for complete television schedule booktv.org 48 hours of nonfiction books an authors. television for serious readers next we kick off the weekend with dana joya on why poetry matters. [inaudible] >> good evening everyone if you're stapgd there's still a few seats up here. over here a few places. welcome to tonight's trinity form evening conversation with dana joya i'm president of the forum and on behalf of us wii all delighted that you are here. and we're also delighted to get to partner with howard and roberta who are sponsors this evening in getting to host what is sure to be a fascinating event. if you're new, i know many of you seem to be new faces. a little bit about us. we exist to provide a space and resource for leaders to engage life greatest questions in the the context of faith and great questions of life linked to our notion of truth, beauty and goodness, and historically one of the most important means of disterns and internalizing those notions of truth, u beauty and goodness of art and practice are of poetry. it was through poetry that epics were passed down but truths were internalized. that much of the bible came to us and the great mists of civilization were transmitted but over the last half century or so poetry has become increasingly ignored by broader culture regular gaited to university english departments and occasion gnat berkeley poetry plan but our guest tonight among most outspoken critics for state of poetry he will make a provocative and argument for its power and rightful priority. dana joya a renowned poet and unusual one. and he's also served as a marketing executive, a literary critics and essayist as well as head of a federal agency. rarely do you find a corporate executive and a federal bureaucrat who is also a poet. [laughter] to unpack -- to unpack each of those, dana is poet of california and has five full collections of poetry including daily horoscope, gods of winter that won the 1992 poet prize interrogation at noon that won the 2002 national book award. and his latest right off the press, 99 poems which you will have a changes to acquire tonight. he's an aboutive translater of poetry from latin, italian and german. composed three and in 2013 he won a award for lifetime achievement in american poetry. as a krittic and author no less of an impact, in fact, in 1992 his atlantic monthly article can poetry matter generated more response than any other article published in atlantic monthly to that date as well as extending almost 20 years afterward when it was finally knocked off that rank by some article that atlantic plish urging women to settle. [laughter] he's published criticism could inning can poetry matter and american culture. disappearing inc. poetry ath end of a print culture and barrier of a common language. his literary anthologies are numerous including 100 great of the english language opinion literature and introduction to fiction, poetry and writing and will theture for life. addition to that his articles reviews, and appeared in new yorker, the atlantic, "new york times," "new york times" review, slate and numerous articles as well. as the nea chairman dana revitalize reinvigorate and perhaps save one of our country most embattled agencies. he was appointed by president george w. bush and unanimously confirmed by senate twice no mean feet it was them who called them the man who saved nea for those art graduate students out there looking for a thesis topic story of how he did it is one that i would recommend to you. he published shakespeare at american communities, bringing shakespeare to every congressional district in the nation. he published operation home coming which provided opportunities for returning veterans to writing their wartime experience, and he also created poetry outloud a national poetry recitation contest involving more than 15,000 high school students learning to memorize, recite and perform poetry. he also created the big read, the largest literary program in history of the country encouraging reading to libraries across the country since leading dana has been named judge professor of culture at the university of southern california and addition to his b.a. and n.b.a. unusual a poet with a n.b.a. masters in literature from harvard and recipient of ten honorary doctorates as well as a medal from university of notre dame and about hon or nor given to roman catholic in recognition of outstanding service to the church and society. tonight, i'll have an opportunity to interview dana after that read his poems, of course, then open it up with always perhaps the most dynamic time, questions from the audience. so dana, welcome. [applause] [cheering and applause] [inaudible] start right from the very beginning you have an n.b.a. how did you become a poet? >> bad luck. i guess, i don't know. i fell in love with poetry as a kid because my mother who, you know, working class mexican whom didn't have much education and loved poetry gone to school in evil repressive days when school children were required to memorize great poems. and these were, obviously, extraordinary valuable thing in her life and used to simply recite them so sheeted, you know, be in the kitchen doing dishes and she would go television many and many a year ago that a maiden there lived whom you may by the name of anna belle lee so i fell in love with the bewitchment of poetry, the magic of poetry and fairly early age, though, it never occurred to me that i would be a poet that happen when i was 19 or 20 and then i had a problem. i had very good parents. but they neglected to give me the private income that i so richly deserved. none of you have faced this indignity, and moreover i was oldest kid in a big family that had no money. and so it was required that i be practical. and that eventually lead me to probably be the only person in human history who went to stanford business school to be a poet. [laughter] >> you've been a frequent proponent of poetry and started the contest why is it so important to speak and hear poetry rather than merely read it? >> i can give you reasons theoretical, historic, or practical. but i think that practical one is most oven. most people think they don't like poetry. most americans believe they don't like poetry. but if they hear a good poem, well spoken, they like it. and the reason is i think they don't like studying poetry as a kind of analytical art and we've lost touch with the essential element of poetry which is its morality. poetry is oldest art that is still practiced by humanity. it goes back to a time that's prehistorical. poetry existed before there was writing and any other way to preserve the past, traditions, the history of the people. and so things that matter were put into a form that was moving and memorable which is to say that it was put into meters. and those allowed pipe to remember them. if robert frost defined poetry as you know once as a way of remembering what it would impoverish us. but it was a artist song. an i think that as poetry has moved away from that, it touches people less directly so we're in a culture right now where there's a small group of intellectuals who likes poetry paid to profess it. but most people feel alienated but i believe that -- art answers needs and peoples arts. oscar wild once said, man hungers for beauty. there's a void. and poetry is one of the things in sense that feeds that appetite. and it does it most naturally as a form of musical speech. >> one of the themeses that seems to come up repeatedly in your poems across the collections really -- is both the power of words but also silence. what is left unsaid. why do you keep returning to the scene in your poems? you have poems entitled unsaid. >> yeah. if you're a poet, you're working with words. you're working with language. and if you are at all truthful, you understand to a certain degree what can be said in words an what is beyond the power of words to express. words can imply it but they can't express is quite literally i think also if you are a person of faith, if you are a person who prays, person who has an inner life. you're aware of the profound nature of your silences. you know, those things felt, buttive, imagined, remembered that are never fully articulated, and so i think that what you're doing as a poet is to do everything you can with words without denying what lays beyond words. make any sense to you? >> a lot of sense. >> it has come up new your title is that of time. god's of winter, interrogation at nob. why is time important to you and what do you hope to -- gain by exploring this theme? >> well, i think that older you get, more you'll understand what had i'm about to say is that -- one of your primary experiences in reality is -- being mortal is having, you know, a human life is a linear structure of time. and you're in a natural world which had repeats itself. so every spring, everything is new again xepght except for you, and you're going -- [laughter] and if you're a christian you also believe that there's an eternity, that there's a level of existence that is outside of this linnearity and natural cycle so time then becomes a reality and a kind of paradox and i think that -- about poems ponder the things that are important, and that stiex to me as one of the important things. if we were not mortal, if we did not exist in time, why would we write poetry because you have forever, and you could in a sense nothing would matter. and you think of that in greek mythology gods are immoral because they're eternal and nothing matters to them. the world is a play thing to them. let's talk a little bit about the purpose of poetry at one upon the in one of your essays you said that one of the purpose of poetry is to purify the language what had do you mean by that? >> that's not my idea. s that's -- the -- great frernlg poet wrote a poem about edgar allan poe but french treated him as a god he was bairvegly founding figure of symbolism and he said that -- poetry purified language of the tribe which i think he meant tsl picks up on this and other o people today that words are misused. you know words are inflated, forgotten, and one of the purposes of poetry is to use words in the fullness offer that meaning and in the trueness of their meaning. and it's a sacred responsibility of poets and we tend to think of language as an intellectual thing. but a language is a way that one human speaks to another in fullness of their humanity. and it speaks intellectually, memories that's what a poet does. a poet is going to use to make two plus two equal eight because you're using words in the fullness of their meaning both of what is being said and what unsad which had is implied. what is suggested -- what you yourself as the read or supplies. older i get more i think as a et po i'm writing only part of a poem. it needs to be completed by the reader. if i cannot bring the reader in as an equal and collaborator, i have failed as a poet. >> now presumably there's a public even a political component to that as well. ping it was george orwell said it is connect with the decay of language does it mean that decline of poetry is somehow responsible for the mess that we're in? >> i don't think you can blame that on poetry alone. [laughter] but i mean -- we're in a election year and it doesn't matter who is running. you hear -- you always hear language misused in election year and misused in public speech but you doapght have to go to politics but you can go to marketing, you can go to education, any kind of institution -- every institution has a way of saying things which are not entirely true. it's politics of that institution. what i believe, i mean, poetry like any art can be misused by i think at base of a poet's responsibility is to use language truthfully and powerfully to express that person's vision of reality powerfully. if you think of the society we are in at the moment to be able for an individual to register his or her individual experience and in a responsible way, truthfully as astonishing cultural power because what we're mostly hearing is corporate language. political language. a group language which has been distorted to a greater or lesser degree, you know, for the political concern of that group. you know, that institution. >> in your monthly arm you trace some of the reasons why poetry has become so marginalized over the half century. you pointed out the fairly prominent role poetry has played through couple of years of our country why has poetry become so much relegated to margin of the cultural arena? >> well so there's a number -- usually big historical changes don't happen for one thing but self things coming together. start with one that people never talk about. for thousands of years, poetry was badly taught. consequently everyone loved it. you know, it was used to teach hrs., it was used to teach elocution, you know, you had people reciting corally as a kind of communal experience. you have all of these things, and it was people were allowed to enjoy it. and knowledge of poetry largely experience. a group of brilliant sorners came in and taughts us how to see poetry accurately new critics, and it's been all downhill since then. because poetry has essentially become a -- kind of text to make analytical instruction. so the way it's been taught has contributed to its decline. and it's in creative writer programs so you have small professional groups. larger problem in terms of american society. right now we have people intellectuals, academics they're brilliant at learning how to talk to one another. but collect uvly they've lost their ability to talk to the rest of societies. not entirely but to a greater or lesser degree. i think this is bad for academic and bad for societies. because i think society's intellectual cultural help depends very much on a very viable sort of conversation that art -- said area of argument and die lettic and more voices to contribute in a way truthfully and accurately more powerful culture is, and we've got a very bland professional dialogue about poetry . for example, almost you never see an academic give a bad review to a book of poetry because they might be on your grant committee, maybe on a prize committee to professional courtesy. i think professional courtesy is the death of an art form. [laughter] >> one of the few places you would think many americans would be regularly exposed to poetry is in the bible. close readers of the bible know that the psalms many of the books are in the medium of poetry, and you would think this might have cultivated a familiarity and affection for poetry among close readers of the bible. but this doesn't seem took the case. any ideas why that might be? >> once again i think that if you go, you know -- i don't think even christians readed bible enough. they've viewed certain passages and glasses on it but read whole book of job so less experience of reciting you know those poems. i think that they're red less and less even in services. so you know, the culture we have a culture where everything is mediated so you read a book about reading the bible rather than reading the bible but reading poetry. criticism rather than reading primary text and it's good. , i mean, i'm not denying criticism and commentary but no substitute of reading great works and dare i say the bible is the greatest of the great works. >> where do you see sign of hope for poetry? >> well, i think it's interesting. when we started pow outloud this is a national high school poetry recitation contest we did it at the n.e.a. we were told by the state art agency that it was a bad idea and it was a bad idea for three reasons. first of all kids did not like poetry sending repressive to ask somebody to memorize a poem and third,s it have degrading to have the arts done in competition now this was, obviously, before "american idol" and dancing with the stars. [laughter] so most complex -- negotiations there was only one of the 40 of the -- 53 states that's the way that federally working in federal government that was supporting us. we convinced other ones allowed us to do one year and what we discovered is that kids loved diagnostic doing poetry memorizing and reciting them was an interesting thing because kids if you give them a chance -- to immerse themselves in arts, threat or music, poetry a lot of kids like it, and third, when you did it in competition it added a special energy. now, in most poetry reads half way through the audience fell into a slum or beer and they're tired who would deny them this pleasure. but it's interesting when you you do it in competition people are leaning forward. they bring the same kind of special attention that they do a sporting event. because when you're watching something in competition you are trying alating it saying this is what i bet they think and where it's going to end up. so people, you have an audience of hundreds of people that will sit there for two hours while these kids do it plus an interesting thing happen when is you start to say why did that kid pick that poem and then you get this human moment discovery. so you know, i'm not sure what question with i'm answering now, but what you see is you see a kind of -- u youthful energy that was brought into is it. i think there's always hope. i think we are doomed the moment we believe that we cannot create the culture we want to live in. that keek note create the society we want to live in. it's not going to happen easily or be done given to us on high. but you know, we can begin as individual as member of organization to create thingings that we want to see. had and a lot of times when you have the right yd, and you execute it guess what people get behind you. so at this point we have three million high school students that have participated in poetry outloud a program that was -- had been predicted to fail. you know, at fits very first offing. >> you mince awngses i think it was walt whitman said to have great poets you need great audiences. what makes an audience great? what guidance would you give to potential audience members out there? >> well welcome let me start by saying that i seem to be in a minority to believe that an art without an audience is a diminished thing. i don't -- that's not the same as saying you have to take your art and bring it down to the dumbest possible level. but u you know, think of somebody like bob dylan. i think of bob dylan career, a conversation that dialect with his audience, you know, over half a century now. and that has been important to him had as an artist and to the audience. i think that audience members are -- most passionate when they feel they're engaged in a sense you know with a kind of larger culture exchange so i think that art be it the the most difficult art or popular art always takes into account the odd fact that somewhere along the line another human being is going to encountinger your work, and they were -- these people are either going to engage with it or not. and you know, i don't think that mozart could have disagree it but they respected their audience. i think the problem with artists is we do not respect our readers as equals. you know, we do not in a sense say you know, for a poet, if a poem is any good, people in this audience. everybody here has brought a different life into this room. you know, different parts of your life, and a poem that's good is going to have room for everybody to come in it in some way and maybe do different things but have a different kind of result so you'll feel to have, you know, great art. you have to have room big enough for a great audience. and i just think that's common sense. common culture had sense and educational sense. >> another form of engagement is review and criticism. and in your original essay in 1991, you argue that one of the reasons for the decline of poetry was the rather abysmal state that it was rarely done and even more rarely done well. a generation later has this changed? >> it has the goen even worse. [laughter] >> as far as i can tell there's only one person left in america who gives bad poetry reviews. a brilliant critic usually unhappy critic. but it's -- if you have been engaged to review a book, i think you're packed with the public is that you're going to portray your own reaction truthfully and you may like it and you may not. usually most reviews are mixed but you know if you -- there should be a separation reviewer and marketing department. >> you gave several suggestions for reinvigorating poetry in america and i'd like for you to talk about some of those but one many particular is a rather counterintuitive one. you said one of the most important ways to reinvigorate poetry are is to read and perform poet's work as well as their own. why is that display a professional humility important to poetry? >> in one hand u humility, but it's also passion. i mean the reason that people have come to a poetry reading is because they love the art. may love the artist in particular but i don't know if they're good or o not i guess i'll show up. but it is important to honor the art itself you know rather than just the ego of the poult. you know, poets -- the controlling vice of poets is egtism. am i telling you something you don't know? [laughter] sos there's a number of dominicans in the audience so i believe thomas defined humility seeing things as they really are so see yourself in perspective that's one thing in the cosmos but u greatest photois simply part of something very larger. what poetry is and this is something rather magnificent i think. poetry is a conversation that is continued throughout humanity from it earliest recorded moments. it's a conversation between the living and a dead and in which you begin by sort of listening into this rich complicated conversation and if you're very good, you get to enter it at some point, and if you're really great somebody remembers that a hundred years later. but, you know, i think we begin by honoring the conversation still. >> along those lines who are your favorite poets both living and dead and perhaps you could recite one of their poems. >> okay. >> my favorite poet and this is so benal william shakespeare not or sure if you've ever heard of him he's a calmer, pay attention. but you know among americans up and robert frost, i think is i think he's greatest of american poets we have a great poetry and i think he's our greatests poet. i love w.h. aden born a british and died american citizen in austria very interesting. i like phillip vark and a bleak poet. but i can go on. but those are a couple of the people that i like had in particular who would you like me to do? a robert frost poem that nobody pay attention to. it has a obscure biblical illusion correct me if i'm wrong when king david was ill, they decided, you know, maybe they could spruce him up you know by prink prg in the fairest maiden of the field and put her in bed with david but it didn't seem to work. her name was abashag and robert frost read an article about a silent film actress who was you know one was most famous people who was a char woman and wrote provide, provide. >> that witch that came, thatting with pail and rag, to wash the steps, that withered hag had was the beauty abashag picture pride of hollywood. too many are from good for you to doubt the livelihood. die early, and avoid the fate. or if predistinned to die late, make up your mind to die in state. make the stock exchange your own. if need be occupy a throne where nobody can call you krone. some have survived by what they knew. some by simply being true. what worked for them may work for you. no memories of having started make up for later drashed or keep the end from being hard better to go down dignified with boughten friendship by your side than none at all, provide, provide. that was actually -- [applause] to washington i have to give a political context he wrote that institution of social security. certainly finest inspired by social security. [laughter] >> you have been considered a leader of the neil formalist movement that recognizes and uses rhyme and meetser in your foe try that goes against current of much of academic poetry why do you believe that is so essential? >> let me clarify first thing, we -- i never called myself a new formalist that's whats i called. you know that's what they want to call me, fine. i love rhyme and meter but i don't believe poetry needs to be in rhyme and meter. what i believe is this. if you're writing in the 21st century you should have the ability to write in any technique that exist in the english language. the whole, you know, all of these -- what kind of person doesn't want all of the resource was his or her art available? that when you're writing a poem sometimes it wants to be in rhyme and meter and sometimes in free verse so my poems fall one thrd in free verse, one without rhyme and one in rhyme and meter and that's the only way to write. >> others don't agree. you know, the photo-- you know new formalist have been accused of -- reactionism of political conservatism of angle of doing a it but, in fact, one of the that said robert frost wasn't american poet because he wrote in rhyme and meter any definition of american poetry that kicks robert frost out probably isn't a vrpgd very good one so my deaf nation is radical. american poetry is poetry written by americans. you know, doesn't need to be in english. and so -- seems to be common sense. now on top of that, i love the magic you you can have with wors and rhyme scheme and form of reputation each has a slightly different effect and i tend to use not traditional form so much as little form that i've invented using elements of that. so you know, robert frost you know really no surprise for the writer. no surprise for reader and i would say no fun for the writer or no fun for et reader. >> poetry power presumably lieses not just in our ability to hear it but our ability to read it. while you were the chairman of the n.e.a. one of the things you instigated was largest studies that country had ever done on the state of reading in america and the results that you gathered were quite depresses that found that reading as a wholes was decline. reading literature and poetry was in decline and reading comprehension in decline. but reading in state of america accelerated since you left office what does that say for the future of poetry? >> let me summarize you know, i had to bring these results to congress so i had to keep it simple. [laughter] so this -- elaborate hundreds of pages of table sum up in three sentences americas are reading less. especially younger americans. two, which means that americans are reading less well. younger you are, the less well, and reading less and reading less well have important consequences in the lives of individuals academically, educationally, civically and socially. and we can demonstrate this through, i mean, literally about 40 hard statistical studies. i mean first thing you do about this is you lament, you pull your hair, you weep and then you do something positive. we created this program called the big read. it was -- we started it quickly and moved it quickly. we had it in every state in the country and really by the time we left we have 25,000 organizations working with us in partnership and guess what happen haded for the first time in almost three decades studied the kind of reading, reading adult reading went up in the united states. adult measure of adult becauses that's when you're out of school, 18 and plus what that says is that you can change the trends that are affecting this country. the program has been backed off of some other programs that were similar backed off of it and numbers have fallen down tben. but you know, i think it is very simple reading is a transformative and social act individuals who can read and read well perform better than those that don't. important consequences if we do not find ways to support and perpetuate power of reading, america is beginning to suffer not simply, you know, culturally, but civically. people who read vote more. they volunteer work, vast higher levels, they give to charity more, and readers even exercise more than nonreaders so you know, guess what -- is there anybody in this room who doesn't know in a sense from their spiritual life the transformation that occurs through reading? and that's what we're trying to, you know, to -- perpetuate is i think it's really at the core of a free society. >> one of the great debates that your atlantic monthly article first ig nighted. >> wherever we talk about inner joy where debate always comes up it's sort of sad. >> own it. >> was your dream that poetry are would once again be part of mainstream popular culture? if this were to happen, what would be the sign that your dream is come true? >> well -- there's something really weird that's been happening now for a couple of dc decades and i've been taking notes on it. i haven't written this article u up. but i will give my collect -- wisdom to you. 30 years ago a poem, quoted in a movie, this is accelerated and accelerated. i cannot watch tv without having to get up and write down the quotations that are happening, i think it's because there's this desperate need for this and these people that are writing these scripts are literary people and caught in culture had which doesn't -- you see this kind of once again man hungers for beauty there's a void. but what i would see, i've begun to see this. this is i think the main difference between when i wrote poetry matter and now and there's been an emergence of poetry outside the university. and you can see it any number of ways you can see it in poetry slam. you can see it on poetry on radio and hip-hop poetry and in cowboy poetry, new formalism is mostly people that are not -- it not teachers. i go to -- give readings in public libraries. we get large audiences they're not academics. and i think what it is. what is hip-hop new formalism. poetry slam, poetry outloud. what do they have in common? it's all spoken it's. tive and social. if you think of power of art and people come together in a sense share a space, share a reaction and it's extraordinarily power of the moment. you see this with theater, music, you know, with dance and performance, i think what poetry is doing is recovering a little bit of the civic space even on television. >> before we e hear some of your poems and turn to audience questions, close readers of your poetry will notice that certain themes keep coming up. which may be unusual among modern poetry sin, redemption, grace, and other themes. has your faith affected your poetry? >> i'm a cradle catholic. i went to, you know, eight years with the sisters of providence. four years with marionists, i go to mass. i'm a catholic. i'm a catholic down to the tips of my toes. so the funny thing ises mog of my poetry is not any overt sense religious but you reflect your world view and my world view is that we -- about live in a fallen world. we are faced with our imperfection and long to transcend this. we will -- we ask for grace and hope for redemption and funny thing is i would write these narrative and think it's about a murderer, you know, about a person who is parishing and then a year later say that is such a catholic allegory. you know, but it's operating at a sub conscience levellening is good but very hard and maybe -- people may be disagree with me but hard to write poetry using language of faith because language is received language it's communal and what you have to do is if you're writing about these mysteries. mist of our existence what we have to do is in a sense reinvent experience from the ground up. you know, with the vividness of something you're discovering for the first time and that's what one tries to do. it's kind of hard. >> perhaps you can share some of those poems with us. >> if you insist. so i have something -- i think my -- there i go. someone hopefully tape me to the chair keep me from the podium. i thought i would do about eight poems. variety of different things. i wrote a couple of them down here. here it is. let me begin -- something going on in the next room there. not quite sure what. but i will give it a run for its money. i'm from a town called hawthorne, california. who knows hawthorne here? got a kesm people. you know,s it's, you know -- it's a really rough working class urban neighborhood two trees in the entire city boundary. so i never door my parents always had two jobs and never took vacation so i never saw nature until i was 18 -- went off to college and went to stanford and nature around me and first time i really experienced the spring i was with a young lady that i was in love with -- unsuccessfully the right way to use, and it was about going to this apple farm actually ironically it's right around where i live now, and so in the county it's a love poem but it's a friend of mine said dana when you write a poem about a young man and a woman -- in a garden with an apple it's about something else too. [laughter] it's called the apple orchard. and this is written years later addressed to this woman who i'm sure doesn't even remember this experience. the apple orr orchard you won't remember it. the the apple orchard we wandered through one april afternoon. climbing the hill behind the empty farm. a city boy, i'd never seen a grow burst in full flower. or breathe the bittersweet perfume of blossoms mingled with the dust. a quarter mile of trees and fragrant rose arching above us, we walked the aisle, alone in springs in cathedral. we had the lock, if you can call it that of having been in love that never lovers, the bright flame burning fed by desire. nothing consumed such secrets brought to light. there was a moment when i stood behind you, reached out to spin you toward me. but i stopped. what more could i have wanted from that day? everything, of course. perhaps that was the point. to learn that what we will not grasp is lost. there's a -- type of statue a religious stat u statue in southwestern united states it was carved out of wood easily by a local artist called santos virgin, the saints. and they were used home alter or small rural churches. this is a poem spoken by a santos a mexican statue, and it's been damaged in mexican revolution when troops came and the catholic church was outlawed. and it's now in a music and this is a poem about the difference between a work of art that's created for -- devotion that have been referred into a decision for contemplation and most of the contents of museums are this way. rickty here. called the angel with the broken wing. >> i am the angel with the broken wing. the one large statue in this quiet room. the staff finds me too fierce. and so they shut artery in this air-condition tomb. the dose sprays my elegant design above the chatter of the gallery. perhaps i'm a masterpiece sorts. the perfect emblem of futility. mendoza carved me for a country church his name is forgot about now except by me. i stood beside the guilded alter with a hopeless offered god their misery. i heard their women whispering at my feet, prayers for the lost, the dying and the dead. their candle stretched many my shadows of the wall, and i became the hungers that they fed. i lost my left wing in the revolution. even a saint can saver irony which troops were sent to vaunt lies the chap had l they hit me once, almost apologetically for everybody the godless fill something in the church. a twinge of hope, fear, who knows what it is. a trembles unaccounted by their lawyers, a ancient memory that they can't dismiss. there is so much i must tell god to hauling of the reach so high. but i stand here like a dead thing nailed to a perch. a crippled saint. against a painted sky. [applause] >> now i want to do an l.a. poem. you know which is at least in the popular imagination of beautiful people and they seem to have life easier than regs of us. i don't think we have any -- anyway, i won't comment on looks of the audience. but -- you have to take that on faith. and there's a certain price to beauty which had is when it passes, you don't develop the toughness that we ugly people do so this is a poem about that. and i wrote it -- i wrote it in a form of a popular song for a jazz musician nailed helen doing a jazz song cycle and i wanted to use slang the way you do in this to get out a poem the way they would with the transparency of a song. pity the beautiful. >> pity the beautiful. the dolls and the dishes. the babes with big daddy. granting their wishes. pity the pretty boys, the hunks and a the pavo, gold and lads whom success always follows. the hotties, the knockouts, the tens out of ten, the drop dead gorgeous. the great leading men. pity the faded, bloated the the lucks turned lousy pity the gods, no longer devine pity the night the stars lose their shine. and now this is a poem just to show you how i think one of the ways you can use free verse which has a musicality this is a washington poem that is called money. [laughter] money -- the long green, cash, stash, rhino jack or just plain dough to be made the of it to have it to burn, double eagle. mega buck or good gear is the palm, petsers the nest holds heads bo water, makes both ends meet. money, breathes money, gathering interest, compounding daily, always in circulation. money, you don't know where it's been. but you put it where your mouth is and it talks -- [laughter] now i want to talk about something being a poet is a very odd business. you know, in a lot of ways -- if you can even call it a business. and you learn certain things that poets don't usually admit and one of the things that i've learned andening as a reader might already know this is that if you write a poem you're writing a construction of language that has a life of its own and kid when it's ready it moves away and does things you may or may not approve of. but what i discovered is my poems have a meaning sometimes which i did not intend but which is there. and that is actually a sign offer that strength rather than of, you know, my weakness or at least i like to believe that. and i want to give you this one example. i wrote a poem and it's called reunion. and it's about this notion of coming to a place where you should know everybody and you don't. and you just realized how especially in a big society like ours how much of a stranger you are in your own hometown or school, and i wrote this poem and sent it to an editor he said dana m poem. one of your twilight zone poem and very much like expense of the twilight zone and i consider that a complement a one of my heros it came out in a book and a woman i knew as an undergraduate and she came to a reading and she had a copy of the poem framed and shex look at this. wow, she turned it around and there was a picture of -- her father . and she said, you know, my father has alzheimer's, and you gave me the poem that by which i understand how he feels. and i -- realized shefts e-she was right. reunion. this is my past where no one knows me. these are my friends whom i can't name. here in a field where no one chose me, the face is different. the voice is the same. why does the stranger rise to greet me? what is the joke that makes him smile. is he calling his children together to meet me bringing forward in single file. i nod pretending to recognize them not knowing exactly what i should say. why does my presence seem to surprise them who is the woman who turns away? is this my home or on a illusion? the bread on the table smells achingly real. must i at last solve my confusion? or is confusion all i can feel? a short poem, my wife and i who lost our first son at a four months of sudden insignificant death syndrome, and i don't -- probably someone in this audience has lost a child. but if not you understand it changes your life and i don't to talk about the process of loss. i want to talk about somethings that's sort of odd that happens thereafter is that ever thereafter wherever you see a child who would be about the same age as your child -- you say that's what my boy would be doing. that's what my son would look like now so he has a phantom second existence. and this is about that. i wrote this poem on what would have been my son's 21st birthday. and it's called majority. you know in that legal sense. >> now you had -- you would be three seeing the child born the same summer as you. now you'd be six, or seven or ten. i watched you grow in foreign bodies. leaping into a pool l all after or frowning over a keyboard but mostly just standing. taller each time. how splendid your most mundane actions seem in these joyful approximate px roxi now i held back tears, now you are 21. finally it makes sense that you have moved away into your own afterlife. two more poems. here's one that i don't read -- really ever because it's, you know, called a 7th deadly sins, and it occurred to me that 7 deadly sins they kind of hang out together and this is about them all going into a diner. [laughter] with potential client. and we should all know what et deadliest of the 7 deadly sin to remind you probably in this room have practiced all seven of them this week. in the anger slut, gluttony and pride and we should know the most dangerous of the seven sins is pride. so -- the sevenadeadly sins. forget about the other six says pride. they're only using you. admittedly lust is a looker, but you can do better. and why do they keep bringing us to this cheesy dive, food is so bad that even gluttony can't finish his meal. notice how aborist keeps refilling his glass wherever he thinks you're not looking while envy eye yours plate. hell, we're not done anding a orer is arguing about the bill. i'm the only who you know ever leaves the decent tip, let them all go, the losers. it's a relief to fat ass go out o the door. but stick around, i have a story but not everyone appreciates about the special satisfaction of staying onboard with the last grubby lifeboat pushes away. i'll end with the most recent poem in the book. i think one of the hardest subjects to write about is a happy marriage. and it's because first of all it's always easyier to write about dark and dramatic emotion but a marriage has a strange private quality. in a marriage your wife and you begin in a sense to create a private language. joke illusions that only you understand. nonverbal signals that, you know, you understand. i know immediately at 50 feet when my wife disproves of something -- ing that is one of the reasons i've been married 36 years. so trying to do this in the metaphor i came up with is if you think of these vanishing tribe, two or or three speakers and when they go, the language goes. their myths, their customs, and this struck me as the kind of metaphor for this private world that exists between the two of you. marriage of many years. ... around the fire, performed the sorcery we most required. they bound us in a spell time cannot break. let's be young, flaunt their ecstasy. we keep our tribe of two in solemn secrecy. what must be lost was never lost on us. [applause] [applause] >> now comes one of the most interesting times in the evening conversation when we get to hear from you. if you have questions our only rules are simple, those who have been here before know them. we ask that you keep all your questions brief, civil and in the form of a question. if you could raise your hand and be called on we have mike coming around so you can be heard from. right appear in front. >> thank you. you spoke about poetry moving out of the university which a number of us feel is a healthy thing. my question is do you think things like rap and hip-hop and other forms of modern poetry if we can call it that are indeed a healthy development? >> what poetry is is a special way of thinking than by rewards, special way of listening. in a language you can say anything. you can say simple things, complex things, tragic things. i believe there is a certain power of keeping that language as broad, as inclusive and dynamic as possible. hip-hop is an extremely interesting phenomenon. here is my interpretation of hip-hop. american intellectuals and academics took poetry away from the common people and reinvented itself. how can not feel the nobility of that gesture. that being said, i don't necessarily think snoop dogg is the new shakespeare. it is a new commercial category largely marketed to adolescent middle-class kids with gangster fantasies. the form of hip-hop is interesting and over time it may develop into a significant artform. what we have seen in our time with hip-hop is interesting. the reinvention of poetry. we have seen what happens. i reprinted some lyrics in a textbook, it made me popular here, the first literary person who reprinted a hip-hop lyric in a standard anthology. i wrote it to these artists, if you send us a copy, i will be happy to, we have never seen it written down. homer would have said the same thing. homer -- there was no writing so it would have been more complicated. the invention of these new media for poetry is a good thing and people in a sense invented and artform to talk about their own experience. it is good, unqualified. >> right over there. >> where do you go to find contemporary poetry written today? what are your sources for that? >> it should be easy. there should be -- go to bookstore and get an anthology and honestly believe every poem in the anthology the editor thought was so good he or she wanted to share with you. nowadays you get a lot of anthologies and i don't think that is the criteria. i talked about one anthology, 104 leading american poets, it is the 104 people in charge of 100 for creative writing departments basically. what you have to do is do a lot of digging for your self. the shortest way is to ask someone who knows more than you to recommend something they really like. with the demise of anthologies and honest criticism that is harder. another thing going on with anthologies is the reprint cost of anthologies has become outrageous. no one can afford to do the anthology that they want because of the cost of it and that is one of the reasons textbook costs are going up so much. i am embarrassed by what students have to pay for the anthologies i have edited. i think ask people whose judgment you trust, one or two critics you seem to trust. let me say, recommendations, richard wilbur, kay ryan, david mason, julia out there as, six suggestions you can't go wrong with. >> i was glad you chose for your reading to do a variety of poetry. it seems more popular for publishers right now to publish somatic books of poetry. can you comment on that? >> you are so right. the problem is you have a lot of people who feel they should publish poetry, they are unsure of their own taste. the aftermath of modernism is in the early 21st century nobody trusts their taste about art because their of all these things they are told they don't like. i don't know what to say. intelligent people have to have honest responses. what happens is they say there is a book all about a plane that went down over alaska. you know what every poem is about what the trouble is even a really good poet probably can't write 30 good poems on the same subject in a period of 18 months or whatever. shakespeare was able to do it but not a lot of others. it is the kind of fallback. that poet probably wrote 20 poems of which they should have accepted one or two. i think variety is a sign of artistic vocabulary but it is increasingly rare these days. critics feel more comfortable because they know how to review a book all on the same subject especially if it is next to a literary subject. >> what do you say when someone says to you i don't like poetry, i don't understand it and it makes me feel stupid? >> i hear that a lot and i feel sorry for them because i think poetry is one of the pleasures of life. it is like someone saying i don't like classical music and so what i try to do is suggest how easy it is to do this which is to read one poem a day, get a book of a well-known poet, get shakespeare's sonnets. probably wouldn't start with something really hard but take house or thomas hardy or listen to bishop, gwendolyn brooks, robert hayden, wonderful poets, read a poem a day. a good anthology, read a poem a day. better yet what i do is i recite them a poem and they go that is good. i'm not talking one of my own poems by the way. i think it is just that poetry has been made inexpressibly boring by the way it is taught. if every time you were given a piece of music they would turn the music off and say let's write an analysis of the chord structure people wouldn't want to hear music either. it is almost like bf skinner's negative conditioning. i think it is a very common thing. the reactions of the 21 stuber century is we feel if we don't like a work of art it is our problem rather than the work of art. in some cases there are very great works of art that are very challenging at first but sometimes you come across a poem in the new yorker and it is a stinker and the problem is not your fault. it lies in the institution's judgment. >> can you tell us about a memorable poetry reading you have attended, give us some details, what made it truly memorable. >> a lot of poets are very good poets who are not very good at reading their work and other poets who are really quite wonderful. there is a poet, an american who lived in england whose name was michael donaghy. he was more -- he was born and raised in the bronx, of irish immigrants. he died at the age of 50 of a heart attack, but michael donaghy was the best reader of poetry i have ever heard. he had complicated metaphysical poems but you had this sense when he read them as if they were being created out of the very moment and he was able to do that while never losing the musical line of it. i really thought he was something special. a couple poets have passed away. anthony hecht, donald justice were really wonderful readers in their own way. richard wilbur who god bless them is alive at 95 living up in massachusetts, the same thing, the kind of natural grace and when poetry can sound like speech bewitched by song that is when it is most effective. kay ryan who was poet laureate seven or eight years ago is the same way. her poems are very short. when she speaks th, they unfold. i think she is really quite wonderful too. those are just some examples. a lot of times even a good poet the poems don't quite come off the page. i would almost rather read them. >> second row. >> i was thinking originally -- benjamin britton said heck no. i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about whether there is a distinction, lyrics are a species of poetry and why have they not had the same decline that poetry has? people know lyrics. >> a couple questions you are asking, complicated questions. one of the great poems of the 20th century, for the time being, meditation on the incarnation and longevity, he called it a christmas auditorium. it was 100 pages long. it would take days, like a minimalist. one little chorus and just gave up. that is that particular case but it is a great poem and english literature would have been a poor thing if he hadn't written it. they are not well understood in english because by and large most operas until recently, benjamin britton, were in italian or french or german, people read them in very bad rime to translations usually with cuts and so the poetry was seen as a doggerel. when you read them in italian, for bellini, or a fellow -- the poetry is superb. they are superb in italian but as frost said poetry is what gets lost in the translation. even today if you go to the metropolitan opera, it has mistakes and inventions. i use it teaching a class. it is not an adequate translation but people don't pay attention. if i were a poet in the year 1600 i would be expected to write poems in conventional sense of the lyrics, novels, we used to say narrative poems, i would write plays, masks, anthems, popular songs and things like this, verse is the language and you can say anything in that language. at the end of the 20th century where i was starting out, you were exposed to rather than doing all these things, write short lyric utterances on one page, published at the bottom of the page of a magazine. that struck me as kind of boring. i didn't read narrative poems. the best things i have done as a poet, they take 15 or 20 minutes, i have recovered, hope i don't sound like a megalomaniac, start speaking in first person plural, we have recovered. trying to recover the territory from pros. i have collaboratively -- it is a great pleasure because you bring out a different size -- side of yourself. aside of myself i don't think i express daily. maybe nightly. writing dramas, that are rather different, that wouldn't happen if you were writing a short lyric, plus the pleasure of working with fingers, musicians, dancers, the communal aspect, it is a great pleasure. one thing about musicians, musicians our kids but learned to play with the other children. they have a natural collaborative quality. poets who mostly, mostly unhappy by themselves. >> one last question here. >> you said at the outset. >> i am ignoring this side of the audience. >> we are responsible for the culture in which we are apart. one of the concerns i have is what appears to be coarsening of the language used in society. and the dominant media is film. is that a concern to you. what can be done to change the course of that? >> i do share the concern. i am staggered by the imbecility of most of the movie scripts not only in the coarsening of language but the absence of dramatic reason in many cases. if you can blow it up, why worry about continuity? but i think the answer to this and a lot of things is we have to take it upon ourselves to embody the principles that we champion. as teachers, as writers, as citizens, we need to embody eloquence. we need to embody eloquence as something fresh, not pretentious, that is immediate, accurate, vivid. there is a kind of collapse of linguistic panache, skill, the joy of using words to describe what life is like to us. i do think the same way, how do you improve morals? you start with yourself. the power of example, the power of modeling is underrecognized in our society. we should try to speak as well, to write as well, to teach as well as lecture as well as we possibly can because language has a social and civic importance in and of itself. we have to purify the language of the tribe. [applause] >> as we wrap up tonight i want to direct your attention to an invitation on everyone's chair, that is to join the trinity forum society. as you probably gathered if this is your first time here we are trying to do something unique and fairly countercultural. in an environment characterized by triviality, polarization, we are trying to provide a forum to talk about what matters most in a way that is intellectually rigorous and warmly hospitable. we thank you for being here tonight, we hope you will do that. to sweetly offer yet further i will tell you about a few of the benefits. members receive quarterly readings where we try to take a classic work or contemporary piece of literature or letters that raise big questions of life and make those available to you as well as daily what we are reading updates and monthly podcasts with leaders like dana goioa. i will also let you know our upcoming reading this summer features introduction by dana goioa of the poems of gerard hopkins, it is not to be missed. if that doesn't sweeten the pot i don't know what will, except if you join tonight we will provide you with a free copy of dana goioa's book "99 poems". i highly recommend it to you. this is the result of all five of his collections, we have been on sale for $24 each, dana goioa will be around to sign those books and we commend them to you. hope you can join us next time. the next example is may 23rd, we will be launching a series in faith and international development and mike gersten is always not to be missed, hope you will join us for that. we end with thanks. deeply grateful to howard and roberta whose sponsorship made this evening possible. we are really delighted, and as well as to be joined by mary, thank you for joining us as well. >> i would like to thank my crackerjack team, margaret, our head of events and membership, alyssa abraham, fantastic interns, freda masterson and ben struble and volunteers, kerry lucas who used to be an intern, and photographer zach miller, appreciate your help and effort. thank you again, dana, thank you for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here is a look at what is on prime time. we kick off the evening at 7:00 pm eastern with david kessler who talks about the history of mental suffering. he talked about the a roosevelt's citizenship in a republic address. that happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> i started with the idea that i wanted to write a book about mohammed ali. it was cowritten with john smith. i want to give him full credit for co-writing the book because quite frankly mohammed ali was my champion. if you like boxing, if you follow boxing, people that lived through the 1930s and early 1940s, joe lewis was there champion. in the 1950s, rocky marciano was there champion or in the 1920s, jack dempsey. if you lived through the 1960s at 1970s, mohammed ali was your champion. in the ring he was your champion. what is even rarer, outside of the ring he was my champion. so i thought wow. i would like to write a book about that. johnny and i started to work on it and the more we worked on it the more we decided what is really interesting is how casias marsalis clay became mohammed ali. what went into that? the more we looked at it the more we realized it was malcolm x. cassius clay was almost inhabiting the mind of malcolm x. we decided that is an interesting story. a short period of time, we could look at it fully and deal with all the sources we could dig up on it. it is a moment that changed american history. i think from that period, the first half of the 1960s, the three great black leaders, martin luther king, malcolm x, and casias marsalis clay. >> you can watch this and other programs online on booktv.org. >> here's a look at some others recently featured on booktv's afterwards with our weekly author interview program. peter marks remember bob ben moshe a who turned it around during the financial crisis. steve case told us how emerging technologies are reshaping the internet. sue klee bold, mother of dylan klee bold discussed mental health and how she dealt with tragedy. in the coming weeks on afterwards, criminal justice reform and 19 years in prison. and america's new working-class and its potential political power. coming up senate majority leader mitch mcconnell will look back on his life and career in politics. this weekend don watkins, fellow at the on rand institute will argue that measures to alleviate income any quality end of hurting low income americans. >> the real insight of enlightenment thinkers like the founders was each of us is equal in that we have equal rights so the government's job did not rule us, it is to be our servants, protector of our rights. what happens when it protect our rights equally? when it protects you, your freedom the same as it protect mine? create different amounts of wealth because we have different abilities, we make different choices, some of us want to go into become a teacher. for us that is what a successful life is. whether we go up from where our parents were, down from where our parents were, that is what a successful life is was other people want to be hedge fund managers. other people want -- we are going to get any quality if we have equal freedom. >> afterward there is on booktv every saturday at 10:00 pm and sunday at 9:00 pm eastern. you can watch all previous afterwards programs on our website booktv.org. >> james traub is contributed carter author for new york times magazine where he has been since 1998 and a regular columnist for foreign-policy.com. his books include the best intentions, kofi annan and the un in the era of american world power. the devil's playground, a century of pleasure and profit in times square. city on a hill, the freedom agenda. in his review of john quincy adams, "john quincy adams: militant spirit," the author of the

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