Danez Smith: She’s the star of Fievel Goes Western Civilization Must Fall, Franny Choi!

Franny Choi: And they’re the star of The Devil Wears Prosody, Danez Smith!

Danez Smith: And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Franny Choi: Brought to you by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

Danez Smith: We’re very excited to bring y’all a very special episode of VS. We had the great opportunity and pleasure to spend a couple days down in Oxford, Mississippi, with the Ole Miss MFA program, and we did a live show.

Franny Choi: Yep.

Danez Smith: With Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Beth Ann Fennelly, and Helene Achanzar at Off Square Books. It was a grand, fantastic time. Thank you to everyone who came through. And now we’re gonna give it to you.

Franny Choi: Yeah, so please enjoy this very special live episode from Oxford, Mississippi.

(SOUND EFFECT)

On-site Host: Your hosts, Danez Smith and Franny Choi.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Hi!

Franny Choi: Hi, everybody!

Danez Smith: You’re here with us for VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Franny Choi: Presented by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Please give it up for them!

Danez Smith: Woo!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: For funding our ability to come here and eat crawfish in your lovely city.

Danez Smith: Yeah. And please give it up for the Ole Miss MFA program, who let us stalk them this week. (LAUGHS)

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: Yes, absolutely.

Danez Smith: It was our great pleasure.

Franny Choi: It’s been really, really wonderful to be here in Oxford and get to hang out with some of the stars and key heroes of the MFA program here at Ole Miss. So, thank you. This is our third live show that we’ve done.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: And we’re happy to be here in the good ole South.

Danez Smith: Yeah, we had a little dreaming session a couple months ago, and it was like, “Where could we go—if we could go anywhere in the country to interview the writers there, where would we go? We have old dead white people money to do so.”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And … (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Mmm, that good old dead white people money.

Danez Smith: And Oxford was at the head of the list.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: For real! No, literally, I’ve had the pleasure of running through Oxford a couple of times over the last couple years. And every time I’ve been here, it’s been a city and a literary community that has felt special and awesome. And there’s something new and explosive going on here, both in and out of the MFA, and so, we are just honored. So thank y’all for letting us come here.

Franny Choi: Yeah, give it up for y’all.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. Thank y’all.

Franny Choi: Truly. So, tonight we have three spectacular guests who you’re gonna hear from. We’re going to talk to them, we’re going to hear two poems from each of them. So, we’re going to hear today from Helene Achanzar.

Danez Smith: Woo!

Franny Choi: Give it up for her.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: From Beth Ann Fennelly.

Danez Smith: Woo!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: And last but not least, from Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Danez Smith: Woo!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: Yeah. Fantastic. With that, we’ll welcome our first guest for the evening.

Danez Smith: I think we should.

Franny Choi: Helene Achanzar is a Kundiman fellow, Chicago lady, and all-around badass poet. So please, put your hands together for Helene Achanzar!

Danez Smith: Woo!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Helene Achanzar:

(READS POEM)

O desire, I grow my hair long

A rein for him. Lavender 
over the August afternoon.

A palate for the lake expanse.
I was swimming when he got the good
news, every gull hovering at once.
So badly I closed my eyes.

All my life I’ve wanted
to be called in from the shore.

On the sand, the way I rest is swollen.
Sheen of a body, a balm of good fortune
to have this new impulse. To elastic
my strands over what he might say.

To celebrate, he sliced apples. 
The outdoor octaves between us. 

Today our thighs brown in the sediment
grove, water beading inside and outside
a bottle. Tomorrow I’ll comb out my tangles
while the water scatters in his rearview. 

* * *

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Hi Helene.

Helene Achanzar: Hi!

Franny Choi: Hi. We’re gonna start off by asking the question we ask every guest on our show, which is, what is moving you these days?

Helene Achanzar: Okay. So, there is minimalist painter who died recently. His name is Robert Ryman. Man, I have liked his work for a long, long time. It’s funny, I get a lot of heat for, you know, liking his work from people who actually know art. I’m just sort of faking it, but he painted with white. The first time I saw his work was at Dia:Beacon in Beacon, New York. And it was in this dark hallway. There were a row of canvas squares that were painted white. And it was just like, a dark hallway with the row of squares. And as you moved through the hallway, the squares that were all painted the same color white looked different, because of the light touching it in different ways. And I just remember walking up and down that hallway so many times and thinking, “Oh my god, this is important in a way that I can’t really comprehend quite yet.”

Franny Choi: Had you known of his work before you went to go see that exhibit?

Helene Achanzar: No, I hadn’t. It was really just like that moment where I was like, “Dang, Robert Ryman.” So yeah, when he passed recently, I didn’t know that I’d be moved, but I read more about his life, and I had no idea about it before. But he was someone who wanted to be a jazz saxophonist. 

Danez Smith: Hm.

Helene Achanzar: So he spent his time doing jazz stuff.

Danez Smith: As one would.

Helene Achanzar: Yes. But he worked at the MoMA as a guard for seven years. And in that time, he was like, “Okay, maybe I’m gonna try this thing that I look at all the time.” And he tried it! And his whole thing was like, the content and the form are not important. It’s really the paint. The paint is the art. So he worked with almost exclusively white paint. And it was really about the texture and what paint can do, and how different paints moved. And yeah, dang, Robert Ryman!

Franny Choi: Have you felt like you’ve been bringing any of that energy—like it’s about the paint, it’s about the material—into your poetry lately?

Helene Achanzar: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of his philosophy on art really works into what I try to do in poetry. I think it is really the texture of words that is fascinating to me. The way that a collection of words can really do something different.

Danez Smith: Just like Robert, you also kinda had a pivot from art to art, too, right? There might have been an opera career, somewhere in there?

Helene Achanzar: (LAUGHS) Maybe! Yeah.

Franny Choi: Operatic alternate universe?

Helene Achanzar: In a different life. When I was a little girl, into being not so little of a girl, I wanted to be an opera singer. It was my dream. And I did have to pivot. You know, it’s really sad when your body doesn’t do the thing that you want it to do. When you aren’t built to perform that thing that gives you the most pleasure and the most joy. I’m small. My lungs are like, you know, like that maybe, (GESTURES) not very big at all. Or maybe like this. (GESTURES)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: You know, like my palms. I don’t know anything about the body, actually, so—

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: —I’m just sort of making shapes with my hands right now.

Franny Choi: Like two fingers across.

Helene Achanzar: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Who knows, yeah.

Helene Achanzar: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm. They’re around the knees, right?

Helene Achanzar: Yeah, they’re somewhere down there. But yeah, you know, it’s very much something that I think about a lot. How poetry is not my first love. Poetry happens to be something that I think I’m okay at, but it’s not that star in the sky the way that opera was.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Helene Achanzar: I’m embarrassed to say that, and I feel like I sound ungrateful.

Danez Smith: No!

Helene Achanzar: I love poetry.

Danez Smith: I feel like it’s kinda like lovers, right? Like I­—(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Go on.

Danez Smith: You know, like, Elena will always be the one that got away for me, so I guess like, Calvin will do for now, because they kinda have like, the same breath.

Franny Choi: Whew, I can’t believe you used people’s actual names in that example!

Danez Smith: They don’t listen to things.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: So …

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: So I’m wondering, right, like, if opera’s the old boo, is there anything about your new boo, poetry, that sort of reminds you of opera, that you see that twinkle in poetry’s eyes? (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: That is such a tough question, my goodness. The ability to inhabit someone else, and to be other things. To think about art and life in a different way. What I loved so much about opera was, I really think it’s kind of the height of art. It’s costume, and it’s song, and it’s dance, and it’s theater, and it’s gosh, so many things!

Franny Choi: High drama.

Helene Achanzar: The highest drama!

Franny Choi: The highest drama of all, yeah. (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: But in poetry, you can find a lot of that, or you can conjure it, you know. You can make it yourself. I never wanted to write an opera, but I think there is a way that the high drama can find its way into poems. And also light drama too, you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah. Just to turn a little bit, we first met at Kundiman. At the Kundiman retreat.

Danez Smith: Still trying to sneak my way in there.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Good luck! Can you talk about what Kundiman means to you, and what that community of people has meant in your journey through poetry?

Helene Achanzar: For sure. Kundiman is so funny, because I came to the organization and the retreat when I was very young, in 2006. So it was just after my first year of college. And I feel like if I applied now I would not get in. Because I sort of snuck in when no one knew about it. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: But it’s been a community that’s meant so much to me. I know that I have people all over the country who are rooting for me and rooting for my work, but also people whose work I admire. And when we say that it’s a family, it really feels that way. I say all the time to the folks in this MFA program that my favorite poet is Sarah Gambito. She’s one of the cofounders of Kundiman. And without her, and without her influence, I don’t know if a lot of the poems that I’m writing now would be the way they are. Kundiman has inspired me artistically; it’s inspired me to really think about community in new ways. And I was so happy to meet you there.

Franny Choi: Aw. But I mean, I think it’s a beautiful thing when we asked you about like—you know, earlier when we were eating mozzarella sticks you named the two Kundiman folks who were like, five-hour drives away, and I was like, oh yeah, this network of people is a strong and actual network of humans. How beautiful.

Helene Achanzar: Yeah, for sure. I think there’s one way to talk about community. It’s another thing to practice it, and to go see your people, and to go be with your people. There’s nothing like it.

Danez Smith: Amen. Helene, can I ask you a favor? Would you read us one more poem?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: Sure, yeah! I was like, please don’t ask me to sing. I’m not ready. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: No, no, no.

Franny Choi: Oh, now that you mention it … jk, jk. If you could read us another poem that would be amazing.

Helene Achanzar: Yes. I would love to. Thank you for asking.

Danez Smith: One more time for Helene, everybody.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Helene Achanzar:

(READS POEM)

Great Lake

So what if I don’t love you anymore?
I swam in Lake Michigan about it.
A natural drifting mechanism.

Frost on the rim of how I missed you. 
Exactly two karaoke songs wide.

After you left I was assigned a 24-year-old
therapist, so I ordered another drink.
Made my way beyond the far buoy.

Would that there were even ardor 
enough now to send a drunk text. Glad for you
to be an emotional hoochie elsewhere.

That once I breathed in with my head under a wave,
and I didn’t die. I just coughed the water out.

* * *

Danez Smith: Beautiful. Helene Achanzar, everybody.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Franny Choi: Thank you so much, Helene. So we’ll go ahead and bring up our next pal up to the stage.

Danez Smith: Are we using the word “pal” now? We’re bringing that into the year 2019 with us?

Franny Choi: Yeah. Our next star in the sky that we run toward.

Danez Smith: Love that. Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of the most recent Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs and The Tilted World. She is a professor here and one of the great architects of the program that we know today. So everybody please give a huge round of applause for Beth Ann Fennelly!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Beth Ann Fennelly:

(READS POEM)

Why I’m So Well Read

Once, when we were young and poor, my husband and I learned that an Irish friend was road-tripping across America with two Irish pals, so we invited them for a visit. They arrived sniping at each other. They’d had a falling out, and in fact after dinner they were to have a doozy in our driveway that stopped just short of fisticuffs, then go their separate ways. But, before this happened, when thanking us for the meal, one of the men opened his wallet and held out a fifty-dollar bill. Don’t be silly, we said, we’re not taking your money. He insisted. Thanks, we said, but no. He kept at it, clutching the bill. The more we rejected his money, the angrier he got. Finally, we accepted it. All I could figure was, he had plenty of dough, and felt bad that the three of them had argued, and wanted to make up something to somebody somewhere.
       Perhaps if we’d acquired the fifty through some usual channel, we’d have stored it in some usual place. But it wasn’t paycheck money, it was found money. My husband walked to the bookshelf, opened a book to its fiftieth page, slotted the bill there, then slid the book back. That way we could kind of forget about it, but we’d have it for an emergency: an elegant solution.
       We were poor and young, I’ve already said that, and dumb with love. One night, I was working at my desk when my husband wanted to frolic. He called for me and I delayed, needing ten minutes to finish my project, then ten more. Finally I heard a noise and looked up. He wasn’t there, but his penis was, jutting from the doorframe. Out of sight, he gyrated so his penis beckoned, like a crooking finger, and we both got the giggles. My camera was on my desk, and, still giggling, I took a photo, then followed him into the bedroom where we made our love.
       Weeks later, when I picked up the developed film, it took me a minute to recall why I’d photographed our doorframe. But oh, there it was: my husband’s penis. I showed him, and together we laughed. Then he moved to tear it up, but I stayed his hand. Let me keep it, I argued. Let me keep it someplace secret.
       Into a book, page fifty.
       It couldn’t have been more than a few months later when we found ourselves desperate for dough. We walked to the shelf and removed the book in the upper left corner, turned to page fifty. No money. We opened the next book, the next. No money. We’d neglected to note which book contained the money, but knew where to look, forgetting that we tend to dip frequently into favorites, then reshelve them in the nearest space. We expanded our search. No fifty anywhere. And then I remembered the penis. Now we were searching for both. We checked the fiftieth page of every book in our house constructed of books.
       We must have loaned them out. We do that, we can’t help it. We collect strays, lost students who need some pals, some protein, and sooner or later, we’re incredulous, “But you’ve never read Hopkins?” or “You’d love Denis Johnson,” and a few hours later the student is saying goodbye with a doggie bag and an armload of inspiration. But we couldn’t remember any recent borrowers, and couldn’t imagine asking about the bonus material, even if we had. Did we lend both books to the same student? If so, in what order? Fifty then penis, we decided, was slightly less salacious than penis followed by fifty.
       It’s been nineteen years. Our house has more books than ever: not just poetry and fiction and memoir, but biographies, cookbooks, thrillers, graphic novels, mysteries. I love a good mystery. Like, where the hell is that photo? Even now, middle-class, and middle-age, I never open a book without hoping for a fifty or a penis.

* * *

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Woo! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Give it up for Beth Ann Fennelly!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Are the penis and the $50 still lost?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Still lost.

Danez Smith: Still lost to this day.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah!

Danez Smith: Wow.

Beth Ann Fennelly: And I’m still looking.

Danez Smith: Still looking. Yo, I realized I’ve never been in love, because no one has ever hooked their penis at me.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly: You’re young, Danez. You have time, you know?

Danez Smith: I know, I’ve gotten a lot of unrequested dick pics, but they just don’t have the same romance.

Franny Choi: Yeah, right.

Beth Ann Fennelly: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Beth Ann, what is moving you these days?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Well, a couple weeks ago, I was in Miami. I was there for an artist residency. It was super great. And I went out early one morning over to the beach to see the sunrise. There were several people on the beach watching the sunrise, and I saw a sanitation worker come down the beach, wearing the jumpsuit and picking up garbage. And when the sunrise started, he stopped and watched the sunrise, the whole time, and then picked up his stick and kept going. And I keep thinking about him. I’ve been back two weeks, and I keep thinking about him. And I realized it’s because I think he has something to teach me, about appreciating the moment. And I spend so much of my life rushing, and I’m always trying to get through one thing, even as it’s good, I’m immediately thinking about the next thing. And I think I’m going about the wrong way. I think I need to stop. Watch the sunset. Sunrise.

Franny Choi: Yeah. What is the sunrise equivalent that you want to be stopping for?

Beth Ann Fennelly: You know, just being in the moment. We all have busy lives, right. I’ve got three kids and a job I love and all these good things, but I’m always trying to figure out how to do more. (LAUGHS) I think I should try to figure out how to do a little less, actually.

Franny Choi: For sure. Yeah. I mean, I see that doing so much in the expansiveness of the forms that you’ve been working in these days. Can you talk about what your expansion into prose and into the hybrid forms of these micro-memoirs, what that’s been like for you, as somebody who’s been rooted in poetry for so many years?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah. Yeah, it’s true, you know, I’ve done three books of poems. But this book is micro-memoirs, which is a term I think I made up. But what I was trying to do is combine what I love from the different genres. So what I really love about poetry is its extreme compression, and abbreviation, and lyrical thrust. And what I love from fiction writing is narrative. And sometimes even creating suspense. And what I love from nonfiction is truth-telling. And so I thought, I’m just gonna write little, tiny true stories about my people. My life. The small moments. Every day, a thousand crazy things happen to us.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Beth Ann Fennelly: But we don’t get to clear them away with white space. (LAUGHS) And really take a moment to appreciate how amazing they are.

Franny Choi: Hm. That act of stopping to look at the little thing that you were talking about with the sunrise, yeah. That seems like the ethos of this project, which is so cool. Are there things from this project that you see being applied to other kinds of writing that you’re working on now, or that you might be doing in the future?

Beth Ann Fennelly: It would be good if I said yes.

(ALL LAUGH)

Beth Ann Fennelly: But the truth is, no. I’m on a new project now. I’m actually secretly writing a novel. And struggling with it, yeah.

Danez Smith: Can you tell us a little bit about that? I know it’s got something to do with the hummingbird.

Beth Ann Fennelly: No. (LAUGHS) Well, I mean it is true I have a hummingbird obsession. Because where we live, here in Mississippi, you know, at the end of the summer, the hummingbirds filter down from Canada and North America, and they stay here, fattening up. What does it mean to fatten up if you’re a hummingbird? It means you go from the weight of a penny to the weight of a nickel.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Oh wow.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah. And then you lift up—in one night, in 24 hours, you fly 500 miles without stopping to winter in the Yucatán and Central America.

Franny Choi: Oh my gosh.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah, so cool right?

Franny Choi: Wow.

Beth Ann Fennelly: So I’ve become obsessed with hummingbirds since my time here, and I ended up going hummingbird banding in Belize.

Franny Choi: Banding?

Danez Smith: What is that?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah! Yeah.

Danez Smith: You like, gave them a bass and a—

Franny Choi: Like a jam band.

Beth Ann Fennelly: (LAUGHS) Yeah, you know, with little guitars and the cymbals.

Franny Choi: That is an extremely cute image. I have to say. (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly: Right! No.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly: But your idea is better! I like that so much better. But hummingbirds are so lightweight that they can’t be outfitted with even the smallest cameras, like a bee. Because they’re so lightweight, they don’t leave fossils.

Franny Choi: Whoa!

Beth Ann Fennelly: So we don’t know actually all that much about their evolutionary history. And in fact, we know they migrate, but it’s never been proven, because there’s not been a hummingbird banded in North America in the breeding grounds that was caught in Central America in the wintering grounds.

Franny Choi: Ohh.

Beth Ann Fennelly: So there’s a group of people—I can’t believe I’m one of them, but somehow, I am. The youngest member on Hummingbird Hobnob listserv.

(ALL LAUGH)

Beth Ann Fennelly: I know! My best friend on this listserv is Myrtle. You know what I mean? It’s so great.

Franny Choi: Literally Myrtle.

Danez Smith: Anybody out there pregnant, bring back Myrtle. We need that name out there. (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly: (LAUGHS) So I went with this group of scientists, and we banded hummingbirds with—we had a certified bander. The band is so small it could fit around Lincoln’s eye in a penny.

Franny Choi: Oh my god!

Beth Ann Fennelly: It’s equivalent to the weight of a wristwatch on a human, it’s so lightweight. And it’s photo-engraved with a serial number, so if ever a hummingbird is found—if you ever find a dead hummingbird, which you probably won’t, but make sure you check its ankle to see if it’s wearing jewelry. And if it is, you’ve gotta call 1-800-BIRDBANDING.

Franny Choi: Literally 1-800-BIRDBANDING? That’s actually a thing?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Uh-huh.

Franny Choi: Wow. How great. So you ended up doing this because you were on the listserv.

Beth Ann Fennelly: So I ended up doing it because I just got obsessed with hummingbirds, and then realized that there was a scientist who would take trips. And also, Belize. Hello!

Danez Smith: Yeah!

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah, right. So I just pitched it to a magazine, and I wrote a travel article about it.

Franny Choi: Oh cool.

Beth Ann Fennelly: But the place didn’t leave me. I do a lot of freelance travel pieces, because I love to travel, and I don’t have the money to do all the trips I want. So I find reasons to write about it.

Franny Choi: Great.

Beth Ann Fennelly: But this trip, I didn’t turn in the article and I was done. I kept thinking about this experience. And some of the Mayan people I met when I was there. So then a couple of years later, I started this novel.

Franny Choi: Wow, great, yeah.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Which I probably shouldn’t talk about, because if I never publish it, there’ll be evidence of my failure.

Franny Choi: No!

Beth Ann Fennelly: You know?

Franny Choi: You gotta speak it into existence and run toward it. Or slam the mic into your face like I just did. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. Or next time you publish something, put a hummingbird image in there, then it makes sense, it’s tax deductible, it’s all good.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: To pivot a little bit, I would love to talk about—you were so instrumental, along with the rest of the faculty, I think, with what has really become of this program, and I just want to say, from afar, it’s a really beautiful thing to see. What is it about Oxford that has allowed a program like this to change, and what were some of those conversations, maybe, that y’all were having as the program continued to grow and become the sort of literary juggernaut that I consider it today?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Thanks, yeah, we are so proud of what our program has become. And one of the main things is, you know, for example, you’ve been talking to a bunch of our students the last couple days, so you know what fabulous students we have.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Beth Ann Fennelly: It did take us a while to be able to recruit students like that. And we had to be worthy of them. (LAUGHS) Another thing is that Oxford has a really great literary tradition, and of course people here on this podcast don’t know that we’re in this beautiful space called Off Square Books. And Square Books is right down the street. So to have a small town with an independent bookstore with a huge presence and really active with events—and always books are part of the cultural conversation here—makes a big, big difference.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: For sure.

Beth Ann Fennelly: And then, over the years, we were able to make some really good hires, and add a lot of diversity to our program. And now, several people have claimed that it’s the best program in the country. And I think it might be.

Danez Smith: I’d make that argument.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah! Right. I know.

Danez Smith: Clap it up for y’all selves, dammit. (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah, yeah!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: So, Beth Ann, would you close us out with one more piece?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yes, I would be happy to. So I wrote this piece because I was at a reading at Proud Larry’s, where we had mozzarella sticks.

Danez Smith: They were good mozzarella sticks.

Beth Ann Fennelly: There was a young man introducing his mentor who was reading. And the young man was giving this kind of soulful introduction. And he started to tear up. Which I thought was actually very moving. But it embarrassed him. And he said, “I can’t believe I’m up here crying like a pussy.” So I thought about that for a couple days. And thought, you know, it’s not the vulgarity about it that’s wrong. It’s a bad metaphor. You know? So I corrected it.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Beth Ann Fennelly:

(READS POEM)

What I Think About When Someone Uses “Pussy” As A Synonym For “Weak”

At the deepest part of the deepest part, I rocked shut like a stone. I’d climbed as far inside me as I could. Everything else had fallen away. Midwife, husband, bedroom, world: quaint concepts. My eyes were clamshells. My ears were clapped shut by the palms of the dead. My throat was stoppered with bees. I was the fox caught in the trap, and I was the trap. Chewing a leg off would have been easier than what I now required of myself. I understood I was alone in it. I understood I would come back from there with the baby, or I wouldn’t come back at all. I was beyond the ministrations of loved ones. I was beyond the grasp of men. Even their prayers couldn’t penetrate me. The pain was such that I made peace with that. I did not fear death. Fear was an emotion, and pain had scalded away all emotion. I chose. In order to come back from there with the baby, I had to tear it out at the root. Understand, I did this without the aid of my hands.

* * *

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Beth Ann Fennelly.

Franny Choi: Give it up for Beth Ann Fennelly, everyone.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Woo! Good lord. I love that piece. I’ve heard that piece a couple times. I love that piece every time I hear it.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Make some noise if you are currently experiencing feelings.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Woo!

Franny Choi: Yeah. I am.

Danez Smith: I am whelmed with many emotions.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) We’re gonna bring up our third and final guest for the evening. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is a professor here, is the author of Oceanic.

Danez Smith: Bout the fish.

Franny Choi: Yes. And our hero and a mother and a perfect, perfect gem of a human. So please welcome Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Danez Smith: Woo!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Oh my goodness, thank you so much for coming out on a clammy, cold Friday night. Gosh, I’m so excited that you are here! I don’t even want to hear myself, I wanna hear you guys!

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I have a poem that I’m gonna read. I’m gonna play just a snippet of a song for you, because I was asking kind of around and this is a Prince song that I don’t think people know too well. This is the one and only time that Prince was dancing around with the Muppets. Do you guys know what I’m talking about?

Franny Choi: What!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Prince was on the Muppet show! Do you know this? And Danez, I read this with you at a Prince tribute.

Danez Smith: No but I didn’t—

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I didn’t say about the Muppets.

Danez Smith: There you go.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: It’s called “Starfish and Coffee.” Do you guys know this song? Okay.

(SONG PLAYS)

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Okay. So I had to kind of showcase that song. It’s one of the strangest of the strange songs of Prince. He’s literally going on and on about breakfast. And I don’t know if you caught that little snippet. The words are “Starfish and coffee, maple syrup and jam.” That’s just what makes him excited about breakfast time, you know? This is my ode to that song, and it’s called “Starfish and Coffee.” I can’t beat that title, so.

(READS POEM)

Starfish and Coffee

after the song of the same name by Prince

Prince knows the sexiest meal of the day is breakfast—
the meal that separates the sexy from the selfish
after a night so wild the fitted sheets slough
halfway off the bed like Velella velella jellyfish—

the bluesail left on the shore after a riotous night.
And that’s how you feel after tumbling
like sea stars on the ocean floor over each other.
A night where it doesn’t matter

which are arms or which are legs
or what radiates and how—
only your centers stuck together.
Underwater volcanoes send up pillow lava,

and after a night like that you rest
your head on it, not caring at all about
the burn but the startle of falling asleep
with his lip just inside yours.

All the shifts and small adjustments
with this fish-bright and beautiful body.
A nightstand knocked clean of its clock.
What care and flair goes into the person

who rises after a night like that to mix
flour, sugar, eggs, and oil—who puts on
a pot of hickory coffee, a fine butter dish,
a vial of syrup on the table—then goes back

to the bed where you lie: cheeks still rosy,
one hand still clutching a fistful of pillow,
hair tentacled over the side of the bed
your three hearts so full, so hungry, so purple.

* * *

Franny Choi: Give it up for Aimee Nezhukumatathil, everyone!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Thank you.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Danez Smith: Thank you for bringing that song back into my life. You know, Prince has many a breakfast song, actually.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I think he is obsessed with breakfast.

Danez Smith: He’s obsessed! He has this album—on one of his later albums, he has a song called “Breakfast Can Wait.”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: And isn’t there a famous story where he invited the basketball team out for pancakes?

Danez Smith: Yes. It’s true. Prince would throw these random and impromptu concerts in Minneapolis, where you would get the announcement that day.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Did you see him?

Danez Smith: I got a chance to see one of them.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: And it wouldn’t always be him. Sometimes it’d be somebody he appreciated. So like, Janelle Monáe is in town, and he’s like, come perform at my complex.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Oh my gosh.

Danez Smith: But he would just announce it. He’d be like, “4PM, show up at Prince’s tonight, there’s a party.”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: What do you mean “Prince’s”? Paisley Park?

Danez Smith: Paisley Park. You’d go to Paisley Park.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Oh my gosh.

Danez Smith: And there was a literal pancake stand.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: No! (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: In Paisley Park. Literally.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I did not know—

Danez Smith: Like if you stay until 4AM, they start serving out pancakes and sausage—

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: No, no, no.

Danez Smith: —at Prince’s place. It’s rather amazing.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I’m dead, I’m dead.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Oh my gosh. Pancakes with Prince, wow.

Danez Smith: So we should ask the question that we ask everybody. What’s moving you?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I made it into Memphis at 3 o’clock. My husband and I were praying, no tornadoes, no rainstorms, so, what’s moving me is I’m so glad that there’s no tornadoes here right now. Knock on wood.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: What is moving me right now … it’s not a super lofty thing, but my two little boys have entered the world of Harry Potter.

Danez Smith: Ohh!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: And I don’t know anything about Harry Potter, so it’s vexing me. This is the first time where there’s starting to be a separation of like, “Mom, oh my gosh, you don’t know Voldemort, c’mon!”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: All this diction and vocabulary I don’t know. And I don’t know if I wanna read the books. I read the first one, so I know the gist of it, you know? But I don’t know the details, so I’m kind of grappling with that right now. Oh and this is something new that has just—the last thing I was writing was trying to keep up with science right now. I write about sea life a lot. In my forthcoming book of essays, they discovered something new about the narwhal. So this has been vexing me.

Danez Smith: Whoa.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: You wanna hear?

Franny Choi: Tell us.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: This has just been released.

Danez Smith: The narwhal’s so cute.

Franny Choi: I love narwhal news.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: (LAUGHS) Yeah, this is breaking news from the narwhal world.

Franny Choi: Narworld.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Narworld, yes, exactly! So anyway, this maybe isn’t interesting to anybody but maybe three people in the room, but the tooth that comes out of the narwhal—it’s not a horn, it’s a tooth—scientists have never really understood what it’s for. They don’t know if it’s kind of an aggression thing where they play swords at each other, or what. But this was just released within the last two months. It’s like a tooth that is absorbing communication, so that is how they actually talk.

Franny Choi: (GASPS) No way!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: It’s not clicks, like from other fish, it’s through the horn.

Danez Smith: Whoa!

Franny Choi: What!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: They can actually activate sounds from the tooth. And they can also receive them.

Danez Smith: Holy sea unicorn…

Franny Choi: How do you—

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I know! I’m still trying to process it. But in narwhal news, this is the biggest thing.

Franny Choi: I think we’re all trying to process it. Yeah, it’s a lot. Oh my god.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Yeah, yeah. So the two things are Harry Potter and breaking news in the narwhal world.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Incredible.

Franny Choi: Oh my gosh. Well, speaking of other animal news, we also wanted to ask, you know, what’s the latest with birds around your house and birds in your backyard?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Aw, so sweet. You know, that’s also something that vexing and delighting me as well. As Beth Ann said, this is a kind of just a bird-friendly town and little divot in Northern Mississippi. What is our drama right now … it’s bluebird season right now. So we have bluebird boxes, and now we have suddenly deer—this is again, not interesting to anybody, but we have deer coming through and they’re knocking over these bluebird box nests. And it’s making my littlest cry.

Franny Choi: Assholes.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: (LAUGHS) I know, right? Deer are jerks. And it’s making my littlest cry. So anything that makes my littlest cry. Because some of them had started to have little eggs, and they’re knocked over because of these deer!

Franny Choi: Oh! Killer deer on the prowl in Mississippi.

Danez Smith: Who knew deer were the secret oppressors of the animal kingdom. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I know, right.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I threw an apple at one, but I forgot—

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I know! I know. But my husband reminded me, “Aimee, you know that they eat apples.” So now he’s gonna come back, because he’s thinking I’m feeding him.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Welcome to my house!

Danez Smith: Somebody threw some catfish at me one time, and it didn’t really—I just started going back a lot.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I was like, please, hate me more with catfish. (LAUGHS)

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Well as someone who writes a lot about nature and about the natural world, you’ve been in Mississippi now for two years?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: This is my third year.

Danez Smith: Third!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Third year.

Franny Choi: Yeah, third year.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Yeah, yeah.

Franny Choi: So has Mississippi infiltrated your poetry? Or like, how has the landscape of Mississippi affected the landscape of your poems?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Yeah, you know, I don’t know yet. And it always makes me so self-conscious to talk kind of about that stuff, because it’s still so new.

Franny Choi: Totally, totally.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: One thing that’s been so exciting—I used to live in Western New York. And I knew the trees, I could identify them by sight, even without the leaves, I could identify trees up there. And I’m learning a whole new vocabulary here in the South for flowers and plants and birds that I did not see up above the Mason-Dixon line, you know? So that’s been exciting. And it’s been, just on the human level, nothing to do with writing, I’m so delighted to know things like catalpa, you know?

Danez Smith: Nice word.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Isn’t that a beautiful word? We have the largest catalpa on campus. It’s called the Champion catalpa.

Franny Choi: What does that word mean?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: If you’re a Champion tree, that means you’re the biggest tree in that state.

Franny Choi: Oh!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: So did you guys know this? The Champion catalpa is actually on campus.

Franny Choi: Whoa! I didn’t know there was a word for—

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Yeah, the leaves can cover your face and my face together.

Franny Choi: Gosh, and I have a pretty big face, so.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I don’t want to put you too on the spot, but as someone who writes a lot about the natural world, the grief of knowing what is happening to our climate—how do you as a writer who is writing about the earth grapple with grief, I guess?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Such a good question. You know, I’ve only written a few pieces that deal with the grief of seeing whole species disappear, whole landscapes become almost unrecognizable from what they were, even 20 years ago, but I tend to kind of turn towards the joy of what’s here. And I think that’s super important. People write about the despair and the sadness and the anger, to see our climate being destroyed, but there’s so much joy and exuberance that I find with celebrating like, the first baby bluebird, you know, who looks kinds of pale and peachy orange. Or the new narwhal news! You know, that kind of thing. That inspires me to just like, we gotta fight for these narwhals.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: They’re speaking through their teeth, you know.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: And to me, that’s a very real, visceral feeling. I feel it with every bone in my body.

Franny Choi: For sure.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I wanna make sure that my kids see fireflies in five years. I don’t know, I kind of want to go a little bit more towards convincing people to fight for what they love, rather than fight because of fear.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I feel like we do so much of that on the news already.

Danez Smith: We do.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: So I just wanna fight for love.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: And you’re one of the poets I go to, personally, and who I feel like has taught me how to write about love and joy and whimsy and wonder.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Aw, I’ll bet you say that about everybody.

Danez Smith: I do not! No, you can go through the episodes. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Definitely not.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: But, I think there’s a lot of writers in the audience tonight, and I feel like, wherever I go, what I hear people talk about is the struggle of not knowing how to write about joy, and how to write about the wonders and the whimsies of the world. Is there any advice or tools that you would give to somebody who is feeling like they want to write about joy but have a roadblock in that?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I would say to take it back down to the image. To really study—to close-look, or to hear, or to taste, you know. To really get down to the senses of what is delighting you, and what is making your heart race, what is making you kind of bubble up with excitement, and then kind of see if you can capture that in metaphor, capture that music, capture that simile. It’s the basics, kind of, you know? I mean, it’s the same thing, if you’re gonna create grief and make a line that makes another person feel grief, do that with joy. And I don’t know how else to explain it except for I always take it back down to the basics of poetry, with music, metaphor, image, and sound, going back to the sound.

Danez Smith: Amen.

Franny Choi: Well Aimee, will you close us out with one more poem?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Sure, sure. This is one of the few poems I’ve written about the South and the landscape. It’s the first poem I wrote about the Southern landscape and how exciting it is! All these weird and wild animals. Nothing dies in the summer or winter, I feel, because there’s bugs everywhere all the time. There’s also beautiful and unusual smells and sounds that I wasn’t used to. Walt Whitman has a quote that goes, “O glistening perfumed, South! my South!” So this poem is called “My South.”

READS POEM)

My South started with sugar
boiled and spilled for birds

green as my mom’s signature
ring, three emeralds in a band
across her finger. When I first

moved here, I hardly knew anyone
except for some brushy armadillos

who stood and showed their bellies,
hissing when my little Chihuahua
and I walked too close. But when

you start with sugar you think
you’d end in salt: spicy shrimp

and grits, a rim of a glass, a rind
of peppered bacon. My South runs
a bit of beaver spit along the edges

of crepe myrtles, towhee feathers
lost in leaf litter, and a bit of ladybug

blood from the curdle of them slow-
crawling over the sunset side
of my house. I never thought I could

love this perfume, this stink bloom
following me now into each restaurant,

the gym, or the bookstore where upstairs,
a handsome brown man slides me a scoop
of vanilla ice cream with my coffee

and even on my first day, never asked
if I’m from around here or just visiting.

* * *

Danez Smith: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, everybody.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: Thank you so much.

Danez Smith: Alright. So now we would like to welcome Helene and Beth Ann back to the stage. Give it up for them one more time as they make their way.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

Franny Choi: We are going to close out this evening with a few rounds of This vs. That, specially tailored to our guests, which once again we will have other folks guess what that person will pick. Right?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: It’s like The Newlywed Game, slash, Would You Rather, slash, a poetry reading, I don’t know.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: So we’ll start with Helene. The question is, who would win in a fight: opera singers or poets at large? What’s Helene gonna pick between opera singers and poets?

Beth Ann Fennelly: Opera singers have those big lungs.

Danez Smith: They do have those big lungs.

Franny Choi: True.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah, lots of stamina. But poets got your back.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: They’re scrappy too!

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah. Right. Zombie apocalypse, I would take some poets on my team.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I think I gotta go with poets.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Yeah, we’re going poets.

Franny Choi: Alright, audience, what do you think? Clap if you think opera singers have it in the bag.

(AUDIENCE CLAPS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: No!

Danez Smith: Right, they like the drama, they like the drama.

Franny Choi: Yes, high drama. Fashion, costumes.

Danez Smith: Flair.

Franny Choi: Clap if you think it is poets that will win.

(AUDIENCE CLAPS AND CHEERS)

Franny Choi: Okay! A sizable difference.

Danez Smith: Secret: poets like drama even more.

Franny Choi: Yes!

Helene Achanzar: That’s actually true, yeah.

Franny Choi: Alright, Helene, who’s it’s gonna be?

Helene Achanzar: Alright so here it is.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Helene Achanzar: We’re all pretty vain, right? Like, we all care about how we look. Like, look at us, we’re all so cute.

(ALL LAUGH)

Helene Achanzar: But you need to be seen as an opera singer. All of this face stuff and your hair and your body, you gotta take care of that. And so, you know, I think that poets might win, because we can stay inside and write a little bit and heal, whereas for work, you need to look good as an opera singer. So I think poets would just go at it, opera singers would be a little bit more reserved about like—

Franny Choi: Not the face, not the face!

Helene Achanzar: Yeah, exactly. Messing their moneymakers up is all.

Danez Smith: You heard it here, the three tenors don’t want none. (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Good, good.

Franny Choi: Alright, moving down the line, for Beth Ann.

Danez Smith: This is more of a would-you-rather.

Franny Choi: Yeah, it’s a little more of a would-you-rather.

Beth Ann Fennelly: Okay.

Danez Smith: Would you rather be too hot or too cold?

Franny Choi: Heating and cooling, yeah.

Helene Achanzar: I’m gonna go with—so B.A. and I are both from the Chicago area.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Actually all of us!

Helene Achanzar: Oh yeah! Go Chicago!

Franny Choi: Look at this all femme, all Chicago line-up!

Helene Achanzar: But yeah, I moved down here to be warm. So I’m gonna go with too hot.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Look at her, she’s so hot! Hot, hot, hot for Beth Ann.

Franny Choi: Audience, do you think it’s too hot? Rather be too hot?

(AUDIENCE CLAPS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Yep, yep, yep.

Franny Choi: And votes for too cold.

(SILENCE IN AUDIENCE)

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Alright, Beth Ann?

Beth Ann Fennelly: No such thing as too hot for me.

Danez Smith: Ohh! (LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Ow, ow!

Franny Choi: Alright, alright. Okay, this is maybe the silliest one we have up here. So who would win in a fight: a flock of fierce bluebirds or a single narwhal?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Oh my gosh.

Franny Choi: This is a poetry podcast.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Alright, what do y’all think?

Beth Ann Fennelly: A narwhal.

Helene Achanzar: I’m gonna go strength in numbers and go with the bluebirds.

Danez Smith: Oo, okay. Audience how are y’all feeling? Let’s get this Celebrity Deathmatch in our heads. All those for the flock of birds?

(AUDIENCE CLAPS)

Franny Choi: Oh wow. Beaks, claws, got it.

Danez Smith: And all those for the one single narwhal.

(AUDIENCE CLAPS)

Franny Choi: Okay, it’s kind of a toss-up, but maybe narwhal is favored. Aimee, what’s the verdict?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Hello, the narwhal!

(ALL LAUGH)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I just told you! Gotta be the narwhal. Have you seen these teeth coming out of their head? They will stab through the little bluebirds.

Danez Smith: That’s true, that’s true.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I know, I know!

Franny Choi: Skewer them.

Danez Smith: The twist at the end—

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: They’ll make a shish kabob of bluebirds.

(ALL GASP AND LAUGH)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: I know, I know!

Danez Smith: But the twist at the end is that a deer just runs out the back with a chair and is like—(LAUGHS)

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: The deer wins them all.

Danez Smith: The deer wins them all. The deer comes out, knocks over the narwhal, knocks over the birdhouse.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Thank you so much for playing our silly, stupid game. Please give it up for all three of our guests, everybody!

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Danez Smith: And please give it up for yourselves.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Franny Choi: Thank you so much to Off Square Books for hosting us tonight.

Danez Smith: Yes, yes.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

Franny Choi: Thank you to the Poetry Foundation. To Postloudness, to our producer Daniel Kisslinger, to Ydalmi Noriega, and to you. Have a great night. Get home safe, we love you, bye.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS AND CHEERS)

(MUSIC PLAYS)