>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Silence ] >> Hello everyone, welcome to the final event of Rosanne Cash's residency here at the Library of Congress. My name is Rob Casper. I'm the Head of the Poetry and Literature Center here and I'm happy to welcome you on the calm night before the storm to come here in Washington, D.C. So, for the past two nights Miss Cash has performed with her band and with a round robin of other musicians in the Coolidge Auditorium, which is just downstairs from here. But, we're happy to be up here in this room in a much more intimate space with all of you to have an onstage conversation about how songwriting connects to poetry. And we're thrilled to have Miss Cash here with our 19th Poet Laureate consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress, Natasha Trethewey. Many of you, I'm hoping many of you, remember a night like this seven years ago when Poet Laureate Ted Kooser talked with singer-songwriter John Prime. Tonight's conversation hopefully establishes a tradition in which our laureates speak with songwriters about the power of lyric language. And there are no two better practitioners of the art than the two people sitting to my immediate left. You can read more about both Rosanne Cash and Natasha Trethewey in your program. But, let me just say that I think both engage with the past and the grand traditions they come from to sing us into the future. Before we begin let me also ask you to turn off your cellphones and any electronic devices you have that might interfere with the event tonight. Thank you. And let me tell you a little bit about the Poetry and Literature Center here at the Library of Congress. In addition to being the home of the Poet Laureate and before that the Consultant of Poetry we have hosted readings, lectures, symposia and celebrations of all shapes and sizes for over 75 years. To find out more about our programs you can visit our website, www.loc.gov/poetry and you can also sign up on our signup sheet, which is in the back of this room. And there are some materials about upcoming events that we have in the spring. I would also like to make a shout out to the library's Music Division, which is hosting Miss Cash's residency. It puts on an unrivaled series of concerts throughout the year. Please visit their website, www.loc.gov/concerts to find out more. Much thanks to Sue Vita and Anne McLean of the Music Division and to Rosanne Cash's manager Danny Khan for all their work to make tonight's event possible. So-- yes, yes, indeed. [ Applause ] So, we're going to have a conversation for 30 or 40 minutes or so and then, we're going to open up the floor to questions from you. And hopefully your questions will connect the two of them as we will do and connect both songwriting and poetry. There was a question I feel like I had to ask and I wanted to find the best way of asking this question, and we had to sort of get through it to continue on with our conversation tonight. So, my first question is both of you have fathers who are practitioners of your art. Given that, what might the two of you already know about each other and what might you want to know? >> Natasha Trethewey: Hmm, that's pretty good Rob. Well, I must say that I was really taken with the interview that you did with Terry Gross about the list. And of course, if you-- if any of you in the audience heard it then, you know that Rosanne was talking about this list of 100 songs that her father told her she needed to know right, to be-- >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: A singer-songwriter. And I remember thinking that there was a similarity but also something that was very different in the way that you were describing what your father did for you in that instance. I remembered that I had always asked my father for those kinds of things. My father was my first professor of creative writing when I went to graduate school, so I was in his class. And so, I was getting you know that kind of thing from him in class, but what it really reminded me of was at that point when I was in graduate school I knew I wanted to be a poet. My father and I were in New Orleans and we were walking down the street in the quarter and we stopped in front of a doorway, because we could hear the lovely voice of a singer you know coming out of the doors. And I kind of listened for a moment and then said very wistfully, oh I wish I could sing. And my father said to me how are you going to be a poet if you can't sing? And for that moment I was pretty devastated. I still can't sing, but I think I sort of steeled myself to figure out a way to make my poems like song. >> Rosanne Cash: That's interesting, because I strive to make my songs through lyrics be able to stand alone on the page without their melody, so. >> Natasha Trethewey: We're doing the same thing. >> Rosanne Cash: I think so. >> Natasha Trethewey: But, you could probably sing my poems and I could not-- I could say your songs. >> Rosanne Cash: Well-- >> Natasha Trethewey: Because you wouldn't want me to sing them, but I-- >> Rosanne Cash: I don't know. My songs coming from you might sound kind of like dah dut dah dut dah dut dah, you know. I-- you stick with your poems. But, what I-- what interests me about that and I hadn't really thought about it in this way about what fathers give to their daughters is that there is a certain gentleness and ease in what a father gives a daughter. There's not that sense of urgency or kind of proprietorship that fathers have with sons to be like them. So, for me anyway what my father gave me was with complete freedom and generosity. >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, I think I also never felt pressured to do what my father does. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: But, I wanted to do it too. >> Rosanne Cash: Same here. >> Natasha Trethewey: And I think it is that kind of tenderness or gentleness that you're talking about. And the ways that he sort of instilled the importance of poetry in me. On long trips my father would say if you get bored why don't you write a poem about it. So, it was something I was always doing. >> Rosanne Cash: That's so smart of him. [laughter] That's interesting. My father passed on a love of literature and poetry to me as well in songs, of course. But, he liked really I guess what you would call folk-art [inaudible] poem-- poets. They were very simple. There was a poem-- a poet named Will Carlton and he wrote about rural life and a preacher who went to the Holy land and then talked about it endlessly until he bored his congregation. You know his poems would be about these very small pictures of rural life and I used to read those poems to him in the last few years of his life. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yea. Well, my father used to dream of being a country singer. >> Rosanne Cash: That is so funny. >> Natasha Trethewey: I mean there was a point I remember in his life where you know he you know had a couple of glasses of wine and said-- came in and said I'm going to Nashville honey. You know way after you might think of someone making that journey to Nashville to make a career. But, he-- I think it-- on one of those nights I used to sit out on his porch in the country and he tried to teach me to play the guitar. >> Rosanne Cash: Did he play guitar? >> Natasha Trethewey: He does, yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: He plays the guitar and you know he'd be singing some Lead Belly song and you know trying to teach me. And I could never do it. But, we both wrote poems about that night. He finished his and published it. The poem of mine, "Guitar Lesson" that I tried writing has never been one that I have felt was finished, successful enough to go out in the world. But, I've been trying to write about him trying to teach me that. >> Rosanne Cash: But, in a way you did, because your poetry has an element of the blues in it. You know so maybe you-- >> Natasha Trethewey: It worked its way in. >> Rosanne Cash: It worked its way in. I think so. I mean to me it does. That kind of southern swampy dark edged-- oh, love it. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Well, I'm interested in talking about the power and tradition. And one thing I realized in referencing the list is what it must be like for a musician to be inspired, a songwriter to be inspired to write her own songs as opposed to playing songs that you know and have been passed down and you find a way musically to, to-- and have it differently. And I wondered if there is a parallel in that for poets too? That kind of need to think through, feel through these, these great songs, these great poems and then also sort of juxtapose that with the poems and the songs that you write yourself. >> Rosanne Cash: Well, it certainly provides a standard for the kind of songs you want to write. And I used to write down the lyrics. Like I would read the lyric on a page of what I thought was a great song and then I would rewrite it for myself to dismantle it and figure out why it worked. Why? What made that a great song? You know just breaking down the rhyme scheme, how a pattern would repeat or an image that showed up in the first verse would then tie up the song at the end of the last verse. Why was that so powerful? And then, you know as someone who wanted to be a songwriter to try to replicate that in my own writing in steel as quietly as I could, you know. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. That was something I wanted to ask you about so I'm glad you asked her Rob, because you also talked about when you did inhabit those songs on the list and what it meant for you to sing songs that you hadn't written. And I was thinking about how-- I know that you also write fiction and that fiction writers will often give an assignment to students to actually just copy, write out a story in longhand that someone else has already written to sort of feel it in the body and in-- you know in your hand writing it. And I was thinking about how I'd never done that, but I use imitation all the time for myself and with my students and it's exactly what you say. When you're imitating a poem line by line I'm looking at the pattern of imagery in the syntax and the caesuras in the poem and how it does what it does. And I feel like when my students do that, because at first they're a little nervous about imitation. >> Roseanne Cash: Um huh. >> Natasha Trethewey: Because it-- they think it means copying. And I have to assure them that it's just like form and whatever material they have to pour into the form will be different. But, once they do it they often write some of the best poems. And I think some of-- you know some of the poems I've been happiest with are poems of mine that are deeply influenced by-- >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: The movement, the rhetorical and syntactical structure of a poem I loved. >> Rosanne Cash: That I find the very same thing and also as an adjunct to that I think it's really important to know the tradition you're writing in. If you don't know who wrote these kind of poems or who wrote these kind of songs that came before you, you know you're at sea. It's so-- I can't-- see I work with young songwriters sometimes and I can't stand it if they're writing in a you know a strict folk tradition and they haven't listened to any other folk songwriters. But, I was going to say something else about that, about imitation and inspiration, but it'll come back. >> I thought it would also be fun to talk about historic persona, which is something that Natasha uses a lot in her poetry and something that you turn to in your latest album that you're here in residence to promote. What did that mean to you to take on these voices, these historic voices? And how might that be different seeing them than writing them in a poem? >> Rosanne Cash: Well, I just remembered what I was going to say-- >> Natasha Trethewey: Okay. >> Rosanne Cash: And it answers that question. >> Natasha Trethewey: Oh, good. >> Rosanne Cash: The-- I had always wanted to write a song in the tradition of those great Appalachian and Celtic ballads, story ballads. Some of them were very long, many, many versus. And I particularly like the war ballads, which always had a heartbreaking end. And I had never gotten to that. That had been something I've been kind of reaching for, for a long time and I wrote one for this last album. I co-wrote it with my husband John Leventhal and my ex-husband Rodney Crowell, actually co-wrote the song together. And it's a Civil War ballad based on two of my real ancestors, William Cash and Mary Ann Cash and I had ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War, so I left it ambiguous in the song whether he was confederate or union. And then, the couple become a metaphor for the union, their union, the union of the country. And it was an incredibly satisfying experience, because one it was a third person narrative, which I wanted to write in that tradition, that ballad tradition. And I co-wrote with both my husbands so that-- [laughter] >> Hopefully they didn't echo the Civil War in any way. >> Rosanne Cash: That would be too much content and content. >> But, songs seem to be so much a part of the culture of the country. And when you think about soldiers sitting by the campfire singing songs to one another maybe songs have a different kind of frame of reference pointing to the past. I don't know. I'm curious. What do you think? >> To the past. >> To how we, how we express ourselves, how people express ourselves, how people express themselves. How, how we think through poetry, we as a culture engage through poetry and engage through song? >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, it sounds like you're talking a little bit about, well the role of the ballad-- >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: Which is you know what Roseanne was just talking about that they help us to record the cultural memory of a people. Those stories that are illustrative of the particular historical moment and the values that the people had during that time. So, they do help us sort of know something about the past. >> Let me ask you in a simple yes or no way. Do you think that, do you think that whether or not it's a sung ballad or it's a persona poem, you know a sequence of sonnets matters? Does that shift in form matter? Do they do something different for us? >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, I suppose in both cases you want something to be memorable and rhyme or the musicality of song is what helps us to remember things and to make that story memorable. So, I don't know if that's what accounts for a particular difference whether it's the ballad or the persona poem, because I also think it's about voice as well that hearing the intimacy of a voice is also what helps us connect to a particular time and place. >> Rosanne Cash: And let's not forget-- I mean we're kind of talking about the lyric quality, but you know a lot of songs require a backbeat, you know. If you read the Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter" on the page it's kind of cool, but you got to have that driving backbeat-- >> Yeah, yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: Or else it's not, "Gimme Shelter" anymore. >> What's it like to read your, read your-- we all love, "Gimme Shelter." But, what's it like to read-- >> Rosanne Cash: Just a shot away. >> Yea. I guess if you said just a shot away it doesn't really work the same way. >> Rosanne Cash: Right. >> But, you read your song lyrics to yourself right and? >> Rosanne Cash: Oh sure. >> And do you think-- >> Rosanne Cash: You mean when I'm editing or as I write? >> Um huh. >> Rosanne Cash: Of course, yeah. >> And at what point do you start actually singing them? >> Rosanne Cash: Well, now that's an in-- that's-- the question I think you're saying is which comes first music or lyrics. And the answer is both, because it comes in all different ways. Sometimes I have a complete lyric or a partial lyric yet it doesn't have a melody and the melody comes later. Sometimes I'm co-writing and somebody else is writing the music. Sometimes I have a melody with nothing to it and I go through reams of lyric ideas to get something or something sparks. You know I mean it-- you know it happens a million different ways. >> Natasha Trethewey: That's right. >> Roseanne Cash: If it-- if you knew how it was going to happen, if it was predictable it wouldn't be poetry and songwriting anymore. It would be something else. >> Natasha, do you, do you listen to yourself read poems? Do you ever record yourself reading poems? And do you always read the poems at some point in the process of writing them? >> Natasha Trethewey: Oh, the whole time that I'm writing them. I don't think I could write them without hearing them and feeling them, you know. I'm tapping my feet as I write them and hearing and feeling the music in that way. But, of course, it's different. You know I'm thinking about how the struggle I think of trying to create a kind of musicality in poems. I mean this is something that you and I have talked about. Rob and I have talked about this and I'll just confess it. This feels very much like a confession. But, I feel like because I grew up loving the rhythm of syntax, I love sentences and I hear the rhythm of syntax. And yet, sometimes you can read a poem, a particular poet and be so focused on perhaps content or the way that imagery is used that the musicality might wash over you in such a way that you don't take notice of it, you know. Well, I think T.S. Eliot talked about that just that you know some poems we attend to the sense and let the sound wash over us. And in others we attend to the sound, the sonnet qualities and let the sense wash over us. And I think maybe, because I'm not musically inclined it you know in some ways, like I couldn't sing when I heard that woman singing in New Orleans. I-- I'm always drawn to attending to the sense, but feel the music when it's there. And so, you know I'm very attentive with that with my own work. So it's always surprising to me if you know allow myself a moment of reading a critic who doesn't realize how musical my poems are. There I said it. >> Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: And I think it's because maybe they're just attending to the sense, you know the content. >> Rosanne Cash: I think your poems are incredibly musical. I would say you're a great musician. [laughter] >> Well, that's interesting too, because in your book in "Composed" it seems like you use poets and poetry when someone's doing something you know greatly as a songwriter you talk about them being a poet or you wanted to get into the poetry of a song in the process. Do you think the same way too to say to Natasha that you think of her as a musician is a way to sort of celebrate something, something you know that we might not turn to, to poetry to hear, but is always there? >> Rosanne Cash: Oh God, yea. The rhythm and the melodic lyricism of her poetry and any great writer, you know. I mean Tolstoy was musical in the way he wrote. There's-- in great prose there's always a melody, always. And sometimes it's very subtle and sometimes it's jarring. I mean you know when I write prose that's the-- because I'm a songwriter and I feel a little more awkward writing prose, the first thing I try to do is find where the melody is, you know. And I like syntax too and I like grammar. I like punctuation. >> Natasha Trethewey: Um huh, me too, you know. >> What's your favorite punctuation? [laughter] >> Rosanne Cash: Some kind of diacritic probably. An umlaut. >> Alright. But, when you say, when you say for instance, he is a poet of the dirt about a songwriter what are you saying? What are you tapping into? If calling a poet a musician is tapping into the kind of melodic structure. When you're saying a songwriter is a poet what are you tapping into? >> Rosanne Cash: I think Bruce Springsteen is one of the greatest American living songwriters. And if you look at his songs like for instance, look at his album, "Nebraska." The landscapes he paints and the characters he draws are as vivid as any John Ford movie. And the fact that he does that, that you could read the lyrics and feel just as moved as you do when you hear his voice in the melodies you know that's very hard to do. And the best songwriters do that, you know or if Steve wrote a song like, "Jerusalem," which I think is one of the greatest-- I'm a Steve Earle fan. >> [inaudible background comments] >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. I've worked with him several times. But, to so simply without proselytizing write this anti-war song that just is about the details, the guns and the-- you know the man on the TV, what he's saying. And how he tries not to believe what the man on the TV is saying, making it so personal yet so universal and doing it by those artifacts and real tangible details. >> Natasha Trethewey: You know have you-- you must have-- have you ever been willing to teach songwriting workshops? >> Rosanne Cash: I do, yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: I mean I did workshops and I've been guest teaching at NYU-- >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: For the songwriting program. >> Natasha Trethewey: Well so, what I want to know then is-- you know, because I teach poetry writing workshops. And I'll have students who come sometimes who you know want to be singer-songwriters and they come to the poetry workshop, because they think that it will help them write better songs. >> Rosanne Cash: That's really smart of them. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: I wish some of the people I worked with would do that. [laughter] >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, so I wanted to know what then maybe that's what you would say to them. I was going to ask you about what you might say to them, because obviously there's still this, as you pointed out before, there is some lyrics that are really good, but it's not the same without the melody. >> Rosanne Cash: Without the melody, yea. >> Natasha Trethewey: But that is-- >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah, it is a song. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: I mean-- >> Natasha Trethewey: And so, they had-- there's something a little-- I mean I'm sure there's plenty of songs that cross over that are both poetry. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: And if you don't need to hear their music and then you hear their music and then it's a whole other elevation of what's there. But, what do you say? Are you able to work with people who-- where you could see that the lyrics with whatever music might be really good. But, you want it to be even better as poetry. >> Rosanne Cash: I, I just think it's cheating to just make a lyric and service of a-- >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: You know a loop of some kind of you know just the melody of-- I mean by definition a song has both, right. And one-- I have a friend who says sometimes one line is the life support for the whole song you know and so you have to just start with that one line. And I had a mentor who used to say you have to throw out the best line in your song if it doesn't serve the whole song. Take that line and start something else, but you know be ruthless. Be ruthless in your editing. So, about being married to melody I think you have to have contrast. Like a song that is very bordering on sentimental and that is about you know deep feelings, if you put that with a really sentimental melody it's just going to collapse in on itself. So, that might be served by something that was more driving and jarring and vice versa. I mean that's oversimplification, but you know that's part of how I work with them. >> Natasha Trethewey: The thing about throwing away the line too, I mean that was a lesson to learn and to be willing too, you know because sometimes you have a line and you think this is the whole poem. This is the whole reason I wrote the poem. >> Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: And then, at some point it doesn't belong in the poem anymore and it's so hard to take it out. >> Rosanne Cash: I know. >> Natasha Trethewey: But, you know you've reached a new place in your writing life when you can take it out-- >> Yea. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: And put it away for later. >> Rosanne Cash: The danger is being so proud of yourself-- >> Natasha Trethewey: Yes. >> Rosanne Cash: That you-- for you leaving that line. I don't care. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. I told a student of mine just the other day who was feeling reluctant about revising a poem that one of the things that happens when you start writing a poem and you have a draft of it you get the music of it even if it's not great yet in your head. And then, changing it seems like your destroying this necessary music. >> Rosanne Cash: Um huh. Um huh. >> Natasha Trethewey: So, it's hard to force yourself to change that music for better music. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. That's the hard work of it, right. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. That's the fun work. >> Rosanne Cash: You know I find one thing in working with other-- I mean you can't teach songwriting. You-- but I can work with them and talk with them about their songs. But, one thing I think songwriters want to do when they're starting out is to write about themes, to write about love and forgiveness and loss. And going but yea, but what happened, you know. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah right. >> Rosanne Cash: Did they throw a glass against the wall or did the-- was it raining, you know? Were you sweeping the floor? What happened? >> Natasha Trethewey: The concrete versus the abstract. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: I hear myself saying it every day. >> Natasha, is there something about those students that come into your class wanting to be songwriters that seems different than the other students who are there? Do you notice something, a different kind of sensibility? >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, I think it was really what Roseanne just said, the themes. I mean and certainly students who come in just wanting to write poetry also at times begin with those big abstractions. But, I do see that I think with-- but I think you know that-- you know as Rosanne said they're smart for trying to focus on language. >> Rosanne Cash: It's fascinating to me the similarities here, you know. It's so interesting. I imagine that you know E.L. Doctorow would be saying the same things. >> Natasha Trethewey: Right. >> Rosanne Cash: His writing novels. >> Well, I've-- we asked both Natasha and Roseanne to give us examples, Rosanne to give an example of a poem she'd like to read and Natasha of a song that she'd like to discuss for songwriting. So, who would like to go first? Natasha? [laughter] So, we have-- well Natasha why don't you talk about the song that you selected and why and then, we'll play it for you. >> Natasha Trethewey: Oh, you are going to play it? >> Rosanne Cash: Yes. >> Its-- yes. >> Natasha Trethewey: Who, whoo hoo. >> Rosanne Cash: Right. >> Or maybe you just want to play it first and then discuss it? However you'd like to go. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yea. Let's just play it. That sounds good. >> Should we tell people the name of the song? >> Rosanne Cash: Are you going to tell them the name of it? >> Okay. We're going to listen to the song-- >> Natasha Trethewey: It's a surprise. >> And then we'll discuss. [ Music ] [ Silence ] [ Music ] >> Natasha Trethewey: So good. >> Alright. >> Natasha Trethewey: So-- >> So, you want to say-- >> Natasha Trethewey: That-- >> Say something about that song? >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, it illustrates exactly what we've been talking about, because you know the poem is focusing on concrete images to talk about this larger theme. I mean the themes that we hear have to do with you know the economics in this town that's been devastated because the coal yard isn't operational anymore. And there's no reason for this train to come through anymore. And the workers who would have been drawing their pay in the coal yard aren't getting paid anymore and the coal cars on standing on empty. I mean it does all those things to tell us about that theme, but it gives us the most concrete details to do it. And I love each of those stanzas that she sings. And that was June Carter Cash, right? >> It was June Carter Cash. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. That's the version that I love, which is different than the one that you printed out from the writer. >> Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: And I love some of the changes that she makes when she sings it particularly in that last stanza about the dreaming of going down to the coal yard. But, I think as much as I loved every single one of those when I heard and saw the vivid imagery of I used to think my daddy was a black man. I mean so this guy who was employed, he was working and he came out of the mines with a black face and that meant they could go downtown and he had script. You know he had that money and he could stuff in the company store. But, now he's a white man, because there's no more coal and his face is white as February snow. That was the most powerful way of saying to me about the loss of those jobs and that way of living for the people in that song. That's what I try to tell my students to do. >> Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: What happened? >> Rosanne Cash: You know you brought up something really interesting with-- about changes. Over time the changes they make to these old songs and ballads. >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: So, fascinating to me, because a lot of those songs came from Elizabethan ballads and then came through the Appalachians and how the songs changed over time, because they were part of oral history until A.P. Carter went through the mountains and started collecting them, writing them down. But, there was a Carter family song called, "Merry Golden Tree" that Aaron Copland reappropriated and I listened to both of those back and forth like how he changed it. And of course, most people who listen to Copland would not know that the Carter family first sang that song and that he took from that, so interesting to me. >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, you know and one of the changes I just noticed it when we printed this out before coming and I just need to mention it as a-- so what here reads-- well there's some things that are left out of this. But, it's that last stanza and it reads here, "Last night I dreamed I went down, I went down to the office to get my payday like I've done before." But, June Carter Cash sings, "Last night I dreamed I went down to the coal yard to draw my pay as I had done before." That is so much better. >> Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: Coal yard versus office. >>Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: Even just sonically for me. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: I like the sound of coal yard better then office. >> Rosanne Cash: More evocative. >> Most definitely. Rosanne, if you sing it, if you do a cover of a song you change a few words do you ever secretly or not so secretly think to yourself this is a better thing that I did. >> Rosanne Cash: No. I don't change peoples' words. >> No, never change the words? >> Rosanne Cash: No. >> No. >> Rosanne Cash: No. That's-- I have a great story about that. I was performing at the Nobel Peace Prize concert not to drop peace prize. But, I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of artists on the bill and the final song was John Lennon's, "Imagine." And a very famous rock star-- I had one person. This very famous rock star had another and I had the verse that said imagine no religion. And he came up to me and he said could you change that, because you know my wife's family are very religious and it's going to offend them if you change that line? I said, "You want me to change John Lennon's line?" [laughter] And he goes, yeah. I mean it's no big deal you know, just change it. And so, we went back and forth for 20 minutes. I said, "I can't change John Lennon's line." I just can't. You know I'm physically incapable of doing that. So, the way we resolved it is that we switched verses so that he could change the line and I would pretend not to notice and I would sing the other verse. >> Did he get in any trouble for changing the line? >> Rosanne Cash: No. You know most people don't care about that, I guess. I care. >> Natasha Trethewey: You know that's like-- I feel the same way. I don't want to change when I'm reading a poem out load of someone else's. If I've never heard the person read it, all I have is the musical notation that is the lineation. >> Rosanne Cash: Uh huh. >> Natasha Trethewey: All I have is their line breaks, their use of the field of the page. And so, I try to read you know as close to what is given me as possible. >> Rosanne Cash: It's very hard with the internet now, because they do arbitrary line breaks. >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, that's what I was going to say. >> Rosanne Cash: They do that in songs as well. It drives me crazy. >> Natasha Trethewey: When I've seen it, you know and of course, it's when it's a poem of mine when all of the sudden the line breaks are different or the stanzas or if I had a step down second line and it's all flush left. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Natasha Trethewey: It's not the poem. >> Rosanne Cash: It's not the poem, I agree. I know. >> Well, speaking of poems would you like to read yours? >> Rosanne Cash: Oh, I am so nervous about reading this poem out loud in front of you. >> Natasha Trethewey: And see, it's not fair, because I didn't have to sing. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Rosanne Cash: Totally not fair. Oh, okay. >> You can do it. You can do it. >> Rosanne Cash: Alright. This is a poem by Philip Larkin. It's one of my favorite poems. It's called, "An Arundel Tomb." "Side by side, their faces blurred, the earl and countess lie in stone, their proper habits vaguely shown as jointed armour, stiffened pleat, And that faint hint of the absurd, the little dogs under their feet. Such plainness of the pre-baroque hardly involves the eye, until it meets his left-hand gauntlet, still clasped empty in the other and one sees, with a sharp tender shock, his hand withdrawn, holding her hand. They would not think to lie so long. Such faithfulness in effigy was just a detail friends would see, a sculptor's sweet commissioned grace thrown off in helping to prolong the Latin names around the base. They would not guess how early in their supine stationary voyage. The air would change to soundless damage, turn the old tenantry away. How soon succeeding eyes begin to look, not read. Rigidly they persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths of time. Snow fell, undated. Light each summer thronged the glass. A bright litter of birdcalls strewed the same bone-riddled ground. And up the paths the endless altered people came, washing at their identity. Now, helpless in the hollow of an unarmorial age, a trough of smoke in slow suspended skeins above their scrap of history, only an attitude remains. Time has transfigured them into untruth. The stone fidelity they hardly meant has come to be their final blazon, and to prove our almost instinct almost true, what will survive of us is love." >> You did an amazing job, seriously. That was perfect. >> Rosanne Cash: No pressure. [applause] >> Rosanne Cash: I've read that poem many times, so. >> Well, and just like Natasha when she talked to me about, about that song focused on one particular moment. In your memoir you focus on one particular moment in that poem, if we could talk about that. >> Rosanne Cash: Yea. Well, there's two lines in that-- in the poem that just move me so deep. I mean the whole poem moves me, but the snow fell undated, that sense of timelessness like it could be any time at their tomb. You know these people who once lived who have been lying here for centuries and the snow just keeps falling every year, you know. It could be 1520. It could be 2130. But, the line that I quoted in my memoir, "Was time has transfigured them into untruth." And that's a very powerful thing to think about when your parent is famous, that the truth of this person has been mythologized. It's been turned into something that's partially true and partly myth. And so, that's why I like that line so much. >> Yeah, yeah. You know I know it's interesting that both of you picked poems, a poem and a song that did connect to family in such a powerful way and that-- >> Rosanne Cash: It's my stepmother singing that song, which is really weird. >> Yes. >> Natasha Trethewey: And I did not choose it because of that, I want you to know. >> So, I'm wondering-- we have a little bit time of left. I'm wondering if you all have questions. We have a couple of mics we're going to pass around. So, if you don't mind just waiting for the mic so we can make sure to get the-- get your question into-- as part of the recording. >> Check. >> You should know that by answering a question-- we're recording this for a webcast, so by asking a question you're giving us permission to run your-- run it. You're second. You're first, yeah. No. Go ahead, go ahead, yeah. >> We have one over here. >> Okay. So, let's go to you first. >> Great poem, great song. On the song the mandolin intro casts that dark iron range kind of tension that you can cut with a knife right from the get go. In the first couple of measures you can pick that out as oh, this is that song from that tradition. If you had to create an instrumental intro to that poem to cast the same kind of here's the mood, lyrics coming how would you go about doing that? >> Rosanne Cash: Wow. That is a great question. What's your name sir? [laughter] >> My name's James and-- >> Rosanne Cash: Hi. >> I work here in the library. >> Rosanne Cash: Wow. French horn, something sad and I guess like Barbara Zadazio [assumed spelling] for strings would be too obvious. But, something that's sad, but kind of a little off key slightly. You know how a horn-- yeah. There is a sweetness, but Larkin was not sweet. You know he was kind of hardened, so maybe that's something. You know how in like in Renaissance plays like the instruments are different. They're not modern instruments and they sound slightly out of tune, but some of them are very sweet and sad, maybe something like that, whatever that instrument is. [laughter] >> [inaudible] reading a poem, set a mood before you actually start the reading of a poem? [ Silence ] >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, I think that-- do you mean just for the individual poem in the context of a reading or-- okay. Because I do think that this is something I do think about that you know when you go to a poetry reading and sometimes you'll hear the poet either do a little banter you know between poems or explain something that you want the ear to be able to pick up on. My father always used to say to me that the ear is stupid and that there are a few things that you might need to say so that people who are not actually reading can pick up on. But, I think that what I like to do, and I think this may be because I'm sort of a grave poet in a way. A lot of my poems in an elegiac mode whether they're about family or history that I'm happiest when I'm able to create a mood of that kind of reverent silence, so that that means me not talking or trying to be friendly or make jokes between the poems. And it's sometimes hard to do that, because it's hard for me to go up in front of a room of people and not want to be-- I want to be liked. And so, that means maybe I should say something between that will do that. But, sometimes it's better to just let the quiet be the thing instead of my own desire for you to like me. >> Rosanne Cash: That's great. That's very brave, because we go up and we want to be liked. And so, we end up kind of frittering away the energy sometimes. >> Right. Thank you for this evening very much. A simple question in terms of collaboration, could you speak to how that works for you? There are of course, great songwriting teams, Rogers and Hammer and so forth. But, I think of writing as a kind of initial inspiration on one person's part. So, writing by committee or some-- but nevertheless obviously great collaborations happen and you and treat us with the familial one that you were describing. So, if you can talk a little bit about that perhaps. >> Rosanne Cash: Well, you've heard of Lennon and McCartney, right? So, collaboration does work. I collaborate. I used to be averse to collaborating. I wanted to write everything myself. It had to be all my thoughts, my rhymes and I was very territorial about my songs. As I've gotten older I want to collaborate more and I know it's very different from poetry. But, I play-- I like to play to someone's strength and have them play to mine. Like the songs on my new record, 10 of the 11 I wrote the lyrics and my husband wrote the music. And then, the third one I collaborated on the lyrics on the Civil War ballad. So, I don't-- I think in collaboration you want to find a person where the sum is greater than the parts you know, where there's some kind of chemistry and understanding. And for instance, my husband is a great, great musician and he hears voicings and chord changes and orchestral things that I don't hear. So, I use him. [ Laughter ] [ Silence ] >> [inaudible background comments]. >> Third round. Thank you. >> Thank you. So, I wanted-- you mentioned chemistry, which is exactly where-- I think it was Krista Tippett interview that you did where you talked about your interests and discussions and astrophysics if I'm not mistaken. >> Rosanne Cash: No, theoretical physics. >> Theoretical physics. >> Rosanne Cash: Yeah. >> Like, easy. And I was curious to take sort of the looking home out into sort of the cosmos, which is I think a mirror image. And it also connects to poetry, because friends of mine who in their graduate school group in chemistry there was a tradition. They were led by a Nobel chemist and there was a tradition of writing poetry. It was kind of like a competition in their group that took them beyond the chemistry that they were doing. And they were competing in poetry as well as chemistry. And so, I see something that's kind of informing both of you. And I'd be interested how you perceive that feeding back into whatever threads of your lives, of your creative output. >> Rosanne Cash: You mean looking out into the universe-- >> Yes. >> Rosanne Cash: Uh huh. Well, I mean that's why I'm interested in quantum physics, because of all of the weird-- well number one, the language of it is so poetic, you know. The event horizon, the-- you know all of these-- I can't think of anymore right now. But, I read them and I go ooh. It's so good for why a particle and wave, light is particle and wave, you know. So, that in itself just the language is very inspiring. But, I mean it's-- I like to be awed. I like to you know try to grasp what my mind is never going to be able to grasp. And I like touching things that feel timeless or that feel like time travel. I mean many of the songs that I just wrote are about that very thing you know, how a place can be part of time travel. The place exists in your past, in the past of your family and it exists in the future for your children. And the place is the nexus of the time travel. And I mean all of that-- I'm not a traditionally religious person, so theoretical physics kind of has a religious aspect to it. There's-- it's so big and you know maybe if I screw up there's a parallel life, one I'm doing really well in, so I mean it's all inspiration. >> Natasha Trethewey: Well, I liked how you, you know you started with the words. The-- those words that are so exciting, the language. And then, you know just as I was thinking that we couldn't be any more similar you said you're not a very religious person. And I had been thinking as you were talking about being drawn to the language of thing, the language of science or for me the language of religious ceremony. And once I-- you know I began to think about this that I'm not a religious woman so why am I drawn so to the language of religious ceremony. So, it's not just the beauty of the words, but so often-- well not so often, but always the words in their original Greek or Latin had secular meanings. And it's-- and in that way they are about the past. They are a way to time travel in the words themselves. Every word is a poem, because of its long history and where you know it may take us from our usage now to all the other usages before that. >> [Inaudible background comment] >> Natasha Trethewey: It would great. >> Okay. Go ahead. >> I have a mini challenge for you. I teach third grade and every year and in the spring we start a poetry unit. And these are eight year olds, so they just learned ABCs a year and a half to two years ago so you can't use words like secular. You can't use words like syncope. How do you describe what poetry is to an eight year old in a vocabulary that's very small? >> Natasha Trethewey: Now, you do know I wrote my first significant poems when I was in the third grade. Do you know this about me? So, let me tell you, because I think it's a good story. But, my third grade teacher taught us a lot of poetry and I began writing poems. And I was even writing poems about historical figures particularly certain African American heroes. I mean I remember my odes to Martin Luther King Jr. that I wrote in the third grade. And my third grade teacher and the librarian of my school bound these poems and put them in the school library, so my first publication happened then. And I think that's-- >> Aw, that's so great. >> Natasha Trethewey: Got to be one of the reasons that I continue to be a poet. But, I think it's easier for me to talk about it, because I've witnessed a second grade teacher who was an amazing teacher. I visited her class and she was teaching this second grade class a poem of mine. And so, I got to hear these students in the second grade talk about this poem and then, to make some of their own. And she talked about pictures and she-- and I think maybe she used that word to explain image. But, she talked about picture and she talked about story and she talked about memory, things that they remembered. And they were writing down what they remembered in as vivid visual detail as possible. Now, she didn't say vivid visual detail. She probably said you know make a picture in your head of what that day with your grandfather was like and describe it. And they did. [ Silence ] [ Inaudible whispering ] >> Thank you for a great discussion. >> Rosanne Cash: Hi Bob. >> Hi. How are you maestro, maestra? Would you-- both of you are very well educated people. Would you comment on the value of that education to your art and to your life? >> Rosanne Cash: You're better educated than I Natasha. >> Natasha Trethewey: I don't know. You had that list. >> Rosanne Cash: No, I-- well I didn't graduate from college. I-- my formal education ended early. I went to-- I did two years of college and then, I went to acting school for a few months and then, I went to Europe and made records. But, I feel that acutely that I didn't complete my education. I think about it quite often and I know another musician I was-- he was on the road with me and he also felt it very acutely. And so, we would go the bar after a show and make lists of books you know and we called ourselves the autodidact club. And you know then, we would have books discussions and we tried to you know up the ante just a little bit. But, you know education goes on. >> Natasha Trethewey: I feel the same way. I feel woefully undereducated. >> Rosanne Cash: What? >> Natasha Trethewey: Yeah. I feel the same way. I mean and that you just have to-- and you of-- you obviously don't sound that way at all, because you know you keep learning. You keep deciding you know there's so much more I need to know. What you need to know is endless and so you just feed-- >> Rosanne Cash: Endless. Yeah and I think staying curious is the key to a good education. But, I value formal education. I really do, very much. >> [Inaudible background comment]. >> Okay. >> Rosanne, what are you listening to right now? And Natasha, what are you reading right now? >> Rosanne Cash: You first Natasha. >> Natasha Trethewey: I know she asked you first. Okay. Well okay, you know there are a lot of things. But, some of the most significant things I feel like I've read lately were the work of some young poets that I've recently come across. And I'll-- so two of them, one is a young woman named Tarfia Faizullah who has a book coming out from Crab Orchard called, "Seam" in the spring, in March. And it's an amazing book. I haven't seen a debut like this in a long time. And also the work of a young poet from Detroit named Jamaal May, which is also-- his first book just came out, a really terrific book. And I just started rereading Joan Didion's, "The Year of Magical Thinking." And then, there's always like some history on the side. I'm-- you know I read, reread Robert Penn Warren a lot especially his, "Legacy of the Civil War" and, "Segregation." >> Rosanne Cash: I've been listening to some old field recordings lately a lot. There's this company called Dust to Digital, which is fantastic and they rescue old lacquered and vinyl recordings and digitize them so they won't be lost forever. Thank you Library of Congress for doing the very same thing. Yes. [applause] And I love this man named Washington Phillips who I've been listening to him a lot and some blues stuff, Howlin Wolf, some old gospel singers. There's this great song called, "John the Revelator." Do you know that song? Oh, so if you find one version of a song then you want to see who else did it and hear you know the differences through the decades, how it was done differently so I love doing that. And then, my friends give me their records. I've been listening to Billy Bragg and Joe Henry and Wesley Stace. And I think Billy Bragg just made the best record of his life. So, it's called, "Tooth and Nail." It's wonderful. >> So, maybe just one more question. >> Roseanne, in todays, "Washington Post" was a review for a recently published autobiography of your father. In the article the writer states that your father had to attempt 35 takes on one particular song. Have you ever had anything like that affect your creative process? >> Rosanne Cash: Yes. I remember in particular trying to get a vocal and you know in the early days I was really insecure about singing and I had a lot of fear about singing. And I was in the studio trying to get a vocal and I think three days went by trying to get the same vocal. Excuse me. And I finally left the studio for two weeks and said I'm quitting. This is [inaudible] I'm not doing this. I'm going to be a housewife. That's it. And you know that stuff just happens. We, we tried one song on the new record. We wrote two different complete melodies for the song and tossed them before the third one. And you know sometimes it's arduous. I have a friend who says sometimes it's magic, sometimes its work. So, 35 takes, that's a lot. But, he probably had a lot of drugs in his system. [laughter] And I say that lovingly. >> Natasha, I imagine you've had the same experience with a poem where you're just working on it over and over and over and over and over again. >> Natasha Trethewey: Some of them you know mostly go into a drawer and if I'm lucky five years later I'll pull it out and I can see what to do with it. And then, that's when it's more magic than the work that it was at first to get me to get to that moment. But, other ones have stayed there and I you know pull them out occasionally and it's just as arduous trying again and it doesn't work again and they get abandoned until the next time. >> Well, thank you to both of our wonderful guests on stage, Rosanne Cash, Natasha Trethewey. [ Applause ] [ Inaudible background conversation ] I do believe we have started a new tradition here at the Library of Congress, but harking you back to an old tradition there are books for sale in the back. And I'm sure that our poet and our songwriter would love to sign, so please do pick up their books, get-- bring them over to get signed and come to more events at the Library of Congress. Thanks a lot. [applause] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.