Scribe

Bartender says, little darlin, that is some doggone wig. Come on and get you some green belt.

Yes.

Thanks so much for having me, you guys.

Yeah. Thanks, you guys for having me on. And thanks for inviting me into the Tools of the Trade segment. I love the premise. So, you know, what I'm consuming these days are very specific here in the days of quarantine. So at the moment, I have a huge canister of of a Costco treat that is the Kirkland signature peanut butter pretzel nuggets. These? Yeah, these are Valencia peanut butter. It says filled. They're like inside of a nugget of pretzel. So I just have them around. Probably too many of them have been consumed in these days, but they're good for grading, writing, anything that you need a snack for.

Passing through a room, like breathing oxygen. And they're good for having nearby when I'm watching the other thing that I'm consuming, which is Star Picard, the new Star Trek series that is currently streaming on CBS All Access. This is not a sponsored post, but Johnny knows that Star Trek is one of my deepest fandoms.

And this new series is about my favorite character in the Star Trek universe.

I mean, I remember attending a Star Trek Convention in 1997. It was called Shore Leave, and it was at the Hunt Valley Marriott where many of us had our proms.

Yeah, it's like somehow. But there was a massive Star Trek convention there in the. In the late 90s before it was cool to go to cons. Yeah. And, you know, I may or may not have been dropped off at that con to, like, hang out with people dressed up as Star Trek characters. Like, that's how deep it goes.

Yes, yes, yes.

I know. I was like, you want my com badge?

Well, my husband and I finished the series, and so now we're kind of in a stage of, like, when you go back leisurely and, like, just watch individual episodes and trying to, like, tie things, tie different subplots together. Although we're not, you know, we're not so into canon with a capital C that we can't enjoy things, you know, but it's just a really fun series. And I heard that it was renewed for a second season, and I just can't wait.

That's right, exactly. And he actually. One of the characters. There's, like, an alien character that's named she Bonded. There's just all kinds of, like, really cool little Easter eggs.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. So I've been enjoying that. And then the third thing I've been consuming is the yacht rock station on Pandora. Because it. Sometimes you just need to chill and, you know, you need to Listen to some Michael McDonald, like, get some eat up. Definitely. The Eagles.

Holon Oates. Milli Vanilli, I think will make an occasional appearance on there.

Yeah, it's like just cool music to just, you know. It's not cool. Here's the thing, it isn't cool at all.

Music that you can, like, cook your dinner to and, you know, like, just kind of chill and, like, try to forget that the world's ending and stuff.

Yeah, why do we know? Like, you're gonna know every lyric to every one of these songs for some reason, you know, so. And then the next thing is what we're writing with and on, right?

So I am writing with slash on the same thing that I've been writing with on forever, which is my 2011 MacBook Pro, which I actually purchased because I'm pretty sure that, like. John, you told me to change to Apple products.

Are you sure?

Oh, that's.

All right. Well, I changed up my game circa 2011. I bought a MacBook Pro. It actually has a CD ROM drive in it and it's still really good. I've written probably three of my four books on it. And I changed the hard drive to a solid state drive maybe a year or two ago. At that point, I wasn't sure if I was going to have to replace the whole unit. But since then, I haven't had a peep of trouble out of this thing. And that's good because you got to save your dollars and cents during quarantine time.

Yes.

I totally do have a couple stickers on this laptop that are stationary related. I've got like a David Bowie lightning bolt and A David Bowie, like, portrait sticker that are from the Moleskine release.

Right? Yeah.

Yeah, I think John sent me some.

You did.

Okay.

Yeah, well, because, you know, because John's known me for so long, he actually knows me by my actual name, which is Courtney and. Oh, yeah, we didn't say bye.

Yeah, we should disclose that fact.

That's right.

Nice.

And you have to, like, climb into a coal car and, like, zoom down into something awesome.

Yeah.

and

Oh, my gosh.

That's a great record.

Oh, wow.

like, oh, my cigarette. Nine miles long.

Sure.

Yeah, it's okay. I'm waiting. I'm going to check my mailbox.

Right.

Okay. Well, this is my first time contributing to FreshPoints, so thanks again. And, you know, for me, I am dealing with the fact that everybody's quarantined, everybody's at home. I am, for the past six weeks, have been teaching online all my classes at the University of Virginia. And so I had, prior to. Prior to the pandemic, I had kind of developed a cool. What I felt was a cool combination of, like, analog and digital ways of grading papers. I would pretty much insist that students print out their poems and turn them into me or print out pieces of writing that I had assigned. And then I would really like to either take a pencil that, like, Johnny had sent me, like, I have a beautiful pencil box in my office, all pencils that I would use, so. Or I would use some colored pens to kind of like make marks. I'd even invested in some stickers because even college students will get. Will enjoy a sticker if you give it to them. So, you know, I had all these, like, cool analog little teaching things that I was doing, and now, you know, we can't even really go to our office unless we absolutely have to. So my pencil box is in my office. All the stickers are gone. The students have all gone back home. So I still have to give them feedback on their work and on their writing. And so I've just changed over to track changes. And I have to say, in some ways it's faster to just type a comment. And of course, it's easy to transmit, but I really do miss the feeling of reacting to something on the page. I guess my fresh point is that I Am now moving to all digital grading and feedback. But I'm looking forward to getting back into the classroom so that I can bring back some of those fun analog teaching elements that I really enjoy.

I do.

Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I've got a pretty cool printer and I've got paper coming through, like, subscribe and save on a certain website that rhymes with shma. Amaz. That's still going on for me. It's a different way of using your brain to write something by hand or to have a piece of paper in your hand.

No. What's up?

Wow.

Oh. That's how you got to the page count, you know. Oh.

Yeah.

Sure.

What color are they?

All right.

Oh, wow. Like required.

So.

Yeah.

As a poet, I just have to say that, like, hearing about Animal Crossing is really evoking a lot of images for me, and I kind of don't ever want to really see the real game

Yeah.

Yeah.

In Frankie's defense, or maybe not. I remember that as a kid, I would borrow. Whenever I would borrow a book from her, she would only lend it to me on the condition that I not crack the spine of the book.

So she really wants the book to, like. If she wants that book to close, she wants it to close. Like, you can't just give her a babysitter club book back that has like a trap spine, you know?

Exactly. It's true.

All right.

Thanks so much. I'll just read a couple poems. The first one I'll read is called 21, and it's from my third book, which was called Witch Wife. It came out in 2017. This poem is a pantom, which is a special form of poetry. All the stanzas are consisting of four lines each. There's a certain pattern of repetition that happens, and the repetitions kind of braid together into a certain shape for the poem. This poem is good for the podcast because it starts out with the word journal. So this poem is called 21. Journal, mixtape, leather coat, silk scarf painted with caducei. Luna park, broom, flowers, ferry boat, ticket stub, autobus, 25, birthstone, anklet, white Peugeot, journal, mixtape, leather coat, Perseid shower, bear paw, charm, Luna park, broomflowers, ferry boat, thumb ring, tank top, lucky coin, Birthstone, anklet, white Peugeot, pasta, schutta, freckled arms, Perseid shower, bear paw charm, Campfire, wind, serve, sudden wine, thumb ring, tank top, lucky coin, Olive orchard, sunflower farm, pasta schutta, freckled arms, yogurt with apricots, coca light, campfire, sudden wine, windsurf, olive orchard, sunflower farm, laundry, terrace, sting, concert, feather earrings, volcano, hike, yogurt, apricots, cocolite green, yellow, sunset, fever, sleep, terrace, laundry, sting, sting.

Thanks. Should I read another one from the new book?

I mean, does that not remind the age 21?

Yeah, exactly.

So the next poem is from my new book, which is called White A Lyric of Virginia. This is a really, really different book from the other one. It's about history, particularly the history of Virginia. And for this, the research for this book, I took a lot of trips before I had moved to Charlottesville. I was taking a lot of research trips over here, and particularly going to Monticello, which is Thomas Jefferson's home on a mountaintop here in central Virginia, and kind of thinking about what it means to be a tourist, particularly an African American tourist in that particular space. This one is called the Shop at Monticello. I'm a black body in this commonwealth, which turned black bodies into money. Now I have money to spend on little trinkets to remind me of this fact. I'm a money machine and my body constitutes the commonwealth. I spend and spend in order to support this. I support this mountain with my black money. Strange mountain in late bloom. Strange mansion built on mountains of wealth. I spend so much I'm late for the tour Where I'm a Blooming black dollar sign. I look good in the dome room prowling its high gloss floor. It's common to desire such flooring for my own home. But owning a home is still strange. My blackness makes strange tools for a living. Rakes the strangeness like dirt. I like to rake my hands over merchandise. Bayberry votives, English hyssop and crisp sachets. I like this engraved pewter bookmark so much, suddenly I line up for it, clenching my upright fist. I pay cash to prove myself no shoplifter. Still, I abscond with my black feelings. Crisp toast points dunked in fig jam on one hand. I must think very highly of myself to come here. Then again, that sounds like something I would say.

Yeah, sure. Is there one?

Thank you. I'm gonna choose the Valentine one.

You like this one. Okay. Great valentine. Suppose it was a cold throwdown for my affection. Who would win? Jack White or Jack Black? You have to think in three dimensions here. Jack White, Jack Black. And one acoustic guitar. I'm the fourth dimension in a yellow wig and small purse. Okay, let's have a ref. I choose Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. We all gather at the bar, high ref. We all get free number two pencils from Vermont. Vermont is rad. Then we see a mini throwing star. It's zipping over us. It's Jack Blacks intense, I say. Jack White opens his shirt. He takes out some kind of raptor. This is totally poisonous, he tells me. I tell him it'd be pretty cool to win this fight for you. I mean, throw down, he says. The poisonous raptor spits onto the floor. Jack White isn't hot. Exactly. Another mini throwing star goes by. I decide to stand behind the bar. Bartender says, little darlin, that is some doggone wig. Come on and get you some grain belt. We drink our grain belts. We watch the raptor dig a hole in Jack Black's neck. Now he's stacking me Throwing stars inside. Bartender says, moves secretary like. Sure does. I say, I bet you can't speak too well with a neck full of blades. I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure once I saw the moon.

So good.

Thank you. Thanks.

Yep. Yeah, I mean, I would say. I mean, what I would say is that I started thinking as a poet way before I was in high school, way before the age of 18. But like the history that you just told Johnny about, about reading in Baltimore, I think my early history as a poet really has a lot to do with the city of Baltimore. So as you know, as John knows, I was born in Baltimore and growing up during our early childhood, my mom, who was a public school teacher in Baltimore City, she decided that she would stay home for several years and raise us in our early childhood. That meant that my dad, who was also a public school teacher in Baltimore, that meant that he continued to work, but then he also took on these, like, extra jobs where he would do, like, adjunct teaching at night. So he would teach the whole day in Baltimore. He would be a foreign language teacher. He would teach Spanish and French in Baltimore. And then at night, he would go to community colleges around the area, and he would teach English to speakers of other languages. So the other quirk about our family is that only my mom had a driver's license, so my dad, like, didn't drive. So what would happen is that my mom would drop off my dad and pick him up, and we would be in the car with him going on these long. To us, it felt like these long, like, sojourns across the city of Baltimore to, like, go to these buildings and wait for my dad to come out or to go in. And so frequently what would happen is that my dad would teach a night class in, like, Catonsville, which is a suburb, and my mom would bundle us up. When it was time to pick him up, she would bundle us up. We'd still be in our pajamas, but we just put a coat on over our pajamas, and we would all get in the car and she would play music on our way out to pick up my dad. And at those. At these times, we would be listening to a lot of 80s top 40, like, pop. And so there was a ton of George Michael and Prince and Michael Jackson and Dire Straits. Like, all of these bands from the 80s and just acts from the 80s would be in our ears all the time. And while we were in the car, my mom would engage us in conversation and ask us about what the songs meant, what was the emotion being conveyed. She would effectively have us do, like, close readings of this music, even though that, you know, we didn't know that that's what we were doing. So I learned how to listen, and I learned how to think critically about something that I was hearing. And I learned to think about language as connected to sound. So I always had that sensibility. It was sort of natural to me to think that way. And so as I got older, I started to write my own poems. And I always had this kind of sense of language having rhythm and music and that kind of internal logic to it that had had a lot to do with sound. So that's really how I started in the car in Baltimore.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, I think that some of the advantages. The advantages have to do with things that happen outside the classroom, in my view. I really appreciated being part of a community of poets and being able to identify myself as a poet while I was living in Iowa City. And to be part of a group and part of a town where there were just poets living everywhere, you started to see yourself as part of the fabric of a creative economy of a place. I didn't know what my future was going to be in creative writing. I knew that I loved to write. I loved poetry, I loved language, and I hoped that I would be able to teach in some way. But I also worked in administration at the University of Iowa. I met writers from all over the world who came to Iowa. I started to just basically build a network of friends and colleagues and associates and mentors who continue to be really illuminating and wonderful people to communicate with today. So it was more of, you know, more than the academic curriculum. It was the. This, the fact of being there, the fact of being in a place where everybody was passionate about poetry. That is what I really appreciated and loved about getting my MFA degree. You know, that's some of the best as far as. Go ahead.

Absolutely. And that started for me at the University of Virginia, where I spent my undergrad years and where I now teach in kind of a. Kind of a full circle moment. I'm, like, back teaching at my undergrad alma mater, and even though we've sadly had to end in person instruction because of the pandemic, the months that I've had to be able to be in the classroom and teach students have been really, really wonderful for those exact reasons.

Absolutely. I think that professionalization is really important. I mean, it sounds, I think if you're outside of, of the creative writing community, it might sound kind of weird to say something, to say a word like creative economy. Most people don't really know like what, what could pot. What that could possibly mean and how a poet could possibly could actually plug into that. And by that I just mean like the aspects of the economy that involve, involve people talking to other people about ideas and making things happen. You know, we're in an era where at least, you know, prior to the pandemic, there were, you know, things like south by Southwest Festival, you know, idea festivals, you know, various conferences for different fandoms. That, those ways that people have to kind of commune with one another and share expression, those things are major parts of the creative economy. But even more than that, you have universities like the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia that are like bringing intellectuals into a town to interact with people. How do we make that happen? How do we make sure that writers and visitors, musicians, filmmakers, how do we make sure that they get paid for what they do? How do we create opportunities for those people to come to a place and actually like take part in their craft, either by making something in a town or by coming to the town to actually like interact with people or maybe teach students. That's all part of the creative economy. And poets, because we can write well and because we can communicate our ideas and because we're very, very invested in the act of communication, are in a very, very important part of that fabric. So even if your job isn't, you know, to write poetry full time, your job is probably going to have an aspect of writing or communication, you know, ingrained within it. So, you know, at my previous job at the University of Louisville, I helped to kind of resurrect a literary magazine that had been begun and then had gone dormant. And now that that lit mag, it's an online award winning publication that one of my colleagues is the editor in chief of and we have a student staff and they get credit for working on the journal and they also get credit for doing things to promote the journal. They would do a lot of amazing, like they would host events, they would do things on social media to get people excited about the journal coming out. So there's just like this multivalent, very exciting, bustling and burgeoning economy of creative artists that I'm hoping we can get back to once all of this. Once, once everybody can be safe and healthy again to interact.

You know, I think that you all really set the table well on this podcast by talking about the various notebooks that you keep and the various ways that you express yourselves in writing using the implements of stationery. But really, what you. But what you're doing is you're using the stationary as a means to access what's already in your mind and in your heart and in your imagination. I think that a lot of what might get in an aspiring writer's way is the idea of time. Like, I don't have time to write. I don't have time to sit down by myself. I don't have. I don't. You know, I may have to take care of a family. And we have this image of the poet as, like, a solitary bohemian in, like, fingerless gloves with, like, a candle,

Definitely drinking paint thinner, like, and writing some impenetrable text that nobody will see until after they've died or something, you know, but in reality, you know, writers are everywhere, you know, and there's somebody that is writing songs right now. There are people that are rapping. There's spoken word artists. There's people that just participated in National Poetry Writing Month or National Novel Writing Month. My advice would be to begin to value your own experience as a form of knowledge. Don't wait until you've read all of. All of Jack London right before you can work on your novel. Don't worry that you haven't read and understood every single Shakespeare play before you write your play. The things that you know are yours, and they're important. The jobs that you've had, the relationships that you've had, the upbringing that you've had, the conversations that you may be having with friends, and especially this time of quarantine. Some of the best advice that I have seen is that you should write about what you're doing now and how you're feeling now. And even if you're not working on some, like, major creative work at the moment, you will probably be able to return to your notebooks and to your various bullet journals to kind of regain a sense of what this time was and make something of it.

Me.

Yeah, I think that makes a great deal of sense. And I actually have had friends who, you know, had. Have creative writing degrees and went to Iowa along with me. And then in addition to their creative work, they have jobs at like, a car company or something working for. Or an advertising company working for. For a major campaign doing exactly what you're talking about. Copywriting or technical writing, which it sounds like the UX writing that you do is a species of, you know. Yeah. Business writing, technical writing, all these, all these, all of these things. I had another friend who worked for a major theme park, like, working on writing copy for. Writing copy for a new part of the park. They had to describe each ride and they had to do it in a. Yes. They had to do it in a certain number of words. And it had to make people really want to, like, stand in line and go on that ride, you know, And I think that the. I think that what you learn from poetry is what we will call economy of language.

You know, the field of words that you could possibly choose from. Is effectively infinite, at least in English, because English is such a wonderfully absorbent language and we have so many different ways of making words and making meaning from, like, the whole, like just plethora of words and syllables that we have to hand. Well, in poetry, you know, that poetry is about compression and it is about. It's about working within a constrained space. The container of the poem, whether that's a 14 line sonnet or a 19 line villanelle or, you know, you have 17 syllables in a haiku, you know. And so being able to reach for those words and be able to bring them into that container and to understand that the form itself pressurizes each word, you know, puts a spotlight on each word. I think that's probably the biggest skill that you, that you can bring into other fields is to understand the power of a single word, understand the constraints of a form, whether it's a business letter or whether it's a description of like, something that people need to read on a software interface and be able to, like, make your words fit the container, but also to suit the container, you know.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

Exactly. I mean, we need barbecue sauce.

I mean, it can be a really Intense experience. I do tend to. To write things that are meaningful to my life as it is being lived any. Any particular moment. The poems in all of my books, I feel are extensions of my imagination and maybe my identity. I guess it can be kind of weird to read a really personal poem out loud, but by the time I've read it aloud, I've already, you know, composed and revised and I've thought about it and then most importantly, I've written more poems after that poem. So you kind of. For me, I need to have like a little bit of distance between actually writing the poem and polishing it and actually sharing it with an audience. For me, I guess I fall back on the properties of sound that the poem may have. And for me it becomes kind of almost a musical experience where I just want. I want the audience to hear these particular syllables and to take. To take meaning not only from what is being said content wise, but also the whole texture, the whole texture of the piece that I've. That I've worked on that I hope will evoke a particular emotion in the audience. I'm actually really curious about audience reaction to my work. And it becomes about that more than it becomes about me anymore, you know.

Yeah, that will happen every now and again, I guess. I mean, my last book, Witch Wife, I remember coming to visit my mom at one point and she had the book on the coffee table and she had like all of these blue post it notes like throughout the book.

She was like, these are all the things I want to talk to you about. And it wasn't just about recognizing, I mean, it wasn't really about recognizing herself. It was mostly just like, what were you thinking when, you know, what were you thinking about this? You know, why did you write this image? It can be really difficult, I think, to explain one's work or to kind of unfold one's work in front of, you know, for your family because they are so close to you. And you know, in the context of poetry, a lot of times I will try to veil certain things or I will make it be a deliberately fantasy, you know, fantastical kind of poem. I might Use a Persona where it isn't really me, but I'm talking about a situation that I lived through, but in kind of a masked or a veiled way. You can do that in poetry. In nonfiction, it's a little bit more difficult because when you're writing an essay, the assumption is that when you say the pronoun I, that it really is you and that you're really talking about your own life. And there are even fact checkers. And a whole process that can happen with certain journals before you could even publish certain pieces of nonfiction. In general, yeah, it depends on the piece. It depends on the journal. But in general, like, you know, some, some issues may be resolved by simply changing a name. But, but really, they advise you, if you're going to write something that could be quite sensitive, that you do have a conversation with anyone who might recognize themselves. You know, our writing, especially in the context of a personal essay or a poem, our writing is really about. It's about ourselves. It's about our identities, about our. It's about our growth. It's about how we process experience. I don't write in. I don't write poems in order to, like, litigate a past issue or something in my past, but I write poems in order to give life to the language that I have inside me. So, you know, I've never had, at least now, and not till now or not so far, I've never had, like, any kind of negative encounter with anyone in my family over a poem. But, you know, if I, if I did, I would, I would try to listen to what the person said and think about, like. And think about what I was thinking when I was writing the piece. I try to be sensitive at the moment of composition and certainly through revision. It's an interesting, complex issue, and every writer has a different relationship to it. Some people don't check with anyone. It's Anne Lamott who said that, you know, if a family member doesn't want to be portrayed negatively in their work, then they should have behaved better in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was a poem about my husband. Who, you know, his name. My husband's name was Philip and one of the first things that he told me was about the etymology of his name when we first met. Phil means love and IP means horses. So Philip means lover of horses. So that was, like, one of the first things that he ever told me about himself. So I do have a poem called I Married a Horseman, which I also kind of pronounce as I married a horse man. That kind of talks about, like, our marriage and our relationship, and I'm, you know, in a positive way. So, you know, he likes that poem, but he is kind of a quiet way of approving, let's just say.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's a wonderful question. I think that at root, at bottom, poetry is a way that we remember. Poetry exists in service of memory. You know, the very, very first poems were actually songs that were sung by traveling bards or by members of the community that were known as shops S C O P s. And they would. They were the ones who, like, you know, had a stringed instrument or maybe even no instrument, and they were singing about Beowulf. And the poem in Old English of Beowulf has all that alliteration in it, if you all remember, from, like, freshman English class. And that was done because the poem had to be memorized. It had to be sung from memory, and having the alliterative lines helped the singer remember. So poetry is always is tied to memory. And so for that reason, I think that it still has a lot of resonance today. But I also think that poetry is a way of thinking. It's a way of working on problems with the mind. So you might approach poetry with some of the same questions that you would approach philosophy or history or religion or, like, divinity. You ask questions about, like, what are the limits of human knowledge? Can people change? What is love like? These are all questions that poetry attempts to respond to, just like all of those other fields.

Thank you.

Wow. I think that the. I think that poetry occupies the same place that it always has, which is it is a place where humans invest creative energy into forms and shapes and containers that can hold memory. I think that that's probably what's really important now in 2020. So many people are having experiences of this quarantine, and people's experiences are very different depending on who you are, what state you're in. We were just talking about, like, do you have to wear a mask depending on what state you're in or what town you're in. You know, what poetry does is it allows for a focused investigation of those feelings that are coming up. I think that a lot of people are struggling with feelings of depression and anxiety because we've effectively lost some version of the world that existed before this pandemic. And when we get back outside, it's going to feel different. And we're going to need some way to describe that feeling, to talk about that feeling. We're going to need a way to acknowledge to one another that we've all been through something that is incredibly scary and that will have a long term effect on us and on our relationships. Poetry has the ability to help us with that. The poetry of the past has that ability. The poetry of disaster, the poetry of survival, poetry of hope, the poetry of joy. All of that already exists in our tradition and we're going to add our voices to that as we move through this crisis together.

Thank you guys so much. It's been so much fun to speak to you and actually just like commune with other people who are interested in writing and stuff. I wish we were all hanging out together with a drink, but maybe that can happen someday.

Kiki.

You can find me on my website, which is just kikipetrosino.com and you could also find me on Instagram and Twitter and just ikepetrosino. Thanks.