{"id":2269,"date":"2012-07-11T11:42:43","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T09:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2012-07-14T12:14:23","modified_gmt":"2012-07-14T10:14:23","slug":"american-poets-take-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/american-poets-take-paris\/","title":{"rendered":"American Poets take Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"
Reading at Shakespeare & Company<\/h5>

\"poets\"<\/p>\n

The following is a transcription from the Q-and-A session from the \u201cAcclaimed American Poets\u201d event, this past Monday at Shakespeare and Company. Catherine Barnett, Matthew Rohrer, and Deborah Landau read from their new or recent collections, respectively <\/em>The Game of Boxes, Destroyer and Preserver, and <\/em>The Last Usable Hour.<\/p>\n

Discussed: Scientifically perfect titles; writing in collaboration; the children of poets; the cemeteries of Queens; the impersonality of the \u201cI\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> Are there considerations you take when translating your poems from the written to the spoken form [this event, for instance]?<\/p>\n

Matthew Rohrer:<\/strong> At the last minute I took several out because I thought they wouldn\u2019t go over. Or they do things that are fun to look at, but maybe don\u2019t sound so good. There\u2019s no getting around the fact that there\u2019s a difference between some poems that work on the page and just don\u2019t work out loud. It\u2019s best if they sound good to hear and do something interesting on the page, but I guess that doesn\u2019t always happen.<\/p>\n

Deborah Landau:<\/strong> I think the poem needs to work on the page.<\/p>\n

Catherine Barnett:<\/strong> It\u2019s very helpful for me to think about reading to an Other. I\u2019m interested in the I-Thou anyhow, in speaking to an Other, so it\u2019s useful for me to imagine. Otherwise it seems to be just a private meditation. That doesn\u2019t mean it reaches you.<\/p>\n

Having heard poets read, it really helps me read their work on my own.<\/p>\n

\"Shakespeare<\/p>\n

Q:<\/strong> For all three poets who have children, how do you think that having children has affected your work?<\/p>\n

DL<\/strong>: Actually Matt has been a model for me. He told me that when he was taking care of his daughter, he wasn\u2019t writing at all because it was so overwhelming. And then he told himself if you can just write three lines a day, and then of course he wrote much more. So I think of him now when I\u2019m barely surviving. My daughter\u2019s over there, so I shouldn\u2019t say anything mean.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t know\u2014the place I write is not the place I live, actually.<\/p>\n

CB<\/strong>: I try to pretend when I\u2019m writing that no one will ever read anything. Even when I\u2019m putting the book together, though that might sound the opposite of what I just said, about speaking to you. But I\u2019m interested in speaking very intimately, and I try to get rid of the idea that people might think that the poem is me. I want to write as deeply as possible of the human condition, but I also want to escape the personal \u201cI.\u201d I can see how a child might get that confused, and that would be an interesting conversation.<\/p>\n

\"Shakespeare<\/p>\n

Q: <\/strong>You have very recent collections, or forthcoming. I\u2019m wondering about your titles\u2014how did they come to you?<\/p>\n

CB<\/strong>: The Game of Boxes <\/em>is a poem from the book. It\u2019s that game that you play when you\u2019re really, really bored, and you\u2019re trying to find something to do. And you have these dots, and you\u2019re trying to close up the boxes. I came up with a lot of other titles, and the press kept saying \u201cno.\u201d I\u2019m happy with \u201cThe Game of Boxes.\u201d It\u2019s very abstract, it seems like it leaves a lot of room. But I actually find titles impossible. I leave a lot of poems untitled until very late, and I don\u2019t pay attention to other people\u2019s titles. When I teach, I often just jump right down.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it\u2019s extremely important, the title\u2026so I should pay more attention.<\/p>\n

DL<\/strong>: \u201cThe last usable hour\u201d is a line from\u2026it evokes the end-of-the-world, nightmarish feeling I get in the middle of the night. I was thinking a lot about how the luxury of being in the middle\u2026we have all of this time right now, and eventually we\u2019ll get the last hour that we have. That haunted me, \u201cthe last usable hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

MR<\/strong>: Can I ask you a question about that, actually? Where do you think you\u2019ll get buried, because, when the hearse driver takes you across the bridge [in one of your poems], were you going to Queens or something?<\/p>\n

That <\/em>has haunted me\u2026I\u2019ve always thought that you don\u2019t want to be buried in that direction.<\/p>\n

My book, Destroyer and Preserver<\/em>, was going to be called Army of Giants, <\/em>which is, I think, a scientifically great title\u2026there\u2019s just no getting around how great that title is, Army of Giants<\/em>. But it just stopped being perfect for the book, after a while, as I was putting it together. I mean, Mad King Ludwig had an army of giants, it\u2019s an army of midgets, in his retinue, because you never know what you\u2019re going to come up against. And that\u2019s a line in one of the poems. But then\u2026it just stopped seeming appropriate for the book. So as much as I loved The Army of Giants,<\/em> I had to let it go.<\/p>\n

\"Shakespeare<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong>: I know that Deborah and Katherine show each other work. Can you talk about the value of sharing your work with other writers?<\/p>\n

DL<\/strong>: I really need readers. In fact I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal <\/em>last spring about collaboration and the way in which I work with writers, and even in that piece I needed writer friends to read it. So for me it\u2019s a very important part of my process.<\/p>\n

MR<\/strong>: I think you need like-minded people. It doesn\u2019t have to be a lot of them, but it does need to be some of them. And I think those are the people that make you better. You want to write for them, you want to impress them or do something that they haven\u2019t seen you do before. Otherwise, it\u2019s hard to know exactly who you\u2019re talking to, it\u2019s easy to get in a rut. But I think if you have people who you really admire, maybe if you even feel a little inferior to, then I think that makes you perform better. It makes you take a step up.<\/p>\n

CB<\/strong>: I think it helps with the loneliness of writer, and the difficulty of actually shaping something. To make from the raw, the pleasure of just tracking the mind, I think it\u2019s helpful to have a group of people, or a reader to accompany you all the way through.<\/p>\n

\"Shakespeare<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong>: How often do you write a poem that you are really proud of?<\/p>\n

MR: <\/strong>Not very often.<\/p>\n

DL<\/strong>: Ditto.<\/p>\n

CB<\/strong>: Definitely not very often. It\u2019s interesting, being here in Paris, looking back at my notes. I try to tell students, and I do this myself, to take one\u2019s poem to different places and see how it looks there.<\/p>\n

Everything looks shabby here, in comparison to Paris.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a transcription from the Q-and-A session from the \u201cAcclaimed American Poets\u201d event, this past Monday at Shakespeare and Company. Catherine Barnett, Matthew Rohrer, and Deborah Landau read from their new or recent collections, respectively <\/em>The Game of Boxes, Destroyer and Preserver, and <\/em>The Last Usable Hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2303,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herroyalmajesty.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}