^B00:00:13 >> Leila Farrer: Welcome everyone. So glad that you guys could join us for Life of a Poet this evening. My name is Leila. I'm on the programming here at Hill Center. How many of you guys have-- are here for the first time this evening? A couple of you. Well welcome; we're so glad that you could join us. As you may or may not know, Hill Center does a wide variety of programming, not only Life of a Poet with Library of Congress, but also political talks and Q and As, cooking classes, language classes, visual arts, music, everything under the sun for children, so please go online, check out our calendar. We've got print materials downstairs as well. This evening we're here with Ron Charles and Marilyn Chin and introducing them will be Rob Caster-- Casper of the Poetry and Literature Department at the Library of Congress. ^M00:01:04 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:08 >> Rob Casper: Thanks everyone. Thanks Leila. If you could turn up Marilyn's just a little bit, make sure that everybody can hear you. Here's my nicely crumpled little intro. It's wonderful to have you all here tonight. I'm thrilled to kick off the fifth season of our Life of a Poet series. It's hard to believe we've been doing it for five years. Thanks to Diana Ingram and everyone here at the Hill Center for helping make this possible, and of course thanks to Ron Charles for continuing on with this series. I feel like-- this is what I wrote. I feel like I can't even brag about Ron's turn to poetry anymore. >> Ron Charles: Oh, you can. >> Rob Casper: But I can't [laughter], I can't. ^M00:01:52 Instead I can say he's become legendary for his in-depth conversation with poets here at the Hill Center over the last five years. Leg-- I wanted to say legend and mean it. Before I go any further let me tell you a little bit about the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. We are home to the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry and we put in programs like this here at the Hill Center and at the Library's Capitol Hill Campus and around the country. We'd love to have you come to more of our programs, so if you want to check us out you can go to www.loc.gov/poetry. We've also passed out a little survey that you all should have, which we'd love to have you fill out. You can hand them to me afterwards; we'd love to know what you think of the program. The rest of the PLC staff is in the front. You can hand them your-- the surveys too; we'll all be happy to get them. ^M00:02:48 Today, if you don't know, is the start of the fiscal year in terms of the federal government, of which we are a part. And I can't imagine a better way to start FY19 than to kick of this year's lope season. We call it lope in the office. And I couldn't be more excited to introduce tonight's feature poet, Marilyn Chin. I have heard Marilyn read only twice and only briefly at a Brooklyn book party to celebrate the launch of her 2014 collection Hard Love Province, and the year before when she read as part of the Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey's closing event, Necessary Utterance: Poetry as Cultural Force. I'll never forget seeing her up on the Coolage auditorium stage reading poems with such necessary force that it seemed like they might blow the speakers. Hers are poems willing to face up to death and loss and also unabashed in their lyric playfulness. They can be body and prophetic and sorrowful, can dazzle with wild images and be joyously talking, can feel steep in history and form and also charged with challenges to our moment. Listening to her then I thought only I want to hear more. And luckily here we are. Please join me in welcoming Marilyn Chin. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh. ^M00:04:10 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:16 >> Ron Charles: Thank you so much for coming. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, thank you. Thank you for loving poetry. >> Ron Charles: Yeah, thank all of you for coming too. And if you can't hear at some time just call out; it's very informal and we'll-- we'll adjust. >> Marilyn Chin: Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. >> Rob Casper: Ron, why don't you push up your-- >> Ron Charles: Mine a little more. Let me put it here. Okay. ^M00:04:33 >> Marilyn Chin: I want to thank Rob for being such a cheerleader for poetry. We've got to give him a-- >> Ron Charles: Yes. ^M00:04:39 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:43 >> Ron Charles: One of your early poems begins, beginning is always difficult. But the beginning of this conversation doesn't feel difficult because I've spent all week in conversation with you and your work, but it's all been one way and now I'm so looking forward to asking you about this. I want to start with this incredible event that starts early in your life where your folks move from Hong Kong to the United States and you eventually settle in Portland. Why do they do that and how did you feel about it? >> Marilyn Chin: Oh God, I don't know. I was a child, I guess I had no-- no power in those decisions. I was born in Hong Kong in 1955 in a cold water flat, if you remember those in colonial Hong Kong. And there were open sewers, there were 15 of us in a small apartment and-- and it was really-- yeah, and my-- my father was already in the U.S. He was-- he worked in various restaurants in what-- what I call piss river Oregon. Various restaurants in Portland, Oregon. And so-- so we came as-- yeah, the family came shortly after-- af-- yeah, after he-- you know, he first went to the U.S. and then-- then he brought my mother and the family over. >> Ron Charles: And how old were you? >> Marilyn Chin: I was seven years old. >> Ron Charles: So, you were-- you knew what was going on. You-- you-- >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, I guess so [laughs]. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. ^M00:06:11 >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah yeah. I was-- and when I was very young my-- I remember my grandmother carrying me on her back in this little-- >> Ron Charles: She came too? >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, the whole family came. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Marilyn Chin: And she-- she used to sing Chinese poems, she used to chant Chinese poems. She was-- she was illiterate but she had a-- a prodigious memory and she memorized various poems from the-- from the Tang dynasty and-- and Confucius sayings and she was-- she was incredible. And then she used to walk, you know, carry me around on her back. And so, the very first words I heard were poetry, yeah, and-- and yeah, and I've loved the-- I've loved poetry ever since, so. >> Ron Charles: Did she speak English? >> Marilyn Chin: No. >> Ron Charles: Did you? >> Marilyn Chin: No. >> Ron Charles: Your mother? >> Marilyn Chin: No. Nobody spoke English. >> Ron Charles: How did that come about? How did you gradually learn English? >> Marilyn Chin: Well when we immigrated to-- to Portland I started school. >> Ron Charles: Oh. >> Marilyn Chin: That's what ha-- you know, and it's really interesting how first I, you know, I changed-- I changed languages several times because first I-- I spoke in the dialect of Taishan and then I moved-- then I-- then when we moved to Hong Kong-- when I was born in Hong Kong, I spoke Cantonese. And then when I came to the United States, you know, I learned English and-- and so it was pretty much a tri-lingual family because there were dialect differences and-- and nobody spoke English, so, you know, the children served as translators. >> Ron Charles: You all learned it first and then brought it home from school. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. Yeah, we-- yeah, we brought-- but my mother never really, yeah, learned English, and my grandmother didn't know a word of English, yeah, so. >> Ron Charles: You say in one piece, poetry is a vast orphanage. In another poem you write, poetry is my nunnery. Here I am alone in my alter self-hate, self-love, both erotic notions. What led you to write poetry and why does it sometimes feel like that a lonely place sometimes holy, sometimes bereft? ^M00:08:21 >> Marilyn Chin: Well, you know, I think poetry saved my life in many ways. I was a very lonely, quiet child and-- and-- and there was a lot of inter-generational problems, as you know you can imagine in a family like that, and-- and I would-- I would read a lot of poetry and I-- and a lot of the poetry I didn't know what they meant. You know, when I was younger, I read Shakespeare, I read Emily Dickenson, I read, you know-- I read all kinds of poetry and I didn't know what they meant but somehow, they soothed me and the poem soothed me. And I suppose I learned that soothing from my grandmother who used to chant Chinese poetry with me on her back, therefore-- therefore, yeah, I think that lone-- you know, I'm-- poets are solitary animals. We have to-- you know, we-- we read and write, I mean, that's-- it's very difficult in that if you're a play write or if you're a-- yeah, or a-- write for TV you have a lot of people to work with, right, but po-- but poets, we-- we sort of sit-- you know, my favorite thing to do is to go to the Harvard-Yenching Library and read and it's that solitary-- that solitary conversation that I have with the ancients, with the Tang dynasty poets that-- that, you know, really warms my heart, so. Yeah, we're poetry nerds; I love poetry; we're poetry nerds. What-- what can I say [laughs]? >> Ron Charles: What about your-- how did your family react to this decision to go into poetry? ^M00:10:04 >> Marilyn Chin: Oh my gosh, are you kidding [laughter]? >> Ron Charles: It's a long way from becoming an engineer or a doctor or-- >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, a doctor, you know, doctor, lawyer, poet, you know. Oh my gosh, you know. ^M00:10:16 Gosh, I guess I had an old uncle who was crazy and he lived on-- you know, he was-- >> Ron Charles: You were following his-- >> Marilyn Chin: The village idiot, and then he was the poet, you know, I don't know. And yeah, but, you know, when I finally found a teaching job, you know, they felt better about that. But I was always the weird child anyway. It was, you know-- ^M00:10:39 >> Ron Charles: Would you read Poetry Camp, which I think might contain some of that? >> Marilyn Chin: Poetry Camp. >> Ron Charles: Your family's frustration. ^M00:10:47 >> Marilyn Chin: Well this is pretty-- this is a new sequence, a prose poem sequence, so there was a prose-- yeah, okay. Poetry Camp. Grandmother, when can I go to poetry camp? What in hell is poetry camp? Where a bunch of teenage girls go into the woods to write poetry. I know what teenage girls do in the woods and it's not poetry. ^M00:11:12 [ Laughter ] ^M00:11:14 You may not go to poetry camp. You must scrub the soy sauce off the walls of the restaurant, then study for the SAT exam. Grandmother, what if I spurn you and go to poetry camp? Then you will shame your ancestors with your foolish dreams and in your vain attempts to change your destiny you will trip and fall off your platform shoes, break your neck and amount to nothing. This is the grandmother [laughter] how supportive. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, she is. >> Ron Charles: That's pretty-- pretty encouraging [laughter]. ^M00:11:53 You write so movingly, and sometimes very wittily about the pain of a simulation. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh. >> Ron Charles: In many poems. In a short poem called prelude, dedicated to your mother, you write, although the country is lost, rivers and mountains remain and we shall always live in this poetry that you love. ^F00:12:11 ^M00:12:15 >> Marilyn Chin: That-- that first line is actually from Du Fu from the Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, and it goes ^M00:12:24 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:12:26 Which means all-- country-- although the country is lost, rivers and mountains remain. It is such an amazing line, you know, it says all in that one-- in those five characters and-- and-- and yeah, and I feel that I've lost many countries, but rivers and mountains remain. There's some-- yeah, there is-- >> Ron Charles: And the poetry remains. >> Marilyn Chin: The poetry remains, yeah. >> Ron Charles: If you'd read this poem, We're an Ameri-- We're-- We Are Americans Now. ^M00:13:02 >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, these are early poems; I wrote them in my 20s. Okay. He digs up all this dirt [laughter]. ^M00:13:12 We are Americans now. We live in the Tundra. Today in hazy San Francisco, I face seaward. Toward China, a giant begonia. Pink, fragrant, bitten by verdigris and insects. I sing her a blue song; even a Chinese girl gets the blues. Her reticence is black and blue. Let's sing about the extinct Bengal tigers, about giant pandas. Ling Ling loves Xing Xing, yet we will not mate. We are not impotent, we are important [laughter]. We blame the environment, we blame the zoo. What shall we plant for the future? Bamboo, sassafras, coconut palms? No. Legumes, wheat, maize, old swine to milk the new. We are Americans now. We live in the Tundra of the logical, a sea of cities, a wood of cars. Farewell my ancestors. Hirsute Taoist failed scholars, farewell my wet nurse who feared and lathed the Catholics who called out. Now that the half-men have occupied Canton hide your daughters, lock your doors. ^F00:14:42 ^M00:14:48 They-- well I didn't have a wet nurse [laughter]. We were too poor to have a wet-- but apparently in that building women would share their milk, their breast milk because, you know, some women had problems, yeah, with their breast milk. So yeah, I didn't really-- you know, we weren't rich enough to have to-- but I thought wet nurse is an interesting word, yeah, it's a-- >> Ron Charles: Yeah, I loved the way the poem celebrates America and mocks it at the same time. >> Marilyn Chin: Yes. >> Ron Charles: So. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, this is when I-- I started to be comedic here [laughs]. >> Ron Charles: Yes. Yes. ^M00:15:27 There's a poem about things you never forget called the Floral Apron. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, students love that poem. >> Ron Charles: Oh, I love it too. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, I don't know-- they always answer, yeah yeah. Yeah they [inaudible]. ^M00:15:40 It's a-- yeah. ^F00:15:42 ^M00:15:48 The Floral Apron. The woman wore a floral apron around her neck, that woman from my mother's village with a sharp cleaver in her hand. She said, what shall we cook tonight? Perhaps these six tiny squid lined up so perfectly on the block? She wiped her hand on the apron, pierced the blade into the first. There was no resistance, no blood, only cartilage soft as a child's nose. A last iota of ink made us wince. Suddenly, the aroma of ginger and scallion fogged our senses, and we absolved her for that moment's barbarism. Then, she, an elder of the tribe, without formal headdress, without elegance, deigned to teach the younger about the Asian plight. And although we have travelled far, we would never forget that primal lesson on patience, courage, forbearance, on how to love squid despite squid. ^M00:17:08 [ Laughter ] ^M00:17:11 How to honor the village, the tribe, that floral apron. ^M00:17:18 >> Ron Charles: You can see why-- oops. >> Marilyn Chin: Oops, sorry. >> Ron Charles: It's just-- it'll be fine. I think it'll be fine there. It's just your-- >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, my-- oh okay. >> Ron Charles: As long as it's still working. >> Marilyn Chin: Okay. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Marilyn Chin: Thank you. ^M00:17:29 >> Ron Charles: You can see why people love that poem. It's so sensuous, it's so filled with imagery of site and touch and smell. It so captures the things we do retain forever from childhood and it's witty. ^M00:17:44 >> Marilyn Chin: It's interesting, the students either say, ewe, why did you have to use the image of squid? But it depends-- it's really culturally bound. If you're from Greece you love squid. If you're from Hong Kong you love squid. >> Ron Charles: Mm-hmm. >> Marilyn Chin: But if you're from the Bronx you might not like squid. >> Ron Charles: Yeah [laughter]. ^M00:18:03 >> Marilyn Chin: I don't know. Or maybe-- I don't know. But-- but, yes, it's the something about the kitchen table, you know, and mother's apron. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Marilyn Chin: And it's what's interesting about this poem is that for a time people would send me their mo-- their aprons. >> Ron Charles: Oh wow. >> Marilyn Chin: You know, because I read-- I read this, it was Bill Moyers, you know, introduced this poem in his PBS-- you remember his PBS special and-- and I got all these aprons from women. >> Ron Charles: Funny. >> Marilyn Chin: And-- and yeah, everybody remembers their mother's kitchens. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: You know, I think that's why this poem is personal and universal. >> Ron Charles: Right. Exactly. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. Peculiar and-- and universal at the same time. A longer poem called How I Got That Name, much anthologized. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, yeah. It is just-- it's one of those poems, if I don't read it, Rob would have a fit [laughter]. You know, if I don't read it at-- or somebody would say you got to-- you got to read this. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Well I've been working up to it here. Is it in that-- is it in that collection, number four? >> Marilyn Chin: Oh yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Marilyn Chin: Should I read the whole thing? >> Ron Charles: If you don't mind. It is long, but I think it's so-- it's so good and it deals with so many of your most essential themes. >> Marilyn Chin: I usually-- okay, I-- >> Ron Charles: Here it is. >> Marilyn Chin: I-- I usually perform this one. >> Ron Charles: Oh. >> Marilyn Chin: So-- so I-- okay, I usually perform this one. ^M00:19:38 I-- it's called How I Got That Name: An Essay on Assimilation. >> Ron Charles: Do you need it? >> Marilyn Chin: I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin Oh, how I love the resoluteness of that first person singular, followed by that stalwart indicative of be, without the uncertain i-n-g of becoming. Of course, the name had been changed somewhere between Angel Island and the sea, when my father the paper son in the late 1950s obsessed with a bombshell blonde transliterated Mei Ling to Marilyn. And nobody dared question his initial impulse, for we all know lust drove men to greatness, not goodness, not decency. And there I was, a wayward pink baby, named after some tragic white woman swollen with gin and Nembutal. My mother couldn't pronounce the r. She dubbed me Numba one female offshoot for brevity, henceforth, she will live and die in sublime ignorance, flanked by loving children, the kitchen deity. while my father dithers, a tomcat in Hong Kong trash, a gambler, a petty thug, who bought a chain of chop suey joints in Piss River, Oregon, with bootlegged Gucci cash. Nobody dared question his integrity given his nice, devout daughters and his bright, industrious sons, as if filial piety were the standard by which all earthly men are measured. Oh, how trustworthy our daughters, how thrifty our sons. How we've managed to fool the experts in education, statistic and demography. We're not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning, rote-learning, rote-learning. ^M00:21:28 Indeed, they can use us. But the model minority is a tease. We know you are watching and we refuse to give you any. Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots. The further west we go, we'll hit east. The deeper down we dig, we'll find China. History has turned its stomach on a black polluted beach where life doesn't hinge on that red, red wheelbarrow, but whether or not our new lover in the final episode of Santa Barbara will lean over a scented candle and call us a bitch. Oh Lord, where have we gone wrong? We have no inner resources. Then, one redolent spring morning the Great Patriarch Chin peered down from his kiosk in heaven and saw that his descendants were ugly. One had a squarish head and a nose without a bridge. Another's profile, long and knobbed as a gourd. A third, the sad, brutish one, may never, never marry. And I, his least favorite, not quite boiled, not quite cooked, a plump pomfret simmering in my juices, too listless to fight for my people's destiny. To kill without resistance is not slaughter, says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death. The fact that this death is also metaphorical is testament to my lethargy. So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong, daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong and G.G. Chin the infamous. Sister of a dozen, cousin of a million, survived by everybody and forgotten by all. She was neither black nor white, neither cherished nor vanquished, just another squatter in her own bamboo grove minding her poetry, when one day heaven was unmerciful, and a chasm opened where she stood, like the jowls of a mighty white whale, or the maul of a metaphysical Godzilla, it swallowed her whole. She did not flinch nor writhe, nor fret about the afterlife, but stayed solid as wood, happily a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized by all that was lavished upon her and all that was taken away. >> Ron Charles: Wow. ^M00:23:52 [ Applause ] ^M00:24:02 >> Marilyn Chin: So. >> Ron Charles: That's fantastic. >> Marilyn Chin: I had to read this one for Rob and for you, my dear. >> Ron Charles: My gosh. That is your song of myself, isn't it? >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, it is a-- yeah, a song of myself. I mean, if you're a short little Chinese poet and you need to insert yourself into the poetry world how shall I do this and I shall do it with as loud as forcefully as possible. >> Ron Charles: And yeah, some of us I heard gasping were touching references to other poems in there. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh yes. >> Ron Charles: Right. Yeah. >> Marilyn Chin: Yes, of course. >> Ron Charles: And some TV shows. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah [laughter]. ^M00:24:43 >> Ron Charles: It's comic and tragic to have your identity just sort of casually remade after some, as you say, tragic white woman, swollen with gin. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: You never changed your name back when you could have. >> Marilyn Chin: Well, you know, because-- you know, a Mei Ling appears in my-- in my fiction and appears in the poetry as an alter ego, but-- but, you know, I don't know, because are there many women named-- are you naming your kids Marilyn these days? It's really-- yeah, what happened to that name. I think it's kind of an interesting name actually. Yeah, my father was like-- oh he was-- he was a rake, so trans-- he translated literally Mei Ling to Marilyn. And then my sister's name was Mei Jun and he named her Jane after Jane Mansfield. ^M00:25:40 [ Laughter ] ^M00:25:42 So, talking about bombshell blondes. I mean-- I mean it's-- yeah that's-- that's another story. But-- but yeah, those-- ^M00:25:52 >> Ron Charles: Twice in that poem you say no one dared question him. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: You obviously questioned him. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh yes, yes. He-- you know, I am very rebellious because of my father, yeah. So-- so-- so yeah. But the name, I like the name Marilyn Chin I guess, yeah. Mei Ling. You know, at first, I started with Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, and it's a little long. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Marilyn Chin: And makes Mei Ling look like an afterthought, right. >> Ron Charles: Oh yes. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, like a translate-- yeah, ladies or something like that, so yeah. >> Ron Charles: You say in that poem that all was lavished upon her and all that was taken away. >> Marilyn Chin: That's right. I mean that's how we feel about our li-- they-- we're all temp-- temporary here, right. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: And I feel-- I, you know, I feel very blessed to have all I have. You know, I was born in a cold water flat and, you know, I was one of-- one of many young-- you know, small little girls born in that flat and in that building and, you know, I remember the story about this-- this, you know, uncle who looked at me and said, oh she's so small and dark, maybe we should sell her. I mean that-- that was supposed to be a joke. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: But, you know, and so I feel so fortunate to be able to write poetry to be able to express myself to be in this world to celebrate poetry. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: I mean how-- how great is that? >> Ron Charles: It is. >> Marilyn Chin: So. >> Ron Charles: And that poem is very raw and very funny, but there's another one that deals with one of the same themes called That Half is Almost Gone. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh. >> Ron Charles: Which is not funny; it's really very sad. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. ^F00:27:38 ^M00:27:40 Actually, I-- you know, I try to be funny because I'm a deeply depressed person, can't you tell. >> Ron Charles: No, we cannot tell. ^M00:27:52 >> Marilyn Chin: That Half is Almost Gone. That half is almost gone, the Chinese half, the fair side of a peach, darkened by the knife of time, fades like a cruel sun. In my 30th year I wrote a letter to my mother. I had forgotten the character for love. I remember vaguely the radical heart. The ancestors won't fail to remind you the vital and vestigial organs where the emotions come from. But the rest is fading. A dash dissects in midair. Ai, ai, ai, ai, more of a cry than a sigh and no help from the pheneticist. You are a Chinese; my mother was adamant. You are a Chinese, my mother less convinced. Are you not Chinese, my mother now accepting? As a cataract clouds her vision, and her third daughter marries a Protestant West Virginian, who is very handsome and very kind, the mystery is still unsolved. The landscape looms over man. And the gaffer-hatted fishmonger sings to his cormorant. And the maiden behind the curtain is somebody's courtesan, or, merely Rose Wong's aging daughter pondering the blue void. You are a Chinese, said my mother who once walked the fields of her dead. Today, on the 36th anniversary of my birth, I have problems now even with the salutation. ^F00:29:53 ^M00:29:58 Oh, thank you. Yeah. This is a nice audience. >> Ron Charles: It's such a beautiful and heroing image of not being able to remember the word for love when you're talking to your mom. >> Marilyn Chin: Well the character, you know, I-- so I'm playing with homophony here. Ai, ai, ai, ai is a cry when, you know a Chin-- when Chin-- yeah, it's a cry, but it's homophonous with ai image love. And so-- so, you know, I-- yeah, so it's a pun there, and also a visual pun because a slash goes through the heart, the-- yeah, the character, the ideogram of heart there's a slash that goes right-- right through that character. So, I'm playing with the pictograph, and also playing with the sound of-- of that character for love. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Marilyn Chin: So, this-- there's all, you know, all that stuff going on. And when you look at the poem, the left-- the left side, you know, the half-- when I write the line, that half is almost gone, there's a break to the next line, the Chinese half. So visually you, from the very first line you see the, you know, the despair, you see that cut. And so, I was playing vis-- with the visual aspects of the poem and a sonnet-- the sonic aspects of the poem. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Marilyn Chin: And pondering the blue void, I tried-- you know, I tried to give it space, that, you know, line. So, when you have it-- so when you read it you-- you have-- yeah, there's all this play with the page, the space, the space and everything. Yeah, that's-- and it's-- it's really amazing how much Chinese I've lost. You know, I-- when I go to Beijing or Hong Kong I can barely speak to people. It's just, you know, it's so easy. I remember, I think it was around sixth grade, which English completely took over and I started dreaming in English. Then I realized it took over my other half, you know. And-- and I don't know, bilingual-- any of you bilingual, you-- I don't know, I have friends who are perfectly bilingual but I-- you know, I just-- I-- yeah, I think I'm only 80%-- I'm only 20% now [laughs]. ^M00:32:30 >> Ron Charles: And so, losing the language becomes combined with losing the culture, losing your ancestors; it's losing all kinds of complicated things that are wound together in that poem. In another poem you write, my loss is your loss. A dialect here, a memory there. If my left hand is dying will my right hand cut it off? We should all be vesicle organs, the gift of democracy, the pale faces, the wan conformity, the price we pay for comfort is our mother tongue. ^M00:33:02 >> Marilyn Chin: Yes, it's-- it is very sad. I-- I morn this all-- yeah, all the time. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Marilyn Chin: But-- >> Ron Charles: It's the essential American story, is that if you come here-- >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, it's-- yes. >> Ron Charles: You're blessed with freedom and riches and you lose this rich heritage. ^M00:33:19 >> Marilyn Chin: That's right, and then-- and yeah-- I think now there's, you know, there's this new identity thing now in which poets want to write about their-- their id-- yeah, identity now. But I think, yeah, it is a problem of assimilation. It is-- and it's hard work to try to-- try to keep yourself bilin-- you know, to keep bilingual, I mean it's very hard work and to keep the culture, yeah. >> Ron Charles: Right, particularly when you're struggling to assimilate at the same time. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. Yes. And as a teenager you want to be like everybody, you want to conform, you want to be like everybody else. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Marilyn Chin: You don't want to be different, but. ^M00:34:05 >> Ron Charles: Identity poem number 99. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, you're talking about identity, [laughs] okay. Ron Charles, he is digging into these-- these poems I haven't read for years. Okay. >> Ron Charles: Now there aren't 98 other identity poems are there? ^M00:34:19 >> Marilyn Chin: Well, you know, I'm just, you know, trying to be-- yeah, not-- well I've written a lot of identity poems. Some of them like are still in the drawer, right. >> Ron Charles: Okay. But the word-- the number 99 there was meant ironically. >> Marilyn Chin: No, yeah yeah. >> Ron Charles: Okay. ^M00:34:34 >> Marilyn Chin: Identity poem 99. Are you the sky or the allegory for loneliness? Are you the only Chinese restaurant in Roseburg, Oregon, a half-breed war orphan, adopted by proper Christians, a heathen poi dog, a creamy half-and-half? Are you a dingy vinyl address book, a wrist without a corsage? Are you baby's breath faced down on a teenage road in America? Are you earphones, detached, left dangling on an airplane jack to diaspora? Are you doomed to a childhood without music, weary of your granny's one-string, woe-be-gone erhu mewling about the past? Are you hate speech or are you a lullaby? Anecdotes requiring footnotes, an ethnic joke rehashed? How many Chinamen does it take to screw-- how many Chinamen does it take to screw a lightbulb? ^M00:35:54 Are you so poor that you cannot call your mother? You have less than two dollars on your phone-card and it's a long cable to Nirvana. Are you a skylight through which the busgirl sees heaven? A chopping block stained by the blood of ten thousand innocents, which daily, the same busgirl must wipe off. Does existence preempt essence, I being what my ancestors were not? Suddenly, you're a vegan vegetarian. Restaurant is a facticity and getting the hell out is transcendence. Was the punch line incandescent? Was a nosebleed your last tender memory of her? Did he say no dogs and China women? Are you a rose or a tattoo of fire? ^M00:37:02 [ Applause ] ^M00:37:05 Well I haven't read this one for a while Ron Charles. >> Ron Charles: It's-- it's such a powerful recitation and denunciation of all of those horrible slurs that you turn each one. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, that's-- yeah. There was that ethnic joke. I mean there was-- there's these jokes you hear or these slurs you hear in your childhood and I-- yeah. >> Ron Charles: And all these clichés about who you are, who you can be as we're trying, you know, slot everyone into the identities we expect them-- of them. This becomes more complex when you start dating. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, yeah. >> Ron Charles: And falling in love. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Not with other Chinese people, much to your parents' horror. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah that's right [laughs]. >> Ron Charles: I love him. I hate him. I don't know how. I'm bi-racial. I'm torn in two, you write in one poem. He is so fair you can see the Thames pulsing in his temples. So fair, he blanched the skies of the suburbs. You love him anyway. His beauty is all you know. So fair you imagine sewing his grey children. In a parking lot you say to Margarete, why must I yearn for his bland porridge. ^M00:38:14 [ Laughter ] ^M00:38:17 >> Marilyn Chin: That's called weaponizing your images. ^M00:38:20 [ Laughter ] ^M00:38:22 >> Ron Charles: I want you to read one stanza from the end of this poem. Oh, where's number nine? Oh, must be in my lap. Would you start here? >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, okay. >> Ron Charles: And read to there. This is your mother reacting to a young man you brought home, I think. ^M00:38:42 >> Marilyn Chin: Okay. So, you've come home finally with your new boyfriend. What's his name? Ezekiel. Odd name for a boy. Your mother can't pronounce it and she doesn't like his demeanor. Too thin, too sallow. He does not eat beef in a country where beef is possible. He cannot play the violin in a country where rapture is possible. He means a tawdry smile, perhaps he is hiding bad intentions. And that moon, which accompanied his arrival, that moon won't drink and is shaped haughtily like a woman's severed ear. ^M00:39:32 [ Laughter ] ^M00:39:34 >> Ron Charles: You didn't marry him, did you? >> Marilyn Chin: No [laughter]. Oh boy, but I dated lots of creeps [laughter]. ^M00:39:41 >> Ron Charles: We're going to stand up, and turn around and sit back down, just so they can, you know-- >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, get-- >> Ron Charles: They've been listening very hard. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh okay, they're okay. Let's-- >> Ron Charles: Come on, stand up. You stand up. ^M00:39:55 >> Marilyn Chin: Okay. >> Ron Charles: This isn't an intermission though, we're just standing up. Now we're going to sit back down. >> Marilyn Chin: That's great. >> Ron Charles: Now let's keep talking about your mother, she's such a character in these-- in these poems. In a poem called Alba you speak of your mother as the moon. It's another beautiful poem. >> Marilyn Chin: Actually-- actually, my mother was a very sad character. I mean I felt that-- that I need to avenge my mother's death. I feel that my father ruined her life, so that's-- that's-- basically, that's why I write poetry, to avenge my mother. Yeah, so. >> Ron Charles: You should read that poem. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh yeah. ^M00:40:43 Take a left at the waters of Samsara. Do you know this-- what Samsara is? It's a cycle, yeah, of-- it's a, yeah, cycle of life and death. It's reincarnation to life, yeah, a continuous reincarnation. ^M00:41:05 There is a bog of sacred water behind a hedgerow of wild madder, near the grave of my good mother. Tin cans blossom there. The rust shimmers like amber, a diorama of green gnats ecstatic in their veil dance. A nation of frogs regale, swell-throated, bass-toned. One belts and rages, the others follow. They fuck blissfully, trapped in their cycle of rebirth, transient love, unprepared for higher ground. And I, my mother's aging girl, myopic, goat-footed, got snagged on an unmarked trail. The road diverged; I took the one less traveled blah, blah [laughter]. You know what I'm referring to in that line, right? I sit at her grave for hours; a slow drizzle purifies my flesh. I still yearn for her womb and can't detach. I chant new poems, my best fascicle. Stupid pupil, the truth is an oxymoron and exact. Eternity can't be proven to the dead. What is the void but motherlessness? The song bellies up. The sun taketh. The rain ceases to bless. ^M00:42:50 [ Applause ] ^M00:42:53 >> Ron Charles: I still yearn for her womb and can't detach. What-- what was the source of your mother's unhappiness? >> Marilyn Chin: My father. Didn't I say he was a rake? >> Ron Charles: Yeah. And her situation was not uncommon, you suggest. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Many women suffered like from those situations. >> Marilyn Chin: And-- and she-- she stopped eating and died at 62. She just, you know, didn't want to live. So, she was-- but she was such a good woman. She was ver-- a very important role model. She was ethic-- you know, she was ethical; she was so pure, she was pure-hearted, yeah. ^M00:43:36 Well that part-- you know, interesting about these poems you've chosen, that poem I-- I reread it the other day and I felt it was a perfect poem, that there's something about the lines and how-- how the-- they were carved, and yeah, I couldn't-- yeah, I couldn't change a thing in that poem, I mean there's something about precision and I learned from, you know, from Chinese poetries, the precis-- yeah the precis-- the precision of the line, the precision of the imagery. >> Ron Charles: Talk about that because the language just seems so different. ^M00:44:13 >> Marilyn Chin: You felt that-- you feel that the language is different? >> Ron Charles: The languages seem so different in their construction. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, the-- >> Ron Charles: How do you-- how do you translate that lesson of precision from Chinese into English? >> Marilyn Chin: The-- you know, Chinese-- I stud-- for-- my undergraduate degree was in Chinese poetry and I studied the Chinese poem deeply and heavily, you know, I was really into it. I was such a nerd, right. But, you know, the Chi-- classical Chinese poetry there's no inflection or morphology. You-- I mean there-- there-- you know, there are no tenses, you know, no-- and, you know, lack of case tense. I mean, and some poems there aren't verbs, you know. I mean, I-- it's-- it's so concise and precise and the imagery is so precise that I try to bring that into the, you know, my English poet-- my writing, and t hat's, I think-- I think that's-- that's why I've been developing a Chinese-American esthetics, a Chinese-American quatrain, a Chinese-American poem, where I borrow from the ancient Chinese-- Chinese poetry and try to bring-- bring that precision into the, you know, my-- so-- you know, some of my poems. Now I write different kinds of poems; I write long line poems and talky poems and-- and I-- you know, some poems shout at you, but-- but some poems are really influenced by Chinese poetry, and so-- so, yeah, I just-- it's-- it's a wonderful puzzle for me too, to try to bring Chinese poetry into, you know, into the western world. >> Ron Charles: It is-- it is wonderful for us. Here is a poem that captures, I imagine, what your mother went through, but what so many women go through. >> Marilyn Chin: Which-- which one? >> Ron Charles: This side here. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, this one. Ron Charles [laughter]. Okay, I'm-- >> Ron Charles: You should have told me what poems not to ask you to read [laughter]. ^M00:46:23 >> Marilyn Chin: Okay. This one is called Variations on an Ancient Theme: The Drunken Husband, right, and this-- okay, these are written in octaves and fashioned after Du Fu's octaves, his-- his [inaudible], I just-- okay, I won't get into the geeky information regarding that form, but-- but there's also there's these folk songs, these ancient folk songs that-- that talk about drunken husbands. They would come home, these drunken husbands would come home and-- and of course the woman would-- would wait for him in her finest, you know, outfits and she would forgive him for-- you know, after he's you know, come home from the brothel. Of course, these poems were written by men, right, so-- so yeah. So, I talk back to those poets and-- and so-- and there's a dog that goes through these-- this poem, and in Chinese poetry there's often this bark, this dog that is-- that he-- often the harbinger of good luck, of good news. But in-- in this sequence he's a harbinger of bad news and-- and this is my-- one of my issue poems about domestic violence, so, and these are different vignettes of-- these are vignettes of different-- different situations, different families. ^M00:47:46 Variations on an Ancient Theme: The Drunken Husband. The dog is barking at the door. Daddy crashed the car. Hush, kids, go to your room. Don't come out until it's over. He stumbles in the dim lit stairs, drops his Levi's to his ankles. Touch me and I'll kill you she says, pointing a revolver at his head. The dog is barking at the door. She doesn't recognize the master. She sniffs his guilty crotch, positioned to bite it off. Jesus, control your dog. A man can't come back to his castle. Kill him, Ling Ling, she sobs, curlers bobbing on her shoulders. The dog is barking at the door. Quiet, Spot, let's not wake her. The bourbon is sour on his breath. Lipstick on his proverbial collar. He turns on the computer in the den. He calms the dog with a bone. Upstairs she sleeps, facing the wall, dreaming about the perfume river. The dog is barking at the door. He stumbles in swinging. Where is my gook of a wife? Where are my half-breed monsters? There is silence up the cold stairs. No movement, no answer. The drawers are open like graves. The closets agape to the rafters. The dog is barking at the door. He stumbles in singing. How is my teenage bride? How is my mail-order darling? Perhaps she's pretending to be asleep, waiting for her man's hard cock. He enters her from behind. Her sobbing does not deter him. The dog is barking at the door. What does the proud beast know? Who is both master and intruder? Whose bloody handprint on the wall? Whose revolver in the dishwasher? The neighbors won't heed her alarm. She keeps barking, barking, bent on saving their kind. ^M00:50:22 I-- I think domestic violence will do us in. We just-- >> Ron Charles: That's a devastating poem. >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, it's-- >> Ron Charles: And you say that it-- you've borrowed from a Chinese form, and even a Chinese theme, so it's not just a translation, it's a transformation of that form. >> Marilyn Chin: That's a-- yeah, that's a good-- >> Ron Charles: Into a very different kind of poem. >> Marilyn Chin: Right, right. I-- I used-- I used the formal base, but then I bring in, you know, contemporary themes and ideas and issues. I just-- I see myself as an activist poet and I write about the issues of the day. And also, it's per-- it's personal, it's political and my family is just filled with -- with strife and-- yeah, and therefore I feel like I must-- I must write about-- about it. ^M00:51:17 >> Ron Charles: What's so chilling is, you know, each of those, are they quatrain? >> Marilyn Chin: They're octaves, yeah. >> Ron Charles: Octaves. Each of them is parallel, each of them very similar, but each of them different, in different cultures at different times, obviously, but it's essentially the same story over and over again. >> Marilyn Chin: Right. >> Ron Charles: It reminds me, of course, of Dr. Ford's testimony when women all over the country said, yes, that's exactly-- even people in my own family told me, yes, that's exactly what happened to me at a party. >> Marilyn Chin: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Everyone's had this happen apparently. >> Marilyn Chin: Yes, and-- and women's issue-- I mean-- I mean I wrote this poem, what 20 years ago and it's, you know, and the theme-- it's universal. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: We're still suffering from, you know, from domestic vi-- from violence. >> Ron Charles: And the denial of it. >> Marilyn Chin: And denial, yes. >> Ron Charles: That's all part of it. It's acting like it never happens or being surprised. >> Marilyn Chin: And-- and, yeah. So, yeah, that's-- that's why these-- you know, certain poems live on. You know, they're-- they're un-- they're universal. ^M00:52:18 >> Ron Charles: Every Woman Is Her Own Chimera. That's a very different kind of feminist poem, right. Where is that? Number 16. ^M00:52:30 >> Marilyn Chin: I wrote this poem for Adrienne Rich. Did you know Adrienne Rich? Yeah. >> Ron Charles: I-- I can't have you read the-- we won't get through the whole thing but just you'll see when to stop. >> Marilyn Chin: You want-- should I read this? >> Ron Charles: I've got a little mark on the other side, next page. ^M00:52:47 >> Marilyn Chin: I-- I stop here? I read-- >> Ron Charles: Yes please. >> Marilyn Chin: Okay. >> Ron Charles: Thank you. ^M00:52:51 >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, I wrote this suite for Adrienne Rich. Every Woman is Her Own Chimera. Every woman is her own chimera. Today she is laughing with Julio. Tonight, she is dancing with Coolio. How long can happiness last? For a slow brief afternoon, my head on the thigh of a Sequoia, reading Wang Wei. Butterfly in mouth, but don't bite down. Whose life is it anyway? She born of chrysalis and shit or she born of woman and pain? Mei Ling brings a wounded poem, cry-- crying, please, mommy, mommy fix it. You wipe the tears from her cheek, then glue a gnat's torn wing. The sand dab flicks her tail. The tears of the wombat are green. Kiss me against the last hydrangea. Comrades, we are not yet free. ^M00:53:59 [ Applause ] ^M00:54:02 Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Women aren't just victims in your poems. They push back. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh yeah, they talk back, they push back. >> Ron Charles: They fight back. >> Marilyn Chin: They fight back. >> Ron Charles: They-- what they say about a woman at 45; too late to live, too soon to die [laughter]. My wine is bittersweet, my song is rye. You go on to talk about other parts of your body, which I will not read. ^M00:54:25 [ Laughter ] ^M00:54:29 >> Marilyn Chin: Yeah, he's afraid of the c word and the v word he's afraid of [laughter]. ^M00:54:38 >> Ron Charles: But it is very funny. It's a very funny poem. >> Marilyn Chin: There's a v word, okay, and a c word, okay. >> Ron Charles: In the afterward to the Phoenix Gone you write I have not been rehabilitated in middle age. In fact, I want to reassure my friends that I am as feisty as ever, which we've clearly seen. I am still very much an activist poet who believes in my work, my life work, to infuse my art with three powers; to inspire, to illuminate, and to liberate. How does poetry do those things? >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, as Oden says, poetry makes nothing happen, right [laughter]. ^M00:55:13 Well it's-- it's important that the poet believes that, you know, she can do these things. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: It's important for the poet to-- to have this grand scheme of-- you know, of things. I don't know. This is-- this-- I just retired from my full-time teaching job. I'm going to, you know, run around the country and talk about poetry and-- and bring the good news, present the good news, and it's-- it's important, I think. >> Ron Charles: Your poems do that, but they also push back at our temptation to speak in a grandiose way about poetry. >> Marilyn Chin: Right, right. >> Ron Charles: Several witty lines here. The poet guards the conscious of society. No, you're wrong [laughter]. She stands lonely on that hill like observing the pastures. Later you say, I do hate my loneliness, sitting cross-legged in my room, satisfied with a few off rhymes, sending off precious haiku to some inconspicuous journal named Lev Leaning Bamboo [laughter]. ^M00:56:14 It's such a great satire of the poet. And finally, how could we write poetry in a time like this, a discipline that makes so much ado about so little. Willfully laconic, deceptively disguised as a love poem. I mean you implicitly challenge poetry, not to claim more than it can do. >> Marilyn Chin: Right, right. And-- well I-- but I still love the genre. >> Ron Charles: Oh yes. >> Marilyn Chin: You know, it's the genre that's closest to our hearts, when you're sad and lonely and angry you write a little poem, you know, you write poems, you know. And so, yeah, yeah. I just-- well, you know, a poet, we're-- we're the-- we're the step-children of literature, aren't we? >> Ron Charles: No. No. You're the queens and kings. ^M00:57:02 [ Laughter ] ^M00:57:05 Look at you laughing. ^M00:57:07 [ Laughter ] ^M00:57:12 There's a wonderful tribute poem here I want you to read the-- the first part, and this will be the end. >> Marilyn Chin: I read here? >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Marilyn Chin: Okay. This-- I wrote this for my friend, the activist poet, Mitsuye Yamada. Do you-- any of-- yeah, I wrote it for her 90th birthday and-- >> Ron Charles: She's still alive. >> Marilyn Chin: She's still alive, she's 93, and she calls me and says when are you going to come and visit me, I might not have long, you know, I might have another year. And so, it's-- she's really great. But she's-- she was one of the fir-- you know, first Asian-American poets that I read and her-- and her father was inturned, you know, she was-- you know, was taken away to an internment camp. For Mitsuye Yamada on her 90th birthday. ^M00:58:08 They say we bitch revolutionaries never go out of fashion. Look how fashionable I am [laughter]. Wearing floppy hats and huge wedgy shoes. A feather bandolera and a lethal python. Sometimes we wear a fro perm cause we hate our straight hair. Sometimes we wear it straight to the ankles like Murasaki. I bleached mine purple to look like Kwannon Psylocke. Maxine's beaming, like the Goddess of Nainai temple. A cross between Storm, the X-girl and Ahsoka Tano. We love our laser eyes; our Yoko granny glasses are dizzy. Short women poets unite! Revolution ain't just style, it's destiny! ^M00:58:59 [ Laughter and Applause ] ^M00:59:07 Remember those spiral perms? I don't know, you guys are too young. Oh, the spiral perms in the 80s, you know. I had-- ugh, yeah. >> Ron Charles: It's been such a pleasure to talk to you tonight. Thank you so much. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, thank you. It's-- the hour's over. I can't believe it. >> Ron Charles: There are poem books-- there are collections for sale in the lobby. Please fill out the questionnaires and feel free to come up and talk to Marilyn. >> Marilyn Chin: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you [applause]. Thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you.