>> Robert Casper: Thank you, Lauren. And thanks to every here at the Hill Center for having us back for a remarkable sixth season of Life of a Poet. Of course, also, thanks to the amazing, wonderful, mind blowing Ron Charles and the Washington Post for their continued support of this series. >> Ron Charles: [Inaudible] lower expectations [laughter]. >> Robert Casper: So, I wrote a blog post today about this event and this series at the Library's Literary Blog, From the Catbird Seat Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress. And I talked about how magical this series is. What I said is that the next 75 minutes or so will be so moving and thought provoking. Will surprise us and focus us. And will ultimately show us how language can contend with our world in the most powerful and meaningful ways you can imagine. So, you better do that, Ron. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: It's really up to Carmen. >> Robert Casper: Before I begin, though, I'd like to tell you a little bit about the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library Congress. We are home to the U.S. Poet Laureate. And our new Laureate, Joy Harjo, will give her opening reading at our Thomas Jefferson building just down the street on Thursday, September 19th. I'm sad to say that yesterday we maxed out on registration for the event. But if you haven't already registered, we'll have a rush line. So, you should show up and be there. And get in. And at the very least, be in our overflow room and be part of the wonderful, exciting, momentous, historic occasion that is Joy Harjo's opening reading. To find out more about our events, to sign up for the blog I just talked about, or to help support us as part of our new Poet Laureate circle, you can visit our website, loc.gov/poetry. You should also have surveys on your seat. And we'd love to have you fill out those surveys. And let us know what you think about tonight's event. We use those for our future programming. So, please do so. And you can hand them to me or leave them on your seat after the event. Tonight's feature poet is Carmen Gimenez Smith. And I can't imagine a better way to kick of the Library's fall literary programming, than by hearing she and Ron talk about her work. I've known Carmen and her work for over a decade when we published her in my literary magazine, Jubilat. And we were just talking about how great that was. How exciting it was to have her in print in the magazine. And what I wanted to say formally is that when I think of poets I learned about through the magazine, Carmen is tops. I've evenly read her poetry collections. And I'm excited that her seventh Be Recorder is just out and available for purchase tonight thanks to East City Bookshop. And it's, as Laura said, right out there. The Library of Congress has had the great good fortune to feature Carmen in 2016 panel of Poetry, Publishing in Race. And I encourage you to check out the webcast at loc.gov. But this event will be something special. And it has been many years in the making too. I want to give special thanks to Letras Latinas, the Literary Institute at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, for their support of this Life of a Poet event and of Hispanic poetry. The Hispanic programming at the Library of Congress in general. And, in fact, I forget how many years back you participated in recording for the Hispanic divisions Archive of Hispanic Literature on tape. That's also worth checking online at loc.gov. If you want to find out more about Letras Latinas and the Institute, you can visit latinostudies.nd.edu. And now, Carmen. Carmen Gimenez Smith was born in New York. And currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she is a professor of English at Virginia Tech. Her other collections of poetry include Milk and Filth, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critic Circle Award. And Goodbye, Flicker, winner of the 2012 Juniper Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of the memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds, on Mothering, Art, Work and Everything Else, winner of the 2011 American Book Award. And she is co-editor of Angels of the Americlypse, New Latino Writing, published in 2014. The publisher of Noemi Press, Gimenez Smith is also a poetry editor of The Nation with Stephanie Burt. And a co-director of CantoMundo, a national organization that cultivates a community of Latinx poets through workshops, symposia and public readings. Please join me in welcoming her to Capitol Hill and the Hill Center. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much for coming. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I'm thrilled to be here. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: It's wonderful to have you here. And congratulations on your new book, which is wonderful. I highly recommend it to all of you. We're using a new sound system tonight, which is about as convenient as dancing in suits or armor [laughter]. But I will do my best. So, raise your hand if you can't hear me. In the first lines of your first poem of your new collection, Be Recorder, you write, people sometimes confuse me for someone else they know because they projected an idea onto me. What is this idea they've projected onto you? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I think it, part of what I am interested in thinking about race and identity is that personally we have, people of color have lots of different experiences. And their internal questions about who they are. But at. But often times, we're defined by who other people think we are. And, and so, my sense of how I'm perceived is just as a kind of, a generic brown body. And, you know, the idea that. Or like, kind of a replaceable body. And I guess some ways that you see that enacted is in the idea of like, well, we need a Latina poet. Who do we, you know, who do we have? As opposed to thinking about, who's writing great poems? Oh, let's invite that person. >> Ron Charles: So, that surprises me, you start there with liberals. [Laughter]. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Well, I think there. One of the other influences in my work is I guess its rap and I think about it as in the tradition of the troubadour. Or say, something like the guzzle, in which the poet kind of puts themselves as the interlocutor of the book. And my sense of that was, I wanted to set the tone. And I wanted to. Part of the poems ideas is reclamation of my subjectivity and in this particular way. And that is, that I'm not a generic face. And I've worked really hard to work against those assumptions. >> Ron Charles: Nobody is, right? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Nobody is. But I think when. So, you have someone like Trump talking about the Bahamas and saying that there are thugs and criminals. That's just code, right? Like, he's sort of doing this blanket. He's not the. You know, I think there's a way in which we all do that, including the most liberal of us, the most seemingly woke of us. We still have a lot of work to do to think about how we identify with each other. And how we can move away from using the immediate markers. And this is the utopian version of life. And see human beings and for all the things they are. But I think that poem is also informed by, I mean, revenge. You know, like this professor that I had who confused me for year, like, it wasn't like a one-time thing. It was several times, who convinced me, who confused me with another woman of color. Part of it is like, fuck you, you know, like here I am. Like, you know, now you should know who I am. >> Ron Charles: Read that poem for us, please. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Origins. People sometimes confuse me for someone else they know because they've projected an idea onto me. I've developed a second sense for this. Some call it paranoia. But I call it the profoundest consciousness on the face of the earth. This gift was passed on to me from my mother, who learned it from solid and socially constructed doors whooshing inches from her face. It may seem like a lie to anyone who has not felt the whoosh. But a door swinging inches from your face is no joke. It feels like being invisible, which is also what it feels like when someone looks at your face and thinks you're someone else. In graduate school, a teacher called me by another woman's name with, not even brown skin, but what you might call a brown name. That sting took years to overcome. But I got over it. And here I am with a name that's at the front of this object. A name I've made singular that I spent my whole life making. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: So much of your life and work are compressed in that poem. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes, for sure. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Really. Your fight against racism. The respect for your mother. Your struggle and successes of poet. Here I am with a name that's at the front of this object, your book. A name I've made singular that I've spent my whole making. And that's what I want to talk to you about tonight, is the life you've made. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Okay. >> Ron Charles: You spent making. In one of your poems you write, I grew up on the edge of your electrified fence like a weed. Put this in our place, puts you in your place. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: That childhood is why I'm a poet. Tell us about that childhood. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Wow. Where shall I begin? If there's so many interesting factors that I think if you come from a lower middle class or working-class background that are the small miracles that get you to a place in which you have, I don't know, access. And my brother. My brother. My father, for all his faults, was a veracious reader. And had all sorts of books in the house. A lot of them were for like business management or self-help. I read them all. Sort of I had no filter. I just read everything. And I got into the habit of just, I would go to garage sales, which is garage sales and flea markets were where I bought a lot of my books. So, it was a lot of like middle-aged ladies, you know, a lot of Danielle Steel, a lot of historical novels. So, it was very like self-put together experience. But it was also a very difficult childhood. And a lot of it, I think, the difficulties came from the challenges of my father, his desire for assimilation. And the reality of what assimilation would look like. And his sense of assimilation was just a natural progression into success. I mean, kind of being brainwashed by the American dream. But the fallout for my family. For his dreams, the fallout always landed in our laps. So, we moved around a lot. And we had like this weird phone thing when phone collectors would call. So, if family was call, would call, they would call twice and then. They would call, let it ring twice. And then hang up. And then, they would call again. So, it was just like this sense of like. >> Ron Charles: So, you knew it wasn't a bill collector? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: So, we knew it wasn't a bill collector. So, that's the code. So, the. Just the sense of like wanting the American dream. But also, being up against like the reality that it wasn't happening. It wasn't going to happen for us. But looking out onto the landscape and feeling like the story seems that it's happening to everybody else. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. TV, magazines. They all. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: TV, magazines. The mythology, yeah. And so, I think that I became. Because of the reading and because of how I was experiencing the world, I developed a really complex interior life that was fantastical. And the book, Goodbye, Flicker, is actually a chronicle of a lot of that magical world that I created that was very much based in fairy tales and that kind of stuff. But I guess the miraculous thing that happened along the way was that I was able to cultivate an aesthetic subjectivity, in a way in spite of my childhood that I developed kind of first on my own in an autodidact way. And I never quite lost that autodidact impulse. >> Ron Charles: Interesting. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: In the poem called, Sleep as Deep as Coma, it ends with these lines. When I was a girl, I collected reams of paper, smoothed by the white over and over. The hope of starting from blank. I hope to endure being well enough to conjure a new bright vessel because I wanted to live. So, you were going to write yourself into being. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Yeah. And I think also, mental illness. Writing gave me a way of processing what seems amorphous. I think when we think of anxiety, one of the things that you're asked, like when you have anxiety is to really just concentrate on what it is that you're feeling anxious. And parse out like what it really is, as opposed to what you think it is. And I think the notion of having a subjectivity and the particularly private subjectivity that comes when you're in communion with a poem. Because a big. You know, when you're writing and revising a poem, I think you're moving through lots of stages of consciousness and relation with who you are. And certain stages of revision require emptying ones self of the self. And then, other ones require using the self as, as, I guess as the paint of the poem. >> Ron Charles: I love to think about the family you describe, in which that's taking place, which is very different than what you just, than you. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. I lived in a. I was in a fantasy world. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I wasn't ever 100 percent present. I think it was a difficult childhood with abuse and lots of other factors. So, it did cause me to retreat much farther into my sort of disassociated world. But the advantage to that was that when you have a disassociated world, you just have to do a lot of work to keep it going. And so, I. [Inaudible]. Yeah. And so, I learned just kind of by being a daydreamer that was kind of a controlling, like a, you know, kind of like a Alfred Hitchcock. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: You know, he was like notoriously a controlling awful director. I felt that way kind of tyrannical about the world that I would create. And sometimes I would, you know, be angry with myself, the director of, like that shouldn't have happened. And so, I would have to kind of go back. So, it was a very. It taught me a lot about the structure of story and the structure of imagery. >> Ron Charles: Wow. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Because it doesn't sound like you were being left alone in your room. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I was being left alone a lot. >> Ron Charles: Were you? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: But, you know, then sometimes I wasn't. [Laughter] >> Ron Charles: I want you to read this wonderful poem, Our Voices Occupy Rooms. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. >> Ron Charles: About the women in your life. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. And this is actually a poem that's set in D.C. >> Ron Charles: Oh. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. It's right there. Our Voices Occupy Rooms. We were a family of women big on art. Not the kind gotten from travel thick papered books or the didactic analysis of a period in a classroom. But rather the kind garnered from gaping at a painting goose skinned with awe. Well into my years, I feel it in my body, activated sanely by the woman in my family doing their [inaudible]. And when the goosebumps came in the museums, my mother urging us to get right into the painting's faces. I'd remark loudly on the French Parliaments, the rosy cheeks. Although, my mother was most likely standing near the Dutch Milkmaids. And she would call back, yes, wow. We joke about volume in our family. My sister's husky, ruckus laugh. My aunt's melodic squeal. My mother's operatic sneeze. All freight train loud. I take large gulps of air to fuel my oration. I worry terminally that people notice knowing that people notice. And so, hoping that people realize there is not little that I can do to change it. My friend, Aida, beautiful in a 40's Varga way, has a voice that booms like smoky electricity, an eel. She's brown too. But that suggests, look at those people with their ways, their food. Like when people assume, I like spicy food. I don't. Yet, some native attributes are deep wells of pleasure. In museums, my mother would call out to me over the galleries, benumbed solemnity in her familiar and animal call, [foreign language]. Which like a scent, gave me a sense to tingle in this most public place. >> Ron Charles: I love the tension in that poem between your pride in your family and the way they embarrass you. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: Your pride in your culture. And the sense that you're always being slotted into it. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Those two things are not resolved in that poem. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: No. >> Ron Charles: You love those people and they annoy you. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. What's interesting about the, what the backdrop of that poem is. And I think, again, it's like one of those small factors that take me from like having been like, you know, an office manager or a marketing executive or a wife or a nurse. But that my mom, who had a high school education, came to this country, worked, was a waitress most of my childhood, well into high school. Was like, we live in this amazing country with all these museums. Like, I don't know anything about art. But let's, let's go to the museums, you know. And so, she would take us. And that was our experience. Like, it wasn't like she hadn't. You know, she would talk about what she saw. But it wasn't like she was an art historian. Like, now I take my kids. And I'm like, well, that's Robert Wash, you know, like that, you know, it's kind of boring. But there was just something about the, the awe that she also gave to us. And I guess modeled. So, I was so hungry. And I knew nothing about art. And that actually was an advantage. Because then, I could do whatever I wanted with that art. And those, those experiences are so key to how I became an artist. >> Ron Charles: I love her enthusiasm of that poem. She's the only one yelling out. She's probably the only one really enjoying it. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Frankly. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: That's right. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: The numbing solemnity, is that what you referred to it as? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. I mean, she's really doing what the museum hoped would happen. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Exactly. >> Ron Charles: She's being moved by the art. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: There is a fascinating and really deeply troubling conflict throughout your poems between patriotism and the fight against racism. Your parents went through it. Now, you go through it. I wonder if you'd read a section of Be Recorder that begins, I became American each time. It's at tab three. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Okay. >> Ron Charles: This is a much longer poem. But I'm just having her read certain sections of it. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I became American each time my parents became American. Each instance symbolizing a different version of being American. First, is when they decided to stay. And next, is the photo of my parents beaming by a judge with citizenship in their hand. Also, the photo of my mother and father in the 60's looking like any American, perhaps foreign only in tongue. The Statue of Liberty behind them. Or the first time they registered as American by having an American job. Though, I was born in America, I wasn't born American. I know it's hard to understand. But it's also not hard. I became American when I memorized the National Anthem or when I had sex with a white boy or when I thought my first racist thought or when I decided I wanted to always live in a place like U.S., which is how America becomes an event that happens only for the lucky. So, the question, where are you from, means I was born foreign in America. But not their America. I mean the chain of lands called America connected by chains of mountains where minute threads of the first people who lived that America live in me when there was the earth giving only over what she wanted. That was before she became American. >> Ron Charles: That poem speaks so directly to the last two or three years. Not to limit it historical. But obviously, it took you much longer to think that through. But it speaks so much to the, our heightened racism, tension about immigrants, all those issues. Talk to us about that awkwardness of being American and suddenly not American. And how deeply irritating that is. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: There are, there are a couple of ways that I feel American and not American. And I think when you come. My mom was so. She's Peruvian. And she was just so enamored and idealized this history. And taught me all about the Incan culture and the Incan mythology. So, there was a part of me that. There is still a part of me that feels a link to Peru that's very tenuous. But it still informs a lot of who I am. When you are, grow up around immigrant parents, you can have different experiences. My dad, who all my life worshiped Donald Trump, like back in the 80's was obsessed with Donald Trump. I mean, I think, I think that's one thing that we forget is Donald Trump has a fan base that extends back into the 80's. And my dad was so certain that he could be successful because we lived in this country. And, you know, I think part of what. We all have Stockholm syndrome, right? Like we live in this country. And we've been totally brainwashed to act against. I think all of us in some respects are brainwashed to act against our own best interests in, in the anticipation of some enactment of the American dream, which, which changes forms. But everybody thinks they're an exception to the rule of that. And in a way, that is the part of our Stockholm syndrome because there's a finite amount of resources. There's a finite amount of money. And in order for people to be successful, it has to be on the backs of other people. And I mean, like I said, my mom was a waitress. She cleaned houses. She cleaned hotels. I saw her body being pushed down. You know, so, there was my father, who had this really idealistic and was going to be rich. And was an inventor, just kind of. But never was able to do anything. And there was my mother, who always had three jobs. She tells me this story when she like pulled into a parking lot and she didn't know where she was supposed to be. And the reality of, in order to even just have a basic existence that my mom would have to do this kind of labor that, even at an early age, I was like kind of skeptical. You know, I was like, is this really what's happening? And, you know, the experience of racism. And I. When I was in high school, it was such a kind of, I mean in retrospect, kind of funny. There was a young man. I grew up in San Jose, California. There was a young man who had a locker above me. And one time we were both taking stuff out. And he was like, why don't you get back on the boat. And I was like, dude, that's the wrong. You're wrong. Wrong racist comment. [Laughter]. I need to get. You know, I need to go back through the river. That's what you want to say, right? >> Ron Charles: Well, you're from New York. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: My parents came from, in on a plane, by the way. But you know. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. And you were born in New York? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I was born in New. Yeah, but it was [multiple speakers]. It had nothing to do with. >> Ron Charles: No. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Who I was. Like it was a moment of clarity. I was like, he just doesn't like me because I'm not white. Like, it doesn't matter that I didn't come on a boat or whatever other kinds of racist things that people think. It was that I wasn't like him. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: And so, I was like, okay. So, this is going to be a thing. >> Ron Charles: You write about work so well and so viscerally. I wonder if you'd read a section of Be Recorded that begins, they work their fingers to the soul. That's tab number five. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Okay. So, this poem is based on [foreign name] Puerto Rican obituary. So, I just kind of did a riff on it. It took a long time because. Well, anyway, it took a long time. After [foreign name] Puerto Rican obituary. They work their fingers to the soul, their bones to their marrow. They toil in blankness inside the dead yellow rectangle of warehouse windows. Work fingers to not sapphire the young, the ancients, the boneless, the broken. The warehouse does too to the bone of the good bones of the building. Every splinter spoken for. She works to the centrifuge of time. The calendar a thorn into the soul dollar of working without pause. Work their mortal coils into frayed threads until just tatter. They worked their bones to the soul until there was no soul left to send. Worked until they were dead, gone to Heaven or back home. For the dream to have USA without USA. To export USA to the parts under the leather soul of the boss. They work in dreams of working under less than ideal conditions. Instead of just not ideal conditions. Work for the shrinking pension and never dental. For the illusion of the doctor medicating them for work related disease until they die. Leaving no empire. Only more dreams that their babies should work less, who instead work more for less. So, they continue to work for them and their kin. They work balloon payment in the form of a heart attack. If only that'll be me someday, the hopeless worker said on the 13th of never. Hollering into the canyon of perpetual time. Four bankruptcies later. Three fifths into a life that she had planned on expecting happiness in any form it took. Excluding the knock off cubed life she lived in debt. Working to the millionth of the cent. Her body cost the machine's owner, [foreign names] once worked here. Their work disappearing into dream. Empty pockets into the landfill of work. The work to make their bodies into love for our own. >> Ron Charles: Thank you. I'm reading a novel now by Ta-Nehisi Coates that comes out in a few weeks. And he talks about the way the plantation was setup, so that the plantation family never had to see anyone working. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Interesting. >> Ron Charles: And everything was done, so that this would take place. They never saw the slaves working. Even in their own house, it was all invisible. And it strikes me, because you're writing 100 years later, 120, 150 years later, 200 years later. We're doing the same thing. So much of the labor in our lives is invisible. The whole internet. The way we order things and they just appear at the door. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Thousands, millions of people are toiling away in dead end jobs, crushing jobs, soul crushing jobs. And we never have any contact with them at all. We don't go to the mall. We don't go to the grocery store. We don't see these people anymore. The invisibility of manual labor. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Yeah. You know, to me, I guess seeing my mom and. My dad worked a lot too. Seeing them work so much, I only know how to work in way. Like the challenge of growing up with immigrant parents is sometimes the, like and it's meant well. But they're only teaching you how to survive. And so, I think, I think that's why I think about work as kind of a primal. And also, because without work, you can't have money. And money is the only thing that matters in this country. It matters more than anything else. It matters more than bodies. It matters more than states. It matters more than cities. And so, there's such a small number of folks that have a lot of money. But there's a way in which. I've been thinking recently about like, well, what would be something really super revolutionary to do. And one of, a thought, and I'm not an economist, is just like nobody buy anything. Like, just stop buying things. We just like exchange things with one another, what we need. Because the fact is we don't. >> Ron Charles: Most of us. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Nobody needs more stuff. But, of course, then, that that directly affects the working folks, who would lose their jobs. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: So, we're in this kind of codependency with capitalism. And capitalism is a sociopath. So, you know, what I mean? Like it's not going to work out for anybody. And. >> Ron Charles: But your poem is radical, in that it makes us see that in a way that we've gotten used to not seeing or comfortable not acknowledging. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Right. >> Ron Charles: You've got another poem called The Hungry Office. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. So, this is. >> Ron Charles: [Inaudible] very directly to this sort of office work you were talking about. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: So, this is kind of a Robert Hayden, which that poem I love. It resonated so much, I couldn't. When I read it, I was like oh, my god, I didn't know that poems could be about that. Hungry Office. Owl girl always bore shame for mother's brown grease uniform. Mother told her that entire cities really got managed by cleaning ladies coming in night after night to correct executive mishap in the moonlight. Mops set aside for calculators, they formulate commerce. The only lady to know European markets writes her equations into contracts, seven-armed document maker, the bedrock, floor by floor. It was an ending like she likes. How maids feel when they elbow through the vacuum dust to distribute their wealth over miles of cyclone fence, that their transport will come. All our mothers. Blank faces answering doors in movies. >> Ron Charles: To me, that poem was so revelatory in that it made me think about this whole army of people that are toiling away at night, literally at night. And that you don't, we're not even aware of. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, now what's been interesting too is because we're recording all aspects of our lives, that there's this entire subculture of folks who make videos of themselves humiliating or abusing marginalized folks. So, you get people kicking homeless people or messing with people at stores, who just, they're just like I just want to do my job and earn my nine dollars an hour before I go to my other job. You know, so, their. It's not. I think it's not just, it's not just that we don't see them. But part of how capitalism is able to perpetuate itself is that we don't only see them, but that we also feel a little bit of contempt. Because the contempt protects us from the reality that we're three minutes away potentially from being in that same position. >> Ron Charles: You have a poem called, In Remembrance of Their Labors. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: It's in this one. [Inaudible]. Yeah, it's in this one. The whole thing? >> Ron Charles: Just the first page. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Okay. Sure. Let's see. >> Ron Charles: Tab seven. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Tab seven. Okay. Thank you. Oh, there it is. Okay. In Remembrance of Their Labors. What is the nature of the brown artist's desire for disruption? My legacy, a long lineage of fuck-up hustlers, mostly on my father's side. On my mother's side, civil servants. Three generations of accountants for the state. On my father's scamps, scam artists, pimps, criminals. Perfect models of destabilization. From all sides, studious and intense labor, relentless work under the table exchange. I'm a node of various dark and light powers, first generation emitting energy from the first world. In remembrance of their labors, honest and corrupt, I infiltrate the creative class by squatting in its traditions. This in remembrance of my impetuous mother and father's jet plane ride into the 60's maelstrom and bussing tables and a tiny apartment in the Bronx. And knowing only the English words for all things restaurant. I serve thee for thine labor is my staircase. The frivolity of poetry, layers of frivolity disguised as labor or vice versa. Poetry is useless until we rot from inside when we don't have words. Emancipatory lyric poetry. Deregulated lyric poetry. Lyric poetry with work boots. The lyric poetry of garbage, of kitsch, of Marianism, of cockroach and placenta and dirty fingernails. In remembrance of their very deep kneed and hand gnarling labors, I declare the ocean Latinx. It's blue surface, the tongue of [foreign language] forming the rough syllables of our Americanized ideals. In remembrance of my father's belief in text, the house filled with books of striving. I devour the argot of the oppressor and U.S. opened in me, opened me in How to Win Friends and Influence People. My favorite story was about a boy, who befriended a czar, who then married the boy's mother. It told me there would be a game. This is in remembrance of my mother, who's hands were calloused against heat, biceps bulging from hauling vacuum cleaners and trays of grand slams. Mercy to my failures and the legacy of failures beneath the surface of the heroic immigrant story I wish I was telling. >> Ron Charles: That poem does so many things. I want to talk about this movement from work to poetry. You say, in remembrance of their labors, honest and corrupt, I infiltrate the creative class by squatting in its traditions. So, you've got. You're suggesting that poetry for you is a kind of spy craft, a secret invasion, a transgression, as protest. In another poem, you say, I'd like what I write to reach into the center of the pastural and throttle it. [Laughter]. What are you demanding that poetry do? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: You know, the world is so different from the time that I was young. And I've seen an interesting elision of Gen X, as a subject of consideration, as a generation, as an aesthetic movement because we kind of went from boomers to millennials. In fact, I saw an ad for a book. And it said, this book will speak to boomers and millennials alike. And I'm like, okay, well, I guess it won't speak to me, you know. [Laughter]. So, and we serve as this kind of bridge culture. The beginning of, I guess, in my college experience was the hope of multiculturism because there was a moment in the early to mid-90's where people were like, this could happen. We could have a world that could look more like the world. And I believed in that until I went to graduate school. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: How can that be? That must have been the most liberal place on earth, wasn't it? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Nope. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: Where'd you go? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I went to Iowa. [Laughter]. And up until that point, I. >> Ron Charles: You mean the Iowa. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Writers Workshop. >> Ron Charles: Writers Workshop. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Wow. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: So, while I was there. When I went to, when I went to grad school, my definition of being rich was you had a swimming pool in your backyard. I was like, those people are rich. But when I went to grad school, there were a lot of really wealthy people. And I was like, oh, they're assholes. [Laughter]. You know, like there's a way in which being really super wealthy just kind of gave folks a sense of entitlement. And I had never seen entitlement in such a kind of, and I got. I got it. I got it. And I did. The professor that I'm talking about did always confuse me. I think she was doing it on purpose too. >> Ron Charles: Wow. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I think she was doing it in a racist way. But it was also, like who had attention. I was part. There was like. You know, there are like 100 students. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: But there were like five of us. >> Ron Charles: It's incredibly competitive to get in. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. There were five of us who were a group of folks of color. And we were so marginalized. >> Ron Charles: There were five out of 100? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Well, there were probably two other ones. But they were like, they were like we don't know you. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. So, so, I guess my sense of like belonging and not belonging was formed by that and my sense of class. And because so much of my childhood had been related to having class aspiration to wealth, it was a moment of realizing like, even if I had enormous wealth, it wouldn't change how I'm read and what the expectations of my work could do. And the expectations at the time were based on Gary Soto. You know like, that's it. Gary Soto and [foreign name]. You know, anything else. I mean, most people at the program hadn't even read those poets. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: So, it was an inculcation that I accepted because I was young, and I wanted to be part of it. But it was also a moment of like, I don't belong in, this isn't my world. So, I'm going to have to figure out how to build my own world to then like infiltrate this world. And make spaces for people who will come after me. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Who need those spaces. >> Ron Charles: Right. And it begins with pointing out that there's a problem here. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Exactly. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: What do you mean, you say. And I love this line. Poetry is useless until we rot from inside and we don't have words. So, it comes from a kind of desperation. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Poetry is, is. I'm teaching undergraduates right now poetry. And one of the challenges really is teaching them the attention that poetry requires. Because once they're reading them with that level of attention, it resonates so much. And allows them access to their interiority. We live so much in exteriority. We document our exteriority 500 times a day with Instagram. And this and that and this. And our visits into our interiority are fleeting because what we want to do is go in, get something pithy and smart. And then, say it about ourselves. As opposed to just really inhabiting our interior life. And seeing all of the contradictions, you know. In the poem about becoming American, one of the. I was thinking of all of the ways that I imagined being American. And I mentioned having my first racist thought. Because I think part of, you know, be. I think immigration, immigrants have a lot of racist, all kinds of racist and colorist problems. One of the reasons, though, I think people who are immigrants participate is it's because what white supremacy does, right? And I was interested in like asking myself the questions of like, why do you believe that? And why do you believe this? And poetry has so often been a vehicle for me to open up to those questions being asked from all sorts of poets. It's not like I don't find great, despite how awfully racist he was. It's not like I don't find resonance in someone like Wallace Stephens. But my goal is to take what he does and deploy it through a marginalized voice. And so, in that way too, I think poetry is an artifact that someone. When I was young, I. >> Ron Charles: Ger. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Younger. [Laughter]. When I was in college, the first book by a Latina that I ever read was by [foreign name]. It was [foreign language]. And I remember physically the room that I was in. I was in a class. It was a survey of like 19th century, or 18th century American literature. So, I was like [clicking sound]. I was out. And I was in the class, you know, like doing whatever. And I had the book because it had been assigned. And I. And it was set in San Jose, which is where I went to high school and college. And I was reading, and I was like, oh, my god. She's talking to me. She's talking to me. Like this is the first time that I felt someone. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Talking to me. Talking about the place I lived. Talking about my experience. And it kind of clicked for me. Like, that's what you do, is you're writing for the person who needs the book. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: So, when I'm writing poetry and when I'm thinking about poems should be, the. And then, when my students are writing, I'm like well, who needs this poem? Who needs this book? >> Ron Charles: Who needs this poem? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: What do they need it for? >> Ron Charles: That's great. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Like, what is the gift of the book. You know, because the [foreign language] was a game changer for me. Without that book, I would have a different trajectory. And so, and that, that's how I think about what poetry can do. >> Ron Charles: You also have this lovely definition of what poetry does to you, right. I wish we were layers. We could unfurl as object lesson. Maybe that's what a poem is. To just open ourselves up to one another. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Really. You write very candidly about the demands and challenges of being a poet. My history with writing is a history of failure, you write. If only I wrote about robots. If only my schooling had been more useful. But I don't give a shit about robots. [Laughter]. Instead, I'm caught up with the lyric that working-class bobble anyone can foment. I don't think that's true, by the way. But. [Laughter]. We need these. These people need to standup and then sit down. Standup and then sit down. [Laughter]. [ Inaudible ] I'm slowly getting used to this. Okay. Sit down. It wasn't a real intermission. It's just a standup, sit down. [Laughter]. We're going to talk about feminism. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Sure. >> Ron Charles: Which is not a dirty word for you. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: No. >> Ron Charles: No. This is an alarming trend among young women. Oh, I'm not a feminist, I hear these women telling me. I don't know what they're thinking. In a poem called, Parts of an Autobiography, you write about learning about feminism from a capri panted rebel, who introduced you to Our Bodies, Ourselves, in your first women's studies class. Feminism seemed like a miracle, you say. Tell us about that moment or that, you know, that era of your life. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I'll tell you. >> Ron Charles: Because your mother was working. I mean, you had good models of women. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Absolutely. But. >> Ron Charles: But you just needed the theory? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: My mother was working. But it was deferential to patriarchy. She worked and then she worked. Like she came home, and she continued to work. It wasn't like it was a partnership of. >> Ron Charles: Okay. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: You know, sharing resources. In. I grew up also in which the men would talk in one room and the women would talk. And I would, like I was such a perverse child. I would just like go plop myself with the men and start talking until one of the uncles were like, get her out of here, you know. So, I was. And I think also, I just, there was my. I mean it's so complicated. But the continuum of gender in my family, like I was not feminine. I didn't quite fit. And so, I felt very much in this kind of middle world. >> Ron Charles: So, when you got to school, and you got this book. And you took this women's studies class, it sort of gave you the language for things you had been feeling. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Is that close? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I mean I. When I was in high school, you know, I was like I'm a fem. I didn't really know what that meant. But I knew that I felt equal to boys. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: And, you know, and I thought, like actually they're kind, in high school they're kind of stupid. Like, I know more. I know how to do things more. The fact that they have all of this cultural capital in this high school doesn't make sense to me because there's no their there. I mean that's what I thought in high school. So, and I think also the ways in which my mom acted in resistance to how her sisters or other women in our community by having two or three jobs, by divorcing my dad because she got fed up, you know, with his financial stuff. And just being able to build a financial life on her own. I mean, she worked 12 hours a day, six days a week doing it. But it was an act of feminism. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Because, you know. And the. Her desire to speak English and to really learn how to speak English, which, you know, I have aunts who don't speak English, even though they've lived in this country for like 30 years. All of those to me had this like, wow, she's, she's really defying this stuff. But it was conceptual, right? And then, I go into college. And I have to tell this one funny story really quickly because it's the best story about this teacher that I have. I went to high school. I went to college in 19. I started college in 1989, which was the year of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which was disastrous in the Bay area. And so, the. So, class was cancelled for a week. And then, the week later my teacher was like, she was just like a fresh out of women's studies in, you know, 1989. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Moment. And she's like, she says, oh, my god, that, you know, when Loma Prieta earthquake was happening, I was using my vibrator. And we were like, oohhh, like what? [Laughter]. It was just like this, you know, this kind of just like yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. No one had ever said that out loud. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: No one had ever said out loud anywhere. And it was just like. I was like, okay, I want that. [Laughter]. Like I want to be able to like say, be in a room and just be like, okay with talking about anything. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Because so much of what I felt was also, I mean I grew up Catholic, was bound up in shame. So, while I want. The things that I wanted in the world were not feminine and not Catholic. So, a part of my experience in college was like, oh, I don't need that and I don't need that. And I don't need that. >> Ron Charles: Casting off. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Would you read a poem called, When God was a Woman? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Sure, I love that poem [laughter]. >> Ron Charles: It's tab number 11. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. So, this one is also, is it in. Let's see. >> Ron Charles: This book. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Okay. So, this one. Another formative teacher I had was a teacher named Mira Zussman [assumed spelling]. And she taught a Western Religions class. But she taught a book called, When God was a Woman, which was, again, a game changer for me. And I thought, I always thought, I'm going to write a book called, a poem called, When God was a Woman. And this was finally after 10 years this is what I wrote. When God was a Woman. When God was a woman, empire was meh. When God was a woman, we build schools of listening and every week we sat quietly until we could hear each other's thoughts. No shadows when God was a woman. Little girls had great dominion and grandmothers were venerated. Sky was the giant bellows of her inside. The grace of God meant flowing and willowy. This was when God was a woman. She played harmless pranks because she liked keeping things light. She made it rain on our collective good hair days. When she met someone, who seemed fun and a little mysterious, she invited him into Heaven. Then, she made her daughter blind for a week, which in retrospect was kind of mean. But her daughter made the best of it. [ Laughter ] >> Ron Charles: It's playful, but it's also a pretty profound expression of feminist theology and what it would mean to reconceive the nature of God in a way that was female. But that ending is troubling. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: I saw in context of other poems you wrote about beauty and getting over this obsession with physical attractiveness. Is that the blessing that God gives that blind girl? Or am I. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I think what my intention was to think, you know, when, when. I have this fantasy project that I want to do that's like an archive of books that would document like a post patriarchy age. But one of the things that I'm interested in is that it's not all ideal and utopian. If it was post patriarchy, then we would have a matriarchy, which is also a kind of power. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Relation. So, I wanted to think about like, you can't just idealize the notion of God being a woman because it's still God. It's still has that effect of being able to act. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Indiscriminately. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: My, my sense of the indiscriminate part, I'm also thinking about the kinds of sacrifices described in the Bible. The fact that she made the best of it was that like, ah, you know, this is just part of it. As opposed to this being this kind of huge reaction that ends in, you know, that leads to transformation or leads to, you know, the kind of soul searching that that's about acquiescing to God. But rather, like, okay, I'm blind. Maybe for now. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: It's all good. I'll figure it out. >> Ron Charles: The way. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: One does. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: The way one does, yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yes. Yes. The new novel last year, The Power, dealt with that. The genders are, the power genders are reversed. And throughout the world. And the women start to commit horrible crimes too. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Sure. Absolutely. >> Ron Charles: They're just female crimes. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. In a very witty way, you connect writing poems with certain physical conditions of your body. You say, for instance, to write a poem, I mustn't be wearing a bra. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Truth. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: I like my poetry to smell like I've forgotten to wear deodorant. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yep. [Laughter]. >> Ron Charles: I'm assuming these are at least metaphorical. [Laughter]. As least, as much metaphorical as they are literal. How's that? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Would you read a poem called, Dear Medusa. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. >> Ron Charles: It's number 12. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: In Milk and Filth. Number. Is it in Milk and Filth? No, it's in Cruel Futures. Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Wonderful little book from City Lights out in San Francisco. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. This came out last year. So, in Milk and Filth, the first section is something called Gender Fables, which I'm taking kind of unrecouperable [phonetic] or kind of problematic figures that were important to me, like Joan Rivers. I was obsessed with her. And so, this is kind of like a B side that didn't end up in this book. It's called, Dear Medusa. What was it like to be left with only a stone husband, stone postman, stone apprentice? Was it loneliness? A miracle? You had enormous power, which people called a curse. But it made you one of the first witches. See, I feel penetrated. And I want to survive my story. I want to be both vegan and Teflon Ms. Medusa. Despite being cursed, weren't your days the wind lifting swirls of dust around your feet like an omen cat. Your deflection cushioned you with 100 husks. I want no window into me. Not even pores. I write you because they want to burry my feet deep into the earth to be loam like that first myth. So, your vilification seems like freedom. I'll end by thanking you for your gift to pre-feminism. You are truly one of my heroes. In praise of your impiety and the hiss of your brink, I write as your loyal and devoted disciple. Amen, hallelujah, and so. >> Ron Charles: Nice. Very witty. You're doing the kind of thing Madeline Miller does in Circe, this novel where she takes the witch and the odyssey and reimagines her, as a. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. >> Ron Charles: As a hero. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Yes. Anger in Women is not a Negative Emotion. One of your poems. And I said when I met you, that I didn't think you thought anger was a problem. I really find your expression and your exploration of anger in your poetry incredibly refreshing. In one short poem, you write that you've inherited only 30 percent of your father's wrath. I'm left with the desire to be as hard as a monster. In another, you say, the best enemy against antagonism is more howl, not less whisper. That could go on a t-shirt, by the way, and do very well. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Okay. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. [Laughter]. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: I'll send it to Bernie. >> Ron Charles: You push back. [Laughter]. You push back hard against repression and impossible standards of beauty and feminism. I wonder if you'd read a poem called, Sometimes There's a Virgin. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Fifteen. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: That's in, The City. >> Ron Charles: It's always in the book you don't have. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: The City I was. Yeah. [Laughter]. Yeah. This is. This book is, was a formative book for me. And it's kind of weirdly one of my favorite. I mean, it is. It's not my favorite child. But it's definitely one I appreciate. Sometimes There's a Virgin. Sometimes, there's a virgin in the room. You make way for her light. She is fountain head. When the virgin is in the room, she's robed by dim wattage. Virgin remind me. When the virgin is in the room, our skirts feel tardy when there's a virgin in the room. The virgin has clean hair and there's nothing under her fingernails. She drinks water from the same cup all night long. She writes her name on the cup. The virgin writes lyric poetry about roads and wars and the crown of trees. But has a degree in something outside the arts. Because artists aren't virgins. Everyone talks to her and she doesn't even have mascara on. Her eyelashes are naturally thick. I brush past her to feel virginity. There's a big difference between virgin and nonvirgin aura wise. Someone drives her home before 11 o'clock. The virgin has a long driveway at her house. A parent waits for her. The virgin leaves her vibe behind. So, we wait for it to dissipate. Then, we get nasty and high since the virgin made us feel bad because we gave it up in high school. That's just her course. It's not our fault. >> Ron Charles: You don't. I didn't not detect a lot of responses to Catholicism in your poems. But clearly, that one. Both the. But, of course, you're doing two things at once there. Talking about the Virgin Mary. And then, the way that idealization of that figure, you know, creates a certain culture for young women that is oppressive and makes them feel slutty and bad and. And the way they push back against that. The way your poem pushes back through wit and satire. Am I on, am I [inaudible] close? >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. I think too, I was speaking to there's a kind of aesthetic critique, right, that talks about being dirty for poetry, as opposed to having this kind of austere sense of like the canonical and not imagining that poetry is a substance. It's a. And it's sticky. And it's dirty. Yeah. You can't put it in a cup. >> Ron Charles: Right. In one of your earliest poems, you write, make something true before you go. That's such a lovely way to live ones life. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: You've certainly done that. I wonder if you'd close by reading my favorite poem, Entanglement. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Entitlement. Okay. So, that's. >> Ron Charles: Eighteen. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Of. Okay. Entitlement. Entanglement? >> Ron Charles: Entanglement. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Oh, okay. I thought you said, entitlement. I was like do I have a poem called, Entitlement? Oh, [laughter]. Wow, that's cool. Don't remember writing that one. Okay. Entanglement. We love what's best in our beloved, what's worse in them. You have to like what time does. Each day I talk to the part of me that is my beloved from a tiny telephone in me. I communicate in the clicks and beeps of our abbreviated tongue. Love is a long trial a wending and an uneven effort. I hate the word faith. But that's all there is. Only the last one standing knows the score. Think of the types of violence on a continuum and toward the mildest end is love. I'm torn by you, I scream when my beloved pulls at our bond. I'm an alien host. Or we are two youths subsumed by a single body. The beloved says, you changed my brain. And I am at that mercy, which is meant as a warranty for longevity. But there is no real promise. You keep knowing each other. And knowing each other. >> Ron Charles: That's so lovely and so true. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Thank you. >> Ron Charles: I had such a great time talking to you tonight. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Thank you. >> Ron Charles: Thank you so much for coming. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. Thank you so much. >> Ron Charles: I really appreciate it. >> Carmen Gimenez Smith: Yeah. [ Applause ]