets I still remember the confessional poets colon Plath Loll Sexton I'll never forget it so I spent the year reading Plath Loll and Sexton and Everyone who had ever written about those poets and their poems I was reading Diane Wood Middlebrook when I was 16 years old And I was reading Helen Vindler. Did you see what I mean? So I think my education was sort of I Think I mean for what I was doing deep and early, you know So much of what you're saying is resonating with me particularly The sense that by reading poems and maybe even writing them you're like getting away with something There's a little bit of that like sneaky deliciousness to it which when I You know arrived at poetry much later than you did in college I had a very similar reaction and I think it was because I enjoyed it so much It was like I'm getting away with something like I'm saying I'm studying this but really I'm just having a really freaking good time and There was something that felt yeah like a little sneaky about that pleasure But that's not really what I wanted to talk about I want to talk a little bit about the South and Southernness People love to hate on the South as a region and There was a time in my life where I really internalized a lot of that and was trying to run from that identity that region but like for the last few years I've been really trying to be more open to that part of my identity and treat it with a little more love and Europe poet who's really helped me Doing that Because your poems have this way of like acknowledging the complicated messiness of the beloved Which so it's it's coming from a place of love, but it's also not ignoring the flaws and I was hoping you could talk a little bit about your relationship to the South and Southernness Yeah, I mean part of what what I try to do Though I'm not sure that I was conscious of the try try to and seem the exact right word But maybe it's the word in revision even if it's not the word in in the drafting of poems Well, what seems to happen in this book is that's one of the things that I'm trying to stand more fully in is The fact that if I'm a poet I'm a poet of the Southern tradition and that means that Whether they like whether they're turning over in their graves about it or not I am a descendant of the agrarians. I am a descendant of the fugitive poets I mean if that's the case then I'm a poet of the pastoral which I've always been but I think in this book I've been much more conscious Over and over again their images throughout the book about the end of the natural world and I think more than ever in my life while writing about it.
out this book, I had my hands in the earth, not more than ever. I should say, after a long period of time, I'm when I was a kid, my mom and dad actually-- the way my dad provided for us was through cutting yards. I mean, he had a lawn service. So I grew up cleaning flower beds and planting things and cleaning gutters, own rules, and doing whatever cut nudges. And so I avoided much of that. And then I was lucky enough to have a yard. And I did that thing that I said I would never do. I became obsessed with my yard in the same way that my parents used to be obsessed with their yard and the way their parents were obsessed with their yard. And I realized more and more how this had been handed down, this thirst for beauty to drive up to one's home and say, I'm home and it's gorgeous. And I'm so happy that it looks this way, also to meet the expectations of the community, that the neighborhood itself is made better, because I'm taking care of my yard. Will you please take care of your yard too? Do you know what I mean? That I was suddenly having these-- what seemed to me very adult feelings about nature and about flowers and about choosing flowers and about-- and remembering that I knew how to do these things. Do you know what I'm saying? And also understanding that my particular love of certain trees had to do with the south. Like, I'll never forget when I did live in San Diego, California for a little while. And I got assigned this office for a teaching job ahead at the University of San Diego. When I was outside, the office, I felt like, oh, I'm supposed to be here, because there was a magnolia tree. It was literally the only magnolia tree I had assigned San Diego the whole time I was there. I was like, why was that magnolia tree? And I really thought it was there for me to make me feel like it'll be all right, because I was already missing home. I mean, I left Houston, Texas kicking in screaming, you know? Anyway, so I think that has a lot to do with me standing in that tradition. And I think thinking about sonnets in that way, thinking about the gothic nature, that which is gothic in that which is queer, all it wants, thinking about what is the difference between the south and my south? You know, when I was a kid, teachers really would. I hope they don't do this anymore. It would be interesting to check and see. But teachers really would say, we lost the war. And you know, I mean, and I would think, no, we didn't. - Yeah, yeah. - It was made with a way. - Like what we are, are we talking about? - No way, I lost the silver war. So I think that's an experience that you have to be from the south to have. And if you're a poet, you're already dealing in a certain kind of negative capability and problematizing to live through that, to understand what is this body? I mean, if it is of that and yet against it. Do you understand what I'm saying? And if you grow up like that, if you're aware of that, then you also apply that to anything you do in your art, that you're becoming again self-aware, which poets have to be, you have to be. And so it's really wonderful. You know, this is why I'm so good to be black. You know, I get to see stuff other folks don't get to see. It's so exciting. I mean, but I feel differently from a lot of people. A lot of black people in particular, a lot of very supposedly liberal and progressive people about a lot of things that I always have to be honest about. I don't, for instance, believe in tearing down Confederate monuments, I think instead that they should all stay up. I think we should just change the plaques and that those plaques should say the truth about these people. They should say traitor. They should say slave owner. And I actually think that would be of greater use to it. You don't see anybody going to Auschwitz, like, oh, let's tear down this concentration camp. That's crazy. I find that over and over again, racism becomes more and more normalized because the answer to it is to erase it. The answer to it is to outlaw the presence of it. Therefore, it can go underground and work in different ways. Do you understand what I mean? So I'm not really interested in erasers in that way. And I feel like they are indeed erasers. And I feel like they don't help white people in any way. I think they hurt white people and they give black folks less to talk about. Do you find what I mean? You know, the experience of-- I mean, you know this. The experience of living under Confederate monuments is singular as a black person or a white person in the South. I mean, it's like, you know, it's like, oh, what am I-- I mean, you're immediately asking. You have to immediately ask yourself questions about that, given your citizenship. And I think that for me growing up, that was a huge part of my experience. And it helped me figure out who the hell I was and what side I needed to be on and how complicated that side would be. And the fact that that side would not always want me. You know what I'm saying? And if that's not there, I feel like those things are harder to come through because there's no physical representation of foolishness. [LAUGHTER] And I think it's nice to have physical representations of foolishness. And it's better for us to be honest about them. But people don't like to talk about stuff. So I just think it's not-- I just don't think it's helpful to us to be out here not talking about stuff. And unfortunately, not everyone does that self interrogation that it should prompt. Like, as you said-- Just change the plot. But it's just-- yeah. Right. You know? Yeah. I mean, the real trouble with white people is being unaware of whiteness in this country. In the 21st century, at least, right, like that there's still this thing going on where it's like, you know, they just need a little nudge. And get the little nudge. You're like, oh, shit. Oh, I'm sorry. Are y'all like an NPR? No. No. You can buy a gun. I'm sorry. I'll stop talking. I'll probably be sure. No, we encourage that. No, we encourage. Because we like for people to cuss. Sorry. But you know what I mean, right? And those nudges don't happen unless you have to do that interrogation. And everybody doesn't have to do it. Some of us are born in positions where we have to do it. But everybody doesn't have to. I think we need to put more people in those positions where they have to do that. We should be having more open conversations with white people about how they're talking to their children about race because they're not. So if you ask them, how are you talking to your children about race? That's the beginning so that they can tell you I'm not. And then they can wonder, well, why am I not? Because I got the same Facebook that everybody else got. I got the same news channels that everybody else got. And I see the same stuff going on. So why am I not? But that's got to start somewhere. And it starts with certain kinds of questions. And if we don't have physical representations, we can't ask those questions. I think. But you know, people disagree with me. Now, I think that makes a ton of sense. I think a lot about the type of answer to racism that is like, but I'm not racist or I don't see color or whatever. Like having that physical representation as a thing to look at, the thing that is separate from the interpersonal interaction, like that-- I'm going to use the word tradition from-- like the signifiers of a certain tradition, of an inheritance, certainly. It is sort of like a structural nudge. Like if you just sort of change the plaque, then the operating structure, not being from the South, but what I imagine, instead of sort of celebrating these monuments, they become a reminder of the facts. Of what you did. And what you could do again. And I mean, if anything, put on the monument that it was erected in 1958. Like be honest about why it's there. Even the like putting up of it right belongs to you. Exactly. Yeah, it's not about the Civil War at all. It's about segregation. Yeah, absolutely. And then if we can be honest about that, then we can be honest about-- I think the South, if we can be honest about the South, we can be more honest about the whole of the United States of America. I mean, bless this heart. People are so kind to me. I gave a reading at UT Austin recently, and somebody was walking me around the campus, and they were talking about how they had taken down their confederate monuments. And yay. They were yay about that. And I was yay for them because they felt good about that. But you know, they were like, oh, this used to be here, but see there's just a pedestal. And this used to be here, but you see there's just a pedestal. And as we're walking by these things, I'm also walking by statues of George Washington. I'm like, George fucking-- excuse me, I can't stop cursing today. George fucking Washington, like seriously, George Washington's teeth came from his slaves. Are you fucking kidding me? Put that on the plate. Show me where George Washington got his dentures. Yeah, well, there's a move towards, like as if they're
There is some narrative that is absolved of the sin, right? Like there is some clean version of America. - Yeah, yeah, there's no clean, you keep scrubbing, you'll get to nothing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - There's an assumption there. - And people think that they need that. And I mean, we've got a, there are two things I think, I mean for this book that I'm interested in when I read my poems in this book. One of those things is just that, that there's no bottom to the damn scrubbing. Like you trying to figure out how to clean America up is not gonna go down well because at the root it is what it is. And we've got to start being honest about that unless we want to continue to be that thing that it was from jump, right? But then the second thing has to do with the ways in which we really believe in this country. Maybe throughout the world, but definitely in this country that the important thing is what we have in common. And we're told this over and over again. And I think it's the worst thing for this dispensation. Like it's the thing that's really hurting us that we feel like as long as I have something in common with you, I don't have to murder you. You know, when Mike Brown lie in the street dead after that, Darren Wilson, when he was given his testimony and when he was on the, when he came on TV, he referred to Mike Brown as it. And I realized that was why Mike Brown was dead. Michael Brown is dead because Darren Wilson saw it. And so he could kill him. That's what happened to Mike Brown, right? He was alien, the fact of his human body, the fact of his human beingness. It was alien to Darren Wilson. And we really think that that's okay, as long as I can say it, if I can keep myself in a position to say it, right? I mean, we literally have cities where there are, where there is not public transportation. So, folk can keep staying in a situation where they will always be able to say it. Do you follow what I'm saying? Because if we come in contact with each other, then I might have to deal with you. Do you follow what I mean? So, I mean, I'm much more interested actually in us figuring out what we're gonna do if I'm nothing like you, 'cause I'm not, I mean, you know, I'm a queer black man from Louisiana. Like, I'm nothing like a lot of folk and I'm cool with that. But does that mean I need to be dead? Does that mean I need to live without proper housing? Does that mean I need to be hungry? Does that mean I need to be unemployed? But I think that's what people decide, right? In some sort of an unconscious way, right? I have nothing in common with you and therefore you can go. And somehow if I have something in common with you, then oh, you're okay. - Yeah, great. - And there's a difference. You're sort of pointing to the divide between like the narrative we tell ourselves about our commonality and the need for the appeal to our shared humanity and then the structural segregation. - Exactly. - If I appeal to a wee, but my policy divides us, then what do I really mean? - Exactly. - Exactly. - Kind of switching gets a little bit and going back to Southernness. When I think of Southernness, all the time I think of the Baptist Church and being raised by Southern Mother from New Orleans, I always got that kind of Southern feeling in my face. And then your poem is kind of enact kind of a calling response kind of thing that I attend to Southernness and the Baptist Church. I'm really wondering more so about that rhetoric you use in your poems and where that comes from and how you come about doing the calling response in your work. - I mean, I think it is directly from the church. I was raised in a Baptist church as a kid and it was a really important part of our lives. It was very important to our family. I think the thing that many so-called progressive and liberal people in the United States don't understand about the church is that it is it's all world within the world. You know, I was raised in a situation where you could, you know, you could be on the church football team, the church baseball team, the church debate team, you could learn a soul, you could learn it. Like everything that you can get in the world, you could get at your church. You know what I mean? Even six. So there was really no, do you know what I'm saying? - And so it creates its sort of all mirror realm inside the larger realm. And because of that, I was, and because I was a believer in that particular church and in the ways of that church, much of what I do now and the way I speak and the way that I go about things in the way I read my poems aloud in the way that I'm sort of thinking about how the line will work has to do with that intonation that I heard people have when they would get up in front. And not just the preacher, but anybody you gave a microphone to anybody who got behind a podium. There's a certain kind of plain spokenness that is lifted to dignity. - Do you know what I'm saying? - Yeah. - And so, and that speech I think is something that over and over again, I am recalling and going back to in my poems, 'cause it's just a part of who I am and a part of my own vernacular at this point. But I also think that calling response and chanting, I like the word chant because, you know, it's the word that's in enchantment. And I think part of what we're doing, y'all know this, 'cause y'all are poets, part of what we're doing, we're writing poems is we're casting spells, you know, we're congevers. And we, part of the reason why we're doing that is 'cause that's how we feel when we have read the poems we love, we're like, this actually doesn't make sense 'cause I'm here crying and this is words on a piece of paper. (laughing) - Yeah. - You really think about it. - That is amazing, right? And so then when the more you practice that, the more you practice casting spells, the more you learn about how to do that, the more you're like, wait, I am a real life sorcerer. - Yeah. Or maybe shaman, or maybe preacher, or maybe, do you see what I mean? So the idea of a decreeing or declaring, or speaking over someone or a situation in order to change its dynamic, is part of what we learn, what I learned in church, and part of what I believe about poetry, right? That in the writing process, and I think this is part of what we learn when we learn craft, and what we add to when we bring our own backgrounds to our particular craft, what we're learning is how to speak over a thing, right? To change its dynamic. Part of what we're doing is changing the lens through which we see a thing, right? When you change the lens to which you see the thing, then you understand it differently. That's the magic, I think, of poetry. That's what I love about it. One of the things I love about it, at least so much, oh my God. So yeah, I think, and yeah, I think that's had everything in the world to do with me being able to get my poems done. You know, if you were to catch me writing my poems, I probably look like some sort of indigent, insane person. It's 230 and the more, and I'm wandering around my house, chanting to myself in my underwear, and running back to my computer, and walking around my house and looking up at the sky as if it's going to bring down words, and then running back to my computer. Do you know what I was saying? And then partially sitting at my computer, and looking at my computer, like it's great, like looking at the screen, like, what are you doing? Like that actually, I would love to film that someday, and just hit fast forward. (laughing) - Time lapse, documentary, Jericho Brown's process. - With everybody, like, what do you look like while you're writing your poem? - You're hot. - You look like a hot mess. Like I always wonder, like looking back at it, particularly writing this book, 'cause this book was overwhelming, and it overcame me in ways that I still don't completely understand. I was like, what, I must have looked at a mess. (laughing) Walking around, mumbling to myself, pulling on my lips. (laughing) Hitin' the side of my head. Like, what, like, what is that to do? (laughing) Anyway. - Do you attribute the way you read poems, analyze poems to the way that preachers and pastors analyze the Bible? - Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, and it was really wonderful growing up with that. I really wish people would understand this about the church. It's very real. Like when a preacher gets up on Sunday, he literally wants to give a sermon on the comma. So, you know, it's an education in English. This is not something I make up. - Yeah, close reading. - I'm making up, close reading. - And of literal lines that are numbered for you. So over and over again, you're learning, like, oh, people like, you know, it preachers love saying stuff. Like, people like to stop there, but you gotta look at this next one. (laughing) And like, oh, I was reading 50, but let me read 50 now. (laughing) Like, I mean, it's literally the lines are numbered. Yeah, they're numbered in what? Shakespeare? So, all of that is lifted to this sort of feeling of literary realness. And if you're indoctrinated in that, you're sort of ready, I think, and prepared for literature and for poetry in particular. Yeah. - Can you then also talk about the duplex form? I think it does all the things we're talking about, the common response, right? The enchanting. Yeah, just talk about that for us. - Well, also explain what the duplex form is for people who don't know and then talk about it.
about it, then maybe read one. - Yeah, I'll talk about it, but there's an essay at the Poetry Foundation blog, Harriet, called Invention, which everyone can find, where I probably say things better. And then I talk about it also in a interview in the Bendington Review with Michael Dumannis. It's a form that I invented that is at once a sonnet, a hustle, and a booze poem. And the booze poem part is, I think, where that collar response comes in. I'm interested in the booze in particular because unlike the pantom or the villainel, that the repetition in the booze is generally made for emphasis rather than for the repurposing of a line. And one of the, I guess, goals I had while writing duplexes was figuring out how to make both happen, right? How do I make? And that's where the booze tone and the booze aesthetic comes in for me in the duplex. The second time, I have to say a line, how is it that it comes through as emphasis, but also how is it at the same time repurposed so that it introduces what will be the next line? So that's what I was thinking about in that part of the poem, as for the hustle, I'm interested in the way that the hustle is not a poem, it's not a narrative poem or a discursive poem, it's a poem made by way of accumulation and juxtaposition so that each couplet has nothing to do with each other and each line in each, in the two lines in each couplet have nothing to do and don't have to have anything to do with each other other than the fact that you put them together. And then suddenly they do have everything to do with each other. So that's part of what I was interested in in that part. And then the sign has to do with the fact that if I have 14 rhymed lines of Iambic pentameter then that duplexes all day long. There's an in rhyme, there's a, I wanted to marry East to West so they're nine to 11 syllables, which is a way of a line, which is a way of approximating. Iambic pentameter, I mean part of what, I mean at first, the first duplexes actually were, just straightforward, Iambic pentameter, obviously with variations. And then I was like, this is actually too much, sonnet. And so I went toward syllabics so that I could pair, sonnet back. 'Cause each of the forms ends up getting paired back, obviously, in order to make way for the other four, right? So they can all live together in a single house, right? The duplex, right? So that each side of that house is made whole but also is one vessel, one house. And to be quite honest, I was thinking about, I mean I think I've probably been thinking about inventing this form for the last maybe 15 years of my life. And I was working with it in my head. So I was just thinking like, oh this sounds good, it would be interesting if this happened. I wrote a poem, there's a poem in this book called, as a human being, and one of the things that happened that sort of led me to realize, oh I'm gonna have to finally deal with this. Toward the end of that poem, I say, for saking all others, no matter how sore the injury, no matter how sore the injury has left you, you sit understanding. And that sort of was like, oh that's that thing I've been thinking about for the last 15 years, do you know what I mean? I saw that happen in that moment. And it was a trigger for me to like chase it in a different way. So I finally got to it. Yeah, I was also really sick. And when I got well, I was like, I need to work on this thing. I said I was gonna do, so I don't die first. And I'm mostly writing this book, I just felt like I was gonna die quite seriously, but also in a very exhilarated way, 'cause I had so many poems at once that it felt really crazy. Like I'm a slow writer, I don't have any feeling about that. Like I'm not out here trying to have a book of years. I don't really, I don't see what that, I mean for me that doesn't do anything. I don't mind people having a book of year, I don't care if anybody else does. I've just never been like a goal of mine, you know? So I just kinda like chill. I have my poems, I'm working every day, failing, working every day, failing. You know, and then suddenly maybe I have, you know, the pages I need for a book, but in this particular case, I was writing three poems a day. Wow. Between. Thanksgiving of 2017 in Martin Luther King Day of 2018. I was writing, I was pulling over on a side of a road writing, I was leaving out of movies, going to the restroom, trying to type stuff in my iPhone. Like when I really thought I was gonna die, not because, I mean I didn't get sick until the end of December, and part of that had to do with the fact that I was really running myself down. But part of the reason why I thought I was gonna die is 'cause I had never written that much that quickly. And, you know, the thing that runs alongside growing up, religious is growing up superstitious, right? So I was like, well I know I'm supposed to be a poet. This is something I know. Like I actually don't know anything else. So I know I'm supposed to be a poet, I know that's my identity, I know that's who I am, and I know what I'm doing that I'm doing the right thing. So why is this suddenly happening to me all at once? And the only answer that seemed to make sense at that time was that guy was getting ready to take me out of here. Like I was like, it's whole forever. - I so understand that. - You know what I mean? - So I was like, texting my friends, and I was calling them in a little night 'cause I was like, "Mm, this ain't right." 'Cause they were all like, "So you know my friends would be excited to have a poem." My friend, the fiction writer, I on a math, math, this I would text, and I'd be like, "I'm texting you 'cause when I die, I need people to see it, I told you." (laughing) She was like, "Chai, you need to go die, you need to go die, you need to go die, you need to go die, you need to go die." So, but I was, you know, it was a happy time because I was getting out there writing dumb, but also a scary time. - Yeah. - A scary time for me. And so the duplexes came because more than ever, I was interested given how scary that time was. I was interested in creating a form that would really represent how I felt in the world. Like I feel like I'm a person who carries several identity, several subjectivities in a single body, you know? And I think we really haven't figured out how to deal with that in our society. Just yet, we haven't figured out how to deal with that and want another. Just yet, I think even I make the mistake of dealing with that in wrong ways when I meet people who have several identities in a single body, you know? - So it was, it's one of the things that I was trying to do with the duplex. How do I have all of these things whole? I don't feel like I'm 27% queer and 52% black and 12% Southern and like I don't, you know, 2% poet, like I feel like I am everything I am 100%. - 100%, yeah. (bell ringing) - Duplex, I begin with love hoping to in there. I don't want to leave a messy corpse. I don't want to leave a messy corpse full of medicines that turn in the sun. Some of my medicines turn in the sun. Some of us don't need hell to be good. Those who need most need hell to be good. What are the symptoms of your sickness? Here is one symptom of my sickness. Men who love me are men who miss me. Men who leave me are men who miss me in the dream where I am in Ireland. In the dream where I am in Ireland, I grow green with hope I'd like to in there. - Thank you. You're welcome. - Oh, you've changed your hair. - I just let it down. - I just look around and I think. - And your hair's coming down. - Oh. - Oh. (laughing) - You're gonna make me blush. (laughing) So I've heard in interviews talk about your devotion to the Carefully Wrath line. And I think that's the thing that many poets talk about, like the weight of the line. I'm really curious about your consideration of the weight of the rhyme. I think there's maybe an element of surprise. Like I love to hear you talk about how surprise also maybe plays a role in crafting the way, or informing the way you employ rhyme in your poem. - Wait, that's the second part again. How surprise may inform the way you employ rhyme. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the reasons that I got particularly interested in rhyme in this book is I had actually avoided. In my first book, I had really avoided rhyme and looking back at it now, it seems almost too obvious. I was fighting not to write science in that book 'cause I had been trained really hard in how to write them. And so I felt that the rebellious thing to do was to write 13. I mean, throughout that book, there are all these 13 and 15 line poems. And the reason why they're, I mean, there are all these like, - Because you're just refusing to let it be. - The first poem in the book is a rhyme and quad train.
And then, and I very distinctly remember that the next quadrion was rhyming, and I fucked it up because I was like, I cannot deal with the fact that I'm riding. Like I could not deal. I added a line. There's a line, I mean, I probably shouldn't even say this, but there's a line that I just literally added because I was like, you will not be 14 lines. That's what you want to do. I love that rebelliousness. Yeah. What were you fighting against? Like why didn't you want it to be 14 lines? I mean, I think I was fighting against the same thing I'm fighting against with all of these poems that are signed. I said, I mean, you know, this book has so many signings in it. It's embarrassing. You know what I said? Like what are you doing, girl? Get it together. You think you Shakespeare? So, I mean, so you know, I think I've taken that on in a different way. I wasn't really thinking about it as directly in my second book, probably because I had other projects in mind. Like I was trying to figure out in my second book, how to write a longer line, how to be discursive. Like how to end up home without sounding like you're in a speech derricko. And in my first book, I was very willfully trying to create the sublime moment without formal, without those, like how do I subvert form toward the sublime? You know, and in this book, I probably turned more directly to rhyme because I needed to find a new way to surprise myself into what I was saying. The wonderful thing, and I try to tell my students this all. My students have all this fear about rhyme, which is fascinating to me because you know, this is one of the things I first attracted me to poems that they rhymed. And you know, they help me remember them, right? So, one of the things that I'm interested in is that when you have to find a rhyme, and that becomes more important than what you have to say, and you have to trust your subconscious given the rhymes you find, then you're in a position where you're surprising yourself because you're saying things you did not expect to say, right? You don't want to rhyme, um, tear with fear, because that already happens in every R&B song ever written, right? So, when you, do you know what I'm saying? So, when you rhyme tear with Matador, then suddenly you're in a new place, a new land, and you have to bring to four, everything there is that you know about Matador's. Well, and it goes to the thing you're saying about the duplex, where like just now they're next to each other and whereas maybe they would have previously not had anything to do with each other, now that they're there, they have everything to do with each other. Exactly, exactly. So, I think, um, for me, that's what, that's what I'm interested in as it relates to rhyme. I have a different set of questions to ask myself when I finish a first draft, because now things have land in directions, I didn't expect them to go in. I mean, when I finish, um, what I call prewriting, I mean, what I'm interested in doing as a writer is creating a mess of text, and sometimes that mess of text includes rhymes. And then once I have that mess of text, I can, I can say to it, who is your speaker, as opposed to me coming to the page, the blank page, and saying, "Oh, this is a poem about blank." Right? I'm going to write a poem about the first time I went to school, the first time I may love, the first time I, you know, and I don't really write my poems like that, you know. I write my poems by way of sound first, and then through sound, I'm trying to figure out since, but I don't start with since, because if I were to do that, then I would, I would be starting with intention. I would be starting with an idea that I know what the truth is, but the whole purpose of me being a poet is that I'm finding the truth out. I really love the idea of asking the poem, who the speaker is, or like the draft of the poem as like a primary way of making order. I think, I feel like that's a thing that I take for granted, like who the eye is in the poem. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Like it's so easy to assume and like not even question, like to not even actually just like evaluate like in a draft, in the revision process. So it's really interesting that you approach it that way. So then does the surprise of the rhyme happen often in the like drafting of it, or do you sometimes use it in revision? Um, I think I will push toward rhyme now if I see that rhyming is happening, because I'm aware of what the forms are. Yeah. Um, and if I see myself repeating certain lines, and I put, that I know, you know, right now I'm actually working on a villainale. It's hilarious. Um, but I only, the only reason I'm working on a villainale is because I saw myself repeating two different lines when I was making the mess of text. And so that's the hint to me that I'm moving toward villainale. Do you see what I mean? Um, so I just sort of take cues given what I know about poetry. Uh, that's how I think about form and that's how I think about rhyme. Uh, sometimes the rhyme, another thing that's happening, I think in this book in the tradition, was that I had read, um, I think just before, I would say, well, I must have been, um, it was the summer of 2017. I read all of Gwyneth and Brooks again. I had all these like Gwyneth and Brooks trap books that you have to like steal from people, you know, and, um, you know, I just like the fact that she'll like, she will go off into a series of very simple rhymes, which like tear every, it like tear, every time she does it, it tears everything up, or she'll have a sonnet that is definitely a sonnet by way of rhyme, but not by way of meter, so that like, you know, in the couplet, the last line, in the last two lines of the poem, the couplet, um, the last line will be like two syllables in the line before it'll be 22 syllables. Yeah, I don't rhyme. Yeah, yeah, but they'll both have the same ear rhyme. Like, so I was sort of interested in seeing what she was doing with that, and probably being influenced by that often, um, in my writing of the poems. And, and also going toward, the other thing that I was doing in this book is going toward what I would definitely tell my students not to do, um, which has become a huge, um, which has been a huge engine for me as of late in terms of writing poems, you know, as soon as I tell my students that they can't do something in a poem, then it becomes-- Then you run into it? I go try to figure it out, and I feel like I'm figuring it out for me and for them, because I'm, um, I'll say to them, you can't, and almost as soon as I say it, I'll say, well, I don't want to tell you, you can't, anything is possible, but you might not want to try. But then I'm like, I feel sort of responsible to see, well, I wonder if you can. Wait, so what was the rule that you felt like you were breaking for this book? Well, a bunch of, you know, people don't like a bunch of simple rhymes. I mean, we're sort of told not to do that in poetry. Um, but I find that if the words are complex, right? Um, you know, rhyming certain words that you don't expect, it doesn't matter how simple they are as long as they're unexpected. You understand what I mean? So I've found that that was useful to me. Um, so things like that, also things about sentimentality and sentimental lines. Um, you know, I'm glad I'm a poet and not a football player or a basketball player, um, because I don't have to worry about, you know, retiring at 34. And so I have a long time, and I know I just need to keep everything in that, um, there are lines that I have that I don't imagine ever working, but I hold on to them anyway because in context they might work. Or if I put them next to another line that I don't have yet, because I haven't had the experience that will lead to the line. If I can put them next to that other line, they'll work. Sometimes that takes 10 years. Sometimes that takes 15 years. I mean, many of these poems have lines in them that were written as far back as 2004. You know, and I remember the year because I have a, I had a computer stolen. So I always tell people, that's that computer, that's where my Nobel is. So, so do you understand what I'm saying? Like I, um, you know, I begin with love hoping to end there is really not going to work well in a workshop. But then if you, if you follow it with, I don't want to leave a messy corpse. Then suddenly that changes the tone of that line where it might work okay in the workshop or just in your home, which is much more important than the workshop or, you know, I managed in this book to say, um, I remember crying when I wrote it. I was so excited and so happy and so sad and all the feelings you feel when you write. I remember writing, um, or coming to a place where I could use a line. And I sort of remembered I didn't have to go look it up or anything. But, um, the line I love my mother. Yeah. Who thinks they're going to get to? Never think you're going to get to say I love, I mean, it's true though. Who thinks they're going to get to say that in a poem and I felt that that was in that moment when I, before, when I got to the point where I could say it and I knew what was going to come right after it. And it was going to be sort of boxy in in between these two things and belong. I felt completely accomplished. Some people feel accomplished because they've managed to write, you know, the big, complex, epic poem. But there also is an accomplishment in being able to say the playing spoken thing or the supposedly sentimental thing. And so those were the kinds of, there were risks of formal concern, but there were also risk of, um, I guess what we would call content concern as it relates to that which is supposedly sentimental. So. Stake. I am a day in most of America. Someone feels lost in the forest of we so he can't imagine a story.
single tree, he can't bear it across a crucifixion, such a Christian, all that would headed his way in the fact of a man or a woman who might as well be a secret, so serious his need to see inside, to cut down, to tell how old will I get to be in a nation that believes we can grow out of a grave, can reach climb high as the first state bank. Take a bullet, break through concrete, the sidewalk, the street someone crosses when he sees wilderness where he wanted his city, his cross tie, his telephone pole, timber, timber. It's an awful sound and people pay to hear it, people say bad things about me, though they don't know my name. I have a name, a stake, I settle, dig, die, go underground, tunnel, the ocean floor, route, shoot up like a thought someone planted, someone planted an idea of me, a lie, a lawn jockey, the myth of a wooded hamlet in America, a thicket, hail, a patch of sunlit grass where any one of us bursts into one someone as whole, as we. I'm so fascinated by how you use the "we" throughout this whole book, but I think especially following this poem, just in thinking about speaking as a collective and foreign as different groupings of people and I would just love to hear your thoughts on that word, the word "we" I know lots of poets have feelings about it and like ethical thoughts about it, political thoughts about it and so whatever direction you might want to take that, I'd just love to hear you unpack. Yeah, well, you know when you're writing, you're thinking about, if you're thinking about anything, you're thinking about the most emotional, powerful, how will I say this actually? How do I get at an emotion in the most powerful way? And I find that the word "we" because it's loaded with a lot of that trouble that you speak of has sort of an automatic feeling attached to it and as soon as people hear it, they really do want to know whether or not you're talking about them when you say "we". And so I was sort of interested in doing that over and over again because I find that when people say "we" I don't always feel that way and sometimes I do feel that way and then I'm sort of surprised by who's saying it, like why are you saying it? Yeah. I didn't think you were my weeb, but maybe you are because you said this way. And now I'm asking myself, are you okay actually? Because you weren't yesterday. Those kinds of things are interesting to me and I'm interested in the complexity of a community or of a people and how for some people, when I say "a people" they don't want to include everybody, you know who might be a part of that, people like everybody who is my people except these six folks. So that's part of why that's part of why the weeb I think is happening. Another example of it I think happens in the poem after every or young where I say sometimes you as weeb you know what I'm saying, which would suggest that sometimes you as not, sometimes you as not weeb. So yeah I'm sort of going back and forth. Yeah and you're from that. And using it where it works. And also trusting intuition where it does and does not work. Yeah, I was thinking about your poem Riddle too, seems very much interested in that and the ending where it's wait, wait, what are we, what on earth are we, what in leaving the audience with that question and the question within the use of the word weeb because I think of those as maybe two ways that you're immediately getting the audience engaged. You can ask them a question or you can, yeah, imply something that they're, that they're immediately going to want to wonder if that's true or not. Yeah, I mean the attraction I think to writing, for me writing Riddle is just that you sort of know that you don't what you're supposed to do as a poet to get it right and yet you don't know what's going to happen to the reader when they encounter it. You know there are some poems where it sort of, you can sort of figure, you can imagine what might happen to the reader when they encounter it but it's sort of weird and odd I think to write a poem like Riddle because you're like, I don't know what people are going to do with that or who they're going to think the weeb is or how they're going to read that title right? And what does that mean this has to be other than me because it says Riddle at the top or when I see read we, does it, do you understand? But I like knowing that all of those things are possibilities. I remember after Citizen came out and one of the complaints that many of the black men on Facebook had was that they felt like Claudia Rankin was talking to white people and I was like, oh yeah, you don't want to talk to them. Like what? What'll happen if you talk to white people? It's like, Negro, you go to work all the time talking to white people. Everyday. I was just, many of the poems in the book were sort of taking that on I think. Like what, like am I not supposed to talk to white people? And you know, I think in large part I thought I wasn't right? Like many of my poems from my first two books I really think I was much more directly speaking if I was thinking of an audience at all which maybe I'm not but if I was maybe they were all black folk and no everybody else was welcome to come watch us talk. And in this book I was like, what will happen if I say some things much more directly about whiteness and much more directly to white folks? So I'm curious like I think over many times over the course of our conversation we've talked about sort of like troubling whether it's the we or sort of like the multiple identities housed in the eye or even I think in our like the sonnet or monuments right? I'm curious like in your interrogation in your sort of asking us to trouble it and maybe it's even in that last question what right? Like do you think on the other side of that interrogation is like a clean answer or are we supposed to just sort of like sit in the riddle or is like the interrogation the work? You know I'm a literalist because I'm a poet right? So I think somebody's I think somebody's never heard of mother whaling so that's what I think. I mean you know what I mean anyway you look at it that's part of the riddle. Somebody's never heard of mother whaling. I mean you know and then like y'all you know people can run around here and pretend that whaling is you know what's that word relative? Yeah but whaling a relative a whale is a whale. It is a response to a certain kind of a treatment or a certain kind of an experience you know? So I'm that's all I gotta say about that. It's almost like I heard that. It's almost like what is a mother whaling? So a lot of your poems in this edition and also in other books to blur the line between desire, violence and consent and in this these poems in this book the speaker is often asked violent as their abusers and attackers and so I'm wondering when thinking about poems like Night Shift and poems of my fury like how does violence and your thoughts out of violence tend to blur the line between violence and desire like yeah. Yeah I'm glad you asked me about this Luther. People don't ask me about this either. There are all these things like going on in this book so I've talked about this book a lot and y'all are the first people that are like oh but uh girl that's like the best book you we've ever gotten. So I guess I have to talk about this which every time I do have to talk about it I ain't ready. So I'm trying to figure out the ways I mean I think in this book I am trying to figure out the ways in which I have indeed been violent and not knowing that and how much of that had to do how much of my not knowing that had to do with violence that were enacted upon me. What I'm so thankful for from your generation in particular is language that I did not have when I was your age so you know I didn't I didn't know terms like sexual coercion for instance I didn't know terms like micro aggression and now that I have those terms things that felt crazy to me make a lot more sense you know and language changes your ability to deal with the world.
and you know with the world and you know better that you've been taken advantage of because you can name it. So me understanding that about myself and learning that over time is something that I've been dealing with. In many ways in all three books, you know, things are hinted at in the first and the second book but I had to be much more because this is a more direct book. In all of its poems I had to be more direct about it, about those occurrences in my own life in these poems. Which wasn't so easy for me. I gave a reading before the book came out which was really just the poems that have to do with sexual violence. And it was the hardest reading I ever gave in my whole life. So I mean I think those things are happening because that's the conversation I would like for people and men in particular to begin to have because there's no, I mean there's really no way to have conversations about consent with folk considering their sexual past. Like you can sort of think about like having conversations about consent with 10 year olds but it's hard to have conversations about consent with 30 year olds who do not have to have sex with 37 people. And it's particularly hard when even women and other queer folks are divided about these things. And you know I didn't know there were the divisions that there are. I sort of found this out in a conference where it was like this woman who was on faculty at this workshop was like this is ridiculous. This whole consent thing is ridiculous and I was like oh girl is everything is ridiculous. Oh my god is ridiculous. I said I say it's a perred. Oh. And when you're confronted with that you realize like oh that's really where we are. Right? Like I'm inside magic. Like I'm at a poetry writing conference and even there there's the question. If I have this feeling that if I can get at those things on the page which becomes a public space whether or not I'm aware of it while I'm writing the poem then it becomes a part of that whole conversation. That these are the things you're capable of. The thing that breaks my mind. I didn't watch it. I'm not going to because I just I can't watch anything anymore. I'm too emotional a person as y'all probably can tell like every time I talk I'm like 17 seconds from crying. And I was not this way. But like the last few years in my life I'm just like oh how old are you? Weeping in the mirror. What time did it get out of work? You know that? Like everything is something to cry about. But I heard my friend Francine, the poet, Francine J Harris was watching the Michael Jackson's victims and she would call me to report on them because she was like you ain't going to watch it. That was like you know I can't watch it. And she was like you know one of those boys didn't realize that Michael Jackson had molested him until he had children. And what happened is he was one day playing with his kids and he looked at them. I have a poem that's sort of in a way about this that came out since the book came out. It's called um who knows it's called Fairgrounds. And it's an out magazine. But he looked and I because when she told me this I had to get off the far away her and like freak out because this is the experience of my life. You know like if you see children and you realize what they are you become suddenly aware like wait. You can see yourself as that. Like that's what I was that's what I looked like. That's how tall I was. That's how big I was. That's what I sounded like. That's where I had a hard time communicating. That's when this thing happened to me. And that motherfucker was 44 fucking years old. So he knew that I looked like that. When you're a kid you don't you don't know what you look like. True. You don't know. And furthermore I'm looking to adults to tell you what's right and wrong. Exactly. Exactly. So that particular that feeling is what I'm after. I'm after getting at what I think is a kind of indoctrination into rate culture. And for me to better understand the ways in which I'm indoctrinated and questioned that as I moved throughout the world every day. And I guess I you know it's hard talking about what I want other folks to do though. But I imagine that if I keep doing that and if I keep doing it publicly maybe somebody else is doing it too. But I can't go that far because you know it's not a good idea to think about that when you're a poet. Because you can't quantify what you do. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like you can't you're not a firefighter. So you're not going to be able to say how many lives you saved today. Yep. So it's not a good idea for you to imagine saving anybody's life but your own. Because you don't have any if you are here looking for some quantifiable like all these people don't rape nobody no more. Then you're not going to get that. You're just not. And so if you know if you're not going to get that you still need a reason to go right again the next day. So that's so that's that must not be why we're writers. Yeah. I'm saying. Let me honest about the power poems have. Yeah. The other thing is this is the thing I do believe poems have that power. Right. I do believe that poems on an individual basis and rape racism and all other kinds of evils. I really do in individual people. I really do believe that. But I don't think I ever get any evidence of that. You can't measure that. Right. True. Yeah. And whether or not I got evidence of it I would still have to write my poems. So that must not be why I write. I think the same thing about recognition, commendation, awards and prizes. It's like if I don't get a review in the New York Times or if I don't want to pull it surprise I guess that's it. No. I'm going to write my poems. I mean if you win all the awards you still going to write your poems. You still got to deal with the fact that like your poems are boo if they boo. Like you still got to open your computer and look at this blank ass screen and be like, well let me put something on here. You don't want all the awards. What you going to do now? You still got to write. You got to keep out of it. Yeah. And even if you win no award you're going to stop writing. So it's not about that. Yeah. If so, the more you write, yeah. Yeah. It's not about that. And so it can't be about something that must mean that what I do isn't about anything outside of me, which I think is really hard to say and understand when you are a black real writer because there's so much expectation as it relates to representation. And there's so much you've needed as it relates to representation. I mean there's no way that you read poets like Gwyneth and Brooks and and Amiri Baraka and Sonja Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni and Lucille Clifton and do you know what I mean? Like you don't really read those poets thinking that they don't somehow represent or stand for you or some aspect of you. Like you don't love Essex Himfield. Like Essex Himfield is love. Beloved generation after generation of people who never knew him. Love him in a way because they believe he represents them. But if my poems are going to be any good, I can't think about that. So that's I think usually paradoxical and weird. Nice shift. When I am touched, brushed and measured, I think of myself as a painting. The artist works no matter the lack of sleep. I am made beautiful. I never eat. I once bothered with a man who called me a snack. Midnight snack to be exact. I'd obliged because he hurt me with a violence I mistook for desire. I'd get left hanging in one room of his dim house while he swept our folded laundry. When you've been worked on for so long, you never know. You're done. Paint dries. The night is many colors. Black and blue are only two. The man who tinted me best kept me looking a little like a chore. How do you say prepared in French? How do you draw a man on the night shift? Security at the museum for the blind. He eats to stay awake. He's so full he never has to eat again. number one goes.
(upbeat music) Thank you to Jericho for hanging out, for sharing our affinity for desire, doubling, and daffodils, and for getting me back into burpees, at least just for like a hot minute. - Hot. - Very hot. Thank you to the favorite blue for our awesome theme music. I know you forgot for a minute, but Betty and Spaghetti still slaps. - Oh my God, listen all the way through to the end. - Always. Thank you to Poke, Rockfish with sauce. - What could be better than that? - Thank you to you for listening, and for sticking out. You probably have listened to the whole first season, if you haven't, go back and listen to it. It's so great. Thank you for continuing to listen to us. If you haven't already, take a quick moment to rate us five stars. Hit us with all five of them. Write a sweet little review. Tell us how much you love our voices and how smart and cute we are. And it helps other people looking for poetry podcasts find us, and that part is pretty dope. And in the meantime, follow us on Twitter at PoetsalonPod. Send us your questions, your desires, your compliments. Again, just tell us that we're cute. That's really all I want. - Talk to Jean's cute. - I desperately need it. Our email is the
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