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AL FILREIS:
I'm Al Filreis and this is Poem Talk at the Writers House where I have the pleasure of convening three friends to collaborate on a close but not too close reading of poems or poetic prose. We'll talk, maybe even disagree a bit, and perhaps open up the writing to a few new possibilities. And, we hope, gain for a writer's work that interests us, some new readers and listeners. And I say listeners because poem talk poems are available in recordings made by the writers themselves as part of our Penn Sound archive writing.upenn.edu/pennsound. Today I'm joined here in Philadelphia at the Kelly Writers House in our Wexler studio by Henry Steinberg, who has done work as a letter press artisan and web design development, a longtime Philadelphian, born and raised. Were you really raised, born? I knew you were raised, but born. Born. Yeah. OK. Philadelphian. And that counts. Right. And a dear, dear friend of the Kelly Writers House going back to his days as a student when he called this very house, his home away from home.

And by Chantine Akiyama Poh, a writer who has a graduate degree from the Harvard School of Design after an engineering education at MIT. Where she participated, among other things, as a designer for the Opera of the Future, who recently made her pivot toward full time writing with the MFA program at Rutgers, Newark, and who, I'm glad to say, has been an active participant in and a dear friend of the ModPo community. Good to see you. And Murat Nemet-Nejat, an Istanbul born writer whose works include 'Animals of Dawn', 'The Spiritual Life of Replicants', 'Holiness and Jewish Rebellion', 'Questions of Accent', '20 Years After' and others other works who has been very actively involved as editor and or translator and or collaborator on many projects among them 'Eda' did I pronounce that right? 'Eda'?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
'Eda'

AL FILREIS:
'Eda' an anthology of contemporary Turkish poetry and 'Istanbul Noir', to name just a few whose 'Camels and Weasels' is part of the seven part serial poem, 'The Structure of Escape', and who, this very day here at the Writers House has recorded some new poems for his already vast and terrific Penn Sound page. Murat, it is great to see you back at the Writers House.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
I'm it's a great pleasure to be here and thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to the whole process.

AL FILREIS:
Yes, it'll be lots of fun.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
The experience. Yeah, I think so.

AL FILREIS:
And let the record show that Murat came earlier, recorded for the Penn Sound pages I mentioned. And then after this recording will be, we'll be shifting into another room in the four of us will be making a video close reading of one of Murat’s poems. So I'm looking forward to it a lot. Henry, I already said hello to you, but. Hey, pal.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Hi. it's nice to be here. I'm doing really well.

AL FILREIS:
Tell us in a second or two. The last time you did Poem Talk, we had a rocking good time.

HENRY STEINBERG:
We really did.

AL FILREIS:
When was that it?

HENRY STEINBERG:
It was. I kind of just showed up to a reading by Caroline Bergvall and was ambushed by Al. Al was just like, we need we need we need a body ambush us.

AL FILREIS:
Is somebody got Covid.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Someone?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Actually, I listened to that fantastic poet. Yeah and it was.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Truly it was such a wonderful conversation.

AL FILREIS:
Sawako Nakayasu It was her some girls and it was.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
By the way, your take is exactly what when you say that it looks like an interrogation, you know.

AL FILREIS:
Yes, I think I should use the word prosecutorial.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
It treats the painting as if it were a photograph as a crime for the.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Crime scene. Yeah.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah, yeah.

AL FILREIS:
Thank you. Murat. I get some feedback. Anyway, I think you were just a revelation that day, and I just. I handed you a script an hour before, and you were so brilliant, (LAUGHS) and

HENRY STEINBERG:
It was wonderful to be a part of that.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, it really was great. Thank you.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Hello.

AL FILREIS:
Hello, how are you?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
I'm well.

AL FILREIS:
It's really good to see you. Thanks for making the trip. Well, today we four have gathered here to talk about Dodie Bellamy's new work 'Vomit Journal'. An excerpt from which a little more than three printed pages was recently published in the literature and art journal 'Local Knowledge'. So far as we know at the time, we chose to discuss 'Vomit Journal' no video or sound recording of the work has been made available as far as I know, and so we're especially grateful to Dodie for producing a recording just for Poem Talk, and it is now already linked to Dodie's penn sound page. So we will be hearing and discussing some, almost most a majority of but not all of the dated journal entries from the Local Knowledge Excerpt. The recording is much longer than we usually feature on poem talk nearly eight minutes and of course we will be back for our discussion after we listen. So here now is Dodie Bellamy reading from 'Vomit Journal'. (AUDIO PLAYS)

DODIE BELLAMY:
'Vomit Journal'. April 14 1997, sitting at the Hong Kong gorging on bean curd with Chinese broccoli. I'm so tired of my own thoughts. I've run out of things to say about Ed, No matter which way I turn, I smack against the incomprehensible fact that I'm the only one doing the missing here. To him, I'm nothing but a case of brain fever, a burning hallucination his medication wiped out. I'm lighting small fires in the snow he wrote me during our final death pangs. His drugs were the snow, rendering everything icy and white. After we broke up, he started reading books on the theory of otherness. And went to Poland and slept with a crazy cousin he didn't remember from his childhood. He told me this during our last phone conversation, which lasted two hours. "You seem quiet", he said. "Are you upset?" The note of pleasure in his voice unmistakable. This is a b and p night. Binge and purge. He chose Cynthia for his therapist, he said, because he needed an attractive woman to help him work through his problems with this girlfriend.

With women. In the early days, he confided in Cynthia that he was attracted to her. She was my age. She ignored him. Cynthia was a traitor to women, helping him fuck over and dump his first girlfriend and then me. The bathroom keeps being busy like its fucking Grand Central Station. When the next person comes out, I'll bolt. I envy Ed's total reliance on Cynthia. Three fortunes in my cookie today. Your dearest wish will come true. Seven, nine, 13, 16, 47. 48. Blue will be your lucky color. Beneath this, a row of Chinese characters. Be moderate where pleasure is concerned. More Chinese characters. 17th April 1997. Hong Kong. I'm feeling like such a freak. Earlier I was reading about barrel pilloris. They were mostly used for drunks. The barrel fit over the drunks body, his head poking out of a hole in the top. Sometimes there were holes in the front, just big enough for hands. Sometimes there were scenes painted on the side depicting the drunks transgressions. I want to extend this metaphor like crazy.

My life is a humiliation barrel. My body is a humiliation barrel. And so is this journal. The rough wood chafes my tenderness. Just spilled wine all over my chest. You have a keen sense of humor and love a good time 220, 21, 31, 34, 36. I don't remember getting a three-digit number before. 6th May 1997. Hong Kong. Yes. Two days in a row. The creamy warmth of tofu. The garlicky bite. Rather smoky of chili oil. Soft tofu is vegetarian oysters slipping across the back of your tongue. Writing is the one reason I have to live. The one place where I feel a reason. Catherine Wagner's photograph of the Human Genome Project's freezer packed with tissue samples. When I noticed that some were labeled bipolar disorder, I ripped the page right out of the magazine and pinned it on the wall beside my computer. I still haven't reached the essence of the photograph. Why I desire it, even though it's sterile and ugly. Frozen vials. Frozen emotion. In the freezers absolute -86 degree coldness clutter coalesces into order.

Its frost-tinged immobility reminds me of the dead body in Plath's poem 'Edge'. The woman is perfected. The illusion of Greek necessity flows in the scrolls of her toga. There's a lesson about writing here. A vial labeled bipolar disorder is infinitely closer to Ed's hyperventilating, panic. The flush of his capillaries, the stench of his drug-induced diarrhea than anything I could say about him. Thingness frozen and sliced versus my fancifications. Vial AA1 meets AA5 on shelf number three. They fall in love and move to shelf number two, tube holder B. AA5 leaves AA1 immobilized with Frost AA1 reads her fortune cookie. It has two fortunes, meaning there's no easy answers. You'll be showered with good luck. Line of Chinese characters. Do not let unexpected situations throw you. More characters. 2nd June 1997. The broccoli bean cake is particularly good tonight. Watching people dining together, I feel envious. Like friendship and sharing food is the most precious thing in the world. Longing never seems to leave me.

It just gets locked away somewhere in the body. Writing about Ed, the fatty seal breaks and loss comes rushing through, flushing my chest. As details come into focus. My mouth spasms marijuana ashes on the bottom shelf of his medicine cabinet. The copper lobster mold I bought at the Salvation Army. I imagine it's no longer hanging on the kitchen wall. Pauline Oliveros on the stereo. Hundreds of books of poetry in the living room. The bedroom, his tiny study off the kitchen. All of them in blonde collapsible shelves he bought at K-mart. His things seem more real than he. I don't think I could love anybody who was normal, who hadn't suffered terribly. The trouble with all us outsiders is that we're always trying to hide our freakishness, striving to attain the status of normalcy. We may be able to understand one another, but ultimately we're not on one another's agenda. Most likely, I'd have come to despise Ed for not being powerful, for being such a weirdo. Last night I dreamt I was having trouble shitting and I began pulling whole cabbage leaves out my butt.

I showed them to Ed and he said I needed to chew my food better. Your present plans are going to succeed. One three 11,13, 46, 47. I love it when I get a fortune with the numbers in it. It's like communicating with beings from a different realm. As Jodie Foster says in the preview to the movie about alien transmission. "Mathematics is the only universal language." (AUDIO STOPS)

AL FILREIS:
I'd like to go around and very briefly ask you to toss into the conversation on the table, as it were, the topics we really need to cover in this conversation. So, we'll collect those and then we'll just go from there. So big topics. Let's go lightning round all the way around one each. We'll go twice around. Henry, you first. What's a topic we need to talk about?

HENRY STEINBERG:
One that feels maybe too obvious, but we need to talk about Ed, We need to talk about. But like, specifically eating disorders.

AL FILREIS:
Oh, you just did two. OK.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Well, sorry, Ed Ed as stand in for eating disorder. Ed?

AL FILREIS:
OK. Ed as eating disorder. Wow. OK, good. Alright, Murat, what's a topic we need to talk about?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
I find this writing incredibly liberating, and I want to discuss it as an example of new narrative and what new narrative does. And I feel a very specific kinship to it, particularly coming from another culture.

AL FILREIS:
Wow, great topic. We'll definitely go back to that. Thank you, Chantine.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Something I'm interested in is, I guess, the use of these extended metaphors of the projection of the speaker of the poem as all of these other characters. So projection of self, maybe, and metaphors.

AL FILREIS:
I think I'll add one that's really adjunct to what you just said. There are two references to confessional poets. One is explicit Plath, the other is implicit. A quote from Lowell, and this is clearly not that this may be connecting us to the new narrative. This is clearly not confessional poetry, but it has some kind of cousin relation to it. Should we go around at the risk of not getting to all these and do one more round of things that we should talk about or that anyone would need to talk about? Who's grappling with this new work? 'Vomit Journal'. Henry One more.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I guess like something that I would would love to talk about are the fortunes and the numbers.

AL FILREIS:
Good

HENRY STEINBERG:
And the Chinese restaurant like the American Chinese restaurant.

AL FILREIS:
Yes

HENRY STEINBERG:
Specifically.

AL FILREIS:
That's right. OK, good. Murat.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
The way the subjective and the objective merge to a new place. A new space really. What does Dodie Bellamy do with confessions and what kind of a confessions are they and who is really speaker in this story?

AL FILREIS:
Wonderful love that. OK, Chantine, you got the last one or actually, I have one after that.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Henry keeps saying the things that I want to say, but.

AL FILREIS:
That's what Henry does. (LAUGHTER) I've learned.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah, on top of it. But something I'm interested in is also just the role in the presence and almost like personification of of writing in this piece.

AL FILREIS:
Well, once again, I'm just going to merge mine with yours. The relationship between longing and writing. There's something this person, this speaker is this narrator is very unhappy things, you know, suffering. But the writing has a relationship to some kind of response to that. OK, so I'm writing that down. I've never written anything down during Poem Talk. This is so refreshing and different. You know what Murat came the furthest distance and is our special guest. Pick one of those topics. You get to choose.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
OK. The phrase you have used, "But desire turns into longing."

AL FILREIS:
Right.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
These are two different concepts. And what happens is that this incredible moment in that last chapter, "writing about it, the fattest seal breaks and loss comes through, rushing through. And longing never seems to leave me, It just gets locked away somewhere in the body. "Writing about it the fattest seal breaks and loss comes rushing through this liberation of longing." Longing, unlike specific desire, is something more abstract. It is not completely subjective. As a matter of fact, it has resonances. All through the cultures and the way it happens there in this text is that suddenly that moment which also joins with the taste of the of the of the food, you know, tofu. The ecstasy of the suffering, it becomes a they say the suffering becomes an ecstatic experience. And suddenly from Ed it moves to the objects surrounding him.

AL FILREIS:
Thank you, Murat. That was amazing. OK. Where are we gonna go next? Because the word liberation generally has not just a positive connotation, but in the kind of psychoanalytic metaphor of truth and revelation, psychic revelation emerging, flowing upward, you know, Freud's hydraulic metaphor, we think of confessional poetry as getting it out. And in this case, it's tainted by purging or by fatty seal breaking. So it's not your typical liberation. Henry what do we do with this?

HENRY STEINBERG:
I mean, I think that it's a kind of liberation in the face of the ways that society tends to police bodies, specifically bodies that are either marked or unmarked by disability or disease in some way. And like thinking about the ways that this is really, frankly, talking about something that we largely think is ugly, like bulimia, like binging and purging, like any kind of disordered relationship to food. I mean, even that phrase, disordered disordered eating or eating disorder is so freighted with ugly connotation, the liberation happens in sort of turning it inside out. I mean, if we look at the like my body is a humiliation barrel. It's turning the like barrel pillory into something that you show the world.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Transformative.

HENRY STEINBERG:
It's transformative. It's completely transformative.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, it's a it's a stunning metaphor that I want to get back to, but I want to turn to Chantine for another response to this whole question of what kind of liberation is this?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah, well, just responding to Henry, I mean, I think you can get hints of what Henry is saying. Also turning it upside down with in May 6th, it says, "Why? You know, I still haven't reached the essence of the photograph, why I desire it, even though it's sterile and ugly." And so it's finding maybe moments of liberation in disorder or in ugliness.

HENRY STEINBERG:
When that comes right after this sort of like reveling in the pleasure of the food.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Right. And that's the first time, actually, that the speaker revels in the food.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Yeah.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Everything before that, they're just talking about bingeing and it feels painful. The hot pepper caught in my throat. But there's actually an, ah, the creamy warmth of tofu.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah, there's ecstatic.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Yeah.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Because before. Yeah. It's like, (CROSSTALK)

AL FILREIS:
What was the phrase you used earlier? Pardon me?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
You used a phrase ecstatic. Suffering.

AL FILREIS:
Suffering,

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Suffering of tears, which is, by the way, very much a Sufi experience. Right? That's it. Kindred spirit. I'm talking.

AL FILREIS:
Yes, you're coming. There's a consonance with your own work and your own concerns. You were hinting at that.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yes, But not only this. I was reading the introduction to writers who love too much, which is about the new narrative which Dodie and Kevin Killian wrote together. They make a point there that San Francisco is a port city, and they say probably what we are doing is being done in different parts of the world without our knowledge. It's almost relationship is a quantum, you understand? And that's really what it is. You know, Dodie and I are very different kind of writers, but we are in search of the same thing and kind of I'm kind of stunned by it, really, how much it is and what really she does I think if I want to put like this and this is the thing about confession and we are talking about. Instead of having the speaker in a position of power. OK. The speaker becomes in a position of vulnerability. So that basically is a celebration of freakishness, openness. All those fortune cookie numbers, for example. All of them except the last one is about how can you can control your life. This is practical.

Whereas the last one is a message from outside. It's, you know, spycerian kind of coming out, you know, from Mars messages from Mars, so that mathematics doesn't become as in the genome process, a place of control, perfection, measurement. Power becomes a place of openness of tears, of bursting, of longing.

AL FILREIS:
OK. Henry, Chantine, you wanna follow up on that?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
This is just making me think that the subject feels pretty apt for this movement. Because just thinking about eating disorders and especially bulimia, the binging is torture, the binging is horrible, and it's the purging that's euphoric. And it's interesting that there is not that much purging. There's just that first, you know, it's a b and p night, but there's not really talk of purging.

HENRY STEINBERG:
You only get sort of glimpses of it in her reporting on what's going on with the bathroom.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And but I think it's interesting because I think the euphoric purging comes in the writing 'Cause at the beginning it feels pained. It's, you know, the my body is a humiliation barrel and so is this journal. The Rough wood chafes my tenderness, but in a different entry that we didn't get to hear Dodie read, you know, she starts talking about that. It's, you know, it's helping her to process what's happening and then it talks about the coolness of the page in May 8th, the whiteness. And it seems like the writing is potentially the place of the euphoric purge.

HENRY STEINBERG:
She references a practice also in that passage of automatic writing of this kind of like vomitorious like just expelling your thoughts onto.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
But but do you feel..

HENRY STEINBERG:
I don't think that this is automatic writting at all. (CROSSTALK) It feels very constructed.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
It's very carefully constructed,

HENRY STEINBERG:
Absolutely.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
I mean explosively. But amazing.

HENRY STEINBERG:
But it has that kind of which is interesting in the context of it's hard for me not to think of this all through the lens of eating disorders, but like as a method of constraint of self constraint and self sort of like. I don't know. Self-flagellation in some ways, but that's not really what I mean. It's more about like, how do you control the uncontrollable going back to like mathematics as this universal language, even though these are random numbers or pseudo random numbers that don't mean anything.

AL FILREIS:
Is writing analogous to the purging, or is it analogous to the euphoria one seeks other than the purging? It's the latter, isn't it?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yes. This is the language is the tool. It's it breaks the seal.

AL FILREIS:
It breaks the seal, which is rather, sorry, disgusting the fatty seal broken, but.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
What happens when it happens? Is that what it starts as missing it, "I'm the only one doing the missing" becomes longing. OK. This transformation occurs. You know, It's very important I think. With the point you are making. This is not a meta text to me, OK? It's not the text. (CROSSTALK) It's not about writing. Writing. It's not writing that. It goes someplace else.

AL FILREIS:
It does. It is not an example of the BNP as most of the writing. Forgive me. I'm gonna generalize here. The kind of writing that people like the four of us admire is the writing that does what it says and therefore is itself vomititious. It is

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Self-referential.

AL FILREIS:
Is itself purging, and it is a meta meta text. That's why the reference to Lowell. "I'm so tired of my own thoughts", you know, this is Lowell, circa 1959 Life Studies, and the explicit reference to Plath is cleverly misleading because this is not a vomititious text.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
No, it is not.

AL FILREIS:
So, wow Henry, Chantine. It's I Murant and I agree on this. What do you think about this?

HENRY STEINBERG:
I mean I think I agree. I think that it is like a like to Murat's point it is a text that uses the language to go somewhere else..

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Outside.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Yeah. And it looks outside of the moment. We're with Dodie, sort of like in the booth.

AL FILREIS:
It's not part of the rest. It's not part of the disorder.

HENRY STEINBERG:
It feels like it is and it isn't. It feels like the kind of exercise you'd be given if you were going through treatment and told to write your thoughts and feelings about what's happening. That's why for me, the character of Ed is so fascinating because it's this in my reading was a personified like character of the disorder itself that kind of both stood in for Dodie and for the bingeing and purging like simultaneously.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah, I definitely agree that it's almost like an exercise of processing someone's eating disorder. I do feel, though, that a lot of these entries start to get into the speaker's head, the writers, you know, starting off writing, you know, "here I am in this place and this restaurant" but then it quickly slips into whatever they've been obsessing about, you know, Ed or whoever it is. And there is a progression. If I do want to kind of I know maybe that's not in vogue right now, but if I do want to draw a thread of a narrative throughout all of the entries, I see that there is a progression slowly of the speaker becoming more present as they're writing to themselves to the fact that they are numb. To the fact that Ed, you know, may not be who Ed is originally, that his things seem more real than he, that he's a bit of a character. And it seems like the writing does exhibit a little bit the the mindset of somebody in an eating disorder. So I'm not saying that I agree that it's not like a vomit, like the writing is not automatic writing or anything, but it does exhibit the mindset of somebody who is (CROSSTALK) going through.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I mean it's the type of thing that you enter into a relationship with that you have like essentially an abusive relationship with.(LAUGHS)

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Totally.

HENRY STEINBERG:
And it doesn't have to be purely like narrativized as such.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
You think we are talking about something is very interesting about. Once again, I'm going to the writers who love too much. You know, this is the title of new writers. Writers who love too much. Interestingly enough, it seems that that term ironically, that term was called by Bob Gluck, boyfriend lowering or something like this. You are writers who love too much. And at that time it seemed that there was a very popular.

AL FILREIS:
It was meant as a criticism.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Well, jokingly, but they served it as a kind of what the writing does.

AL FILREIS:
It became an anthemic statement.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah. And at that time it seemed that there was a very bestseller book written by women, psychologists, women who love too much. OK. And you have here a character who eats too much (LAUGHTER) and and really purges. I think it's really important because there is an interview I think one of the writers does with Charles Bernstein. Ok. About new writing. And you see Charles, at that time, the language school person was trying to turn the writing into disruptions. You know, language, language, nothing outside. And everything is basically meta meta reading. And the response is, no, no, no, no, no, it is not this. You know, we are we want to bring everything else inside, kind of this profusion of material, really. This is where actually, I think absorption more than automatic writing is the incredible ability of the writing absolves multiple spaces of experience into one called body, the body, the eating, the shitting, you know, and and numbers then spicer you know, then Sylvia Plath and Lowell, everything gets submerged.

That's really the profusion. Yeah. (AUDIO PLAYS)

DODIE BELLAMY:
6th May 1997. Hong Kong. Yes. Two days in a row. The creamy warmth of tofu. The garlicky bite. Rather smoky of chili oil. Soft tofu is vegetarian oysters slipping across the back of your tongue. Writing is the one reason I have to live. The one place where I feel a reason. Catherine Wagner's photograph of the Human Genome Project's freezer packed with tissue samples. When I noticed that some were labeled bipolar disorder, I ripped the page right out of the magazine and pinned it on the wall beside my computer. I still haven't reached the essence of the photograph. Why I desire it, even though it's sterile and ugly, (AUDIO STOPS)

AL FILREIS:
You know, I had no idea we were gonna go this far this fast. You three are amazing. And I think I want. I made that list at the beginning. So, I want first to turn to the whole thing about the use of the fortune and the fortune cookies and the whole American Chinese restaurant thing. And then I wanna consider Ed, we've talked about Ed a little bit, but I think I want to do more with that. Santini, How did the fortunes they're written out in italics. They're clearly a different kind of voice, they're speaking in a way that is unlike a lot of the rest of the language, the fortunes. What do we do with that? Why, why, why? Why is that important here? Other than that, she's using the Hong Kong, which is a Chinese restaurant, presumably in San Francisco, as as a way of bingeing?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Um, you know, this is a question that has puzzled me. And I can't say I have any definitive thoughts, but something that I did notice as I read through them as a whole, all the entries together was that at the beginning the fortunes felt very much ironic, like she's in this intense misery and the fortune say, Your dearest wish will come true. (LAUGHTER)

AL FILREIS:
They're all like that.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah. They all seem

HENRY STEINBERG:
Dearest wish will come true. Yeah.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
Aren't they all. Aren't all these fortunes like that?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
It seems like it. But

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
They're. Irony machines, right?

HENRY STEINBERG:
Well, they're so bland and so content list that they have to be ironic. (CROSSTALK)

AL FILREIS:
Have you ever figured out what the numbers are?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
I think those numbers games.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I think they're for the lotto.

AL FILREIS:
Lotto. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea it was like some kind of serial number. Exactly. (CROSSTALK)

HENRY STEINBERG:
Today, your lucky number.

AL FILREIS:
They've never. I've never understood any of this. I'm sorry Chantine. Please continue.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Oh, no I mean, I have a penchant for optimism, so I think by the end, I have a little bit more optimism about the fortunes. And what's interesting is that one of them is repeated. The last one is your your present plans are going to succeed. And it repeats the one from May 5th. Your present plans are going to succeed. And what's interesting.

HENRY STEINBERG:
That was a section we didn't read..

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Oh, yes.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Here, but that's. OK.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
But I think that one's a key, a key entry for this collection, because there's a clue that Ed may not be a person. It says, Ed has become so much a character that it's hard to believe a real person ever existed. And perhaps Ed really is the eating disorder. And I think that's kind of interesting.

AL FILREIS:
You took both topics I wanted to get to and you did them. "Your present plans in the last section. Your present plans are going to succeed. 01-03-11-13-46-47. I love it when I get a fortune with the numbers in it, It's like communicating with beings from a different realm." Alright. Already addressed that in the spicerian sense. But Henry, what's "I love it when I get a fortune that does what?" That's speaking in a language that's some kind of mathematical language. That might be a code to solve my.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Yeah. I mean, I. Think it is exactly that. It's like, I love it when I'm delivered something that should be rational and predictable and reasonable, like numbers like like mathematics being the universal language even though they're random, they're pseudo-random. She discovers one that just has three digits and is delighted by that. And it's kind of like it's almost dreamlike.

AL FILREIS:
Isn't it this truestic or aphoristic false prediction? False because she got two different nights. She got the same fortune, (LAUGHTER) as you pointed out. So that's bullshit. I love it when and then focus is on the stuff that's non-linguistic the potentially unintelligible language from somewhere else that's not manufactured by the fortune cookie makers. Right? So that's what and love is a very important word there. It's not just a throwaway. I love it because love is at issue here.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Well, you see the last two entries. OK. Suddenly you have this Cathleen Wagner's photographs. Ok. Numbers, almost a kind of Cartesian graph appears there where bipolar disorder is placed in numbers. Their numbers are used as tools of control, of perfection, of freezing, literally, which is happening in Plath's poem, which is, by the way, it seems as the last poem that she wrote before committing suicide.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Also 'Edge and Ed (LAUGHTER)

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Kind of essentially and in the you know, from 17th century onwards, numbers become tools for technology, you know, controlling on nature. And we know the rest of history Western civilization. OK. Then you have the numbers which was used beforehand before 17th century and other things. There are symbols of an abstract reason, you know, it is something different. OK. And she's moving to that perception. That is to say, from the Cathleen Wagner's numbers in the last section, going to a completely different concept of numbers in perfection. As a matter of fact, what she doesn't like about Ed his attempt to become normal, you know, she gives this kind of almost ecstatic purging experience about cabbage leaves pulling out of her ass in a dream.

AL FILREIS:
And what's Ed's relation to the cabbage?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
He says you should chew your foods.(LAUGHS)

AL FILREIS:
So he's trying. He's striving for normalcy?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah, he strives. She's complaining. They are afraid to be crazy because she's, you know, in other. I read the other part of 'Vomit Journal', which is not here. What she loves about him is his absolute insanity. Ok? He's trying to move away from it to become normal.

AL FILREIS:
Right.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
And she doesn't. Then she gets bored with him. OK?

AL FILREIS:
Yes. And her her way out a la Jodie Foster is to focus on the numbers and be shot into alien transmission.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yes.

AL FILREIS:
You know, just get the hell out.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah. Going to someplace else. Mystery, you know? Kind of.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. OK. Just to create a sense of wholeness covering topics. The Chinese American Chinese restaurant context for this, maybe it's obvious, but let's take a second to talk about it. You brought it up, Henry.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Oh, I mean, I think it's really fascinating as the site to like discuss the bingeing and purging and gorging and eating because, like, thinking about Chinese food and American Chinese food in particular, I feel like it's often linked to, especially like in my experience as like a fat person in the world, like excess and overeating and like indulgence, but also this kind of very ordinary kind of indulgence like.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Plastic flamingos and exactly the kind of like this, this.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Like bad meady music playing all around.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah, yeah, yeah which really new narrative writers love, you know, this is the called they love kitsch. They want to shock And a bit fluffy sometimes. (CROSSTALK)

AL FILREIS:
Well, like thinking, thinking about, you know, camp. Think about the poetry of the first line, the poetry. I mean, in a traditional sense, gorging here, the sounds, if it weren't gorging and curd and sort of negative-ish connotations, you would think it's like the best metrical lyric poem you've ever heard. (LAUGHTER) Gorging on Beancurd with Chinese broccoli. Dodie Bellamy's relationship to that metrically and that sonority is what? I mean it's clearly ironic after a while gorging. I mean, it's kind of gross.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Well, I think it's like ironic, but also like to the point about like what some of this writing is doing. Like it's also very earnestly like, I'm here eating this food, enjoying it, both enjoying it, and also feeling the sense of shame, but also the ecstasy of where those two things meet. And like I'm I don't know, like I've been in a place of like eating too much and knowing that I'm eating too much, but also enjoying the food and having those two things feel incommensurate and strange.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
In Chinese restaurant (CROSSTALK)

HENRY STEINBERG:
In a Chinese restaurant.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
When you're hungry again. You have to eat again.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Absolutely.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
You know this is..

AL FILREIS:
And the bathroom keeps being busy like its fucking Grand Central Station. Now, not everyone, (CROSSTALK) Not everyone. It really is. Not everyone is purging. There might be someone hogging the bathroom because they're purging but.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
I'm going to bolt. (CROSSTALK)

AL FILREIS:
It's more like the experience of the American Chinese restaurant that, you know, like you were just saying, you had to go to the bathroom. It's a kind of purging, frankly. You go to the bathroom, then you come back and you can order some more. Alright, so just let's go one more round on Ed, just to get that into the record. I don't think we're gonna resolve it. He's a major figure here, and maybe we're leaving it to our listeners and Dodie's readers to encounter Ed and figure it out. But let's give them a head start, Chantine, say something about Ed.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Oh, I'm fully convinced Ed is the eating disorder is a personified version of the eating disorder. I had a really hard time trying to read it, not that way, but something that I liked. As I said, I love optimism. So, June 2nd entry, there's a phrase where she starts to realize her power over Ed, You know, most likely I'd have come to despise Ed for not being powerful, for being such a weirdo, and that despite this whole piece, the series of of poems seeming to be kind of a dwelling in the ugliness there there are glimmers of of growth. And I think it's beautiful the way that it's done in a very raw and authentic way and that it's not just like, yay, no, I'm all better, but it's just like slow realizations that Ed was not as powerful as maybe he was at some point.

AL FILREIS:
Love that. Henry, your turn.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I think I've been went over to the like that he might be real, but I think he functions in both categories like it doesn't to me. I don't know if it matters if Ed is a person or the disorder. Ed stands in for both. It's like and in some ways, when you're dealing with this kind of thing, it functions in both ways. Like you might even begin to refer to it as a person who does at its best, of course, right?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
In my case, what happened when I was reading it. I wasn't sure whether Ed was a man or a woman. And and kind of I was curious. I said, why am I having it? Then I read it again. There's a reference to Ed as a he so that.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Yeah, multiple times. But, but to me

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
There is a he here.

HENRY STEINBERG:
But to me that kind of felt like it was this personification of a type of like male like personage that can exist in the world that like dictates to either like, you know, femme presenting or female bodied people or to just others. Like how things must be like specifically that you have to chew your food more is like the type of like it's hilarious, but it's also like the type of thing that somebody who's experiencing like acute, like eating disorder, like will internalize as like a desperate failure.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
I went to something just came to my mind. OK. Ed to me. He functions to some extent like Beatrice functions for Dante. OK. It's an object of desire.

HENRY STEINBERG:
Yeah.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
That transformed into something where that object is left behind and moved to something else. I think there is a similar structure.

AL FILREIS:
I like that.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I think I like that.

AL FILREIS:
A bit of a muse. OK, quick final thoughts. Something you came here ready to say but didn't have a chance to yet. Very brief, Henry.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I don't know. I like I'm struck by, I think like like Murat said, like the the kind of vulnerability on display here and the like. It's hard. It's hard to digest. It's a difficult work to talk about.

AL FILREIS:
It's hard to digest.

HENRY STEINBERG:
In so many ways. (LAUGHTER) It points in so many directions..

AL FILREIS:
Yes

HENRY STEINBERG:
And asks so many questions and I mean interfaces with my biography in ways that make it difficult and challenging. And I don't know, I think I am gonna keep returning to, again what Murad said about the the IT as a liberatory text. This act of liberation of self like of being OK to use I guess like modern like kind of shitty self care terminology being OK with not being OK. Which is like kind of what it's doing in its earnestness, in its, in its like, you know, depiction of doing something kind of normally associated with shame.

AL FILREIS:
Great. Thank you Henry. Murad, final thought?

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yeah, I'm absolutely stunned by her ability to synthesize multiple levels of experience into this beautiful, beautiful prismatic kind of glorious piece text.

AL FILREIS:
Wonderful. Yes, I agree. And thank you by the way, I should acknowledge that Murat kind of co-curated this. We went back and forth, What text should we do? And you came up with this and I'm so glad you did. And and it both implied. And then later, this has become explicit that this addresses some of your own interests and concerns. And actually, both of you have had this. The other two of you have had this experience too. So there's something powerful about this literary piece. Chantine, final thought.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yes, I think everything that's been said I agree with. I agree with what Henry said about it's OK with not being OK. I do also see, you know, glimmers of hope here because of the relationship of the speaker with writing. I think I might be biased 'Cause I'm a writer, but it seems like writing is the way out here, that writing is the audience that, you know, that the speaker was seeking in the writing in the Lover, and that perhaps it's helping the writer to come to some more self realization slowly. And I think it's not in a rush to reach any place, but the relationship to writing, the consistency with writing, I think has brought the speaker to a little bit more self-awareness by the end.

AL FILREIS:
Thank you. My final thought picks up on something we've already talked about the fatty seal breaks, which is a turning point. Writing about Ed does that. Just prior to that, the broccoli bean cake is particularly good tonight. That is not an ironic good, right? I mean, I think a superficial reading of this is like, come on, it's not good. You're about to puke it up, but it's good. And good is really a form of beauty.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Yes.

AL FILREIS:
So, and then watching people dining together, I feel envious. We talked about this like friendship and sharing food is the most precious thing in the world. Also not ironic. We discover that this disorder or this malady is a social malady. I'm alone. And then the key line we've talked about longing never seems to leave me, it just gets locked away, as if consumed by the body and is in the body and when one wants to get rid of that, one is getting rid of the longing and the loneliness and that is unhealthy physically, but makes sense, if I can put it that way. If that's what's gotten locked in, if the social malady gets locked in, if you're eating alone in the Chinese restaurant, everybody else experiences sociality, then the way out is writing about Ed, If it's writing about eating disorder, I've got to write it because I'm not able to purge that. So, writing doesn't get purged. It gets laid out in this masterpiece. Well, we like to end Poem Talk with a minute or two of Gathering Paradise, which is a chance for us to spread wide, our narrow Dickinsonian hands, to gather a little something poetically good to hail or commend someone or something going on in the poetry world or in the film world or in the dance world or whatever world you want.

Henry, gather some paradise.

HENRY STEINBERG:
I have. I kind of have two. I recently finished "Sheila Hedges, Pure Color," which is a short and beautiful and very funny novel about sort of how people are able to love one another. That really struck me in the way that it kind of plays with language and creates a vocabulary unto itself to describe those types of relations. And then the other one was sort of in the in the wake of Bernadette Mayer passing away, I started reading 'Milkweed Smithereens', and that's been bringing me a lot of comfort.

AL FILREIS:
And that's being affirmed by Murat. Gathering paradise Murat.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Well, I would recommend local knowledge. This is where, though, this text appears. This is a relatively new journal founded by Sanjay Agnihotri in New York from New Jersey and New York, all sorts of very neglected, very unusual writers. Very, very interesting texts are being published. And for example, in the next issue, there is a whole section on Harry Matthews collage. All sorts of other things. There is, yeah, it kind of very much fits with this new aesthetics that we are talking about.

AL FILREIS:
Local knowledge. Murat has brought a copy, and it's a beautiful beautiful looking.

MURAT NEMET-NEJAT:
Beautiful, beautiful. And talks about photography, about design, film, poetry, prose, all sorts of things here. Chantine gather some paradise.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yeah. This semester in Brenda Shaughnessy’s craft of poetry class, I have to read 14 first books of poetry. And I read

AL FILREIS:
14

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yes. And I've read maybe 12. Now, my favorite of the 12 has been Eduardo Corral's 'Slow Lightning'. And as a Chicano author, I think it was It's just really interesting to hear his clever takes on the border between USA and Mexico and the personal stories that happened there.

AL FILREIS:
That's great. What did you think when you first heard the assignment?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
I was excited

AL FILREIS:
You have to read 14 first books because some of them could be pretty bad. (LAUGHTER)

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
I have to say, I hate to say it, but Plath's Colossus was dense and not great to get through.

AL FILREIS:
You read Colossus. Not a first book. Oh.

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Her first book

AL FILREIS:
Her first Book. Not a contemporary first book. Any first book. Colossus was Plath's first book?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yes,

AL FILREIS:
First book of poetry?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Yes. Oh, first book of poetry. Yes.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. So the best one. Was it spelled the last name? Carol?

CHANTINE AKIYAMA POH:
Corral.

AL FILREIS:
Right. Fantastic. OK, I'm going to gather some paradise. It's Murat Nemet-Nejat 'Animals of Dawn'. I brought with me several of his books. I'm just gonna read Joe Donoghue's blurb to attract Poem Talk’s listeners to go to Talisman House Publishers or wherever you get your books and buy a copy. Here's what Joe says about 'Murat's 'Animals of Dawn'. “In Animals of Dawn the entire creaturely world enacts a single drama, one that would reveal the complex relations of time, chaos and consciousness. This drama, this single soliloquy, is the long awaited final act of an earlier play written by the poet in a previous incarnation. The play that has come down to us as Hamlet. The melancholy Dane and his whole disastrous family is here, but fleetingly on stage before us erudite, elusive, witty, deeply pained is a melancholy Irano- Turkish Jew, sharp tongue, incredulous at the unfolding of his fate, remembering innocence, desire, loss and death in sharp flashing lines. This book reads fast. You won't see what's coming. You don't get at first what has just hit you. But then you do." 'Animals of Dawn' by Murat Nemet-Nejat. Fantastic. Well, that's all the bean curd with Chinese broccoli. We have time for poem talk today. Poem Talk at the Writers House is a collaboration of the Center for Programs and Contemporary Writing of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania and the Poetry Foundation poetryfoundation.org. Thanks to my guests Henry Steinberg, Chantine Akiyama Poh and Murat Nemet- Nejat and to Poem Talks directors and engineers today Zach Carduner and Paul Burke and to poem talks editor the same amazing Zach Carduner. Next time on Poem Talk, Chris Funkhouser will be traveling to Philadelphia for a conversation along with others about a mesmerizing sound work by John Giorno, featuring the words and voice of Anne Waldman. This is Al Filreis, and I hope you'll join us for that or another episode of Poem Talk.