 I think when she answered a student questionnaire question about what she was interested in and she specifically said angel wing begonias and particularly her particular favorite matilde and that that struck me because my dad had had grown angel wing begonias you can't buy him in stores anymore if you want an angel wing begonia plant you're going to have to talk to Jen or me afterwards but her love note was what caught my attention and from her love of angel wing begonias her love grew into a love of poetry and she has planted herself at Highline being involved in national poetry committee she's an editor of our literary magazine Arcturus and she I'm going to brag about her for a minute she has sent out her work for the first time to a national journal and had two poems accepted so you heard it here first without any further ado I give you Jen Niet. Hello everyone and thank you Susan for that wonderful introduction I did not expect that and thank you everybody for joining us for this reading and workshop with Jericho Brown coordinated by the national poetry month committee well okay and I'm Jen one of the students of the national poetry committee and I'm also an editor and I just wanted to share with everybody my own personal experience and so I hope that everyone takes something precious from today's workshop in reading with Jericho Brown I know I will and poetry came later into my life last fall actually when I took Susan Rich's creative writing class I never knew I had the talent with words translating my jamble thoughts into words and imagery that people can understand or at least I hope so and the only exposure I had to poetry at least within the kumai culture were the code of conducts which pushed really strict gender rules so when I was introduced to this other realm of poetry I was blown away and now I've gotten you know two poems published which I never knew could happen for me and it could be the same for you as well and anyways enough about myself I'm here to introduce Jericho Brown and I first heard his poem Prayer of the Backhanded when watching his TED talk for Susan Rich's class and watching him perform brings another layer of depth and further meaning to his works the pauses of breaths the change of speed and watching his words from paper being animated into real life the written words became alive and I was completely mesmerized I later uncovered how kind and generous he is being sure to visit all the poets during a live reading event and making sure to say something kind about their work afterwards Jericho Brown is an exuberant bright and colorful human being that is bound to woo you into the literary world I mean have you heard his laugh it's contagious and lively capturing his personality in just a brief moment and Jericho Brown's first book please won the American Book Award his second book the New Testament won the Annas Field Wolf Book Award his most recent book the tradition won the Peterson Poetry Prize and the Pulitzer Prize which is one of the best awards that a poet can receive his poems have also appeared in the New York Times the New Yorker and several volumes of the best American poetry previously Jericho Brown worked as a speech writer for the mayor of New Orleans and he's currently the director of the creative writing program and a professor at Emory University and after reading all of his accolades we can see that his world revolves around writing maybe even a little obsessed now the the fabulous reading by Jericho Brown will be about 50 minutes and we'll have a Q&A right afterwards so be sure to hold on to your questions until after his performance and after the Q&A Jericho Brown will have a brief break because he's going to be thirsty but don't you dare leave he'll be right back with the free workshop I mean who wouldn't stay for the workshop you'll be taught by one of the best poets of our time and also don't forget to drop by the Highline's bookstore to receive a 20 discount for Jericho Brown's book and then I'll pass it along to Jericho thank you Jen thank you thank y'all for clapping that's so nice um that's a really nice introduction I really appreciate that thank you you said some wonderful things about me and it makes me want to meet myself I um I'm gonna read some poems for y'all I do need to say first to this audience I'm so sorry that we are running a little late and I'll try to or try to make it such that it doesn't feel like we're running late everything that I have for you today I'm going to give you even though we're starting just a little late I was having some um I've had in 2019 and 2020 some really painful chronic health issues that are a lot better now but still every once in a while will appear and an appearance happened today it actually happened as I was I was opening my computer getting ready to go and I was like wait a minute and so it takes us I have something I can take but it takes a second for it to kick in and so I didn't want to log in balled up holding my stomach in fetal position thought maybe that would not be a good way to give a poetry reading but I'm okay and I have poems and I wrote them so I'll read them to you and I'll start with a poem that um that Jen mentioned um where I'm from we always begin with prayer so prayer of the backhanded not the palm not the pear tree switch not the broomstick nor the closest extension cord not his braided belt but god bless the back of my daddy's hand which holding nothing tightly against me and not wrapped in leather eliminated the air between itself and my cheek make full this dimpled cheek unworthy of its unfisted print and forgive my forgetting the love of a hand hungry for reflex a hand that took no thought of its target like hail from a blind sky involuntary fast but brutal in its bruising father I bear the bridge of what might have been a broken nose I lived to you what was a busted lip bless the boy who believes his best beatings lack intention the mark of the beast bring back to life the sun who glories in the sin of immediacy calling it love god save the man whose arm like an angel's invisible wing may fly backward in fury whether or not his son stands near help me hold in place my blazing jaw as I think to say excuse me or this next poem is titled after a phrase that I heard as a kid growing up in Louisiana I've never heard people anywhere else make use of this phrase one of the things that I'm doing when I'm writing is I'm trying to bring back to life the vernacular that I heard as a kid in the south growing up and trying to bring back to life language that seems to me lost or forgotten there are certain things certain ways of saying that I remember from my childhood and I try to bring those ways of saying back into my poems in a way to to keep them alive or to or to sort of canonize or instill them in some kind of memory at least in the memory of my books four day in the morning my mother grew morning glories that spilled onto the walkway toward her porch because she was a woman with land who showed as much by giving it color she told me I could have whatever I worked for that means she was an American but she'd say it was because she believed in God I am ashamed of America and confounded by God I thank God for my citizenship in spite of the timer set on my life to write these words I love my mother I love black women who plant flowers as sheepish as their sons by the time the blooms unfurl themselves for a few hours of light the women who tend them are already at work blue I'll never know who started the lie that we are lazy but I'd love to wake that bastard up at four in the morning toss him in a truck and drive him under God past every bus stop in America to see all those black folk waiting to go work for whatever they want a house a boy to keep the lawn cut some color in the yard my god we leave things green sort of reading poems that come out of my childhood so I'll continue with that with this next poem labor I spent what light saturday sent sweating and learned to cuss cutting grass for women kind enough to say they couldn't tell the damn difference between their mold lawns and their vacuumed carpets just before sorry I'm gonna start over my goodness I thought I felt that sneeze I've been feeling that sneeze for like a poem and a half and I was like well I guess I can just hold this sneeze in forever but it happened so I have to start over now sorry I'm glad that happened well y'all don't know what it's like to try to read a poem and hold this sneeze at the same time labor I spent what light saturday sent sweating and learned to cuss cutting grass for women kind enough to say they couldn't tell the damn difference between their mold lawns and their vacuumed carpets just before over a five dollar bill rolled tighter than a joint and asking me in to change a few light bulbs I called those women old because they wouldn't move out of a chair without my help or walk without a hand at the base of their backs I called them old and they must have been they're all dead now dead and in the earth I once tended the loneliest people have the earth to love and not one friend their own age only mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss them around women they want to please and pray for the chance to say please to I don't do that kind of work anymore my job is to look at the childhood I hated and say I once had something to do with my hands this next poem has a little bit of the uh it makes illusion to the odyssey which is a poem I loved when I was a kid uh reading it in high school I sort of fell in love with the odyssey and I've been in love with it ever since um there's some um I wrote I should also add that um I think of this poem as a descendant of a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks called gay chaps at the bar hero she never knew one of us from another so my brothers and I grew up fighting over our mother's mind like sun colored suitors in a Greek myth we were willing to do evil we kept chocolate around our mouths the last of her mother's lot she cried at funerals cried when she whipped me she whipped me daily I am most interested in people who declare gratitude for their childhood beatings none of them took what my mother gave waking us for school with sharp slaps to our bare thighs that side of the family is darker I should be grateful so I will be no one on earth knows how many abortions happened before a woman risked her freedom by giving that risk a name by taking it to breast I don't know why I am alive now that I still cannot impress the woman who whipped me into being I turned my mother into a grandmother she thanks me by kissing my sons gratitude is black black as a hero returning from war to a country that banked on his death thank god it can't get much darker than that I think someone mentioned that I'll read for 50 minutes and I promise y'all I won't read for 50 minutes autobiography this next book this poem I'm about I don't usually talk so much but I feel talky so y'all just bear with me but this poem I wrote this next poem after I was sort of reflecting and thinking back again on childhood and also thinking about all the ways I could make poems happen there's so and we'll talk about that a little bit during our workshop later but there's so many ways that you can make a poem happen and many of you know this every time you write a poem you end up arriving at what ends up being the poem in a different way almost every time you know they might have some things in common but there must be something different about each time you write a poem this poem is completely made up of sentences and phrases that I heard from other people when I was a kid growing up in the church where I grew up and in the neighborhood where I grew up so not this poem in a way it's sort of a sento in that it takes its lines from everywhere but me there's no original line in this poem and yet a sento takes all of its lines from other poems so these people saying these things weren't aware that they were saying poetry to me as they were saying these things and you'll see how I figured out which words and phrases I was going to use there's a there's an anaphora that I make use of in the poem a repetition autobiography keep the line steady keep your back straight keep coming back for more keep fucking with me cletus keep putting your hands on me like that and you'll always have a place to lay your head keep my waistline down keep your figure up keep your man happy keep a woman crazy keep your daddy off your mama or next time I'm calling the police keep these nappy-headed children off my green green grass keep talking smart if you want to keep looking at my man and I'll cut you a new eyelid keep looking me in my face when you tell your next lie keep on walking I ain't talking to you anymore keep holding that last note keep singing while I get the splinter out keep singing for Jesus baby and everything will be all right keep me in your prayers keep us in your thoughts keep your eyes on the black one he ain't got no sense keep your money in your pocket Nelson these hoes giving it away keep this one occupied I'll get his wallet keep on living honey and you'll get old too this next poem in a way is about about all of those people who I heard making making those statements again a poem named after a very southern term the title of this poem is nim and nim means that person and everyone you associate with that person it's sort of a compound contrast contraction for for two words and them which is always hilarious to me because that's still not proper English tell your mama and them I said hello what oh no they said to say good night and not goodbye unplugged the tv when it rained they hid money in mattresses so to sleep on decisions some of their children were not their children some of their parents had no birth dates they could sweat a cold out of you they'd wake without an alarm telling them to even the short ones reached certain shelves even the skinny cooked animals too quick to catch and I don't care how ugly one of them arrived that one got married to somebody fine they fed families with change and wiped their kitchens clean then another century came people like me forgot their names so I'll read about maybe I'll read about some of the some of those people that I think of as my own as my own personal nim you know your nim might be those that you know and sometimes maybe even those that you don't necessarily know you know my mom and dad is always for better or worse always going to be a part of my own personal name as a human being there is the happiness you have and the happiness you deserve they sit apart from each other the way you and your mother sat on opposite ends of the sofa after an ambulance came to take your father away some good doctor will stitch him up and soon an aunt will arrive to drive your mother to the hospital where she will settle next to him forever as promised she holds the arm of her seat as if she could fall as if it is the only sturdy thing and it is since you've done what you always wanted you fought your father and one marred him he'll have a scar he can see all because of you and your mother the only woman you ever cried for must tend to it as a bride tends to her vows forsaking all others no matter how sore the injury no matter how sore the injury has left you you sit understanding yourself as a human being finally free now that nobody's got to love you so that's one name but then there's this other name and I thank God for my mom and dad because they had a a fan that was so old it only got one radio station and it happened to be the old school station so it made me the fan of people that I was really too young to be a fan of I mean when I went to when I was in elementary school and all of my you know my my friends were were excited about the advent of hip hop I was excited about that too but I thought I thought my girl by the temptations was the lick like I was like oh and I had no idea it was a very old song another person that I came across uh in in the van uh that would come up on the old school radio station was a singer I love named Janice Joplin and this is a poem in her voice track five summertime as performed by Janice Joplin God's got his eye on me but I ain't a sparrow I'm more like a lawnmower no a chainsaw anything that might mangle each manicured lawn and port author a place I wouldn't return to if the mayor offered me every ounce of oil my daddy cans at the refinery my voice I mean ain't sweet nothing nice about it it won't fly even with Jesus watching I don't believe in Jesus the baxter boys climb the tree just to throw persimmons at me the good and perfect gifts from above hit like lightning leave bruises so I lied I believe but I don't think God likes me the girls in the locker room slapped dirty pads across my face they called me bitch but I never bit back I ain't a dog chainsaw I say my voice hacks at you I bet I tear my throat I try so hard to sound jagged I get high and say one thing so many times like Willie Baker who worked across the street I saw some kids whip him with a belt while he repeated please school out summertime and the living lashed mama said I should be thankful that the town's worse to collards than they are to me that I'd grow out of my acne god must love Willie Baker all that leather and still a please that sounds like music see I wouldn't know a sparrow from a mockingbird the band plays I just belt out please this tune ain't half the blues I should be thankful I get high and moan like a lawnmower so nobody notices I'm such an ugly girl I'm such an ugly girl I try to seem like a man boys called boy I turned my face to God I pray I wish I could pour oil on everything green in Port Arthur so and finally I'll read about a nym this is actually really a poem completely about me I mean I think of this poem as a prayer more than I think of it as anything else but I know that this poem exists for exists because of having witnessed and having lived a life where I see a nym that that I have yet to understand that seems not to be explained very well to me that nym is the people who have supposedly committed suicide while in police custody that includes people like Jesus Huerta in North Carolina who after having been patted down while handcuffed on the walk between the police cruiser to the building where he was to be booked supposedly somehow managed to shoot himself in the back corner of his head Victor White III in Louisiana who after having been patted down while handcuffed sitting in the back seat of the police cruiser somehow managed to supposedly shoot himself in his upper back Sandra Bland in Texas who after a day of fighting for her life many of you saw that video was put in a sale where she hung herself with a trash bag what's interesting about that is that there is video footage of her in that sale and for whatever reason that feed that video goes out there's technical difficulty and that technical difficulty occurs at the very moment that the coroner says she must have hung herself with a trash bag bullet points I will not shoot myself in the head and I will not shoot myself in the back and I will not hang myself with a trash bag and if I do I promise you I will not do it in a police car while handcuffed or in the jail cell of a town I only know the name of because I have to drive through it to get home yes I may be at risk but I promise you I trust the maggots who live beneath the floorboards of my house to do what they must to any carcass more than I trust an officer of the law of the land to shut my eyes like a man of God might or to cover me with a sheet so clean my mother could have used it to tuck me in when I kill me I will do it the same way most Americans do I promise you cigarette smoke or a piece of meat on which I choke or so broke I freeze in one of these winters we keep calling worst I promise if you hear of me dead anywhere near a cop then that cop killed me he took me from us and left my body which is no matter what we've been taught greater than the settlement a city can pay a mother to stop crying and more beautiful than the new bullet fished from the folds of my brain so one of the things that many of us find ourselves trying to do when we write our poems I don't necessarily try to do this but I do find it happening I should say when I'm writing my poems is uh is that something of the contemporary I mean maybe that last poem in many ways that last poem is a poem about a real American history that isn't particularly particularly contemporary at all but there is something about the contemporary moment that prepares us so that sort of ignites a poem like that to happen so I wanted to read you again another another recent poem of mine just give me a second because it seems to have disappeared and it's um it is a new poem so I don't um maybe that's why I hear it is sorry about that um so I'll read you this poem which I do think uh speaks to that moment say thank you say I'm sorry I don't know whose side you're on but I am here for the people who work in grocery stores that glow in the morning and close down for deep cleaning at night right up the street and in cities I mispronounce in towns too tiny for my big black car to quit and in every wide corner of Kansas we're going to school means at least one field trip to a slaughterhouse I want so little another leather bound book a gimlet with a lavender gin bread so good when I taste it I can tell you how it's made I'd like us to rethink what it is to be a nation I'm in a mood about America today I have PTSD about the Lord God save the people who work in grocery stores they know a bit of glamour is a lot of glamour they know how much it costs for the eldest of us to eat save my loves and not my sentences before I see them I draw a mole near my left dimple add flair to the smile they can't see behind my mask I grin or lie or maybe I wear the mouth of a beast I eat wild animals while some of us grow up knowing what gnocchi is the people who work at the grocery don't care they say thank you they say sorry we don't sell motor oil anymore with a grief so thick you could touch it go on touch it it is early it is late they have washed their hands they have washed their hands for you and they take the bus home so I'd like to finish with a poem one day I'll be dead and people you know maybe I hope I mean that would be nice people say whatever it is that they have to say about the poems and there's you know and everything they say about the poems will be true but I don't want this one one piece of truth to be left out there's sort of a you know you can say things that are true one by one or you can just tell the whole story and you know I feel like I'm a love poet so I'm gonna read y'all a love poem and then we'll have we'll have time for conversation stand peace on this planet or guns glowing hot we lay there together as if we were getting something done it felt like planting a garden or planning a meal for people who still need feeding all that touching or barely touching not saying much not adding anything the cushion of it the skin and occasional sigh all seemed like work worth mastering I'm sure somebody died while we made love somebody killed somebody black I thought then of holding you as a political act I may as well have held myself we didn't stand for one thought didn't do a damn thing and though you left me I'm glad we didn't thank y'all so much thank you I'm so kind I see Kelly out there how you doing Kelly thanks for being here and I didn't get to say this but big thanks to Susan Ridge and and Debra but Susan I've known for a long time so thank you for having me here Susan did anyone have any questions they want to ask should I go through the chat for questions or is there a person that's going to tell me that's a really good question thank you so much that was a magnificent reading and we haven't we I'm so used to doing this in person that I have not come up with a format for q&a so Debra do you have a sense of how to do this right there's no questions in the chat right now but if people want to type in their questions I can read them out or you can unmute yourself and ask the question so just depends on how you want to do yeah it's really great if you could raise your I mean if your camera's on if you raise your hand or if you put that little hand up that I've never known how to put up if you put that hand up I'll sort of look around until I see it I sort of have to go through three pages to see it though but if you put it in the chat we can answer from there too it's always nice though to hear voices and to be able to talk to people directly. Lorelie has a question. Hey Lorelie. Hi thank you for your readings today it's my it's been a long time since I've been to a poetry reading I I'm married to a black man here in the Pacific Northwest to Washington. Congratulations and I'm jealous I too would like to be married to a black man if you could send one my way see if he got a brother anyway sorry that wasn't your question I thought your question was would you too like to be married to a black man? Everybody would want to be like yes but some of us is already married to people that's not black and so we can't like publicly sorry I'm listening Lorelie. So um he he's from Illinois and his family moved over here um he had a rough childhood in some areas he's kind of like estranged from his parents right now for no particular reason we can't put our finger on it he's had kind of a rough couple years um you know he's married to a white woman he works in the construction field where it's usually predominantly white and by nature he's a very artistic man he draws he writes music he makes music um he dresses extremely sharp um and it just seems like this last year to six months you know especially since COVID and everything that's been going on in the nation he's been I think struggling in a way that I cannot relate as a white person I mean even though neighborhood I grew up in was very diverse and as a white person I was the minority there it doesn't even touch what most black people experience in their day-to-day life throughout the country and so I was thinking that he would really appreciate your style of writing in his just privacy of reading in his own space so I was wanting to know if you could recommend of your books of poems a book or two that I could just start with that might be just helpful to him in in maybe working some stuff that's going on in him because he's not a big talker but I know I've been married to him so I know that there's something going on with him that's related to everything that's going on I can tell by the things he's reading and watching and I can tell he's upset and I just want to give him a bit of an outlet a creative outlet well I think poetry is a wonderful way to um considering the pressures that we are under individually you know not just as a nation and not just as citizens of the world but just individually we have individual pressures that we otherwise would not have except for the time we're the times we are living in right and I do think that poetry can be a kind of um salve a kind of medicine uh an ointment even that um that helps you feel in the midst of those things if I were to recommend one of my own books maybe I would recommend the most recent which is I only have three the most recent which is the tradition uh just because it might be more directly contemporary in some ways um and I think it would be good to um to look at other people's work as well also I think it's a good idea to look at things that um are good and get us thinking and get us moving uh that also might not be about the moment in a direct way a book of poems I love for instance in moments like this is a book by um Christine Garen uh it's called Among the Monarchs I love that book uh so you might give them that too um as well as the tradition don't miss I don't give anybody the tradition give people that book honey uh you can give them the New Testament you can give them please you can give them any one of these books they somebody's hand to me but no I'm playing anyway um so that's it but I'll also say that um you know you being there for him is probably really important but what will also be I mean I can say what I would like to see but who knows what might also be good and I think this is maybe how uh well maybe it's just how I feel I don't want to act like I'm sort of I'm any kind of representative for black people all over the country but knowing that it helps to understand that white people who have some sense are willing to have conversations with white people who don't um there is nothing you know these things that white people in the United States are becoming aware of are things that black people have generation I mean we've known our entire lives and we sort of know in a generational way it's handed down to us so we're not just carrying the weight of the moment we're you know when I carry the weight of the moment I'm also carrying the weight of every story I've ever heard about my two sharecropping grandfathers do you understand what I mean and so being and having one another black people having black people to express and to hug and to hold in this moment is very great but being able to see why people be understanding not just to us but to one another is actually for me at least much more helpful um and the reason it's more helpful is because I already know y'all ain't listening to me I have a whole I can go back to Langston Hughes to prove that y'all ain't listening to me you know if you ain't listening to Langston Hughes you sure not gonna listen to Jericho Brown do y'all understand what I mean so I mean and not just not just Jericho Brown right Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, like you know there's a thing that happens where I think it's good for white people to have conversations with each other that they have in the past been afraid of having because this is probably your opportunity to have it um so that that I'll stop there I think that's my best answer for that. Thank you Jericho. I'm going to pull the questions out of chat and read you those in the order that they came in so the next question was from April and she asked can you explain them a little more a little more please so I'm thinking maybe the contraction and you know what it stands for in the American South if you see somebody and I think in other places too because of travel but definitely in the South and I don't even think this is racial I think it's a case for white people and black people and everybody else in the South if you see somebody let's say you went to high school with somebody and you haven't seen them for a very long time but when you did know them before you knew their family you would say when you see them again you would say hey how you doing how you been how is your mama in them um and that mama in them that um or Beyonce in them meaning Destiny's Child or do you understand what I mean there's a way that in them sort of to the other people let you know exactly who you're talking about without without having to list all the people or without having to make a proper name for those people it's sort of like when people say this happens this used to happen in the South or I would overhear it in the South I mean this didn't really happen in my family but I have heard people say things like oh this is um oh this is this is this is William Blake of the Alabama Blake's so it's sort of like that I think now I know which Blake's do you know what I'm saying so the NM is like oh you know those people you know yeah yeah thank you um the next question is from Malalupa excuse me Malalupa sorry I said your name I apologize um which writers influence your poetry it's hard to narrow down I think of Toni Morrison is a great influence Lucille Clifton Gwendolyn Brooks who I've probably mentioned um today because I'm almost mentioning her every day I find without remembering that I've done it um I was just on the phone talking with a friend of mine about Franco Hera um Bernadette mayor has been really important to me in the you know just um probably I mean for a long time actually definitely in writing my first and second book Bernadette mayor's poetry was very important to me um who else it's really just uh you know uh and sometimes there are poems you know that poem Charlie Howe's Descent by Mark Mardody was very helpful to me I learned a lot from it about how I wanted to do what I wanted to do um I think my teachers are obviously influential writers my teachers were um Claudia Rankin Nick Flynn John Gary Kate Murphy um Mardody um who else who else it's hard you know sometimes it's not writing sometimes it's film sometimes it's art um so obviously um you know the the um the movie Moonlight I think I wouldn't have been able to finish this last book if that if that movie hadn't come out while I was writing it so yeah it's a hard uh it's a hard list to narrow Carl Phillips obviously Reginald Shepherd oh SXM Hill so important to me yeah and probably a constantly shifting list well not only that um I mean you know who you love you sort of know you know Louise Glick and Lucille Clifton are probably my first poets that I was like oh my god let me read everything they ever write you know um but the truth is that you I mean and you know I'm not saying this in any prescriptive way and I'm not saying this in any shady way but you know you should be reading so much that you kind of don't know you understand that your writing is descended from all that you are encountering but if you were put in a position where you had to figure out which thing led to which poem you wouldn't be able to do it because you've been reading so many poems oh and since we're waiting on the next question I'll add to that that one way to make sure you're reading a lot of poems is to let things go and stop stressing out about the fact that you don't like a poem or you don't like a book people get all stressed out but nobody feels that way about music I don't understand this thing yeah if we turn on the radio or even if you play one of your playlists right now you really don't actually hear all the songs every once in a while you hear a song you're like oh that's my song like you put you put all 20 of these songs on this playlist and you heard three if you're lucky watching your dishes taking a shower working out the honors mowing a yard do you understand what I'm saying so for me what was really important at the beginning of my poetry career I guess was going to a Barnes and Noble going which is the bookstore we had going to the um going to the poetry section and starting at a and opening the book and starting a poem and being bored to pieces thinking it was the worst thing that ever happened to me by the time I was online three closing the book and putting it back I don't want to beat anybody up yeah I don't think I hate oh I didn't like that I hate poetry like people think they hate poetry and I'm like you had three poems you had two poems and you hate poetry dang do y'all know what I'm saying so you know I go to a and I get through a and if I keep going sooner or later somebody in a I like and that's about the right ratio you're probably gonna like one person in every letter but that's 26 poets and that's actually a lot I mean and Susan knows there's people who are poets Kelly know 26 words is a lot of poets delight like if I ask y'all to name 26 singers you want to hear you would be you would have a hard time after you get to six do y'all understand what I'm saying like you would be like um I mean you would get to seven but you would be like um do y'all follow what I'm saying and like I hate to see what happens by the time you get to like 20 you're like wait I know it's more singers and you would do whatever you needed to do to figure out who that is because you really believe in yourself that you love music but the ratio really suggests that you don't if you really think of all the music that there is and how much music you actually like you don't love music and I think the ratio is the same for any art for dance for painting for any art and definitely for poetry but there's this sort of weight poetry has to carry the burden of wisdom everybody wants to read the poem and then be changed instantaneously show the items like there's this expectation I read your poem and now I'm treating my children better good luck do y'all understand what I mean so that poetry carries this burden where people really are hungry and thirsty for it and have these huge expectations for it from it and if it does not deliver those expectations instantaneously everybody's like oh fuck poetry I'm like what happened you don't do that with nobody y'all love so why are y'all treating poetry like that anyway sorry I mean seriously like you have actually had better times with poems than you have with your daddy so what but you love your daddy and you won't tell me you hate both never I'm sorry I'm sorry never thank you very much we had a few more questions but I think you know we were after the break point so we should probably take a five minute break so you can get some water you know so can I tell you what I would like to do after the break and then Susan you could tell me if that's okay um I was going to share with y'all and maybe I can I think I'll be able to get to those questions if I do it this way I have this list of what I call best practices and I was gonna share that list with y'all so y'all can have something to hold on to that I think would be of useful useful um during writing and during revision so can I'll I'll give you that list and then maybe I can do some of those same questions right after I do the list and take the other questions as well I think it'll work out because some of the questions are about inspiration and advice for people renewed poetry and things like that so I think that will actually work pretty well well welcome back um Susan why don't you um you I you think you've had an idea for how this should work and Jericho you have a plan and you guys go ahead and I've got the questions that I can ask where we have time okay uh Susan do you want to speak first my plan is to hand it over to Jericho um and it would be great if there's time to just do like a real brief writing exercise but I'm more interested in having you make it what you want so I'm giving it over to you okay um maybe you know we have like 50 minutes so brief writing exercise I might be able to do something when I get to one of these I just I sort of mentioned this to you I don't know if somebody is new here um on the first day of class I give my students what I call these um really actually on the first day of my advanced workshop I actually don't do this in all in in intro or in intermediate but in the advanced workshop I give my students this list of um best practices and maybe I should do it in intermediate or um or an intro but um but I haven't you know I think what I fear about the list is that it begins to sound like a list of do's or don't do's and don'ts I definitely don't want to call it a list of do's and don'ts because one thing that I have learned about I sort of learned this through being a student and I've definitely been taught it again by my own students when you tell a student that you can't do something they spend the semester trying to do that very thing so I have figured out these are what these are not are do's and don'ts but I do think if you think about this list in terms of best practices you can choose not to do the best practice but at least then it's a choice do y'all understand what I mean it's better to be able to make the choice um Michael Dumont is my very good friend who teaches uh writing and who edited the who's he has a book called My Soviet Union and he edited the anthology along with Kate Marvin the anthology legitimate dangers you know he really believes in poems as a series of decisions so I mean maybe that I mean that's not on this on this list but I think of that as a kind of a best practice too right um knowing every step of the way in a poem you're making a decision will actually be of use to you because when you are revising the poem you can think about options as opposed to thinking you are nailed down in one single position okay so um first best practice or maybe second if we count that one is first try to write lines rather than line breaks um one way to figure out what your own personal line length is in a poem in lines is to figure out when you feel like you've actually said something musical in the space of a line can you be both musical and give some kind of information in the space of a line now for some of us that's going to be eight um syllables or or four beats or three beats and so it'll be a short line and that's who you are and that's how your line works and that's okay for some of us that's going to be more like five beats which is a medium sized line about ten syllables and for some of us it'll be longer it'll be a whitmanian or against burgean line right uh that go or or a line from someone like ck williams a line that is really long actually christine garen's lines are actually kind of long considering her poems um so um but if you can think about the line as the unit of poetry then you can be in a position where if you get a line you can be pleased with the line you don't have to stress out that nothing else is coming you can get excited about the fact that i got a line do y'all understand what i mean um the uh the writer of virginia wolf used to get really excited because she understood it she would say she would say to anyone around her to her husband in particular she would say i think i have a sentence and he understood when she would say i think i have a sentence like okay i won't see you for a year because you're going to be writing a novel or do y'all understand what i mean and having a sentence means there's something going on so you have to sort of believe in yourself at the line level i like that line therefore it's worth it and if you write a line down you have already begun writing a poem that doesn't mean that that line has to result in a poem the same day you write it down everybody with that if you're thinking about line breaks then you're always thinking about well what do i say next and then that'll stress you out don't don't stress yourself out um number two time your abstractions um a lot of workshop facilitators teachers will tell you not to use abstractions in poetry and i don't think it's about not using abstractions i think instead that it is about that it is about having extract abstractions placed at just the right moment which means you need a certain amount of concretes in order to say an abstraction so generally i mean you know again i don't want to be prescriptive about this but you sort of have to be aware of it i would say in a sign let's say a sign it's 14 lines right i would try to go three lines before saying love or hate or joy or maybe even celebration do y'all understand what i mean because if i want to get at those things i've got to have some things that shore them up right i also think that if you can find a thing that is literal rather than the abstraction it's always good to use the thing that is literal let the reader do the work you know um saying i love you is great people want to hear that you know saying um kissing somebody and tell them you taste so good you like jolly rancher that's another thing they're not gonna forget that they're going to try to kiss you again they want to hear that do y'all understand what i mean and so you could say love and that's cold like people like love but you could also say jolly rancher does that make sense everybody with that um at any rate i would try to say some things that are real before saying things that we can't touch or hold on to or smell okay that's not to say that love is not real it's just that it is not if it can be embodied in a thing then we can better understand it as readers okay leave your subject alone until it's time for revision let the original idea go um many of you may have already read this essay by uh richard hugo called uh writing off the subject and this is part of that and i i sort of you know i think a good thing for you to do if i was to give homework today i would it's online um writing off the subject by richard hugo it's online in a few places actually um there might uh maybe somebody could drop a link to it but um part of what you want to do while you're writing poems is you want to give up on whatever you thought you wanted to write about let that girl go who cares let it go y'all sit down swearing y'all want to write about a tree swearing you want to write about your son swearing you want to write about your mama and poems are investigation you when you're writing a poem you're doing an investigation through language so to reach a discovery in order to reach a discovery if you know everything you will never discover anything so if you know where you're going when you write the poem that's all well and good but you have not written a poem until you say something you don't expect to say when you say something you don't expect to say in a poem that's when the real writing has begun because you gotta follow up on that thing is everybody with me so you can let the original idea as you are writing yes an original idea might sit you down to write but it's okay to meander it's okay to problematize it's okay to let the original idea go such that you're in a position where you can say things you didn't expect to say does that make sense everybody with me um next best practice every line of surprise try making the next thing you say related on the side so let me explain what i mean there i have every line of surprise uh there because it's something i literally had back when um back when you couldn't move your computer around there was a place that you had to be to work because your computer was just it had to be there you couldn't carry that girl with you and there used to be written over the place where i worked over that computer space um this sort of mantra that i would always say while i was writing every line of surprise such that when i wrote a line i would almost immediately try in the next line to follow that first line's music but not to follow its subject i wanted to say something after i write a line i would do this um i would do this in poems that have lots of lines right and so i was really trying to try i mean now it's not so hard for me but i was really trying to train myself that every time i write a line i want to say something i didn't know i was going to say so it almost stopped myself i would like sort of be writing the line going to the next line like no i knew i was going to say that say something else like what happens if i just say something else right and this is another way of getting you to a point where you can you're writing you're making language happen on the page but you end up tapping into your subconscious your unconscious mind and again you end up saying things that are your real concerns but you don't expect to say them when you sit down so let me be a little more this is going to come up again but i'll be a little more clear about this what it means to surprise yourself um contrary to what people seem to believe about my own poems i would never if i felt i had the choice write about my mom and dad i would definitely not be writing about the police do y'all know what i'm saying i would much rather write about things that make it easier for somebody to name me poet laureate they don't know what i mean like so i don't like when i'm writing my poems it comes a point in revision where i realize oh this is what i'm really thinking about because that is what i said and you want that to be the experience you have writing your poems if you write what you knew you were thinking about then you don't get to have that experience so again you don't get to have the investigation and you don't have the discovery of what you were actually thinking about does that make sense let me can i say something else about this and why it's so important to me um and i'm really sorry maybe this is not you know maybe this gets out of my zone you know i have an mfa and a phd in poetry i do not have degrees in spirituality or in psychology but but i will say that if i'm not writing what surprises me then i am not doing the kind of work necessary to change my life so what happens i what i mean by that is i will write something and i will literally read it to myself and say jericho is that what you think and if i've written it down then i'm in a position where i have to have a conversation an ethical and moral conversation with myself about how i live my life because you will find that you write things down that you are like do i believe that and if the answer to that turns out to be yes that means the rest of your life has to look like it has to look like the answer to that is yes i actually do believe that this is why the investigation and discovery thing is so important many of us know this you know as you get older you look back and you're like oh i really thought this but that was crazy i think this instead and i live like it do y'all follow what i mean and that's what i want to get from my own poems um next next best practice every sentence should be clear if you write a sentence and after that sentence you think that quote you think quote oh they'll know what i mean then you need to rewrite that damn sentence stop playing again don't play that don't do that to yourself and do not do that to the reader that's not fair you don't want anybody doing that to you so don't do that to them oh they'll figure it out oh they'll know what i mean and if you think that that is it then you need to rewrite that be clear do the work to write the line do the work to write the sentence next write the literal before writing the metaphorical or the figurative write the literal think about the literal and write the literal before writing the metaphorical or the figurative right by that part of what i mean is be careful about how many feelings you allow personification right so often you'll say and this it's not that the sentence won't work you know there's a in this robert hayden poem that i love and that many of us love those winter sundays he says something about um fearing the chronic angers of that house do y'all remember that line that's so beautiful fearing the chronic angers of that house so i think that works in that poem right but part of the reason why it works in that poem is probably because it works in that poem via revision do y'all understand what i'm saying in the original moment of writing it's a really good idea to say what is real to say what is happening if you get caught up on something that's not actually in the scene that's not in the dramatic situation then you'll end up saying things that don't make sense to the reader you get caught up in some sort of new agey spiritual speak that doesn't actually look like characters moving around and talking in your poems or having experiences in your poems okay um next be bold lose your mind be bold be bold lose your mind say the unsayable from um the poems that you love most meh and this is without fail we could take a poll the poems you love most people say crazy things that you are not willing to bring up in conversation for a chat in the grocery store line with strangers so if that is true if the poems you love i have yet to see the poem where somebody i think i heard a fly buzz when i died is crazy but you have to be willing to write it for it to exist but can y'all imagine like seriously i mean i think it is completely bold i heard a fly buzz when i died that is ridiculous but you have to be bold enough and ridiculous enough crazy enough you have to have lost your mind in order to write it down if you can be bold while you are writing your poems you can say things that might not make sense in that moment but just keep writing because that's what revision is there for when you need to take those things out you can take them out but you might not need to they might work in the poem does that make sense um i teach a craft class in which i show in american poetry particularly in a short poem there's always this penultimate moment where people say things that are sort of like nonsense or senselessness and it's because i really do believe poets are aware i'm getting into my poem and therefore i should be losing my mind remember that poems are like songs right what happens when you're listening to let's just say any pop song any r&b song any country western song when you're listening to that song things pretty much that first verse is song with the melody the second verse has some variation but then after that there is a bridge and following that bridge probably a key change and if you listen to the music that i listen to after that key change there's a bunch of hollering because i mean and if you i mean if you think about poetry and song and you think about the songs you love somebody is always losing their mind in a song like why are you girl what happened you were singing so nicely the i'm sorry i just have to say this the person who i think is best for this is the singer gladis night whose every song begins in story and in whispers it's sad to think we're not gonna make it and you would think that the song was going to be just nice just like that but it's not she will be screaming at you by the end of that song okay um all right next one um if you say the same thing twice get rid of the second best one if you say the same thing twice get rid of the second best one next metaphorical consistency build a world one way to think about this is to think about conceit we know a conceit is an extended metaphor metaphorical consistency allows for you to build a world in the space of the poem so once and it helps you write the rest of the poem once you make a comparison then that tells you where your poem can move where your poem can go so when i say the linebacker was a bear that means in that poem i can have anything about football about stadiums about fans about players about coaches and referees but i can also have anything about forest do you see what i mean and that's the world of the poem so sometimes people feel sort of locked in because they're like oh i'm still stuck in this stadium because i was writing about this linebacker but i'm saying i'm telling you you're not locked in because you said he was like a bear so therefore that's what allows you to move beyond the poem when you say the linebacker was a bear then you end up in a position where by the end of the poem you have said something about the fact that the bears who were once north are now moving south and that bears that have never made it together are suddenly mating with one another because we are destroying our planet because it's too hot and they want to survive do y'all see what i mean football too seems to be worried about extinction but that's another question do y'all do y'all follow what i'm saying and but you can't get there i just made that up by the way you can't get i mean i didn't make up those facts i just made up the end of the poem right but you can't get there if you don't allow the metaphors to lead you if you sat down to write about a linebacker you're gonna get you a poem that's boring about a linebacker but if you let that bear have its way you get to say more things okay all right um next um i'll save modifiers for the end i'll read the poem aloud to yourself when you read the poem aloud to yourself you're reading for slow moments if if you are having a hard time listening my students i tell them read the poems aloud to yourself and they say yeah but it's so boring i'm like well what you think that mean about your ball if you're reading your poem and you read three lines and you're like oh i'm writing you get to that fourth line and you're like let me hurry up and get to this fifth line because that fourth line was boring and then you read the fifth line and it's good again that's not the end of it what do something about the fourth line that was slow coming out of your mouth do y'all follow what i'm saying read the poems aloud another thing that i think is a good idea that's not on this list if you can always be listening to poems always be listening to poems um i have literally all of my music on shuffle so the gospel comes up right after the country western comes up right after the r&b comes up right after the you know if i don't know what's gonna happen and i like that because i'm a hot mess um but in the midst of all that langston hughes comes up nicky giovanni comes up camille dungey comes up i come up do y'all understand what i mean and so you can get poems listen to them before you know what you'll know more poems by heart and that's always wonderful but also when you do that you're getting the rhythms and the sounds of poetry in your head it also the more you listen to poetry i believe the easier it becomes to read it because now you know what the poems sound like so when you sit down and read them it's almost like you can hear them does that make sense so you know listen to as much poetry as possible when you're writing your own poems read them aloud to yourself if you have a person you're working with a writing friend or a writing partner or working in a workshop it's a good idea to find ways to hear somebody else reading your poem to you when you hear somebody else reading your poem to you you will very quickly figure out what you want to change about your okay um one of the most inspiring moments in my life my very good friend the poet James Allen Hall um i was really down we were um we were applying for jobs and applying for you know there's a point in which you're just applying for everything and everybody's saying no about everything and that's just the way life is and i remember um i woke up one morning and he had left on my voicemail all these recordings of my poems and he was doing that to show me that i really was a writer it was the nicest thing it's one of the nicest thing anybody's ever done to me in it done for me okay um next this sort of goes with that slow moment thing write poetry don't write prose now that gets hard because people are like how do i know the difference between prose and poetry and usually you can tell that in the space of a poem right is this moving forward in a way that is interested in giving exposition is this moving forward in a way that is interested in giving background or is this just the information as it is which is more it seems to me poetry do y'all follow what i'm saying is this trying to be flowery as people like to say or is this in the midst of life which i think is closer to poetry and not prose and i actually think you can hear that if you look forward um next um if you can it's uh you know sometimes it's impossible but if you can try to stay away from to be verbs try to stay away from you know is or to be um try to use action verbs whenever you can use the kind of verbs that keep things alive right um uh one of my students turned in a poem the other day and instead of and it said ample which i was very excited about because the girl ambled in the poem i was very proud of my student for that uh so the last thing i wanted to say and then um susan wanted me to do this thing and i'm not sure let's see if i can let's see if i can show y'all the last thing that i had to say just had to do with um with modifiers um let me see if i can find well one way we can do this is i can do it this way give me one second uh i need um share i'm gonna need sharing capabilities in a second if i don't um if i don't have if i don't have them okay i'll see rachel um um let me see if i have to give that and then once once we've done that i'll um once we do this thing i'm about to do right now i'll take i'll take questions i think i just did that dad we're good okay good because i wasn't sure where to find the share oh yeah oh page i'm responsive that's not good let's try this again we can actually we can do it from here we can use this this is enough space does everybody see that so um one of the things that i i do have an exercise that i do um around oh that's not what i want so i'm going on my old website i'm just sort of doing this at the at the last minute to show y'all one of the things that i do is i'll give students a um a postcard that has an image on it and i'll tell them and this is something y'all can try to take a sheet of paper um you know a normal size sheet of paper like this and to fold the paper long ways you know um hot dog not sandwich and on what would be your right on the right of that paper to make a list of nouns that you see um i usually tell them make me a list of 10 nouns and uh given what we're looking at now those 10 nouns might be flowers might be sea or sky maybe might be crown might be face but even more particularly might be eye or lips right um and if you were to make that list what i would do then is i would tell you on the left of that same page so you have nouns on the right on the left of that same page i want modifiers that somehow describe each one of those nouns but you can't use the color of a thing and you can't use the size or shape of a thing and because you can't use the color or a size or a shape of a thing you suddenly have to be original about what you see and you have to be able to give it story so for instance what might we say this is the part where we're going to get a little more interactive if y'all don't mind i'm sorry that um i'm sorry i picked the wrong thing to look at um what might we say is a modifier i can't see a modifier i can't see you so maybe somebody can unmute and tell me what might we say is a modifier for the word flower anyone are you great huh fragrant fragrant we might say fragrant flower somebody give me another modifier for the word flower delicate delicate very good somebody give me another modifier for the word flower transparent transparent that's a great right all right let's look at the eye what might we do as a modifier for the word for the word i or what would you say i said wet wet wet i very good somebody else i said perceiving would you say jen oh i said orb okay and i heard a man's voice i think uh perceiving perceiving what else lucid lucid anybody else clouded what clouded clouded i right what about this shirt what might we do in order to modify this shirt linen linen shirt very good what else great what what what great draped draped shirt what else protective cool this shirt cool shirt very good very good those are all great those are all great now let's just look at the grass only right let's look only at the grass what might be a modifier we could use for the grass in this image blades yeah but blades is a noun we want a real we want a real adjective fake how did huh crowded crowded what else crowded grass fake grass fake okay maybe i'm not hearing that right i thought i heard fake but maybe not yeah it's fake okay what else thick thick grass right so what what happens here is that you end up saying thick grass or fake grass right and those kinds of modifiers give me things to read in the poem so if you tell me fake grass then as a reader i'm like wait a minute the grass was fake and that already in and of itself has a meaning that sets your scene that sets your stage that's part of what's going to happen in terms of the content of your poem what often happens with um with younger writers or newer writers i should say is that people will say green grass and the truth about us is that every time we think grass we think it's green y'all live in washington state but if i asked you what color is the sky you would most automatically think blue do y'all see what i'm saying but blue sky is obvious in a poem and so there are so many other ways that you can make that sky work for you you can make a heavy sky you can make a light sky do y'all understand what i mean and then that then those modifiers are doing work and so the final best practice i'll give you and then i'll take questions um is for you to come up if you may either use no more modifiers or and which is not my advice i think modifiers can be used in poems a lot of teachers will tell you don't use modifiers which i think is just not the history of poetry but if you look at poems and you look at the modifiers lucel clifton is actually very good at this if you look at the modifiers poets are using it's always a modifier that changes your idea of the now and that's what we want to do we want to change the lens through which people see the world that we all see in common so uh what i do when i write a poem what i want to do when i talk about a tree in a poem is make it such that whenever you see a tree again you have to see that tree made new in the real world everybody understand that okay any questions maybe i should take the questions i already had debora will you read them to me or should i scroll no that's fine let me um let me go back up here because i was taking notes on the best practices so um so there was a question um i'm not sure if uh ryan and still here but one of our um english and creative writing instructors asked any tips and tricks to overcome writer's block and or when inspiration is lacking yeah um one trip is one trick is to write absolute nonsense fill up a page with nonsense fill up a page not not even a work microsoft word document a journal page and just stop when you get to the end of the page fill it up with nonsense say sentence after sentence um i give my students this thing we call it free writing uh they can't pick up their hands they can put something at the top of the page peaches and then write everything you know about peaches all of your experiences with peaches how do you feel about peaches do people know how much you love peaches it's usually good to have something at the top of the page you really care about or that really is driving you crazy and you find that in the i give them 10 minutes and at the end of the 10 minutes suddenly they don't have writer's block because they've written two or three pages about peaches but the other thing that they've done is not write about peaches because i tell them they can't pick their pens up they're not allowed to think i say right don't think don't correct anything you know sometimes for whatever reason we'll write hte rather than te for the do y'all know what i mean like let it go girl it's okay keep going when i say stop you'll see you have two or three pages and when you look at that two or three pages of course yes you're going to have some sentences about peaches but you will also have some sentences about things you did not expect to say use that to make your poem great thank you and then thank you so much sorry that's my that's the most common question how do you get over writer's block so thank you that's brilliant thank you she's going to apply that right in class um the next question is from sam sermeno um jericho what would a dream collaboration of yours be however reality based for future poetry art projects um i don't know i mean maybe this is a poetry art project but i would really there used to be a television show in the very late 60s and early 70s called soul s o u l exclamation point and because of the times it was a show that could work because it um it had very different kinds of people i mean in many ways it was a variety show but a variety show of a certain kind of seriousness because the show would include religious leaders and boxers and dancers and singers and poets um nico Giovanni as a matter of fact did host the show a few times um and i think i would like to do something like that i think i would like to host something like soul exclamation point exclamation point on television again where i can bring together these very different people who would perform but also talk about the issues of the day thank you i see sam is still here so she got to hear her answer and it looks like our next question was from another person named sam but not the same person um any advice for people are new to poetry such as myself um yeah just you know have a good time live i mean i mean that literally have a good time live you know you have to live in order to have that's a best practice to um live as much as you can say yes as often as you possibly can uh especially while you're young because there comes a point in which you have to learn and say no but you know say yes when i was a young person i saw a poet nico Giovanni again she came to my undergraduate school and somebody asked her what is your advice for writers and she said always say yes and so um i've been saying yes ever since and the more you say yes the more you have experiences about which to write true all right and then let's see the last question that i've got from somebody and then we can see if there's more or we can just talk in general um from jen who introduced you um in your interviews you talk about the importance of being vulnerable how did you become comfortable with talking about your life experiences and vulnerability this is a great question and i meant to say this actually when i was talking about be bold be bold um lose your mind um part of the reason why i like to call that being bold is that the other option scares people to death and that is be vulnerable i mean the truth about being bold in poetry really just means having vulnerability um you have to be vulnerable to the poem and you quite literally lose yourself to it in many ways um and that means you have to be willing to try at things that might fail you and you have to be okay with failing do you know what i mean um uh but i just don't think there are any failures uh i think you feel failure in the moment but the truth about being a poet and i really do believe this if you write 10 poems that don't work that is just fine because it is impossible for you to write 10 poems without having 10 good lines if you wrote 10 poems and all of them don't work you find the 10 lines you have in those 10 poems and you put those 10 lines on a microsoft word document you start moving those lines around you will end up with a poem because the line is the unit so i i really um i also think becoming vulnerable really is really happens by way of practice by way of discipline there's nothing around us there's nothing about our world about our nation about the billboards about our social media about the commercials about our relationships as they are now that really encourages vulnerability and yet we understand you don't get to fall in love unless you're vulnerable you can't you people are real anti vulnerability and everybody wants to fall in love everybody wants to be safe but everybody wants to fall in love you don't get both y'all know when i and when i say fall in love i mean literal love i mean that thing that and y'all know this y'all know that there are people there's somebody today who is visiting massachusetts who's going to meet someone in massachusetts that person visiting massachusetts lives in california four months from now some that person that they met today will be moving to california to be with them and nobody's going to think that strange do y'all see what i mean so if we and and that's because that person is willing to take the risk willing to be vulnerable it became clear to me that in my own poems i would have to be willing to take the risk be willing to be vulnerable for the sake of the poems yes that's scary because i didn't know how i was gonna come out of that i was like oh i'm gonna have all these poems and i'll still be what vulnerable who wants that do you know what i mean but what ended up happening was i gained strength because as i was mentioning earlier i quite literally learned from my poems i therefore become a more whole in a more independent person a person more certain of myself because as i'm writing my poems they're teaching me how to live they're telling me what i didn't know that i knew so i hope that answers you jen thank you so much for answering that thank you oh also it's a good idea not to take your family to work you wouldn't take your family to work um for any other job you have i don't know why his poets want to show their their wife their daughter their mom and their dad his husband nature they want to show everybody they poem don't show everybody your poem that's a setup especially if you know you should know your family if you know somebody hasn't been supported do not give them to the opportunity to be unsupportive yet again like if you already know who's ready to say no to you why are you running them down trying to show them the poem that's going to make yet another divide in your family don't do it don't take your family to work when your book comes out you do not have to give your family members your poetry book as a gift you don't have to do that everybody's all worried like oh what is my mom gonna say when she reads my book your mom reads poetry books is your mom gory graham you know what i'm saying like if your mom is not susan rich or jory graham don't worry she will not see your book honey i wrote do y'all think my parents have read the tradition they have not the tradition won the Pulitzer prize i would on the cover of the shreveport times do you think that made my parents read my book no they they read notebooks about the bible all year and they're just fine with it i am too i'm not struggling with my parents to read more poetry that's not where i need to be proselytizing poetry do y'all understand what i'm saying so don't don't create do not create barriers between yourself and your work make yourself free to do your work don't bring people one thing if you're going to a party and you know somebody who's a downer you don't bring them to the party don't bring downers to the party they'll catch up let them catch up later they will catch up thank you i love that you're making me laugh so much um we have about five minutes left is there any final question or dear could you want to leave us with any final thought anything that you always feel like you want to end with no i mean i could probably leave by um reading a poem because i didn't get to read a duplex and i should you know i'll read um since we have five minutes they take about a minute to read so i'll read two yeah i'll say good body y'all i really appreciate y'all having me here and i'm glad we finally got a chance to make it happen the duplex is a form that i invented um i think of it as a form that is at once a huzzle a sonnet and a blues poem and i think you'll hear those elements come through there are many of them in my latest book the tradition i've written a few since then um but i'll read two of them for you now and then then i do um duplex i begin with love hoping to end 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 hail to be good those who need most need hail 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 an island in the dream where i am an island i grow green with hope i'd like to end there and i'll read the the last duplex in the book which is also the last poem in the book um which is also not just i talked about um the formal concerns of the duplex the other thing that i didn't mention when i talked about what a duplex is is that um you know i wanted it to be sort of an amalgamation of these other forms so thinking about it in that way i uh i made each line nine to eleven syllables so in that way it sort of marries east and west it's not exactly iambic pentameter but it does move forward with syllabics in way many in ways many of traditions from from the east move forward in syllabics rather than meter um this poem is also a cento which is i mentioned before a poem that takes all its lines from other poems and it's a cento using all of the lines from the other duplexes in the book duplex cento my last love drove a burgundy car color of a rash a symptom of sickness we were the symptoms the road our sickness none of our fights ended where they began none of the beaten where they began any man in love can cause a messy corpse but i didn't want to leave a messy corpse obliterated in some lily field stench obliterating lilies of the field the murderer young and unreasonable he was so young so unreasonable steadfast and awful tall as my father steadfast and awful my tall father was my first love he drove a burgundy car uh thank y'all so much thank y'all for having me thank you thanks for coming kelly so kind thank you thank you thank you thank you really really appreciate it it's fun to listen to thank you thank you breathtaking thank you iron we hope you guys give a big round of applause for jericho as if we were actually in a room together thank you jericho thank you thank you so much thank you y'all say safe all day i'll touch you