>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> I could not be happier to have everyone here, and please join me in welcoming Fiona McCrae, Tom Sleigh and Juan Felipe Herrera. [ Applause ] >> Fiona McCrae: I'm going to clap for you two. [Applause] We're going to start with a reading from each poet. >> Tom Sleigh: Fiona asked us to read about five minutes, so that's what I'll do. And I always like to start with a new poem, so that's what I'll do. That, you know, kind of keeps you honest. Here it is. Okay. >> Fiona McCrae: Nice and loud. >> Tom Sleigh: Can everybody hear me? [Laughter] Nothing worse than sitting there, and you can't hear a word. Anyway, before I start, I just want to say it's a real thrill to be here, in this wonderful University Club. It's probably the first time I've had a jacket, and I -- I mean, you know, I'm all very spiffed up. I just want to say that it's a great delight to be here with my old pal, Fiona McCrae. I want to thank Jim and the unbelievably dapper and suave Rob for making this thing happen. You know, I also, you know, organize events, and I know how difficult they are to put together. And I'm really delighted to be here. And I also want to say what a pleasure it is to be with Juan Felipe. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you. >> Tom Sleigh: And I'm just glad to be with all of you here. I know a lot of friends in the audience. And Matt, thank you. Josh Fosterguard [phonetic], thank you. And that's it. Won't be any more thanks. It's all downhill from there. So I'm going to read a poem that's in five short parts. And this poem comes out of some journalism. I don't really know how to put it anymore. I've done a lot of journalism over the years, starting around 2007 in the Middle East and East Africa. And this piece just comes out of having been -- about a year, two years ago just before Libya fell apart, traveling around with the militia, all over the country. And I know you say the word "militia," and everybody goes, "Ohhh, militia." You know, but everybody in this room would be in a militia. So it's a very, very common thing. And when you move through different parts of Libya, you move from one militia's command to another militia's command. And that's just how you circulate. And so when I was there I met a young man, a militia meter [phonetic] who fought in the revolution that overthrew Gaddafi, and he had been seriously wounded. He had a big scar on his cheek which deformed his face. And I was just thinking about what it would be like to be him. And I kept looking at his scar and thinking it was a certain kind of writing on his cheek, kind of calligraphy. So anyway, the poem is in five parts, like I said. One. Once I cleared the choppers, wop-wop-wop, the airstrip opened up into a treeless drift of sand, where I heard a distant hammer tap against the wind and smelled scorched concrete wafting from shell holes in the runway. Then we were speeding along in the back of an open truck, its axles shuddering over hardpan, as I rubbernecked at burned-out tanks, turrets blown to the roadside, seeming somehow sadder that the men who died. Two. Just a boy who played soccer until the revolution, he learned with a bad shoulder how to fire an AK-47, shoot off of mortar so he didn't burn his hands, talk away fear. The radio broadcasting endless hero victim chatter sent him racing behind a wall, hiding from the sniper's crosshairs. Pinwheeling shrapnel sent them to the hospital, where he suffered as much from boredom as his wound. Playing with a lizard he holds by the tail, the panting ribs pulse as he dangles it head-down. His bandaged cheek crisscrossed with tape, looking like it aches. The hot breeze dries sweat from his face as the lizard whiplashes loose, scrambling across the sheet to disappear under the bed, one wounded foot leaving pinpricks of blood. Not a trail or code, just the tail left dangling in the boy's fingers, as he laughs and, swinging it around, shows it to his mother, frowning, "What's that?" And snatches it away. Three. Each time the boy, grown up now, is forced to flash ID, his scar tissues calligraphy writes on his body the history of his own scalloped, twisted flesh. Shrugging off my pose of objectivity. Shrinking, puckering, the skin grafts on his burns shine white as phosphorus in the sun. And whatever I write down, the counter text scrawled on his cheek revises itself each time his mouth flexes into a grin or frown, as year by year whatever's written there gets that much harder to decipher that much further from the war. Until in the mirror, he'll see and won't see his own scars. Four. In shade and sunlight, the lizard grows a new tail that writes in dust over a broken cobble, its slithering trail until it stops short, heart pulsing in its throat, red eyes fixed on that foreign shape which takes out a notebook, scribbles. Green and brown skin, broken black diamonds arranged in vertical stripes, claws that look like hands of a fever victim. And then scribbled notes and neutral tones about mortar fire, flak jackets. The strap on the helmet that is always too lose or too tight. The boy's bombed house, shockwaves blowing out the windows to let in riot gas. An adrenaline rush. The smell of tears, chemical as ammonia and as harsh. Five. All around me, the sound of men sleeping. Their bodies shifting slightly in their dreaming. The engines of the trucks still cooling, giving off little ticks and pings. And then I was climbing out of my blankets to slip under the tent's canopy, stumbling away from mumbling and snores. The desert cold making the dew-damp sand stiffen so it crunched underfoot, as I crept beyond the watchman to take a piss. And at the edge of the camp near the chickens and their coop, heads tucked under wings was a fox staring back. Or what I thought was a fox, ducking down into the shadows and disappearing behind the trucks that in the morning would obliterate its precise four-clawed tracks. But the next night and the next would keep on coming back, until the chickens got eaten or the fox was killed. Then pattering of my own piss brought me back into the cold. The sky overhead, dark and bright. Bundled bodies in the dawn beginning to levitate. Whose elbows dreamed up the chokehold? Who pushes back the boundaries so that no man's land is the only high-bond [phonetic] homeland, patree [phonetic]? Who strips us of our shadows so that our histories turn to glass? And then it was time for breakfast. To sit, pee, smoke and take my place besides the others in the truck. Then I'll finish with a short poem from my -- I don't know what to call her. You know, she came into my life via divorce. So I'm not really her biological dad, but I feel like her dad. So we have this little code. I'm her dear almost dad, and she's my dear almost daughter. So we're both each other's dad. That works. Second Sight. In my fantasy of fatherhood, in which I'm your real father, not just the almost dad arriving through random channels of divorce, you and I don't lie to one another. Shrugging each other off when words get the best of us, but coming full circle with wan smiles. When you hole up inside yourself, headphones and computer screen taking you away, I want to fill in ten years that if I'm still alive, you'll still look at me with that same wary expectancy, your surreptitious, cool-eyed appraisal, debating if my love for you is real. Am I destined to be those shark-faced waves that my death will one day make you enter? You and your mother make such a self-sufficient pair. In thrift stores, looking for your prom dress, what father could stand up to your unsparing eyes, gauging with such erotic calculation your figure in the mirror? Back of it all, when I indulge my second sight, all I see are dead zones. No grandchildren, no evenings at the beach, no bonfires in a future that allows one glass of wine per shot of insulin. Where we both agree that I love you always, no matter my love's flawed, aging partiality, my occupation now is to help you be alone. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That was beautiful. >> Tom Sleigh: Thanks. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That was beautiful. Again, thanks, everybody. I really appreciate being here at the University Club, and I really enjoyed our conversations. We had some conversations about possible projects already and using video. And so I just want to tell Rob that there's more projects coming up. [ Laughter ] And things really began to happen for me when you came in, and we had -- we met. So thank you, and also Tom and Fiona, and the whole team. Thanks again. You know, I'm like you, you know, I have a fresh poem, and I've been deciding -- >> Tom Sleigh: Read it. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Whether to read it or read this or read that. So it's kind of like the tradition, isn't it? To bring out a poem that we just wrote. And I don't know why we really do it, but we do. It's kind of -- I don't know. It just -- that's what we do. Is that strange? It's a strange little thing. We've got, you know, a ton of poems already ready, published, and the whole thing. And here we go, you know, with a poem that we just typed this morning. So Victor Martinez was a really good friend of mine, a meticulous poet and writer. And he got the National Book Award for Parrot in the Oven in 1996. And he got it by just cracking each line into little pieces and just really worked so hard on the language and the story and everything you could ever imagine. Every word in that book is measured and weighted and looked at from a thousand angles, from 20 feet away, pinned on the wall, and then he would literally use it. He passed away in 2011 from lung cancer. A lot of my good friends have passed away from cancer recently, the last ten, 15 years. And I had written him some poems early on called Undelivered Letters to Victor while he was alive. So I remember him saying -- he was really a deep guy, a really deep thinker. And on the back of his only poetry collection called Caring for a House, he says quite a bit. He writes a big old, giant paragraph on the back of that book, and he talks about this thing he calls super imagination. And who knows, you know, if it's Quantum Theory or super imagination, and all about being in two places at the same time. So I always think of him. So this is called Thought Poem for Victor Martinez, Undelivered. Still thinking about super time, super space and super imagination. You said what you wrote was being written by someone somewhere else at the same time. Some country, some town, in a broken bus or a polished grain desk or a cheap clinic deep in the rainforest somehow. A hut fixed with branches and strings. Just maybe a school tilted en route to tumbo-by-baneke [phonetic] somewhere. What would you be writing? It does not matter and why. Poetry -- why that? Why continue its tiny mouth on a page? Why not a simple message, just a message there is more hunger than poetry, Vic. I am pushing down the 300 buildings. There is thirst, Vic, more thirst than knowledge. You always spoke of this thing, knowledge, you read Heidegger. What is thinking more than knowledge? Vic, how about knowledge in the hand? In the gut? Water from a storm. Hunger in the center of your flesh; not flesh, is not knowledge. It is pure insight, sinew. It is edge. More edge than poem paper poems are not bread. I am calling for bread. With empty offices at night, the ones across from my tenth floor poetry bed door, D.C. Somewhere else in the variety realms, even though I am here, brother, and you are not. So that's the Thought Poem for Victor Martinez that I hammered out this morning. And this is Task the Void, and this is [foreign term], and this is -- it always comes to this too -- doesn't it -- which poem to read? I Walk Back Nowhere. Let's do I Walk Back Nowhere. I walk back nowhere, under moonlight. The dogs look as if they are angels. The ones I never imagined, with drooling, silvery rays and torn behinds. Yes, blowing in the strange and excited phosphor, dancing out of rhythm. Racing up trees, chasing snails. This is like a children's book. Oh yes, the children with rectangle heads and sacked stomachs, with the eyes of Da Vinci, sad and impish. Meticulous as even Haldun [phonetic] and [inaudible] as Nietzsche, phlegmatic and bitter. When they speak, they leave opalescent liquids on the grasses. Stuttered, under a half-erased mural of [inaudible]. Or is it [inaudible]? Wait. The children never speak. They nod their heads. They carry huge bundles, strapped across their foreheads. They weep under newspapers and roll up their skirts and wash them in gutters. Ponds, if they find them. Then they run into the sea. This is where we meet on occasion. We make up stories. We'll remember fruits and produce as if blessed by the plutonium blast. Remember the pears? They were so green, and the avocados, like guitars -- honey, golden; and the asparagus, like a lion's rainy mane, and our mouths water. Their mouths water. I am used to these stories. I am used to the land, barren, bitten in a flame with lies. I am used to our faces in this new wild, dispassionate life. I learned this from my musician friends. From years waging feudal wars with poetry until I could not think of anything else. [Inaudible] [ Applause ] Thank you, [inaudible]. >> Fiona McCrae: Thank you. Thank you both. So now's the chitchat time. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Chitchat. >> Fiona McCrae: The heading for tonight was Voicing the World -- How Poets Engage with Communities Within and Beyond our Borders. So as I was sitting here, I did have a moment of enjoying the thought of the, you know, poetry, literary community that we're in here and so many allies, sitting there and just grateful to you all and to Jim and Rob for hosting us. Thank you both for reading. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you. >> Fiona McCrae: Juan Felipe, in your -- somewhere in that book, the one you just read from, is Literary Asylums, and in it, you write -- this is just an excerpt from it. You say, "The idea of an audience, the idea itself tears into all experience. The assumption of an audience, they are listening." So I thought we might start with community as audience and just ask each of you what assumptions you make about audience, where your poems are heading -- headed. If any. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Well, you know, I was always concerned with the question of audience, because I started -- I also started out in theatre, kind of speak theatre, and I always wanted to -- and having read Antonin Artaud's book on the Theatre of Cruelty and his journey to Mexico and to [inaudible] ritual and how he became all aflame with that, how he really got a lot of stuff out of that. He wanted this kind of visceral ritual, intense, you know, [inaudible] aflame ritual, explosive self happening, where his words will just burble out. And he was like super totally present in this ritual, compressed, symbolic, physical visceral moment. So I was excited by that back in high school. And so I wanted to figure that out, where there is no audience, because there is no audience in that world, in a sense. So then I began to do community theatre and political theatre, and there was always an audience. And I was always trying to deal with that. And now I visit so many audiences, and they're all so amazing, and they're real audiences. And they're different, and they ask different things of me. And I feel all their lives hitting me. And I go to them, and we kind of come together. And in my poetry, I think -- to change my poetry, I go, "I'm going this way, but you're pulling me this way. You know, I want to write this, but you want me to write that" and "I have this in mind, but you have this in mind." You know, I feel that, from the audience. You know, I feel it. I go -- I'm reading this, you know, poem, I go -- they'll look at me, go, "Come on. Let's move on to something, something real. Come on, Juan." So I feel that, you know? I feel that. And they're excited and you know they -- all these things. And I want -- I like -- I want to adjust, you know, because I'm in the moment. I'm in the moment. So now for me it's a moment. It's a momentarium. I'm in that momentarium, and I want to be in that momentarium. Of course, I am. Of course, we all are. But so now my poems are changing because of that. >> Tom Sleigh: Well, audience, the first thing that really came to my mind -- I also read Artaud. >> Juan Felipe Hererra: Remember that? >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, yeah. [Inaudible] and you know, a lot of the poems too. And I was always interested in his idea about how the actor makes a gift of his whole being to an audience. That was something that, when I first came across it, was such a different kind of way of thinking about just approaching what it was you were doing, because before that, I, you know, what the fuck did I know? I grew up in a tiny town in Utah, you know. There was no culture of any kind. And so to come across this and even what I thought of as an audience was me at the school play. You know, and then and then, you know, I did some theatre work as well. And one thing I thought was interesting about doing the theatre was that, until I read Artaud, I always thought it was like a kind of presentation. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Yeah, a presentation, and they're out there, and we're over here. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah. As opposed to a gift of yourself to what was going on in their minds. And so that's just an interesting way to kind of segue with what you're talking about -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And no boundary, breaking that boundary. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, and the boundary, exactly. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Breaking the boundary. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, exactly. And breaking down the whole idea that when you're playing a role, when you're playing a part, that the audience is in some way completely -- has suspended disbelief, and they really think you're Julius Caesar, where it's really, you know, as far as Artaud was concerned, I mean, he was Artaud, and he was Julius Caesar at the same time. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: He was Antonin and Julius Caesar. >> Tom Sleigh: So I always thought that was an interesting, really interesting idea. And just in terms of writing poems, that's the kind of public aspect of it. And I think Juan spoke really beautifully to that. But you know, just in terms of the private aspect, you know, when I'm sitting down, I think of my audience as being all these -- well, all these dead people, like, well, like Phil now. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's true. >> Tom Sleigh: You know? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Yes. >> Tom Sleigh: You know, like dead friends. I think of those people as you know sort of being in the same room with me, and I don't want their voices to be too loud. You know? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's right. >> Tom Sleigh: But I like having then them there. And so consequently, I think that for me an audience is this present moment here, like Juan was talking -- Juan Felipe was talking about. But it's also when you're privately by yourself, it's like the whole community of the dead that is speaking to you and through you and that you're trying to speak back to them. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about being involved in an art form like poetry. You know, the money is great. We all love the money. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Big money. There's big money. There's a Bentley and a Rolls Royce outside. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, a Bentley and a Rolls Royce, right. But the thing that's really wonderful is that you actually have a sense of, you know, going, you know, it's like every poem you write is this time machine. And it goes both forward, and it goes backward. And I love the sense of connection that that gives me to, you know, a wider world. Because I'm not a conventionally religious person at all. And it sort of makes -- and I always think that posterity is kind of, you know, distant from me. And it also feels kind of pretentious, you know, "I'm writing my poems for posterity," just like, the fuck is posterity? You know? So it's sort of like -- but if I have the idea that in fact, you know, I'm in this time machine, and it's going forward, then it's -- then again, it's like that present moment that Artaud was about. It's a present moment in the future, and it's also as much present in the past. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's right. That's -- I think that's where we -- that's where we were headed. Because as we're talking about this, it all comes down to mind as one big, juicy, spiraling mind that goes back, forward, sideways and in unknown directions. And it just keeps on. I think that's why we're writing. So the audience was maybe just a draft -- a draft concept. >> Tom Sleigh: It's like that Teilhard de Chardin had this concept of the noosphere, in which there was -- the entire earth was blanketed by an atmosphere of thought -- of thinking, of spiritual endeavor. It's a kind of a beautiful idea. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Or the universe blanket. The universe blanket that the Mayans had. >> Tom Sleigh: I don't know that. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It's a universe blanket, and it's also with the women -- the women's [inaudible], you know the, when we see those nice Indian shawls and -- they're like universe blankets. They have the story of the universe on them, and by wearing them, by wearing them and moving -- you wear it, you know, and you move -- of course, you're walking, and you're moving around, you're also contributing to the motion of the universe. So it's like a universe blanket. And the whole notion of [inaudible] or one of the elder Mayan [inaudible] in Chiapas, and the vestiges of the rain forest. >> Tom Sleigh: You knew him? I know him too. I met him when I was doing anthropology? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: When was this? >> Tom Sleigh: That was back in [inaudible] with Pepe Martinez [phonetic], the bush pilot and Robert Bruce and -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Robert Bruce. He was there in the '50s. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, and then I met him when he was a pretty old guy. He had cancer. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: In the '70s? >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Or later? >> Tom Sleigh: Well, it was just when the Guatemalan War was -- because I was working for Gertrude Blom. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Oh, you were? I was there with Gertrude Blom. [Inaudible] Yeah, it was me. I know Gertrude. I knew him, and I knew all his sons. >> Tom Sleigh: I met his son, [inaudible], and then I met -- did you know [inaudible]? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Yeah. >> Tom Sleigh: Oh my God. You knew [inaudible]? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Yeah. >> Tom Sleigh: What a sweet guy he was. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: A sweet guy. That was a sweet guy. That's right. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah. I'm sorry, we're having a conversation. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So we came back to [inaudible]. Remember he said that when the youth cut a timber of [inaudible], a star falls, because you know you're ripping up the rainforest. And every time you rip down or cut down and kill or sever a tree, you're also severing a star. >> Tom Sleigh: I mean, this context of this is that Juan Felipe and I were both in Chiapas in Southern Mexico, maybe at more or less the same time. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: When were you there? >> Tom Sleigh: I was there -- God, when I was probably 30-some, 35, 40 years ago almost. Something like that. Just when the Guatemalan War was getting heated up. And [inaudible] is a [inaudible]. And Gertrude Blom was kind of -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: What a world. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, she was an archeologist. She was a -- you know, what she really was was a great photographer. That's what she really was. Yeah, and a strong force of nature, for sure. Did you remember -- oh, my God. The stories I'd like to tell about Gertrude Blom. Oh, my God. I remember once a woman -- she had a kind of research center. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: She did, yeah. >> Tom Sleigh: And anthropologists would come from all over the world to visit there, and the way she kind of financed the research center -- which she also sort of had a quasi kind of hotel. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It was a quasi hotel. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah. And people would come in, and it was a little bit like Fawlty Towers, right? Yeah, so the guests would come in -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: The Mayan -- >> Tom Sleigh: But they had really wonderful -- they're great anthropologists from all over the world, actually. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And so you got into anthropology? >> Tom Sleigh: I did, yeah. I studied it, and that's why I was down there. Yeah. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So did I. Yeah, I got a degree in anthropology. Is that what you did? >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, I mean, I studied it. I mean, I did all the [inaudible] the British guys. Anyway, well, no, but see I've been so interested in that stuff for forever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So yeah, so Gertrude Blom and Frans Blom -- >> Tom Sleigh: Frans Blom, her husband. Yeah. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So what was the last year you were there? >> Tom Sleigh: The last time I was done there was long after Trudy's death. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Oh, [inaudible]. The late '90s? >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah. And then they transformed it, you know, and now it's taken over by the government. And it hadn't had -- all the aura was gone. >> Fiona McCrae: Can I have a minute? Now I bring you back -- >> Tom Sleigh: I'm sorry. >> Fiona McCrae: No, it's great. It's funny with -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It's good to remember, huh? >> Fiona McCrae: We're just sort of looking at you both and -- not looking at you both now, but looking at you both together -- and that's two different poets. And then you do start to see similarities in thinking about this idea about communities within and beyond, you've both written about places not right here or -- and you have public subjects, in a certain way. And you've had all your travels in the Middle East and East Africa, and sometimes you've written about that in prose and sometimes in poetry. And then you have the book about -- a lot of your work within the Senegal Taxi, that I thought was kind of interesting, where there's prose and poetry within that. So I was wondering about what -- how poetry serves as a voice to communicate about the other, the person who's not you, how you do that and what responsibilities come with that, to whoever you might be writing about and once you start going public, then words like duty and someone's thought coming in, which is a different -- when you're writing about your inner -- you and your stepdaughter, no one can contradict you about that. But if you're, if you're writing about something that's a little bit -- when your subject is beyond, what does that bring up for you and how does -- how do -- you've both written theatre. You've both written prose. But how do you find the form? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Well, you know that -- I remember that -- that's a big issue, still. But it used to be such a hard issue back in the early '80s. I remember we used to have these big old hot debates -- I think poets in the schools had these big hot debates about "Well, you know, what, you know, you can't write as a, you know, a Chicano voice, because you're not Chicano. And you can't write, you know, African-American voice, you know. How dare you?" and all that. And we kind of liked that concept, you know, we were kind of grooving with that concept. And it was a cultural appropriation and all that was like hot, you know? Wrestling -- it was wrestling -- writers were wrestling on the floors, trying to work that out. And but then, you know, you know, it's not a, you know, that's kind of all said and done now, in a way. Because everything is crisscrossing, and everything is changing. A poem is a poem. This is not a mirror. It's not a police report. It's not a social science tract -- even though it could be all those things, in a way. But it's -- you know, it's made out of jelly. You know, it's just perception. And what we see is changing. What we write is changing. Our thoughts are changing. Today is different than yesterday. So there's really no real solid appropriation. That's one thing, for me. And then the other thing is, you know, you really have to -- this is going to sound a little corny, but you really have to feel it. You really have to, you know -- you may be way off, but you really have to feel it. And you really -- for me, when I wrote Senegal Taxi, I looked at National Geographic in a dentist's office. That was really highfalutin, intellectual moment. I was in a dentist's office, and there was a National Geographic magazine, and it was a feature on Africa, and you know how cool those features are -- and it was about the [inaudible], sub-Saharan belt -- the Sahara, and right underneath the Sahara, there was this kind of weather belt called the [inaudible]. And here's Sudan, way over here, and way over here is Senegal. And because of the atrocities committed in Darfur in the Sudan, people were running -- they were massacred, but some of them escaped and would try to go through these big old climatic upheavals of dust and winds and heat, and then people grabbing whoever was migrating or escaping and just killing them. And these little, tight locked, ghost -- what they call ghost houses, with Kalashnikovs. So you couldn't escape. They'd grab you, throw you in there and just torture you. And then they had to make it all the way to Senegal, at the very edge of the coast, all the way from the Sudan to Senegal. And then from Senegal, they had to find a little canoe or boat and try to make it to the Canary Islands. And then from there, they had to do the same thing and make it to Spain. And from there, they had to do the same thing and make it to New York. What a zigzag, long, impossible journey -- a migrant journey -- escape, life or death journey. And I said, that sure is much different than making it from Mexico City or any town -- even though the torture is there, through the border, and then the scorching South Arizona deserts, where many migrants die or are killed and are taken into freezers in Tucson. So I was just amazed by that. I was moved by that, and I said, I don't know, I don't know, this is moving me. I don't know what's going to happen. Then I happened to get a month at the Montalvo Art Center in Saratoga. We have a month to write and cook with people and feed yourselves. Really cool. And so I had 30 days, and I just wrote that. I just wrote that piece, no matter how it came out. Senegal Taxi. And I did all the things I wasn't supposed to do, back in the '80s. I did all the things I wasn't supposed to do. >> Fiona McCrae: You did lots of different voices throughout that book, right? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I used a lot of different voices. >> Fiona McCrae: Including Kalashnikov. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: The Kalashnikov voice, the voice of the ant, the fly. And on and on. But I contradicted myself, which felt good. It's still problematic. But then I was surprised, and it may not be 100% true, but I was kind of cautiously poetically weirdly happy that a man from Senegal and New York said I was in the vicinity of weird accuracy. The only accuracy a poem can have. >> Tom Sleigh: Weird accuracy. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It's weird accuracy. >> Tom Sleigh: I agree. Yeah. What's funny -- I'll just say that, you know, Robert Frost once said that, you know, just in response to this, because he had an idea of cultural appropriation -- yeah, because I did, you know, poets in new schools too. And there was a lot of that kind of talk around at the same time. And it was always complicated because -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It's complicated. >> Tom Sleigh: What you really wanted to say was -- Robert Frost did a really smart thing once. He said he didn't really -- the thing that he really wanted was the freedom of his material. And that seemed to me like if you were a poet, that's the thing that is most important to you. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's your thing. >> Tom Sleigh: You know, and so if you, you know, if you break other person's rules, that fine. You know, but you know for myself, you know, in writing about what I feel like I owe the people that I write about -- you know, like that Libyan guy, for example. You know, I was very aware that his experience was -- I mean, in many ways it was radically different than mine, but in many ways it was weirdly similar. Because like for -- the story that he told me about Gaddafi and what it was like growing up under Gaddafi was strangely similar, because he said what would happen was, you know, when he was a kid, they didn't have any television stations. So -- matter of fact, they only had one, really, and that was the one. And -- but they didn't have much entertainment. So he was watching -- when he was a little boy he remembered watching a series, an animated series about a baby bee that got separated from its mother and wants to find his mother. And just as they get to the climatic episode, Colonel Gaddafi comes on and begins to blather on about Pan-Africanism. So he says there was that element of it. And then he said, you know, later on there was another program about a little boy who wanted to become a soccer star, and like just about the moment he was going to make the team, and again, last episode, which he never got to see, there Colonel Gaddafi is talking about the Green Book. So, you know, I'm really aware -- at the same time, I'm thinking, yeah, well I -- when I was a kid I watched stupid television shows like that and really got deeply invested in them and I thought, well, there's a kind of intersection between his childhood and my childhood even at the same time as, you know, you know, I mean, I've been in war zones, but I never fought in a war. Not even close. You know what I mean? And so the thing that I wanted to do was in a way when I was writing something about him is I wanted to -- first thing to acknowledge is, well, this is what -- there is where we have in common, but these are the areas for me that, you know, I just have to acknowledge the limits of what I know. And I think if there's a way of building that into the poem, then this whole issue about -- is this your material? Is that my material? It just seems -- it seems silly to me at the end of the day. And the fact of the matter is if you feel compelled to take on this material, well, then you let other people sort it out. You know? And they will. I mean, they will, you know. One of the things I find really strange right now is a kind of -- this phenomena of internet shaming, which I just find very, you know, very, very, you know, it's troubling and disturbing. And one of the things about the -- doing the kind of, you know, writing about subjects that are sort of located in cultures that are very different than your own is just being able to acknowledge the limits of what you can know. >> Fiona McCrae: In one of your recent poems, there's a line. Your first line is "You've got to put your pants on in the house of fact." >> Tom Sleigh: Right. Yeah, you've got to put your pants on right. "Put your pants on in the house of fact." It's a very important thing to do. Yeah. >> Fiona McCrae: So as long as you kind of -- >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah. >> Fiona McCrae: There's something that's going back to -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: But you have to find the house of fact; otherwise, your pants will fall down. >> Tom Sleigh: Exactly. The house of fact is being ruined every minute. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: But what -- you're right. It's about -- it's about connecting, where we can connect. You're right. It's about compassion and suffering. And that's where I wanted to go. And I didn't mess with cultural practices. I didn't mess with one-dimensionality. I wanted to make the people we thought were terrible -- like the Janjaweed the actual paramilitary. So I got to bring that character into this piece. That's going to be impossible, because I don't have -- I don't have any idea about that person. And there's nothing really written about Janjaweed. So how am I going to do this? How am I do this? Because if I leave that character out, I'm going to leave a big piece out, because this is the killer. So I've got to bring that -- I'm going to have to challenge myself and jump into the hot griddle and throw myself into boiling chili sauce. And so I brought that character in, in a radio show. I threw a radio show in the middle of the book, hosted by Bart Crimson. And then Bart Crimson is the host, the anchor dude who's very nasty, and he really pushes this guy, which I like doing that. I like to have that pushy anchor. You know? "Come on. What do you mean you don't know about those bombs? Will you get with the story? You know what you've done. Just come on. Get to the story. Only got 30 seconds." So I made that radio host like that, then I made the Janjaweed more like, "Oh well, I did have a dream, and there were bodies, and the chest was opened up. The chest was open." "Oh, so all of a sudden you got feelings, huh?" So then the -- so I kind of turned -- I turned this around as best as I could. And I enjoyed doing that. And that gave me a little -- a little room to bring in those characters. But then again, we don't know -- you know, I didn't know where I was going, and we don't know where we're going. The house of fact. >> Tom Sleigh: I went through a poem that used, you know, I want to do a poem in the voice of Charles Taylor, a war criminal. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Yeah. Like that, like that. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah. And so -- and so there's a way in which you can -- I think it's really how you pitch it, in fact, because Charles Taylor and this poem is the sort of -- it's kind of a composite of my past, as well as being, you know, the historical Charles Taylor. And it's an interesting, you know, problem because basically what you're trying to do is -- as far as I'm concerned, you're trying to make a credible voice that will fit inside a poem. And I think that's the important thing. A credible voice that will fit inside a poem. It doesn't have to be -- >> Juan Felipe Herrera: "The" voice. >> Tom Sleigh: Yeah, "the" voice. But a credible voice. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And then we don't even know -- we don't think about that. We're not thinking. We got the feeling for it, right? >> Tom Sleigh: No, it's the idiom. When you get the words and you get the idiom right, then you don't worry about it so much. Yeah. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Yeah. >> Fiona McCrae: Well, it seems like -- from [inaudible] again, Juan, again you're saying it's this or throughout this conversation -- we've put this conversation. We've gone the mind, the material and connecting. It feels kind of a nice -- the mind where you invent it. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And the house of fact. >> Fiona McCrae: In the house of fact. >> Tom Sleigh: One of your [inaudible] house of fact. >> Fiona McCrae: I think we're ready to have Jim come back. We thank you both very much, and thank you all for coming. [ Applause ] >> It's indeed an honor to be in the presence of two such great poets. >> Fiona McCrae: Such great anthropologists. >> And my publisher. It's my job to give the benediction, and it will be brief, blissfully. But I want to urge those and you in the room to embrace the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress -- a great group run by a great man. >> Fiona McCrae: Here, here. >> And the National Council of the Graywolf Press, which is open to everyone. You know, the word that I'd like to hit on tonight with regard to Graywolf is non-profit. And non-profit means we that rely very heavily to sustain the excellent work that Fiona and her staff do on contributors and the community of readers and literature fans around the country. And we hope you'll embrace the council as well, and we'd love to have you learn more about it. Before you leave tonight, I think you can still get a glass of wine, but we also have some books from Tom and Juan Felipe who -- I think they'll be able to inscribe them for us, and some catalyzed book lists for your perusal and to take with you. And you have my thanks for coming to University Club tonight. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.