 Thank you for joining us for our program at Mechanics Institute online for Divine Madness a novel by Lynn Kaufman. Lynn will be in conversation with poets with poets Allison Lutterman and David Watts. I'm Laura Shepherd, director of events at the Mechanics Institute. Tonight we are proud to co-sponsor our program with the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning. For those of you who are new to the Mechanics Institute we were founded in 1854, and we are one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. Here are General Interest Library on the second and third floor, an international chess club renowned to all, and our ongoing literary programs and author events, and the Friday night cinema with film series. You can see us online at milibrary.org, and also visit the website and also come down for a tour of our incredibly beautiful of Beaux Arts building. There are both virtual tours and live tours on Wednesday, and you can find that information on our website. The book will be followed by Q&A with you the audience, and we'd like to mention that books will be on sale and if you'd like to purchase a book, we'll put Lynn Kaufman's email in the chat and you can be in touch with her directly. So I'd like to introduce our program. Divine Madness. This is Robert Lowell, the sixth poet laureate of the United States, and Lizzie is Elizabeth Hardwick, a writer and critic whose true life partnership with Lowell was marked by his mental illness and desertion. Yet award winning playwright Lynn Kaufman's spare poetic novel is far deeper, much deeper than a harrowing account of a famously unhappy marriage. The fictional manuscript touches on Lizzie's friendships with Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt, her memoirs of the civil rights movement, and her southern childhood and more. In this novel Kaufman has composed an intriguing elegy combining fiction, reality, and writerly personas. And now a little bit about our speakers. Lynn Kaufman is the author of 20 full length prize winning plays produced nationally at such venues as the Magic Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Theatre Works Silicon Valley, The Fountain Theater in Los Angeles and the Abbington Theater in New York City. Most recently, she has three plays produced at the, at the Marsh Theater, including as a test two minds, and who killed Sylvia Plath. Her solo play who killed Sylvia Plath starring Laurie Halt had a six week week run at both the Marsh in San Francisco and also the Marsh in Berkeley, and it's a wonderful show. It also won first place in best show of the Marsh's international solo play festival. She also teaches at the from Institute, and also at Ali San Francisco stage. Alison Lutterman's four books of poetry are the largest possible life. See how we almost fly. The desire zoo, and in the time of great fires, her poems and stories have appeared in the New York Times Sunday magazine, the sun, rattle, Nimrod salon, prairie schooner, the Brooklyn review, the Atlanta review, her two highway and also in numerous journals and anthologies. She has written an ebook of personal essays, half a dozen plays lyrics for a song cycle, we are not afraid of the dark, and is currently working on two different musical theater projects. And David Watts is literary credits include seven books of poetry, three collections of short stories, two mystery novels, eight Western novels, a Christmas memoir and some essays on humanism in medicine. He is a musician, a classically trained musician, and the past national radio TV personality is currently teaching the allure of haiku at the from Institute, where he has taught poetry for over 35 years. So please welcome our guests are our guests of many letters and genres. Welcome to Lynn, David and Alison. It's a pleasure to have you with us tonight. Thank you. Yes, indeed. Thank you and thanks for putting on this event, which looks to be very interesting. So then I think you and I are to gauge in a little bit of conversation. And obviously it's over this wonderful book that you have written. I must say I didn't know what to expect when reading the book. I was delighted immediately by the style of your writing the Christmas as you approached your topic. The literary references that you gave along the way. It's a very elegant, interesting, quirky Lee written diary ask book that I must say I enjoyed greatly. And my first question to you is, what is it that attracted you to this particular subject to the subject. I wrote a play about Sylvia Plath, which Laura mentioned and did a lot of why was I drawn to Sylvia Plath because incredibly iconic, you know, the troubled writer who and she took her own life at the age of 30. And I was intrigued by, I guess by her life, and by the fact that when she was in crisis when her husband left her, and there's two babies to take care of, that's when she wrote her best poetry. And so, you know, in extremis I was drawn to Sylvia, investigated all that we did it as a play. And then as I was researching, I read that Sylvia Plath had taken a poetry class with Robert Lowell. And at the same time and sextum was taking it. And the three of them, Robert Lowell, Sylvia and and shared this kind of manic depressive bipolar illness and used it to inform their poetry. And so, you know, way leads to way, I started reading about Robert Lowell. And through reading about him, I discovered Elizabeth Hardwick, she's not nearly as well known as Lowell. I got deeply interested in her and I wrote a short play called Divine Madness about Lowell and Hardwick. And we did that on Zoom, 35 minutes, and I wasn't ready to leave particularly Elizabeth Hardwick. So, I, I wrote this novel I wanted her she was so discreet. Lowell was all over the place telling, you know, revealing everything about his marriage and leaving his wife or the other woman in the dolphin. Elizabeth kept her own piece about it. And I wanted wanted to hear what Elizabeth really felt during this period of time and I wanted to know her as a writer she's an exquisite writer. And so that's, and then the only other thing I was going to add to that is this wonderful quote from Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream. It's the lunatic, the lover, and the poet are all of imagination are our imagination all compact, the lunatic, the lover, and the poet. This, the lover certainly was Elizabeth she loved him from the time she met him through through his early death, never forgot him. So and the lunatic and the poet. Yeah, you could say in a sense that was Robert Lowell. Yeah, it looks like all three of those are present and Robert Lowell. And it's interesting that all three of those that you mentioned that were in this tight group of very highly productive poets and writers at that time, had a little bit of something going on in their cerebral space. That wasn't quite what the rest of their society would expect is normal. And it brought it brings up I think you touched on this subject somewhere along the way is contentment, the end of the enemy of the poet. Does one have to be in an uncontented state and order to reach into the depths of the consciousness and come up with creativity what do you think. Well, if I were really content I wouldn't write. I don't think I would. Because it calls up so much stuff. You know, so I think a sense of content and I would, I would think they would not be as obsessed with having to express what's going on inside. And you and Allison of course you're incredibly prolific and poets I don't write poetry, but I honestly, there's no other way to know how I really feel about something. I'm using both, you know, the analytic and the intuitive and and what's going on around me. Except, you know, for writing it seemed to me if I were content. I would just want to watch a series on TV, you know which I'm watching anyway, you know during during coven. Yeah, and be out in nature I mean it. It's a wonderful thing to write but it's also torturous. So, no I think, well the big issue is is, and we'll come to that maybe when in the discussion afterwards about the really excessive swings that certain poets have. And I've only read about this but I know a little. I felt a little bit of it when suddenly you're in an altered state. And that can be reached, I guess, mentally or by anguish you know it can be reached by drugs by alcohol so many writers have used those those substances to sort of get out of the ordinary or as you just called it the content. You know, but you know it's interesting because, and I did a little study of this. If you look at the personalities of different writers, you will find that both playwrights and poets end up with the personality most likely to have depression and anxiety. Not to say that all of us do, but that's an interesting observation and it makes me think about. A little study of brain functions on my own self in the process of writing trying to access the unconscious where I believe a lot of the creativity comes. You have to shut down your daytime mode of thinking in order to get into the unconscious mode. And that requires shaking off that sort of linear mathematical approach of daytime living where we go from one thing to another we have a schedule we balance our checkbook all that sort of thing by a portion of the brain that is has a sort of a sergeant major kind of attitude toward getting things done, but it's humorless and it's not creative. And so, to get creative one has to shut down that brain and open up the other side, which gets into what's called the default network more deeply connected with the deeper levels of consciousness. And I think that they who have so called disorders psychiatric disorders, move in and out of those zones with deafness from time to time. Absolutely. It's interesting that you put playwrights and bullets together. Now I'm basically a playwright have done much more work in the theater than than I have. I did three novels before which were pretty traditional novels that were published that was about in 2004 2005 I stopped writing novels, and it was only the fact that this play so drew me, and that the form of the unconventional, you know it's not a traditional novel at all. And when you mentioned, you know it's fragments fragments moments in, in their lives and their shared lives. And I'm wondering if plays to are not, they're not linear narratives, you know, like many, there are novels that are more experimental and not linear move dream like you know but they're not many. Most of them are are narrative and and sort of move forward in a logical time, logical traditional thought. So it's interesting David because I hadn't heard the two together I knew it about poets. But I didn't know. I wish I knew that before maybe I would have just written the whole. So I noticed that your style of writing was very interesting. You, you mentioned the word fragments a minute ago. You have chapters that are three lines long. And then you have chapters that run for two or three pages. So it has a very spontaneous feel to it, a very almost associative thinking process that moves through from vignette to vignette to vignette. And I finally caught on to the fact that you were sort of doing this like a diary. But I think it also brings up that issue of form and content, right. I always say in poetry that the form has to match the content. So if the content indicates a certain style of writing. It changes your way in which you approach it, not just in terms of the way you address the topic, but the form that you put it on the page. Yes, do you think that's right. I do and I attribute. I mean that's how I wrote it mostly and I attribute the layout to my publisher who is kind of extraordinary. She runs the press called tailwinds press. She's also a Wall Street Yale educated lawyer. She works out of both, you know, both sides of her brain. And she laid out the text and in fact there's one moment where I did not do this but it works beautifully. Elizabeth in the novel is haranguing very angry cow at Robert Lowell for using her letters or personal English letters during the divorce that he just lifted them paraphrase them put them in this book of poetry called the dolphin and want to pull this for it and you know and then so he's having this dialogue with her and he says, you know, if I had asked you you should have asked me she said you should have asked me before you use the, and he said well if I had asked you would you have said yes. And then surround my my publisher made a whole new chapter that just says Lizzie, and it says of course not. This is, you know, it almost has this sense of a play. And I guess, yeah, yeah, that that I hadn't thought of it as poetry but you know, but the connection between the way a poem sits on the page. Yeah, it does feel like poetry actually it. I wanted to also to talk about the relationship between these two. It's a fascinating relationship. Cal did everything wrong. You know, he betrayed her he had fairs he ran off he went came back. He got crazy. He became violent. He opted he co opted her letters and turned them into a bullet surprise winning collection. He stuck with him. And then you figure what in heaven's name, allowed her to put up with that kind of behavior she got to where she could actually notice the beginnings of his falling apart right he will become a little more animated. He become a little bit more the way in which he spoke, his pace picked up and pretty soon he was having to get electric shock therapy again. Time and time again, she was there time and time again she came back to him. And at the end you have her say, he was the best thing that happened in my life. Yeah, how is that possible. How is it that was the question. I went into writing that was what motivated the book. You asked what began it what began it was the research on the poetry cycle with Sylvia Platham. But what pursued me through it is because particularly today in the need to time and feminism. I have to think of her time to when they were together and they met in the 50s, and the 50s was still fairly conventional and he died. He died in late 70s. Think for Elizabeth. And it was never all the time, but what she says, his is still the most interesting mind. Yeah, of anyone I've ever met. She saw him as a genius. And I respected that. And, you know, so just the other day, someone said, I have a long marriage, gone on one marriage for a very long time still going. And somebody said, well, how did you, you know, how do you stay married, you know, and I just, it's the family you don't leave. You know, it's as simple as that. That's how to how to avoid divorce. You don't leave. You don't leave. You just don't leave and she did she finally gave him the divorce she'd gone through you're right. His craziness with other women but it was always, he would come back. And it was always in the middle of this mania. Not only would he come back. She entertained Caroline, his next wife. And when she got her in and around the time of the funeral, Caroline actually stayed in the house with her. Absolutely. Love, hate, hot, cold, black, white kind of thing. And you mentioned sometime the weave in the war. It comes together the opposites that make things work. And she mentions love in connection to Lowell, but I don't think that's the whole thing right. I think the genius, like you have said, she was fascinated by him she only thought of who aren't and low as the two geniuses. Incredibly original thinkers, because Elizabeth was not. She wrote the one book sleepless nights which was essays about her own life, and she wrote brilliant critical assets, you know, and but that comes from a different part of the brain. You know, then low and yeah it was. And everything I've read about him is when he came into a room, there was no one else. He was truly physically, emotionally, mentally, kind of larger than life. And that is the puzzle of this why she stay with them. And that is raised in the book, you know, everybody gossiped why is she, you know, why is she with him he's humiliating her. And why would she can consider taking him back. I think, see if I got this right is it Yates who talked about the crooked corkscrew of the heart. Yeah, I think that's the answer. It's, it's, yes, of course, she just, there would be no other man for her there really wasn't before. And there wasn't she lived decades after he did. Well, you know, it's, it's been said of poetry that it is not the job of the poet to answer the questions but to ask the right questions, not necessarily to provide the answers but ask the right questions and Robert Frost said, poetry, we don't look to poetry for answers we look to it for a way through. I mean, you're writing is very poetic. It touches very deeply on poetic technique and poetic observation is hardly a sentence that is not interesting in some way. Thank you. And so I think that maybe the same thing applies maybe you raised the right question. I think I hope so this of all my work, I've never believed in anything being channeled. You know, it's too hard to write. I, you know, it's not a channel, but I heard, I really heard her voice. I heard Elizabeth voice and I so admire. You know, I think it was Susan Sontak who said that a hardwick writes the most beautiful sentences in the English language she was so, you know, she was so articulate and so clear about parsing. And I think what was going on I mean this great sentence about her essays is that she feels that it's not, you don't write a criticism or review, basically, to say if something's good or bad, but to engage, you know that the mind of the reviewer is engaged with the mind of the, the writer, the creator. You know, that's what she did. And so yeah, I mean I have no desire I have no expectation of writing another novel, too many words. Going back. Going back to. It's come to say your message, say your message and go home right. Yes. Yes. I don't know that note. I know we should open it up and bring in Allison at this point for a little more discussion. Allison. Ready to go. Can't hear you. There. Yes, I'm ready. Thank you. It's fascinating to listen to you guys talking about this. I've also had a lot of questions and woman to woman I guess I wondered, you know, did you try to put yourself in her place. Did you imagine what you would have done. Had you been in her shoes whether you would have stayed or not was that something that you wrestled with a little bit as you were writing. Well I knew what she did. I knew that, you know, but that's why I wrote, I wrote the novel as a diary, a fictional diary. Maybe I'll just read the very first paragraph of it which sets answers they think the question you're asking Allison. This is Palestine, Maine, which is the little town in Maine where they had a house and 1977. And this is Elizabeth. It's all in the first person. This is the first page of my manuscript, and I'm not certain whether to call the narrator, I or she either way, it's me. I am writing this during the two weeks that Cal will be away. Visiting Caroline that's the new wife and her daughters in Ireland. Cal says he will return to New York on September 15, and wants to move back in with me seven years has passed since they got the doors. He wants to move back in with me into our old apartment on 67th Street, across from Central Park it's where we live for most of the 21 years of our marriage until he left me for Caroline. And then she says I've already mentioned Cal three times in this short paragraph, and Caroline twice, and not yet named myself. It's a familiar pattern. I prefer writing about other people. I've never kept a diary. I write for publication. However, in these pages which I don't plan to show to anyone I intend to overcome my reticence and reveal the details of my personal life without trying to make myself look good without regard for writing correctly or well I gained clarity through the process of writing I need that clarity now. And so that was, you know, I just put myself in that, like, I don't know what to do, should I take this man back. Right. And everybody says no. Right, right. You know, and so she's writing her way through to figure out what she should do. I was fascinated by her character as I read your book, and she didn't come across to me as being over. I mean she loved him deeply but she was also pragmatic I mean she was a woman who managed her own affairs who published to, you know she was a strong independent smart feisty woman she was not a pushover in your rendering of her at all. And yeah there's something very grounded about her that I liked a lot. She, and she wasn't a drama queen. You know she wasn't self pitying or, you know, it was a dramatic situation, but she was not dramatizing herself in it or having breakdowns or. I mean that was all he was the one who had the breakdowns and she was the one who kind of put things together and kept things going. And not only that she took care of all the practical affairs. I mean she ran the household he was very happy that they had a baby, but he didn't do much about it. Right. He would occasionally take Harriet to the zoo, or you know, on a boat ride but the fun time first, the, all that, you know, feeding, you know, all the care. So I think the only moment, you know that I really saw that pain is with the dolphin, you know, and you know where she says I've never been, never been so hurt. Yeah, life. And even after that, she somehow found it in her heart to forgive him and these days I think somebody would have, you know, she would have sued I mean I think at a 2020 version of her would have taken him to court over that but she did not. I don't sure that never even occurred to her at all. Well, what's interesting is, you know, I did it as a short play at 35 minute play with two brilliant actors, and do it out, make me know who plays. We just did it. Sunday, you know, the magic theater, who plays Elizabeth just had the same questions from at the beginning and as she works for the script and read the novel. And I love it because it isn't, it isn't of this time. Right. Very much not. Yes. I think that it isn't that kind of thing where you betrayed me, you humiliated me, you know, whatever, that's it. It's over. The sense of sort of, I don't know what it is Lord Jess forgiveness awareness that some things transcend that. And you know the other key really element I think made a real difference was the knowledge that he was had hard problems that he had gone through that seven years of separation were very tough on low. He was in a chaotic environment married to a woman who was as Elizabeth says is crazy as he was. So that rock, you know that stability of taking care of him. She said it was so touching and one of her letters to Mary McCarthy she said, you know I think Cal is closer. It looks like we lost. Yeah, oh there you go, Lynn we lost you for a second and I didn't hear the last thing you said. And you're muted now. Gotta unmute. Can you unmute. I had missed, I missed the last thing you said, oh, where did you go. She make she may come. Maybe she'll back out and come back. I'll keep a watch on. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I was. I was so interested in that sentence. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I was going to ask Lynn, whether that sentence came from a letter that she sent to somebody or you know whether she lifted that out of something that Elizabeth hardwick actually wrote or not, but she's not here so I can ask her that. You know whether she projected or imagined that. It's amazing that she stayed or came back or received him again and again. And then, and love yes I guess that must be a big part of it but there was the intellect aspect that was the, the conviviality of the intellectually elite that he was a big part of. The magical interactions that would happen in salons or in parties or people talking. And his, his furious creativity, where he would do these manic states and write very quickly and so hard on the page that it would tear the page part as a part of his writing and revise maybe 10 or 15 times even in the first setting to do that. And so high energy, even though it is, even though it is pathologic, as we think of it in terms of normal psychology was something magical was able to put forward all these exceptional pieces of literature. Yeah, that's a rapid period of time. What are you familiar with Lowell's writing I ordered the dolphin and started to read it in preparation for doing this panel. And I, of course I had read skunk hour and some of his much anthologized poems, but I hadn't really haven't really done a deep dive into lowl. And I confess that reading the dolphin didn't grab me. It didn't. You know, it may be. I had a similar feeling about lowl I had, I had visited lowl. When I first came to poetry, which was, you know, 30 years ago or so 40 years ago. And I thought, well, why is he the person that Sexton and Plath look up to. Right. Sexton and Plath were superior in their poetic innovations and confessional aspects than lowl was, but I returned to him just now because of this connection we have. Yeah, about him with Lynn. And I, I decided that I, of his works, I liked this one, which is the for the Union dead. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. It's a much later poem and a poem group. And in this book he, he takes on the more personal in the previous ones it's so very formal. In a literary way, he makes references to previous literary geniuses and so forth. And it does have that sort of formality feeling that it's hard to bond with and in an emotional sense. And yet this one I find is bondable, at least for me. And maybe that would be if you looked at that one, you would have a somewhat different view. I'm still working my way through the dolphin I haven't, you know, totally given up on it but it didn't, you know, grab me by the collar and make me stay up late reading it or anything. It's interesting to read it now having read Lynn's book and understanding the circumstances in which it was written. And the thing about the differences in time. I mean he could have been accused of plagiarism in that sense. Right. Because he basically lifted the letters and put them in there but he them for his best advantage. He would change things to make himself look a little better and her not so good, which was horrible. And then when she confronted him he said well, you wouldn't have given me permission so I used them anyway. That's the same excuse if I ever heard one. And you know, Ted Hughes did not quite the same thing but when he, he rearranged the poems in Ariel before they were published, and created, you know that structure of the arc of that book. And a lot of feminist scholars have critiqued him for it because he gave the book a different any and the portrait of Sylvia which of course was all that was going to be left of her you know that book is how people know her. And, and he shaped it, and he shaped it in a way to emphasize her insanity and not other aspects of her. You know it's interesting to me how people take limit. How take issue with and permit themselves to make changes and other people's work. And it goes all the way back to Emily Dickinson right right with her long dashes and the editors came along and so now we don't need these. Yeah, we get rid of these dashes when they were integral to right feeling tone and the rhythm of the poem. You had to stop at a long dash. It's almost like having a spawn D right accent accent. It makes you stop. And when you stop then the mind picks up on what you've just heard and looks at it again into somewhat different light. And by the time you connect again to the linear linear aspect of the work. You have a fresher view of what you've just come from. We've been talking back we've been talking to you. Thank you I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened technology. So what did I miss. Yeah, I had a question about the line that line that you referenced earlier when you were talking with David, he was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I wondered if you took that from a letter of hers did she write that did she did Elizabeth Hardwick write that in a letter or a diary or something. She did. She did. Who did she read it to a friend. I think maybe to marry McCarthy, probably to marry McCarthy. And you know it's interesting that you mentioned that because again, you know we had Sunday night we did the reading of the play. And at the very end, and this was a reading in other words of the actors that were still on the script they had memorized the line, still playing with a little bit. Her last speech is that Elizabeth has in the play is, you know, what is it. So, I guess I've been warned people asking what I have married him again. Yes, I would. The breakdowns were not everything. Her last line that I had originally was he was the best thing that ever happened to me. And somehow, when we were rehearsing it right before the performance, it felt right to give that line to low. It was is, you know, and so she says, but the breakdowns were not, were not everything. And his line is to her directly is, he's dead, but she's hearing it in her head. You were the best thing that ever happened to me. That gives me goosebumps and chills. That's what she longed to hear. Well, you know, it's like rewriting, you know, you poets or anything. And if as a playwright, you have this wonderful flesh and blood brilliant collaborators if they're really lucky and I haven't been with this piece. You, it's, it's like, it's inevitable. This is what it has to suddenly clicks, you know, into place and go, yeah, of course. This is what she has been longing for and hoping that that, that that is true. I might go, I'm losing it again. I don't understand what's going on. But as far as I'm concerned, I can still hear you and you, you're not freezing right now for me before you froze up. There was one thing you just mentioned that made me think of the fact that people have talked about writing as a universally collaborative occupation. In that sense that even if you're writing by yourself you're accessing other writing and other experience. The performance in the play. I mean, once the playwright turns it over to the performers, right, the playwright loses control. And what happens is a director or the actors or things like that and then modify. I mean, in storytelling, if you look at storytelling down through the eons, every time it gets told it gets changed a little bit. Sometimes a little deeper or a little more appropriate for the time or the language is a little more current interpretations of sacred literature happen the same way, oftentimes. And so maybe we don't ever write in isolation. The point is so well taken. And the fact that I think one of the things that drew me so much to Lowell and Hardaway was the times they were writing when writing was everything. You know, there's so much product, you know, and because of technology and everything we just bombarded. And but at that time the written word, you know, and what was was everything. And so many, I have many quotes from other writers and divide madness, because that's how those people thought. You know, that was part of their everyday thought, the stuff they had read the fact what their peers were writing. And, and yeah, that sense of connection of universality. I mean, we used to be able to talk with people about a book, right. A new book would come out a new novel and new volume of poetry and we'd all read it. And these, these folks who were in New York at that time, and, and, and Yaddo, you know this hot bed of in many ways. Double meaning. writers. Yeah, yeah. There's a line about that. That has to do with. What is it that you said the libidness of opening and closing of doors or something like that. Yeah. Art is colonies and that was, it was like academic conferences right out of town. Isn't that the same, that same kind of vibe. Well, maybe if any, do you think we David, we should open it to any questions if anybody. Yeah. Yes, let's open for questions and I'll start off with one and also, I don't know if you did a reading yet. A little, a little bit. Okay, but you could do a little more reading but my question is also I'd like to hear about her relationship with a Hannah aren't. There's some amazing incredible people in her circles. So I'd like to know more about that relationship. Oh, interestingly, I had written the play number of years ago that I got produced. And it was about Hannah aren't in her relationship with Martin. And for those just to review a little bit Hannah aren't was gone now is a brilliant Jewish writer, probably best known for her work on the Eichmann trial. It's like men and Jerusalem, and her big quote that is quoted all the time is the banality evil. So when she was talking about Eichmann, you don't make him a monster, don't make him one of a kind. He wasn't, you know, it was hurting. He was a bureaucrat, and doing what, you know, he was asked to do and just sort of separated his emotion this, you know, from that. And the parallel is, is Elizabeth's new Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy and Hannah aren't were very, very close friends. And, and, you know, sort of Elizabeth didn't quite envy them but she really she respected that friendship, you know, of the two of them. And she, she felt Mary McCarthy was a great, you know, very good writer or good novelist, but Hannah aren't was a genius, Hannah aren't was the original thinker. And one of the things in the play that is that I came across is she comes into the house Mary McCarthy's house and Hannah aren't is lying on the sofa. You know, it says Mary McCarthy, she's thinking, you know, and I love that. This is this is genius. The parallelism is, and this was the center of my play. So Martin High escaped Nazi, Austria, Germany. He did their state he became the dean of one of the major universities, and he joined the he had to join the Nazi Party, he did, so that he couldn't maintain his position as teaching position, but he did eliminate, you know, not not kill them without all the Jews out of the university. And so yeah, he, he never, he never decried or defend the Nazi Party after, after the war was over. He had to have his philosophy books published in the United States that they wouldn't. Most of the publishing houses wouldn't consider it because of his past, and Hannah aren't vouched for him. And, you know, yeah, to because she, she said well his work is separate from, you know, the political situation and also she had had an affair, passionate affair with him when she was young, he was her mentor. He adored him and there is a something of a parallel there, you know, modest. I mean, low was not a Nazi, you know, he did very that were deplorable but he was not a Nazi, and some, and I don't ever know if this is true for Elizabeth, whether she ever made that connection in her own mind but I would think she would own. She was so smart. She almost have to. That's, that's that that and and I love the gossip about Hannah are that when she entertained, you know she would, she would serve cocktails and then she would you know very very nice Jewish thing with cakes. And all of that. So that was that that literary literary circle and do we forgive I mean isn't this the major question. Right. Do we separate the artist from its work. And his or her work. Do we think about Woody Allen just right recent. So many, so many many. So I don't know I'll ask you to what do you think about that. What about do I forgive. I haven't, I haven't watched a Woody Allen movie since all the shit went down. Well, that's not true. That's not true. I haven't watched one without thinking about that I haven't paid you know I've watched on Netflix. Because we get Netflix anyway but I don't, I won't like go to a theater and. And I have really conflicted feelings about watching him now it's very difficult to watch him on screen for me to see him as a character. He's not always a character in his movies. And yet I grew up loving Woody Allen my father adores him. We grew up on Woody Allen movies you know I mean it was something I did with my dad a lot was go watch Woody Allen movies. And it was really painful to me that, but I'm just like, Oh, and, you know, I, it's hard. I don't think of myself as a terribly forgiving person so I think if I were either of those women I probably, I'm pretty much of a grudge holder I'm not proud of that but that's kind of part of my who I am. So I think that anyone who creates does so probably consciously or unconsciously in a persona. And when you meet them, which I've done a lot of really top artists, they're not exactly what I expected. Right. They can be a little more conniving. They can be a little more uncomfortable. And whereas in their work they seem to be totally comfortable. I mean, even Robert Frost pick fights with his neighbors. I mean, you know, yeah, he was a grumpy old guy. Yeah, these lovely poems. I mean, right. So I think he wasn't a very good father either I don't think right. I mean there's a lot of false and I think writers are no different in that sense. But when we write, I think we somehow aspire to a higher standard. And that comes through in morality. And I think that stories are inherently moral, because they show the consequence of our actions. In real life, you can walk up to somebody insults them and walk away and never talk to them again and you don't see what happens to them afterwards but if you know I think you know the gun in the first act fired by the fifth act. So if you introduce something that's angry or heart full hurtful or problematic in a major way. Then who's going to happen in the narrative that shows the consequence of those actions. That's ethics that's morality. And it's, and it's the story itself that demands that. You know I know that writers are not any better than anybody else. I don't know if I would give somebody a pass if they were significantly worse, you know, then my, you know people in my, I mean I know we're all human we're all we all have frailties and yes writers are often uncomfortable and anxious and insecure and depressive people so you know just kind of take that as given but that's the business isn't it of separating lighter from his work or her work because you can. In your mind condemn the writer and also love the work. Yes. Yeah. Go ahead. I was going to say we have a question in from Mr Sheldon Bacchus. Lynn by any chance have you read Dostoevsky's idiot Lowell sounds very much like Prince Michigan. So long ago I need to reread it. Tell me how, why. Well, Mr Bacchus would have to do that. Where do you see the. Am I coming through okay. Yes. All right. Prince Michigan's personality is, is very interesting. And what I'm kind of focusing on here a little earlier. We started the discussion we're talking about the difference between the analytic and the intuitive. Michigan was portrayed by this jet ski very interestingly in that he reached some sense of reality and his epileptic fits, which in fact, forced him completely from reality. In the, but the thing was, is that there was somehow that was where the truth was, that was where creativity was, was in, in the seizures. The essence of things became clear to him. And I was just wondering just that it's, that's almost archaic. I'm very familiar with Rebecca Solnitz. Just on the novel on active biography, biography on Edward Mybridge. Same thing. My bridge. My bridge was just the side of crazy, I think. But again, she was dealing with this issue of here's an intensely personal creative creative person, yet that creativity isn't realized until somehow that person is divorced from reality. It's divine madness. Wow, yeah, I think that was what David was really discussing early. Yeah, yeah. At the beginning. And the question is, you know, from what I've gotten my novel at any rate and what I've read is that it's a thin line. There is a point at which, yes, it's tremendously your thoughts are free and connecting in ways that in a traditional way would never come up with. And then you just tilt, you know, it moves to that the needle moves to, you know, you think you're Jesus Christ or Muslim or, you know, or what you're spouting doesn't make any sense at all. What makes sense to you is it is it kind of, you know, moving like what a hark, and you pass a certain point and then it's just chaos. Very interesting. I, I'm not sure I know enough to really say all the what I have. I've done some experiments on myself that have to do with trying exploring the deeper consciousness and I've used the hypnagogic state would that part of life which is between wakefulness and sleep. Where I found the richest resource was about 230 or three o'clock in the morning. When I train myself to wake up in the right, but I would write in the dark without without actually waking up. And so what I envisioned was I would dip down into the unconscious and whatever came up I would write it down without any kind of correction or editing or I have an editor that governs our work, we bring it into life in a certain way that's up to expectation, but expectation doesn't leave room for creativity, because it's what has been done already. And so if you're going to be creative, you have to be willing to be William Burroughs or, you know, somebody like that who has naked lunch and he just rants for about 150 pages. In this ranting there is a form of intelligence that is not present in the linear thinking daytime. And I've actually published two books of poems that come from this source. And when I first looked at them myself I thought they were crazy. I thought nobody's going to like these. But it turned out when I would give readings I would read one or two of these poems and although the audience seemed very quiet afterwards they would come up and say I really like that form. I don't know why but I. And so I what I concluded was that their unconscious was not and not unlike my own. Probably operating at similar ways than my unconscious. And so, yes, I think that the those folks who suffer from what we label as insanity. We've been in and out of various forms of consciousness all the time. And we just think it's not right because it doesn't match what our consciousness in the moment is, but it isn't expression of humanity. Otherwise it wouldn't happen. Otherwise it wouldn't be capable. And I guess the real message is how do we use that form of a barren quote unquote consciousness incorporated into our creativity in such a way that we move forward and low obviously did that. He was able to. And there are other examples to have that sort of thing. And it often comes in those who are the most distressed in their, in their real life. And there were a number of psychiatrists. I remember in the 60s and 70s, who would take patients going through schizophrenic breaks and not and and allow that allow, you know, that instead of trying to medicated, you know, so that would end or suppressed has to be in a very protected environment, etc. But yeah, there's, you know, lying wasn't it already laying the Scottish psycho analyst or there's also an article in this online New York Times website right now. There's an article about a woman who's choosing not to medicate her psycho her psychosis she she hears voices. I think her diagnosis would probably be schizophrenia. And she was heavily medicated for years and it made her gain a ton of weight and just her hands would shake and all these really unpleasant physical symptoms and that made her not even want to live and finally she decided she would just go off all her heads and live with the voices and there's a whole movement of people who are classified as mentally ill and who have, you know, suffered a lot of hear voices and whatever, and they've they're creating now like safe spaces to, you know, allow you they are crazy not crazy to think that they're Mussolini or Jesus or whatever and and relate on that relate in that from that place. Very interesting I think that sometimes real creative interesting thoughts can come out of those voices. Right. We all hear voices a little bit I mean the poets will tell you, I don't write the poem I just hold the pen. And the poem comes from somewhere I don't even understand. And so we become the channel, maybe for thoughts now it does come from inside us but I think what happens is it's different parts of our own consciousness that are speaking to each other. And I can tell you one thing that the unconscious is far more powerful and far bigger and far stronger than the conscious mind and if I try to revise one of those poems that comes out of this exercise, I get my hand spanked. Yep. No, it says who touched that poem it's already been started. I have that in place and actually I had it, kind of with this. So now I merged with what I'm trying to say, and, and leave it alone. Don't try to make it make more sense. Or more connect just leave it alone. And the thing is when people revise revise revise revise you have to be very careful. Sure that you are revising to the initial insight he's event or feeling that got it started in the first place, and not trying to pretty it up in some way that makes it published rule in the Atlantic. Exactly Barbara were you going to ask something. Yeah, unmute. I would say that when I was training to be a psychologist, one of my first patients. This was in late eighties had schizophrenia. And it was just that they had closed the mental institutions and psychotropic medication was really very much in. And when he refused to take the medication he said, it turns off all the color. Yes. And so what what you were saying made so much sense to me about just how important for survival is that color and that story and even he was willing to go through these horrible manic and depressive states and craziness and psychosis because the color was so important. There's a great song and the music go next to normal. I miss the mountains. Exactly. It's a beautiful song I love that song. Basically as a woman in deep grief for the loss of a child. And they're trying to help her by medication and she takes it. And the lyric is, you know, she's gotten rid of the lowest which was horrible depression, but she misses the highest misses the mountains. I'm just, it's just so. There's the story of Harvey the rabbit. Remember. Yeah. Where the Harvey was the companion for this person, the big seven foot rabbit. And when he didn't have the rabbit and was treated he became more gross and depressed but when he had the rabbit he was like a full intelligent interesting person. Yeah. We need our rabbits. Well friends, it's almost that time and I just I want to thank all of you for this rich conversation and yes we do need all the colors in our lives to create and to inspire. I want to thank Lynn Kauffman for her wonderful new book Divine Madness and poets, David Watts and Allison Luterman. I would like to encourage everyone to seek out their work online. And also I put Lynn's email in the chat if anyone is interested in purchasing a book to be in touch with Lynn and she can direct you to the publisher and also to other ways, other ways to purchase the book. And I wish you all very enjoyable reading. And it's on. But it's also the book can be purchased on Barnes and Noble, and also on Amazon and you want to email me though that's great, but the book and so you can get the book, gosh to get the book online. I wanted, since I've interrupted I want to thank you so much. Laura and Pamela and my two wonderful poets, you know, and everybody tuned in for a very soulful conversation. And now it's over to you. Great. Well thanks everyone thank you for joining us and come back to Mechanics Institute, whether we're on zoom or live in person at 57 post street here in San Francisco. I wish you all good night.