November 13, 2024 • 35 mins
Geffrey Davis selects recordings that reveal the bold, risky, and relentless work of attention and connection that poetry undertakes. He shares Lisel Mueller pushing against the limits of human understanding (“What the Dog Perhaps Hears”), Carl Phillips exploring change as more than calamity (“Continuous Until We Stop”), and Ross Gay asserting that pain and grief live alongside gratitude (“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude”). Davis closes by reading his poem “Inside the Charged Dark,” paying tribute to his mother as the model of inquiry in his life.
Find the full recordings of Mueller, Phillips, and Gay reading from the Poetry Center on Voca:
Lisel Mueller (October 28, 1981)
Carl Phillips (November 1, 2012)
Ross Gay (January 19, 2017)
Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.
Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JUL (00:01):
Welcome to Poetry Centered, where you'll hear recordings
of poets reading and speakingabout their work,
selected and introducedby a contemporary poet.
This show comes to you from theUniversity of Arizona Poetry
Center, and our online archiveof poetry readings called Voca.
My name is JulieSwarstad Johnson,
(00:23):
and I'm the Poetry Center'sarchivist, here to say hello.
We're delighted to be backwith six new episodes.
You can look forwardto a new episode
every two weeks, with a breakfor the holidays in the middle.
We'll have episodes hosted byValerie Hsiung, Diego Báez,
Abigail Chabitnoy, MackenziePolonyi, and Kwame Dawes.
(00:46):
But first, to kickoff this new season,
we're joined by Geffrey Davis,a poet, editor, and professor
at the University of Arkansas.
He's the author of threecollections of poetry, most
recently, One WildWord Away, which
came out earlier thisyear, and is also
available as an audio book.
(01:07):
For today's episode,Geffrey chooses
recordings of Lisel Mueller,Carl Phillips and Ross Gay,
exploring through each thebold, risky and relentless work
of attention and connectionthat poetry undertakes.
You'll hear him take up thatsame work in his own poetry
at the episode's end.
(01:28):
Geffrey, welcome,and thank you so
much for being our host today.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (01:38):
Hello.
This is Geffrey Davis,and I'm recording this
at my desk in the Ozarksof Northwest Arkansas.
The first recording I'd like toshare is Lisel Mueller reading
"What the Dog Perhaps Hears."I love to share this
poem with students,and have been doing so
for over a decade now.
(01:59):
I love how Mueller, aGerman born American writer,
upends our idea of quiet.
She does this in part bytuning her speaker's ear
to a rich, kinetic soundscapeof all the life reaching just
beyond the limits ofour human hearing.
Now, this particular recordingwas made on October 28, 1981,
(02:21):
a year my parents were likely,unbeknownst to them, starting
to set my own life into motion.
So now I'm kind of delightedto think of Mueller's voice
as resonating back thenwith one particular birth
that nobody yet couldhear on its way.
I also love how Mueller hereplays with a balancing act
(02:42):
that we might callpoetry's ambition.
On the one hand, awillingness to sharpen,
or admit with compassion,the real limitations
of human understanding.
And, on the other hand, adaringness to transform or even
transgress those edgesof human perception.
To ignite or borrow, throughimagination and invention,
(03:05):
the kind of expression thatcould create a new heat.
By wondering the moving dramasunfolding beneath our grasp,
Mueller's speakeris kind of smuggling
those more-than-humaninsights into our own capacity
for change.
In her briefintroductory remarks,
amplified by what unfoldsin the poem itself,
(03:27):
I think Mueller is makingsome really crucial claims
for the quietimportance of changing
how we listen to the world.
She speculates that hearinganew can lead to new emotions.
Emotions, as shesays, we could barely
feel before, or that wecouldn't feel at all.
I think this is how poetrybecomes a technology
(03:49):
for deepening intimacy.
By translating thepossibility of shared feelings
into the possibilityof shared connections.
For turning a changedsense of hearing into a changed
sense of the worldand our interconnected
places within it.
Maybe what I'm trying tosay is that I see this poem
(04:11):
as a celebration ofour unwillingness
to relent for the next possibleconnection humming just
around the corner of awareness.
So here is Lisel Mueller reading"What the Dog Perhaps Hears."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LISEL MUELLER (04:29):
I get mileage not only out of my kids,
but also out of myanimals, out of my pets.
And this one was inspired, if Ican use that word, by the fact
that I realized one day howdifferent our dogs hearing
(04:51):
obviously was from our hearing.
How he was scared by soundsthat we could barely hear.
And sometimes, thingswe couldn't hear at all.
"What the Dog Perhaps Hears."If an inaudible whistle
(05:13):
blown between our lipscan send him home to us,
then silence is perhapsthe sound of spiders breathing,
and roots mining the earth,it may be asparagus heaving
headfirst into the light,and the long brown sound of
(05:33):
cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like toask the dog if there
is a continuous whir, becausethe child in the house
keeps growing.
If the snake reallystretches full length
without a click, and thesun breaks through clouds
(05:55):
without a decibel of effort.
Whether in autumn, when thetrees dry up their wells,
there isn't a shuddertoo high for us to hear.
What is it like up there,above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
(06:15):
For us, there was no birthcry, the newborn bird
is suddenly here, the eggbroken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothingwhen the world changed.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (06:36):
The next recording I'd like to share is
Carl Phillips reading"Continuous Until We Stop."
Now, I have many qualities.
One of those qualitiesis stubbornness.
Like many, in certaincontexts, that stubbornness
can work for me.
Like, say, when I'm draftingor revising a new poem,
(06:57):
holding out for some minoror not so minor development
that I choose to believeis still on its way.
If I can just resist thealluring satisfaction
of the poem's first light's.
But when I'm reading the poemsof others, more often than not,
I find that my stubbornnessworks against me,
can manifest, consciouslyor unconsciously,
(07:19):
as an inability orunwillingness to receive
the work on its own terms.
And so I love it whenwitnessing a poet
read their work becomes anoccasion to remove such readerly
resistances in me.
Carl Phillips is one of thosepoets whose work changed for me
the moment I heard it aloud.
(07:40):
Call it conversion,call it clarification,
but listening to Phillips scorehis own lines, immediately
and irrevocablydeepen my capacity
to be led by his poetics.
To go increasingly howhis lyric syntax guessed.
Working harder to stayinside the discovery
state of feeling half lost.
(08:02):
The mid kinesis ofwonder and association.
What someone brilliantand dear to me calls Philip's
architecture of thought.
James Longenbach describedthis quality as, quote,
"the sound of a mind alivein the syntactical process
of discovering whatit might be thinking."
(08:23):
The Phillips recording I'vechosen, among other things,
concerns itself with sussing outthe bewilderment of transition,
its speaker striving to parsethe realities of change,
in part by sheddingsome predetermined
ideas of the calamitywe are taught to believe
change itself will entail.
(08:43):
Or maybe this is the lifelens that I bring to the poem.
This Philips recording wasmade on November 1, 2012,
during the early months of auniquely singular transition
for me, that ofbecoming a parent.
Some of which entailedanxiously questioning
how to know whether I wasbreaking or renewing my family's
(09:05):
cycles of tragedy.
Although I'm justnow discovering it
in the midst of more majorrelational shifting in my life,
having left the very longand painful relationship
that led to my son's arrival.
And so navigating once againthat disorienting process
of dismantling themany myths and meanings
(09:26):
that can keep us fromsurrendering to risk.
From stepping further into whatwe hope, without yet knowing,
is the start of a new freedom.
So here is Carl Phillips reading"Continuous Until We Stop."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CARL PHILLIPS (09:43):
This is called "Continuous Until We Stop."
But when I came to what I'd beentold was the zone of tragedy,
transition, it was not that.
Was a wildering field,across it, the light steadily
lessening, and the tall grasses,waving, deepened their colors.
(10:08):
Blue-green or a greenish blue--hard to tell, exactly.
Was like when thebody surrenders
to risk, that moment whenan unwillingness to refuse
can seem no differentfrom an inability to,
though they are not the same.
(10:28):
Inability, unwillingness.
To have said otherwisedoesn't make it true,
or even make it count as true.
Yes, but what doesthe truth matter now,
I whispered, stepping furtherinside what, by then, was night,
(10:49):
almost.
The tamer animals wouldsoon lie down again,
and the wild go free.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (11:04):
The third recording I'd like to share is
Ross Gay reading "Catalogof Unabashed Gratitude."
Now, Ross Gay is anotherwriter whose own scoring worked
to unlock something about thepoetry I couldn't hear before.
By orchestrating acadence of curiosity,
I'm now grateful tosay, I can't unhear.
(11:28):
I admire so much about thisself-consciously long-winded
title poem of Gay's2015 collection.
I love the speaker'srisky insistence
on renewing his faith in ourability to extend and sustain
our attention.
I love the way certain thingsreturn to reward that attention,
(11:50):
creating prismaticechoes of understanding.
For instance, howthe honey left behind
by a mournful pile of deadbees, sings to the honey
that the speakerspoons into our tea.
Which then sings to the beeshadow cruising the page
that the poet iswriting upon, and so on.
(12:11):
I really delight in givingthis voice to student writers,
and watching their early,awkward attempts at making sense
of Gay's disarming rhythms.
For instruction, Iwill often point them
toward a recording or two ofhim reading his work aloud.
And now I'm happy to havethis particular recording
to share because it has wovenyet another appreciation
(12:35):
into my long existingadmiration of this poem.
In this recording, madeon January 19, 2017,
Gay invokes an emotion thatI hadn't quite realized
had so much to say in the poem.
Notice how, midwaythrough his reading,
a rougher energy makesitself heard in Gay's voice.
(12:58):
Is it anger?
Is it frustration?
Is it urgency?
My initial instinct was to growworried when I first recognized
whatever this energy is.
What had upset hisheart that day?
But then I grewgrateful for what
I may be heard, becauseI think Gay's refusal
(13:20):
to resist this energy, aswell as his tearfulness
toward the end ofthis recording,
reminds me that our rougheremotions can and must
share the throat with grief.
Can even prime the voicefor a new kind of gratitude.
I've been known to describe Gayas one of our healthiest poets.
(13:42):
What I'm trying tocelebrate with this label
is his model of attunement.
The way his poems seemconcerned, often directly,
as you will hearin this recording,
with the toll a reader pays tocome along with the speaker.
How he not only weighs thepsychic cost of that attention,
but also takes up some ofthe emotional aftercare
(14:04):
that might needto follow rapture.
In this way, I seeGay as giving us
permission to take the time andspace necessary to manage having
our heads and heartsrearranged, making
sure we feel safely held on theother side of a new reality.
Softening the bell of changewithout arresting any resonance
(14:27):
we might carry withus off the page.
So here's Ross Gay reading"Catalog of Unabashed
Gratitude."[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROSS GAY (14:37):
And I'm going to read you one more poem.
It's called "Catalog ofUnabashed Gratitude."
It takes 10 minutesto read, which
means it takes 10 minutesfor you to hear it.
So if you need to shift, shift.
There's two things about thispoem that I want to tell you.
One is that part of it starts--it starts in a dream,
(14:59):
but then the second part,it goes to this community
orchard in Bloomingtoncalled the Bloomington
Community Orchard,which is this sort of
experiment in neighborliness.
An experiment in caring forpeople you may not know.
(15:20):
There's a hundred trees, there'sa hundred or more fruit bushes,
there's all kinds ofcomplementary plants.
But there's this placewhere we have decided
to try to figure out how togrow food for each other,
and to have the sort ofconversations about growing
food, which are reallyconversations about taking care
of each other.
That's in Bloomington.
(15:41):
Come.
Please, come.
And the other thingis that there's
this kid who was not yet a kidin this poem, named Aralee.
Aralee was the idea of akid, and now Aralee is like
a three-and-a-half-year-old kid.
"Catalog ofUnabashed Gratitude."
I'm very glad to be here.
Feels lucky to do this today.
(16:04):
Friends, will youbear with me today,
for I have awakened from adream in which a robin made,
with its savvy wings,a kind of veil.
Behind which it shimmiedand stomped something
from the south of Spain,its breast a flare,
looking me dead in theeye from the branch that
(16:25):
grew into my window,coochie-cooing my chin.
The bird shufflingits little talons
left, then right, whilethe leaves bristled
against the plaster wall, twoof them drifting onto my blanket
while the bird opened and closedits wings like a matador giving
up on murder, jutting itsbeak, turning a circle,
(16:47):
and flashing again, theruddy bombast of its breasts
by which I knew uponwaking, it was telling me
in no uncertain terms to bellowforth the tubas and sousaphones,
the whole rusty brassband of gratitude
not quite dormant in my belly.
It said so in a humanvoice, bellow forth.
(17:10):
[LAUGHTER]And who among us could ignore
such odd and precise counsel?
Hear ye! Hear ye!I am here to holler that
I have hauled tons--by which I don't mean lots.
I mean tons of cow shitand stood ankle deep
(17:30):
in swales of maggotsswirling the spent beer
grains the brewery man wasgood enough to dump off,
holding his nose, forthey smell very bad,
but make the compost writhegiddy and lick its lips,
twirling dung with my pitchforkagain and again with hundreds
and hundreds of other people,we dreamt an orchard this way,
(17:53):
furrowing our brows andhauling our wheelbarrows,
and sweating through our shirts.
And less than ayear later, there
was a party at whichtrees were sunk
into the well-fedearth, one of which,
a liberty apple, afterbeing watered in,
was tamped by a baby barefootwith a bow hanging in her hair,
biting her lip inher joyous work.
(18:15):
And, friends, this isthe realest place I know.
It makes me squirm likea worm, I am so grateful.
You could ride your bikethere, or roller skate,
or catch the bus.
There is a fence and agate twisted by hand.
There is a fig tree tallerthan you in Indiana.
It will make you gasp.
It might make you wantto stay alive even.
(18:35):
Thank you.
And thank you for not taking mypal when the engine of his mind
dragged him to swig fistfulsof Xanax and a bottle
or two of booze.
And thank you fortaking my father
a few years after hisown father went down.
Thank you.
Mercy, mercy.
Thank you for not smokingmeth with your mother.
(18:58):
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for leavingand for coming back.
And thank you for whatinside my friends' love
bursts like a throng ofroadside goldenrod gleaming
into the world, likelyhauling a shovel with her
like one named Aralee ought,with hands big as a horse's,
(19:19):
and who, like onenamed Aralee ought,
will laugh time to time tillthe juice runs from her nose.
Oh, thank you for the waya small thing's wail makes
the milk, or what once wasmilk in us, gather into horses
huckle-buckling across a field.
And thank you, friends, whenlast spring, the hyacinth bells
(19:41):
rang and the crocuses flauntedtheir upturned skirts,
and a quiet roved thebeehive, which, when I entered
were snuged two or three deadfist-sized clutches of bees
between the frames, almostclinging to one another.
This one's tiny headpushed into another's
(20:02):
tiny wing, one's forelegsresting on another's face,
the translucent paper oftheir wings fluttering
beneath my breath, and whena few dropped to the frames
beneath-- honey.
And after falling down to cry,everything's glacial shine.
And thank you, too.
(20:25):
And thanks for the corduroycouch I have put you on.
Put your feet up.
Here's a light blanket.
That would be really nice today.
[LAUGHTER]Here's a light blanket.
A pillow, dear ones, for Ithink this is going to be long.
I can't stop mygratitude, which includes,
(20:45):
dear reader, you, forstaying here with me,
for moving your lipsjust so as I speak.
Here is a cup of tea.
I've spooned honey into it.
And thank you the tiny beesshadow perusing these words
as I write them.
And the way my love talksquietly when in the hive,
(21:06):
so quietly, in fact,you cannot hear her,
but only notice barely herlips moving in conversation.
Thank you what doesnot scare her in me,
but makes her reach my way.
Thank you the love sheis, which hurts sometimes.
And the time she misrememberedelephants in one of my poems.
(21:27):
Which oh, here they come,garlanded with morning glory
and wisteria blooms, trombonesall the way down to the river.
Thank you the quiet inwhich the river bends around
the elephants solemn trunk,polishing stones, floating
on its gentle back.
The flock of geeseflying overhead.
(21:47):
Into the quick andgentle flocking of men,
to the old lady falling downon the corner of Fairmount
and 18th, holding patientlywith the softest parts
of their hands, hercane and purple hat,
gathering for her the contentsof her purse and touching her
shoulder and elbow.
(22:07):
And thank you, too, the cockeyedbasketball court on which
in a half-court, three onthree, we oldheads made of some
runny-nosed kids a shambles, andthe 61-year-old after flipping
a reverse layup off a backdoorcut from my no-look pass to seal
the game, ripped off his shirtand threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids toadmire the pacemaker's scar
(22:29):
grinning across his chest.
[LAUGHTER]Thank you the glad accordions'
wheeze in the chest.
Thank you the bagpipes.
Thank you to the woman,barefoot in a gaudy dress,
for stopping her car inthe middle of the road,
and the tractor trailer behindher, and the van behind it,
(22:52):
whisking a turtle off the road.
Thank you, god of gaudy.
Thank you paisley panties.
Thank you the organ up my dress.
Thank you the sheer dressyou wore kneeling in my dream
at the creek's edge, and thelight swimming through it.
The koi kissing halosinto the glassy air.
(23:15):
The room in my mindwith the blinds
drawn, where we nearlyinjure each other,
crawling into the shawlof the other's body.
Oh, thank you when I just say itplain, we fuck each other dumb.
And, you.
Again, you, forthe true kindness
that has been for you toremain awake with me like this,
(23:36):
nodding time to time.
And making that noisewhich I take to mean, yes.
Or, I understand.
Or, please go on,but not too long.
[LAUGHTER] Or, why are youspitting so much?
Or, easy, Tiger,hands to yourself.
I'm excitable.
I'm sorry.
(23:56):
I'm grateful.
I just want us to befriends now, forever.
Take this bowl ofblackberries from the garden.
The sun has made them warm.
I picked them just for you.
I promise I will try to stayon my side of the couch.
And thank you the baggie ofdreadlocks I found in a drawer
(24:18):
while washing and folding theclothes of our murdered friend.
The photo in which his arm slungaround the sign to "the trail
of silences." Thank you the waybefore he died,
he held his hands opento us for coming back
in a waft of incense, or in theshape of a boy in another city,
(24:38):
looking from betweenhis mother's legs,
or disappearing into thestacks after brushing by.
For moseying backin dreams where,
seeing us lost and scared, heput his hand on our shoulders
and pointed us to thetemple across town.
And thank you to theman all night long,
(24:58):
hosing a mist on hisearly-bloomed peach tree,
so that the hard frost not wastethe crop, the ice in his beard,
and the ghosts lifting from himwhen the warming sun told him,
sleep now.
Thank you theancestor who loved you
before she knew you bysmuggling seeds into her braid
for the long journey, wholoved you before he knew you
(25:20):
by putting a walnut tree inthe ground, who loved you
before she knew you bynot slaughtering the land.
Thank you who did not bulldozethe ancient grove of dates
and olives, who sailedhis keys into the ocean
and walked softly home.
Who did not fire, who did notplunge the head into the toilet,
who said, stop, don't do that.
(25:40):
Who lifted somebroken someone up.
Who volunteered the way a plantbirthed of the reseeding plant
is called a volunteer,like the plum tree that
marched beside theraised bed in my garden,
like the arugula that marcheditself between the blueberries.
Nary a bayonet, naryan army, nary a nation,
which usage of the wordvolunteer familiar to gardeners
(26:02):
the wide world mademy pal shout, oh!
And dance and plunge hisknuckles into the lush soil
before gobbling twostrawberries and digging a song
from his guitar made of woodfrom a tree someone maybe
planted, thank you.
Thank you zinnia and gooseberry,rudbeckia and pawpaw,
Ashmead's kernel, cockscomband scarlet runner,
feverfew and lemonbalm.
Thank you knitbone andsweetgrass and sunchoke and
(26:23):
false indigo, whose petalsstammered apart by bumblebees.
Good Lord, pleasegive me a minute.
And moonglow andcatkin and crookneck
and painted tongue andseedpod and Johnny jump-up.
Thank you what in us racketsglad what gladrackets us.
And thank you, too, thisknuckleheaded heart,
(26:46):
this pelican heart, thisgap-toothed heart flinging
open its gaudy maw to the sky.
Oh, clumsy, oh, bumblefucked,oh, giddy, oh, dumbstruck, oh,
rickshaw, oh, goattwisting its head at me
from my peach tree's highestbranch, balanced impossibly
gobbling the last fruit, itstongue working like an engine.
(27:07):
A lone sweet droptumbling by some miracle
into my mouth like thesmell of someone I've loved.
Heart like an elephant screamingat the bones of its dead.
Heart like the lady on the busdressed head to toe in gold,
the sun shiveringher shiny boots,
singing Erykah Badu toherself, leaning her head
(27:30):
against the window.
And thank you the way my fatherone time came back in a dream
by plucking the two cablesbeneath my chin like a bass
fiddle's strings,and played me until I
woke singing, no kidding.
I was smiling and singing,thank you, thank you.
Stumbling into the garden wherethe Juneberry's flowers had
burst open like the bells ofFrench horns, the lily my mom
(27:52):
and I plantedoozed into the air.
The bazillion ants labored intheir earthen workshops below,
collard greens waved in thewind like the sails of ships,
and the wasps swam in themint bloom's viscous swill.
And you-- again, youfriends, for hanging tight.
(28:14):
I know I can belong-winded sometimes.
I just want so badly torub the sponge of gratitude
over everything, including you.
Which is awkward.
Yes.
[LAUGHTER]The little suds going down your
collar behind your glasses.
(28:37):
Soon it will be over.
Which is precisely whatthe child in my dreams
said, holding my hand,pointing at the roiling sea,
and the sky hurtling our waylike so many buffalo, who said,
it's much worse thanwe think, and sooner.
To whom I said, no, duh,child, in my dreams.
(29:01):
What do you think thissinging and shuddering is?
What this screaming andreaching and dancing and crying
is, other than loving whatevery second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you.
Every day.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE][MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (29:29):
I'll close by sharing a poem of my own.
But before I do that, Iwant to express my thanks
to Julie and Poetry Centeredfor this enriching opportunity
to search through theVoca audiovisual archive.
Truly, the most challengingpart of this project
was choosing just three of themany treasures I found there.
And I hope, dearlistener, that you'll
(29:50):
consider spendingsome of your own time
there, tracking down some newand old sounds to cherish.
The poem I want to share comesfrom my third collection,
One Wild Word Away,which was published
by BOA Editions in April 2024.
I've found that, whatyou know about a book
before it's beenpublished, and what
(30:12):
about a book afterit's been published are two very
distinct knowledges.
My sense of this new bookhas been further complicated
by the fact that Ikilled it along the way.
I am deeply grateful forthe bright and tender chorus
of folks who helped usherit back from that erasure.
Especially since, now I seethis book, in so many ways,
(30:34):
as a record of mycoming home to myself.
But I'm learning that a voiceyou've killed, or let be killed,
might have some surprisingthings to say to you once it
finds its way into the world.
The poem I've chosen takes onanother thing that I'm learning.
Despite the frequencyof my attention, feeling
(30:54):
drawn to my father,especially to his struggles
with addiction, as achild, it was my mother
who modeled the kind ofinquiry that would go on
to help me to write poems.
This is, "Insidethe Charged Dark."
Dear mother, yourearly lessons got
(31:17):
me to bear the fearfulsounds that faith can
make while clearing its throat.
I remember the hard man whoreaped our purpling Timothy
grass each spring,unbuttoning his tan
jacket to show a gray kitten,gunky eyed and nestled
against fleece lining.
(31:39):
I remember reachingwith hesitation
while saying her new name.
As she grew into a cat, I haveno memory of feeling her claws.
Maybe that was when Istarted begging to keep
buried in me what can hurt.
(31:59):
I would never seeher outdoors again,
but she must have answeredthe barn cats singing
to her readiness for life.
You gave me the word "pregnant"and a story for the act on its
way.
I remember it was night.
I remember trustingyour insistence
(32:21):
to leave her aloneto the bodywork,
as we prepared a towelbox in the nearby privacy
of the closet.
You drifted toward sleep,and I forget how many times
I rose and returnedher to that darkness
before submitting toher urge to burrow
(32:44):
beneath the low canopy my kneeswere making of my blankets.
In bed with thisrestless wonder,
I heard a sound I knew, but not.
Because it seemed to comefrom some strange shore
I couldn't find.
Until I could.
(33:05):
The mewing blindnessof her first kitten's
head transforming theold boundary of her body.
I cried out.
Certain she wasbecoming my failure
to keep her lockedinside the charged dark.
My betrayal breakingher into something I
still don't have the words.
(33:27):
Without languageor understanding,
I'd made a hideous world.
I was hideous and crying.
Then the warmsafety of your hush
was suddenly there, softeningthe cave of uncertainty
at my ear, leading me backinto my chance to see.
(33:49):
I would survive looking ablessing in its full face
before believing I deservedthe voice of light.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JUL (34:08):
Thank you so much, Geffrey, for your poetry and for
your insights into Voca.
Your idea of poetry as atechnology for deepening
intimacy is one that I'mgoing to keep thinking about.
Listeners, thank youso much for joining us.
We truly only make thispodcast because we know
you're out there listening.
(34:29):
Thank you for sharingyour time with us.
Join us again in two weeksfor another great episode
hosted by Valerie Hsiung.
Check out the show notes forlinks to the full recordings
that you heardportions of today.
And remember that Voca, thearchive these recordings come
from, is available to youwherever you're listening from,
(34:50):
anywhere around the world.
It's now fullycaptioned, and recordings
from the Poetry Center'sreading and lecture series
are added on a regular basis.
Thanks so much for joining us.
And until next time.
ARIA PAHARI (35:05):
Poetry Centered is a project of the University
of Arizona Poetry Center,home to a world-class library
collection of more than 80,000items related to contemporary
poetry in English andEnglish translation.
Located on the campus of theUniversity of Arizona in Tucson,
(35:25):
the Poetry Centerlibrary and buildings
are housed on the Indigenoushomelands of the Tohono O'odham
and Pascua Yaqui.
Poetry Centered is the workof Aria Pahari, that's me,
and Julie Swarstad Johnson.
Explore Voca, The PoetryCenter's audio visual archive
online at voca.arizona.edu.
(35:48):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JUL (00:01):
Welcome to Poetry Centered, where you'll hear recordings
of poets reading and speakingabout their work,
selected and introducedby a contemporary poet.
This show comes to you from theUniversity of Arizona Poetry
Center, and our online archiveof poetry readings called Voca.
My name is JulieSwarstad Johnson,
(00:23):
and I'm the Poetry Center'sarchivist, here to say hello.
We're delighted to be backwith six new episodes.
You can look forwardto a new episode
every two weeks, with a breakfor the holidays in the middle.
We'll have episodes hosted byValerie Hsiung, Diego Báez,
Abigail Chabitnoy, MackenziePolonyi, and Kwame Dawes.
(00:46):
But first, to kickoff this new season,
we're joined by Geffrey Davis,a poet, editor, and professor
at the University of Arkansas.
He's the author of threecollections of poetry, most
recently, One WildWord Away, which
came out earlier thisyear, and is also
available as an audio book.
(01:07):
For today's episode,Geffrey chooses
recordings of Lisel Mueller,Carl Phillips and Ross Gay,
exploring through each thebold, risky and relentless work
of attention and connectionthat poetry undertakes.
You'll hear him take up thatsame work in his own poetry
at the episode's end.
(01:28):
Geffrey, welcome,and thank you so
much for being our host today.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (01:38):
Hello.
This is Geffrey Davis,and I'm recording this
at my desk in the Ozarksof Northwest Arkansas.
The first recording I'd like toshare is Lisel Mueller reading
"What the Dog Perhaps Hears."I love to share this
poem with students,and have been doing so
for over a decade now.
(01:59):
I love how Mueller, aGerman born American writer,
upends our idea of quiet.
She does this in part bytuning her speaker's ear
to a rich, kinetic soundscapeof all the life reaching just
beyond the limits ofour human hearing.
Now, this particular recordingwas made on October 28, 1981,
(02:21):
a year my parents were likely,unbeknownst to them, starting
to set my own life into motion.
So now I'm kind of delightedto think of Mueller's voice
as resonating back thenwith one particular birth
that nobody yet couldhear on its way.
I also love how Mueller hereplays with a balancing act
(02:42):
that we might callpoetry's ambition.
On the one hand, awillingness to sharpen,
or admit with compassion,the real limitations
of human understanding.
And, on the other hand, adaringness to transform or even
transgress those edgesof human perception.
To ignite or borrow, throughimagination and invention,
(03:05):
the kind of expression thatcould create a new heat.
By wondering the moving dramasunfolding beneath our grasp,
Mueller's speakeris kind of smuggling
those more-than-humaninsights into our own capacity
for change.
In her briefintroductory remarks,
amplified by what unfoldsin the poem itself,
(03:27):
I think Mueller is makingsome really crucial claims
for the quietimportance of changing
how we listen to the world.
She speculates that hearinganew can lead to new emotions.
Emotions, as shesays, we could barely
feel before, or that wecouldn't feel at all.
I think this is how poetrybecomes a technology
(03:49):
for deepening intimacy.
By translating thepossibility of shared feelings
into the possibilityof shared connections.
For turning a changedsense of hearing into a changed
sense of the worldand our interconnected
places within it.
Maybe what I'm trying tosay is that I see this poem
(04:11):
as a celebration ofour unwillingness
to relent for the next possibleconnection humming just
around the corner of awareness.
So here is Lisel Mueller reading"What the Dog Perhaps Hears."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
LISEL MUELLER (04:29):
I get mileage not only out of my kids,
but also out of myanimals, out of my pets.
And this one was inspired, if Ican use that word, by the fact
that I realized one day howdifferent our dogs hearing
(04:51):
obviously was from our hearing.
How he was scared by soundsthat we could barely hear.
And sometimes, thingswe couldn't hear at all.
"What the Dog Perhaps Hears."If an inaudible whistle
(05:13):
blown between our lipscan send him home to us,
then silence is perhapsthe sound of spiders breathing,
and roots mining the earth,it may be asparagus heaving
headfirst into the light,and the long brown sound of
(05:33):
cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like toask the dog if there
is a continuous whir, becausethe child in the house
keeps growing.
If the snake reallystretches full length
without a click, and thesun breaks through clouds
(05:55):
without a decibel of effort.
Whether in autumn, when thetrees dry up their wells,
there isn't a shuddertoo high for us to hear.
What is it like up there,above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
(06:15):
For us, there was no birthcry, the newborn bird
is suddenly here, the eggbroken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothingwhen the world changed.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (06:36):
The next recording I'd like to share is
Carl Phillips reading"Continuous Until We Stop."
Now, I have many qualities.
One of those qualitiesis stubbornness.
Like many, in certaincontexts, that stubbornness
can work for me.
Like, say, when I'm draftingor revising a new poem,
(06:57):
holding out for some minoror not so minor development
that I choose to believeis still on its way.
If I can just resist thealluring satisfaction
of the poem's first light's.
But when I'm reading the poemsof others, more often than not,
I find that my stubbornnessworks against me,
can manifest, consciouslyor unconsciously,
(07:19):
as an inability orunwillingness to receive
the work on its own terms.
And so I love it whenwitnessing a poet
read their work becomes anoccasion to remove such readerly
resistances in me.
Carl Phillips is one of thosepoets whose work changed for me
the moment I heard it aloud.
(07:40):
Call it conversion,call it clarification,
but listening to Phillips scorehis own lines, immediately
and irrevocablydeepen my capacity
to be led by his poetics.
To go increasingly howhis lyric syntax guessed.
Working harder to stayinside the discovery
state of feeling half lost.
(08:02):
The mid kinesis ofwonder and association.
What someone brilliantand dear to me calls Philip's
architecture of thought.
James Longenbach describedthis quality as, quote,
"the sound of a mind alivein the syntactical process
of discovering whatit might be thinking."
(08:23):
The Phillips recording I'vechosen, among other things,
concerns itself with sussing outthe bewilderment of transition,
its speaker striving to parsethe realities of change,
in part by sheddingsome predetermined
ideas of the calamitywe are taught to believe
change itself will entail.
(08:43):
Or maybe this is the lifelens that I bring to the poem.
This Philips recording wasmade on November 1, 2012,
during the early months of auniquely singular transition
for me, that ofbecoming a parent.
Some of which entailedanxiously questioning
how to know whether I wasbreaking or renewing my family's
(09:05):
cycles of tragedy.
Although I'm justnow discovering it
in the midst of more majorrelational shifting in my life,
having left the very longand painful relationship
that led to my son's arrival.
And so navigating once againthat disorienting process
of dismantling themany myths and meanings
(09:26):
that can keep us fromsurrendering to risk.
From stepping further into whatwe hope, without yet knowing,
is the start of a new freedom.
So here is Carl Phillips reading"Continuous Until We Stop."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CARL PHILLIPS (09:43):
This is called "Continuous Until We Stop."
But when I came to what I'd beentold was the zone of tragedy,
transition, it was not that.
Was a wildering field,across it, the light steadily
lessening, and the tall grasses,waving, deepened their colors.
(10:08):
Blue-green or a greenish blue--hard to tell, exactly.
Was like when thebody surrenders
to risk, that moment whenan unwillingness to refuse
can seem no differentfrom an inability to,
though they are not the same.
(10:28):
Inability, unwillingness.
To have said otherwisedoesn't make it true,
or even make it count as true.
Yes, but what doesthe truth matter now,
I whispered, stepping furtherinside what, by then, was night,
(10:49):
almost.
The tamer animals wouldsoon lie down again,
and the wild go free.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (11:04):
The third recording I'd like to share is
Ross Gay reading "Catalogof Unabashed Gratitude."
Now, Ross Gay is anotherwriter whose own scoring worked
to unlock something about thepoetry I couldn't hear before.
By orchestrating acadence of curiosity,
I'm now grateful tosay, I can't unhear.
(11:28):
I admire so much about thisself-consciously long-winded
title poem of Gay's2015 collection.
I love the speaker'srisky insistence
on renewing his faith in ourability to extend and sustain
our attention.
I love the way certain thingsreturn to reward that attention,
(11:50):
creating prismaticechoes of understanding.
For instance, howthe honey left behind
by a mournful pile of deadbees, sings to the honey
that the speakerspoons into our tea.
Which then sings to the beeshadow cruising the page
that the poet iswriting upon, and so on.
(12:11):
I really delight in givingthis voice to student writers,
and watching their early,awkward attempts at making sense
of Gay's disarming rhythms.
For instruction, Iwill often point them
toward a recording or two ofhim reading his work aloud.
And now I'm happy to havethis particular recording
to share because it has wovenyet another appreciation
(12:35):
into my long existingadmiration of this poem.
In this recording, madeon January 19, 2017,
Gay invokes an emotion thatI hadn't quite realized
had so much to say in the poem.
Notice how, midwaythrough his reading,
a rougher energy makesitself heard in Gay's voice.
(12:58):
Is it anger?
Is it frustration?
Is it urgency?
My initial instinct was to growworried when I first recognized
whatever this energy is.
What had upset hisheart that day?
But then I grewgrateful for what
I may be heard, becauseI think Gay's refusal
(13:20):
to resist this energy, aswell as his tearfulness
toward the end ofthis recording,
reminds me that our rougheremotions can and must
share the throat with grief.
Can even prime the voicefor a new kind of gratitude.
I've been known to describe Gayas one of our healthiest poets.
(13:42):
What I'm trying tocelebrate with this label
is his model of attunement.
The way his poems seemconcerned, often directly,
as you will hearin this recording,
with the toll a reader pays tocome along with the speaker.
How he not only weighs thepsychic cost of that attention,
but also takes up some ofthe emotional aftercare
(14:04):
that might needto follow rapture.
In this way, I seeGay as giving us
permission to take the time andspace necessary to manage having
our heads and heartsrearranged, making
sure we feel safely held on theother side of a new reality.
Softening the bell of changewithout arresting any resonance
(14:27):
we might carry withus off the page.
So here's Ross Gay reading"Catalog of Unabashed
Gratitude."[MUSIC PLAYING]
ROSS GAY (14:37):
And I'm going to read you one more poem.
It's called "Catalog ofUnabashed Gratitude."
It takes 10 minutesto read, which
means it takes 10 minutesfor you to hear it.
So if you need to shift, shift.
There's two things about thispoem that I want to tell you.
One is that part of it starts--it starts in a dream,
(14:59):
but then the second part,it goes to this community
orchard in Bloomingtoncalled the Bloomington
Community Orchard,which is this sort of
experiment in neighborliness.
An experiment in caring forpeople you may not know.
(15:20):
There's a hundred trees, there'sa hundred or more fruit bushes,
there's all kinds ofcomplementary plants.
But there's this placewhere we have decided
to try to figure out how togrow food for each other,
and to have the sort ofconversations about growing
food, which are reallyconversations about taking care
of each other.
That's in Bloomington.
(15:41):
Come.
Please, come.
And the other thingis that there's
this kid who was not yet a kidin this poem, named Aralee.
Aralee was the idea of akid, and now Aralee is like
a three-and-a-half-year-old kid.
"Catalog ofUnabashed Gratitude."
I'm very glad to be here.
Feels lucky to do this today.
(16:04):
Friends, will youbear with me today,
for I have awakened from adream in which a robin made,
with its savvy wings,a kind of veil.
Behind which it shimmiedand stomped something
from the south of Spain,its breast a flare,
looking me dead in theeye from the branch that
(16:25):
grew into my window,coochie-cooing my chin.
The bird shufflingits little talons
left, then right, whilethe leaves bristled
against the plaster wall, twoof them drifting onto my blanket
while the bird opened and closedits wings like a matador giving
up on murder, jutting itsbeak, turning a circle,
(16:47):
and flashing again, theruddy bombast of its breasts
by which I knew uponwaking, it was telling me
in no uncertain terms to bellowforth the tubas and sousaphones,
the whole rusty brassband of gratitude
not quite dormant in my belly.
It said so in a humanvoice, bellow forth.
(17:10):
[LAUGHTER]And who among us could ignore
such odd and precise counsel?
Hear ye! Hear ye!I am here to holler that
I have hauled tons--by which I don't mean lots.
I mean tons of cow shitand stood ankle deep
(17:30):
in swales of maggotsswirling the spent beer
grains the brewery man wasgood enough to dump off,
holding his nose, forthey smell very bad,
but make the compost writhegiddy and lick its lips,
twirling dung with my pitchforkagain and again with hundreds
and hundreds of other people,we dreamt an orchard this way,
(17:53):
furrowing our brows andhauling our wheelbarrows,
and sweating through our shirts.
And less than ayear later, there
was a party at whichtrees were sunk
into the well-fedearth, one of which,
a liberty apple, afterbeing watered in,
was tamped by a baby barefootwith a bow hanging in her hair,
biting her lip inher joyous work.
(18:15):
And, friends, this isthe realest place I know.
It makes me squirm likea worm, I am so grateful.
You could ride your bikethere, or roller skate,
or catch the bus.
There is a fence and agate twisted by hand.
There is a fig tree tallerthan you in Indiana.
It will make you gasp.
It might make you wantto stay alive even.
(18:35):
Thank you.
And thank you for not taking mypal when the engine of his mind
dragged him to swig fistfulsof Xanax and a bottle
or two of booze.
And thank you fortaking my father
a few years after hisown father went down.
Thank you.
Mercy, mercy.
Thank you for not smokingmeth with your mother.
(18:58):
Oh, thank you.
Thank you for leavingand for coming back.
And thank you for whatinside my friends' love
bursts like a throng ofroadside goldenrod gleaming
into the world, likelyhauling a shovel with her
like one named Aralee ought,with hands big as a horse's,
(19:19):
and who, like onenamed Aralee ought,
will laugh time to time tillthe juice runs from her nose.
Oh, thank you for the waya small thing's wail makes
the milk, or what once wasmilk in us, gather into horses
huckle-buckling across a field.
And thank you, friends, whenlast spring, the hyacinth bells
(19:41):
rang and the crocuses flauntedtheir upturned skirts,
and a quiet roved thebeehive, which, when I entered
were snuged two or three deadfist-sized clutches of bees
between the frames, almostclinging to one another.
This one's tiny headpushed into another's
(20:02):
tiny wing, one's forelegsresting on another's face,
the translucent paper oftheir wings fluttering
beneath my breath, and whena few dropped to the frames
beneath-- honey.
And after falling down to cry,everything's glacial shine.
And thank you, too.
(20:25):
And thanks for the corduroycouch I have put you on.
Put your feet up.
Here's a light blanket.
That would be really nice today.
[LAUGHTER]Here's a light blanket.
A pillow, dear ones, for Ithink this is going to be long.
I can't stop mygratitude, which includes,
(20:45):
dear reader, you, forstaying here with me,
for moving your lipsjust so as I speak.
Here is a cup of tea.
I've spooned honey into it.
And thank you the tiny beesshadow perusing these words
as I write them.
And the way my love talksquietly when in the hive,
(21:06):
so quietly, in fact,you cannot hear her,
but only notice barely herlips moving in conversation.
Thank you what doesnot scare her in me,
but makes her reach my way.
Thank you the love sheis, which hurts sometimes.
And the time she misrememberedelephants in one of my poems.
(21:27):
Which oh, here they come,garlanded with morning glory
and wisteria blooms, trombonesall the way down to the river.
Thank you the quiet inwhich the river bends around
the elephants solemn trunk,polishing stones, floating
on its gentle back.
The flock of geeseflying overhead.
(21:47):
Into the quick andgentle flocking of men,
to the old lady falling downon the corner of Fairmount
and 18th, holding patientlywith the softest parts
of their hands, hercane and purple hat,
gathering for her the contentsof her purse and touching her
shoulder and elbow.
(22:07):
And thank you, too, the cockeyedbasketball court on which
in a half-court, three onthree, we oldheads made of some
runny-nosed kids a shambles, andthe 61-year-old after flipping
a reverse layup off a backdoorcut from my no-look pass to seal
the game, ripped off his shirtand threw punches at the gods
and hollered at the kids toadmire the pacemaker's scar
(22:29):
grinning across his chest.
[LAUGHTER]Thank you the glad accordions'
wheeze in the chest.
Thank you the bagpipes.
Thank you to the woman,barefoot in a gaudy dress,
for stopping her car inthe middle of the road,
and the tractor trailer behindher, and the van behind it,
(22:52):
whisking a turtle off the road.
Thank you, god of gaudy.
Thank you paisley panties.
Thank you the organ up my dress.
Thank you the sheer dressyou wore kneeling in my dream
at the creek's edge, and thelight swimming through it.
The koi kissing halosinto the glassy air.
(23:15):
The room in my mindwith the blinds
drawn, where we nearlyinjure each other,
crawling into the shawlof the other's body.
Oh, thank you when I just say itplain, we fuck each other dumb.
And, you.
Again, you, forthe true kindness
that has been for you toremain awake with me like this,
(23:36):
nodding time to time.
And making that noisewhich I take to mean, yes.
Or, I understand.
Or, please go on,but not too long.
[LAUGHTER] Or, why are youspitting so much?
Or, easy, Tiger,hands to yourself.
I'm excitable.
I'm sorry.
(23:56):
I'm grateful.
I just want us to befriends now, forever.
Take this bowl ofblackberries from the garden.
The sun has made them warm.
I picked them just for you.
I promise I will try to stayon my side of the couch.
And thank you the baggie ofdreadlocks I found in a drawer
(24:18):
while washing and folding theclothes of our murdered friend.
The photo in which his arm slungaround the sign to "the trail
of silences." Thank you the waybefore he died,
he held his hands opento us for coming back
in a waft of incense, or in theshape of a boy in another city,
(24:38):
looking from betweenhis mother's legs,
or disappearing into thestacks after brushing by.
For moseying backin dreams where,
seeing us lost and scared, heput his hand on our shoulders
and pointed us to thetemple across town.
And thank you to theman all night long,
(24:58):
hosing a mist on hisearly-bloomed peach tree,
so that the hard frost not wastethe crop, the ice in his beard,
and the ghosts lifting from himwhen the warming sun told him,
sleep now.
Thank you theancestor who loved you
before she knew you bysmuggling seeds into her braid
for the long journey, wholoved you before he knew you
(25:20):
by putting a walnut tree inthe ground, who loved you
before she knew you bynot slaughtering the land.
Thank you who did not bulldozethe ancient grove of dates
and olives, who sailedhis keys into the ocean
and walked softly home.
Who did not fire, who did notplunge the head into the toilet,
who said, stop, don't do that.
(25:40):
Who lifted somebroken someone up.
Who volunteered the way a plantbirthed of the reseeding plant
is called a volunteer,like the plum tree that
marched beside theraised bed in my garden,
like the arugula that marcheditself between the blueberries.
Nary a bayonet, naryan army, nary a nation,
which usage of the wordvolunteer familiar to gardeners
(26:02):
the wide world mademy pal shout, oh!
And dance and plunge hisknuckles into the lush soil
before gobbling twostrawberries and digging a song
from his guitar made of woodfrom a tree someone maybe
planted, thank you.
Thank you zinnia and gooseberry,rudbeckia and pawpaw,
Ashmead's kernel, cockscomband scarlet runner,
feverfew and lemonbalm.
Thank you knitbone andsweetgrass and sunchoke and
(26:23):
false indigo, whose petalsstammered apart by bumblebees.
Good Lord, pleasegive me a minute.
And moonglow andcatkin and crookneck
and painted tongue andseedpod and Johnny jump-up.
Thank you what in us racketsglad what gladrackets us.
And thank you, too, thisknuckleheaded heart,
(26:46):
this pelican heart, thisgap-toothed heart flinging
open its gaudy maw to the sky.
Oh, clumsy, oh, bumblefucked,oh, giddy, oh, dumbstruck, oh,
rickshaw, oh, goattwisting its head at me
from my peach tree's highestbranch, balanced impossibly
gobbling the last fruit, itstongue working like an engine.
(27:07):
A lone sweet droptumbling by some miracle
into my mouth like thesmell of someone I've loved.
Heart like an elephant screamingat the bones of its dead.
Heart like the lady on the busdressed head to toe in gold,
the sun shiveringher shiny boots,
singing Erykah Badu toherself, leaning her head
(27:30):
against the window.
And thank you the way my fatherone time came back in a dream
by plucking the two cablesbeneath my chin like a bass
fiddle's strings,and played me until I
woke singing, no kidding.
I was smiling and singing,thank you, thank you.
Stumbling into the garden wherethe Juneberry's flowers had
burst open like the bells ofFrench horns, the lily my mom
(27:52):
and I plantedoozed into the air.
The bazillion ants labored intheir earthen workshops below,
collard greens waved in thewind like the sails of ships,
and the wasps swam in themint bloom's viscous swill.
And you-- again, youfriends, for hanging tight.
(28:14):
I know I can belong-winded sometimes.
I just want so badly torub the sponge of gratitude
over everything, including you.
Which is awkward.
Yes.
[LAUGHTER]The little suds going down your
collar behind your glasses.
(28:37):
Soon it will be over.
Which is precisely whatthe child in my dreams
said, holding my hand,pointing at the roiling sea,
and the sky hurtling our waylike so many buffalo, who said,
it's much worse thanwe think, and sooner.
To whom I said, no, duh,child, in my dreams.
(29:01):
What do you think thissinging and shuddering is?
What this screaming andreaching and dancing and crying
is, other than loving whatevery second goes away?
Goodbye, I mean to say.
And thank you.
Every day.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE][MUSIC PLAYING]
GEFFREY DAVIS (29:29):
I'll close by sharing a poem of my own.
But before I do that, Iwant to express my thanks
to Julie and Poetry Centeredfor this enriching opportunity
to search through theVoca audiovisual archive.
Truly, the most challengingpart of this project
was choosing just three of themany treasures I found there.
And I hope, dearlistener, that you'll
(29:50):
consider spendingsome of your own time
there, tracking down some newand old sounds to cherish.
The poem I want to share comesfrom my third collection,
One Wild Word Away,which was published
by BOA Editions in April 2024.
I've found that, whatyou know about a book
before it's beenpublished, and what
(30:12):
about a book afterit's been published are two very
distinct knowledges.
My sense of this new bookhas been further complicated
by the fact that Ikilled it along the way.
I am deeply grateful forthe bright and tender chorus
of folks who helped usherit back from that erasure.
Especially since, now I seethis book, in so many ways,
(30:34):
as a record of mycoming home to myself.
But I'm learning that a voiceyou've killed, or let be killed,
might have some surprisingthings to say to you once it
finds its way into the world.
The poem I've chosen takes onanother thing that I'm learning.
Despite the frequencyof my attention, feeling
(30:54):
drawn to my father,especially to his struggles
with addiction, as achild, it was my mother
who modeled the kind ofinquiry that would go on
to help me to write poems.
This is, "Insidethe Charged Dark."
Dear mother, yourearly lessons got
(31:17):
me to bear the fearfulsounds that faith can
make while clearing its throat.
I remember the hard man whoreaped our purpling Timothy
grass each spring,unbuttoning his tan
jacket to show a gray kitten,gunky eyed and nestled
against fleece lining.
(31:39):
I remember reachingwith hesitation
while saying her new name.
As she grew into a cat, I haveno memory of feeling her claws.
Maybe that was when Istarted begging to keep
buried in me what can hurt.
(31:59):
I would never seeher outdoors again,
but she must have answeredthe barn cats singing
to her readiness for life.
You gave me the word "pregnant"and a story for the act on its
way.
I remember it was night.
I remember trustingyour insistence
(32:21):
to leave her aloneto the bodywork,
as we prepared a towelbox in the nearby privacy
of the closet.
You drifted toward sleep,and I forget how many times
I rose and returnedher to that darkness
before submitting toher urge to burrow
(32:44):
beneath the low canopy my kneeswere making of my blankets.
In bed with thisrestless wonder,
I heard a sound I knew, but not.
Because it seemed to comefrom some strange shore
I couldn't find.
Until I could.
(33:05):
The mewing blindnessof her first kitten's
head transforming theold boundary of her body.
I cried out.
Certain she wasbecoming my failure
to keep her lockedinside the charged dark.
My betrayal breakingher into something I
still don't have the words.
(33:27):
Without languageor understanding,
I'd made a hideous world.
I was hideous and crying.
Then the warmsafety of your hush
was suddenly there, softeningthe cave of uncertainty
at my ear, leading me backinto my chance to see.
(33:49):
I would survive looking ablessing in its full face
before believing I deservedthe voice of light.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JUL (34:08):
Thank you so much, Geffrey, for your poetry and for
your insights into Voca.
Your idea of poetry as atechnology for deepening
intimacy is one that I'mgoing to keep thinking about.
Listeners, thank youso much for joining us.
We truly only make thispodcast because we know
you're out there listening.
(34:29):
Thank you for sharingyour time with us.
Join us again in two weeksfor another great episode
hosted by Valerie Hsiung.
Check out the show notes forlinks to the full recordings
that you heardportions of today.
And remember that Voca, thearchive these recordings come
from, is available to youwherever you're listening from,
(34:50):
anywhere around the world.
It's now fullycaptioned, and recordings
from the Poetry Center'sreading and lecture series
are added on a regular basis.
Thanks so much for joining us.
And until next time.
ARIA PAHARI (35:05):
Poetry Centered is a project of the University
of Arizona Poetry Center,home to a world-class library
collection of more than 80,000items related to contemporary
poetry in English andEnglish translation.
Located on the campus of theUniversity of Arizona in Tucson,
(35:25):
the Poetry Centerlibrary and buildings
are housed on the Indigenoushomelands of the Tohono O'odham
and Pascua Yaqui.
Poetry Centered is the workof Aria Pahari, that's me,
and Julie Swarstad Johnson.
Explore Voca, The PoetryCenter's audio visual archive
online at voca.arizona.edu.
(35:48):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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