 to the Creative Life from the American Creativity Association on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Billus Bleece. Our co-host is Darlene Boyd. Today on the show, we will be discussing poetry, knowing why the revolution must come. Our guest is Dr. Roger Rees. Dr. Rees is a poet who has said he wants to be catapulted into a poem. Ask him about that. He earned his PhD in poetry at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently an associate professor of poetry. He earned a prestigious National Education Association Fellowship and a Pushkart Prize. And his work has been selected for anthologies and has been published in the New Yorker Poetry Magazine and more. Dr. Rees' first collection is published under the title King Me. And he has a new collection coming out in February or March of 2022, soon. And it's called Best Barbarian. Before we meet Dr. Rees, I want you to know you can send your questions in by email to questionsatthinktechhawaii.com. Welcome, Roger. Let me start with you. Hello. Thank you for having me. Oh, well, we're very grateful to have you. And my first question, I've already alerted you. What do you mean by wanting to be catapulted into a poem? I think what I mean, and there's many ways to be catapulted, but one of the ways I'm interested in being catapulted into a poem is through the language. I want to either hear a snatch of language or be driven to write something down, something that is unescapable and something that won't let me go. I want that sort of impetus because that feels inevitable. I want the thing that I make to feel inevitable. I want language because that, to me, is where transformation can occur or where probably beauty resides or difficulty. Difficulty resides and what won't let you go. And so I'm always interested in that. And that catapulting could be, again, language. It could also be image. It could be I see something or there's a mood. Sometimes it's a mood. You have a feeling and you're looking for the language of that feeling and you're sort of feeling around. Or sometimes it's, for me, the catapulting comes through great work. In some ways, a book will make you want to be in conversation with it. I think as a writer, I'm always interested in what someone else has said and then the sort of little gaps and absences that I find in that thing. Like David Ferry is an amazing poet who I often find a lot of space in his work and an invitation to write. And that, to me, is that catapulting. The catapulting can be an invitation, like coming to the house. There's alchemy, almost, the way you talk about the words being a kind of serving as sort of an alchemical transubstantiation of feelings made manifest through your words. Yeah, I definitely think that words act alchemically. I think sound does that. That is the nature of something. I think that's why all the great biblical books, all the great sort of spiritual texts start with sound. There's some type of utterance that makes a thing. So I think about ashe, or amen, or all these different sounds that sort of can transform the physical and the spiritual. And they move sort of because they sort of start in the body and start somewhere else, but they become physical. They become manifest. And then there are ephemeral as well. They disappear. So it's just the process of language itself mimics this alchemical process. I say hello or come in, and then you come into my house. I think this is why a vampire tales. We have to invite in the vampire. I think that there's something to that invitation. You're sort of requesting the fate of the vampire, of that sort of energy. And so I think language does that. Yes, and you're, you know, darling and I are in the American Creativity Association trying to catalyze this force, this creative force in many ways and this alchemy and your language and poetry. It seems to get right at the heart and the juice of the creative self, which takes me to the title for today's show. And you say, and I'm wondering, how does poetry tie in with this knowing, knowing why the revolution must come? That's a provocative title and you helped us craft it. What revolution, what revolution is coming and why does poetry help us know that? This is coming, you know, we haven't talked, the audience should know, we haven't really talked about this yet. So I'm going to be learning along with the audience about your title for today. Sure, so the title kind of comes out of this moment. Can I tell a little story? I guess I should tell a little story. You know, they say great lessons are, you know, the great lessons of life are learned through narrative. Or at least Toni Morrison would argue, would have argued that, but I was actually traveling to Alaska for the first time and I was in Chulal. And I remember it's a very quiet city, very quiet. It was February or so and I get there. And the first thing I always do anytime I go to new places, I go to its bookstores. I run it and then I go to its bookstores. Those are the first things because I want to sort of feel out what the place feels like on the everyday. I go to this bookstore and it's a great used bookstore and I find an old copy of an Audrey and Rich book and Audrey and Rich, the poet, essayist and I turn to this poem, Dreamwood. And I'm supposed to give this talk at a local library and I read this poem, Dreamwood. And it's talking about, and then all of a sudden there's this line in the middle of poem where it's like poetry isn't revolution, but a way of knowing why it was called. And that connected to me with this other thing that I had been reading from Foucault, these lectures I had been reading of Foucault from years and years and years ago on Parthesia, the idea that like, so there's this concept that the Greeks had and you saw it in Euripides when a less, like say it was the court jester or a servant had to tell the truth to the king or queen or the emperor or to someone like the Senate and that servant had to speak truthfully, they knew that if they said something that could upset the emperor or the emperors, they could get their heads cut off, right? They could die, they could be killed for this. And so they would ask for Parthesia so that they could tell the truth. And the potentate understood that, hey, if this person says I need Parthesia, then we have to grant them that and I can't kill them for what they're gonna say. And this was such an interesting sort of civil idea. I feel like we need a little Parthesia in our world. But I started thinking about Parthesia and the idea of being able to know why something must come and to be able to speak and to say. And so to me, when I hear that poetry isn't revolution, I think about poetry won't necessarily get its universal health care. Poetry won't change the fact that we use currency, right? Poetry isn't, but it can announce why we might need to have new ways of thinking about economics. It can announce why we might have to allow from more than two genders, right? It can announce why black people need to be free, right? Poetry can sort of imagine and begin to see a future. It can begin to articulate that future. And often what happens is the poem is at the space or in the space of the unsayable. It's in the space of the necessity to make a future that doesn't exist, to try to make the invisible visible. That's revolution, right? That is the revolution, right? So a revolution is, I think about the term in big and small ways, right? We can think about economic revolutions. We can think about, I think when, we can think about France, we can think about those types of revolutions, the US, right? The Civil War, those are revolutions, right? But there's also revolutions in our own lives, right? And sort of in order for some of the bigger political revolutions, like when we want a world for which equity really exists, or we want a world in which black people can walk out the door and feel safe and feel that the police, can we imagine, like, how do we begin to imagine worlds without police, right? That begins personally. That begins in the like, imagining a world for which you don't police yourself. There's imagining worlds in which you think of your community, if you're of color, community of color, as not harmful, as not always lacking, right? As your community is big, beautiful, and because I don't think the police are really here for all of us. I think they're mostly here for us with black and brown folks, right? And so to me, this is part of that revolution, right? The poetry begins to sort of make possible in us. You know, what did you think about either Darlene and Roger? When I listened to Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate at the inauguration for Biden and Harris, I, of that whole proceedings, I was so moved by her voice and the language. I saw it that she brought to bear in the moment, both a revolutionary voice, an emotional voice, a transforming voice, but also a conforming voice. I felt connected, I felt woken up and connected to what we are all experiencing in the great divides today. And just through the cadence, the language, and her poetry. And I wondered if you had felt the same. Does that kind of get, if you had a chance to watch her? Yeah, I didn't, but Darlene, I didn't have a chance to watch her, but Darlene, I was wondering what you thought, what you made. In listening to Phyllis Greamer question, I can't help but think of you and we hope to have you read a little bit in your voices as we progress later on in the short time that we have. I found, and Roger, I have to say, I'm hooked on your poetry right now. I think I have tried to absorb almost every poem and I'm going to share a few things with you and why I say that. And thanks to YouTube, I'm able to hear you read the poems. You have several up on YouTube. So you and I come from a similar geographic background and I was particularly moved, so let me backtrack just a little bit. Let me ask you to set the stage. Why poetry for you? Why not prose? Why poetry? That's a great question. I started in first grade. It really was the first thing I gravitated toward when I was interested in art and I didn't even know it was art at the time. Interesting. Yeah, I didn't know it was art. I just thought it was, I was raised in a Pentecostal church where we had to recite poems during Easter and Christmas. And so I was just raised around as a like almost spoken, even though I was learning it off the page. So it's always just been the way that I've thought about language. I do write prose, but I find poetry a bit more seductive. I find poetry, it's really funny. I think it's like a poor people's art. It doesn't require much. It doesn't require, like when I think about visual art, for instance, painting or sculpting, right? That requires material outside of yourself to some degree. And I think I chose poetry or why I chose poetry to start my artistic career. It's not the only place, but why I think I chose poetry as my starting round was, I grew up with a single mother who we didn't have a lot of stuff. What we did have, my grandmother, we lived with my grandmother and what she had was, she had this coffee can full of pennies. And we had like old paper. And I just would, that's, and so I was like, okay, I want to make things. And all we had were these pens and reams of paper. And so that's why- And there it was, okay. Well, I just, not to take us through a lesson on prose versus poetry and correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think the most simplest, simplistic description would be that prose, you're just writing something. And to me poetry, you're bringing in and drawing in the senses. Of course, there's the rhythm and all the logistics that I can't speak to that you can and that you do demonstrate and illustrate. And I didn't answer your question and I should. You asked me what I thought of our little poetess. As I was watching the inauguration and watching her, I was thinking back to when we had, I work in a center and outreach center mostly focusing on Brown and Black students, but we were very fortunate to have Maya Angelou come in. We were funded, there were 300, 3,000, excuse me, students in the Brent Center, a big center. And the students of high school students came in, of course they were rather noisy when they came in and there was some chatter even when Maya Angelou began, but I would say 12 minutes into that program, there wasn't a single sound. They were riveted. And that was the sound of her voice. She was also demonstrating and explicating her poetry as you just have with defining for Phyllis your perception of the revolution as it relates to poetry. And in many ways Maya Angelou was doing the same, but it was just amazing. And I think if someone, if they had been given a book that would never have been the same and they'll always remember that in their life and their voice. And I think that's what I was seeing come through in the inauguration. I think we have a little Maya Angelou there coming forth. So when, so you said you wrote your first poem when you were in first grade. I don't dare ask you about it. I'm sure it was charming and engaging. But I think I read something about you when you were 16, something, someone challenged you or am I correct in that? Well, so it's interesting because there's several things I want to address. I love the research because yes, at 16 I was writing journalistically in high school and I had a great journalism teacher, Mr. Connelly. And he just challenged me to revise. He challenged me to think about the world in some really interesting ways, really ways that contradicted the way I was being raised. In fact, thinking a little bit larger than I was being taught to think. And that was great. It's something I go back to all the time. I think about Mr. Connelly. In fact, during the summers, it's when I think about Mr. Connelly actually because I would send him- Why the summer? Because I would always send him work in the summer. I would send him poems. I would send him things I would write in. And he was so encouraging. He would write back and he would talk to me. And that was a great sort of lesson too about poetry and about the communities that poetry and writing makes because I think one of the things is it's so extra-curricular to be a writer. No one is like, oh man, you wanna be a writer. Awesome, let's set you up. You tell people you wanna be a lawyer. People are so behind that. You wanna be an engineer behind that. You wanna even play basketball and be a football behind it. You tell people you wanna be a writer. People are like, so you wanna star, right? And so Mr. Connelly was one of those that it's where writing really happens. Writing really happens in these like back doors and after school in the summer when no one can see. You know, it's interesting because we know we can find research to support anything if we really look hard enough. But there is conclusive research that tells us, especially in the area of creative productive thinking that generally if we really think really hard there's probably one person that has made a difference in our lives. And that person is generally a teacher as you're giving your example, Mr. Connelly and setting our life on track and also developing a passion. And one of the dimensions that we talk about or hope to talk about with each of our guests, Billison and myself, we hope that we're able to identify that we have someone that has developed such a passion for their art. And we really think that you have that passion. And as I was looking at your particular poem, Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, I guess you could guess why I was looking at that one. I had many things going through my mind. And one of them being that for me I think the difference between the prose and the poetry, as I've said, would be the senses. But you did something for me in that poem as I was reading it that I wasn't expecting. And it's kind of humorous. Coming from that area of Philadelphia and South Jersey, myself growing up, you mentioned the kiss on the Delaware and the smell of the chemicals. I thought of my kiss, which was not on the Delaware. I'm not sure I wanna think about it. But I thought, thank goodness I was upwind because those chemicals smell so bad. And if your kiss reached that of those chemicals, no wonder you can't forget it because of all the factories. So when folks now land in Philadelphia, that's not just the fuel from the plane you're smelling. It's some of those, if you happen to be upwind or downwind, whatever happens. But the reason I mentioned that, not just for the humor, and I appreciate that you're smiling over that. But I think when I read your poetry, I felt that I was watching a movie. And not only was I watching a movie because of course the artistic part and the visuals were amazing for me. The kiss on the Delaware, so simple. You talked about Mick Wittgenstein and Foucault and just going from the crumb of the Delaware at that point to the analytic philosophers, their arguments, I find that amazing and refreshing. But the sensory experience was quite interesting and quite incredible. I'm looking forward to your book coming out, your next book. Wow, thank you. It's so interesting. Like I love that that was the way you connect. Like for me, I'm always interested in where people come into a poem because it's not always the first line, right? But when you find your way in, all of a sudden the poem sort of, how it becomes sort of multi-tune-ness, becomes mansion life in a lot of ways. Since we're talking about revolution, and also in that poem, you talked about the lawn jockey with the Blessed Virgin looking down on the lawn jockey. Was that a church setting or a yard setting? Because in my growing up, and no one complained about them, there was another reason. There were lawn jockeys all over the place. White families, black families, it didn't matter. And there was probably because we were in, we had the race tracks, we had the AC race track, we had garden state race track, and horse racing was an interest. And jockeys were respected. Not to say that the statues were always treated with respect, they seemed to move around sometimes. My father wanted one and my mother wouldn't let him have one. But the idea of how you messed the Blessed Virgin looking down on the jockey, I found that rather interesting. Where did that come from? Chicago. That's from living in Chicago and walking my daughter to daycare every day down this one street. Her daycare was at an in-home daycare that was like two blocks from our house. And I would walk by, like you walk by fences and I'm walking by this sort of eclectic gathering of lawn material. But what's interesting, I think why I found it, there was no grass. So there was a lawn jockey and then there was a moving marriage. And they were in the same space. It's true. And I just thought this is such an interesting juxtaposition. To me, that's how art happens is these interesting juxtaposition. These two symbols that carry so much weight, so much American historical weight, world historical weight. So for those who haven't read that, do you want to start to just share some of your poetry with us? That one or are slaves caring for masters and deforming mastery or the film from Philadelphia to poetry? I don't have, it's funny, the two that I brought up that I was like, oh, maybe I'll read these two are actually not those, but... That's okay. I think we need to hear it from the master himself being Roger and I'd like you to share. And we have about five minutes left and we do have a couple of questions from our audience. So I'd like to, they make a nice closing. Okay. I can read one poem and then... Please. And this one sort of, again, is thinking about my upbringing slightly as it overlaps with James Baldwin's upbringing, actually. It was also raised in the storefront Pentecostal Church. Rendle, all lions must lean into something other than a roar. James Baldwin, for instance, singing Precious Lord. His voice as weary as water broken over his scalp in a storefront sanctified church's baptismal pool. All those years ago, when he wanted to be somebody's child and on fire and that being Lord, I want to be somebody's child and chosen water spilling over their scalp. Water taking the shape of their longing, a deer diving into evening traffic in the furrow drawn in the air over the hood of the car. Power and wanting to be something alive and open. Lord, I want to be alive and open. A glimpse of power, the shuffle of a mother's hand over a sleeping child's forehead as if clearing the city's rust from its face, which we mostly are. A halo of rust, a glimpse of power. James Baldwin leaning into the word light, his voice jostling that single rain in his throat as if he might drop it or already have. I am calling to that grain of light, to that gap between his teeth where the many of us fatherless sleep and bear and be whatever darkness or leaping thing we can be. In James Baldwin's mouth, my difficult beauty, my weak in war, my future as any number of angels which is not unlike the beast rendle coming out of the wild heaven into the hills and halls of the meat house at the harpest call with absolute prophecy in his breast and desire for mercy for a friend and end to drifting in loneliness and in that coming down out of the hills, out of the trees, for once bringing humans the best vision of themselves. Of course, must be slaughtered. Roger, you're on your way to Radcliffe at Harvard. I want to make sure our viewers know that for fellowship. So we wish you well and congratulations. Thank you. Thank you all for the wonderful interview. Thank you all for the conversation. It went too fast. Thank you, Roger. And I think we'll have to leave it there. Let our audience know you have been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii. Today, Darlene Boyd and I have been discussing poetry and how it wakes us up to the meaning behind revolution itself. Thanks for participating. And thanks to our viewers to turn tuning in. I'm Phyllis Blyse. We'll be back in two weeks with another edition of The Creative Life. Aloha.