# Video: Spring Poetry Reading and Q&A with Poet Jane Miller April 17, 2024 On April 17, 2024, poet Jane Miller presented works from her collection *Paper Banners*, published in 2023 with Copper Canyon Press, and from more recent work inspired by the editors of *Peripheries Journal*. Jane Miller is the author of thirteen books of poems and two collections of essays on poetry. She has performed her creative work and lectured on literature and the fine arts at universities, colleges, libraries, community centers, and public arts venues for over thirty years. She taught poetry workshops and seminars as a professor at The University of Arizona and served as a visiting poet at many other programs, including The Iowa Writer’s Workshop and The Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. She is the recipient of a Wallace Award for Poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Western States Book Award, and the Audre Lorde Prize in Poetry. She lives in Tucson, Arizona. **Spring Poetry Reading and Q&A with Poet Jane Miller , April 17, 2024** \[MUSIC PLAYING\] SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School. SPEAKER 2: Spring Poetry Reading and Q&A with Poet Jane Miller. April 17th, 2024. JANE MILLER: Thank you. So "We were up late, and everyone had been drinking. And someone said, hey, is that God's head on the boil? We didn't know where to look or what to think. It was obviously some sort of perverse joke, or not, right? And the conversation went on for days, thirsty, sober, asleep, awake. What did it matter? Some of us thought the real time was for something, but what? And the questions kept coming, once they started, my favorite one being two strung together. What makes art modern and what does urgent mean now? Where is the greater good? That was another worry bandied about, followed by where was the common tent? Which gave a feeling of empathy for a minute and then grief because well, where was it? Will you arm, hoard seeds, go hungry? Those terrified me because after all, who will repair things when the end is pale or dark? Where will you hide out when capital runs out, when water? Which will be greater, the heat or the c-- wait. Did God's boiling head just say something? Cry out from a giant lobster pot, go to hell! Tantalizing us with where to go next? Do phosphorescent lamps mark escape paths? Not that it's not a great party, but who invited us? Igniting quail in banana leaves, sons bandaged. What are we doing here? Why are the emerald bleeding and the ivory weeping? Lower the freaking music. Does anyone have the time?" That poem was inspired by a party that I attended in my hometown-- \[LAUGHTER\] \--of Tucson, Arizona. And these next couple of poems are set there as well. They were inspired by the editors of Periphery's Journal by \[INAUDIBLE\] by Sam Bailey, who contacted me about their interest in incomplete work, diary entries, letters, unfinished or finished and not sent marginalia, notebook entries. And I had just finished the poems in my collection paper banners, and I was looking for a new grammar, a new mind, really. And so I sent them some pages from my notebook. All of the new poems that follow share the same title, which is "The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness." "Days we would wonder, could it get any hotter? Nights could have peed our pants with friends hard drinking. Drives we took through Texas. The dust devils. We could just stop the car and not go in. We could arrive early and drive around the block. Have they moved yet? We would stop where we'd like those tamales and beer if it hadn't burned down, where that sunburnt homeless woman with her hair matte, like a coyote's, says, any money, help me, with her cardboard, and the cart she'd like to shove in front of cars at the intersection with the lobster sign. What kind of lobster would that be around here? We could hear the freeway, but it never wondered about us nor we it. And the sewage treatment plant coming home with the windows down. No amount of cash could redirect. Coming in hot to make love and seeing the power out. Times my mother wanted my nose fixed and hair straight. Times your mother ought rather to have blunt forced you into Hollywood than speak so poorly to you. You left driving a second hand car, working for tips for the Iranian, smoking a joint on the porch, passing through a desert night blindsided by a memory of snow where love circles like a practice jet over the airbase. Wondering for the hell of it as you see the exit if that would be me. Oh, baby, that would be me." This is a more developed version of the list poem that I was working on in my notebook just loosely. It involves, as I tried to think about things beside myself, climate change, in particular, the enormous monsoon seasons that we get typically in June and July. But now they've been coming at strange times. They stormed through the desert, and they've become more violent and worrisome. And then there are the droughts that follow after the rain dries up. One of the beautiful things that comes out of these storms is the astringent scent of the creosote plant, which is a healing plant that the Native Americans have known for centuries. And that will make an appearance in this as well. So the title, again, "The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness." "Nights it couldn't rain any harder. Crazy running out, stripped down and drinking wine under the gutter spouts. The healer Asclepius sick and missing from the southern sky, who once brought a king's son back with bitter herbs after he drowned gold plated in a cask of Cretan honey. The myth dies with the times. Electricity out. Fallen lines. Life magnificent and raging. Native peoples intuiting that spores of a waxy plant emit a healing 10,000 year old eucalyptus scent soaked in turpentine and clove. Musk of medicinal dusk, of smoked duck cooked over camphor leaves and tea. Life divine. A stink of incense cured over time to signal rain. The shame we failed to harvest. Animals lamed. Birds dropping from the heavens on their way to Canada. Night standing in ambrosia from the heavens as the ancients forest bathing. Nights struck dumb, being so much older than you are and staring down where each of us would go. You inside in candlelight, and my ghost face reflected like dry ice in a lightning flash would go and not return. Earth essence passing through the black washed atmosphere. Life's sacred and night blind waking very late as drops of nectar spoiled by the sun. Earth not one to beg, that begged that scent opens across half the valley, proof the Earth we failed did love us unconditionally. That myth dies with the times. Dies raging. The monsoon lingers until noon." Like the first poem, this poem asks a series of questions but unlike that first poem, it tries to answer them. This was another effort at finding a new grammar and a new mind. And so the voice is very colloquial, I think. "The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness." "Why the flamingos aren't pink? No shrimp. Why we're in France in this nature preserve? Curious. Why they won't let us feed them? Trust. Why is this hot? Humidity. Why are some of their pale bodies blue from Miami to Wisconsin? Global warming. Why this crowded? Humanity. Why it's basically half in French, half English? Tourist money. Why we're drinking too much? That's easy, gluttony. Why photograph this trip? Proof. Why my father kept his glasses hinged atop his bald head? Laziness. Why his parents left Europe? Prescients. Why they thought I was crazy ever to go back? Insanity. Why we surrender? Sore feet. Why my mother would clean her vagina with a douche bag after sex and hang it over the shower? Useless. Why I remember staring at it at 15? Right now, bizarre. Ask a silly question, you get something strange or cliched. Why you're hearing about this now? Kindness. Why go on about it? Ridiculous. What it's like to be middle class in a crisis? Doable. To be poor? Unconscionable. What you pay for? A few details. What you get? Easy answers. What is all over France in September for the lucky customer? Heat and seawater, wheat and eggs and butter. Why the abundance before the disappearance? Insanity. Why homelessness and hunger? Shamelessness. Why force the exiles on rafts back to the horizon? Infamy. What you return to, what you die for, what you cannot ever achieve enough or achieve fast enough? Empathy. Will humans always be on Earth? Not many or not any. What was it we hoped for? Tranquility. Can poetry express the meaning of life as compressed as a green grape? Yes. What is the meaning of life? Hmm. Are the good, the true, and the possible still-- are the good, the true and the beautiful still possible for the noble seeker? I went into Picasso's studio in Antibes and wondered why he was so mean to the women he loved and painted. Arrogance. It was so warm, I took off my shoes and socks. Happiness. Outside, I gazed at the sea. He could afford a great view. I wish everybody could feel this salt spray. What would that be like? Poetry." Speaking of poetry, this poem opens on the great Chinese poet from the 13th century, \[INAUDIBLE\]. I hope I pronounced that correctly. \[INAUDIBLE\] "The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness." "Across the great Pacific, \[INAUDIBLE\] slinks from his desk in a rickshaw hat trimmed like a tasseled lampshade and tied under his chin, demoted and dismissed for criticizing late imperial China. He went on to work himself sick, helping the drought stricken Yellow River basin farmers seven centuries ago. All my life seems like yesterday morning, he sang in a style based on the vulgar songs of foreigners in alleyways. To live in bliss is to be seized by voices and be shown the spirit of a thing is inexhaustible. To live in a fascist society is to understand that saying yesterday was fresh as cherries in a pit stained paper bag really means that strangers bombed are bleeding out in hospitals. Censorship is the violence of the state and of the self." Well, I'm going to read a longer poem that unfortunately is true and gruesome and tragic no matter how you identify. I was advised not to read this, which is why it is my pleasure and honor to do so. And I'm happy that there will be some questions afterwards in case there are questions about this in particular. Covers several real events a couple of years ago. First, an event that happened to journalists in Paris who worked at the journal. Some of you may be familiar with Charlie Hebdo. And later by some young men and women who-- well, I think I'll leave it up to the poem for the details. But suffice to say that these are tragedies and these are gruesome tragedies indeed. As a teacher myself, and I imagine many of you either are teaching or aspire to be teachers or certainly are working with teachers or have, you will perhaps identify with this as I have. "The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness." "Six underage teens hide their faces in hoodies in court. Their history teacher got killed in a Paris suburb after they thought he would only be roughed up or humiliated. Accused of identifying their teacher to his murderer in exchange for money. He had shown his pupils a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in their class on freedom of expression. Police shot dead the assailant, a Chechen. Same cartoon satire printed in the journey journal Charlie Hebdo a few years before, after which two brothers, described as terrorists, murdered 12 staff at their desks, later got shot on a busy street. The history teacher was beheaded outside his school. We say his school, but it was not his. We say beheaded. How is that still a word? And who wields it? Is aggression ever for the greater good? Is that when Buddha says, you don't have a soul, you are a soul who has a body or that purity depends on oneself, no one can purify another. Is it possible to move as water courses, to be that soft and yielding without compromising internal form? My personal problem is that young girls forced into genital mutilation makes me want to vomit or kill. As regards those 200 million young females in 30 countries whose human rights were violated, I cannot grasp the concept of proportionate response. Each helpless as an inky crow glued to this paper. My black thoughts gather. Even as Buddha advises, I will be punished by my own anger. Conflicted as a teacher myself whose student draped a Confederate flag over his bare shoulders to perform his poem entitled, "The Southland." We could see his nipples. They looked cold. He pulled a handgun from his waistband loaded, waved it at the cohort and recited by heart. For a big guy, he had a voice tuned to wind in summer leaves. After a shy woman praised his soft vowels, he removed his flag with a flourish like a king with no one to disrobe him. Then swung the red fabric with its star studded blue X, his enemies tricolors also around his head like a metal propeller, any blade of which could sever a neck. Excuse me. I regret that figure of speech. A false equivalence. At the time, as the party responsible, I nearly crapped my pants. It is that gross to say, what is gross? My poor student stood trial for the weapon. I sat with his proper wife, an emergency room nurse, while he was examined. She and I spoke of how beautiful Western North Carolina is. Copper seams run through its Blue Ridge Mountains, burbling waterfalls above laurel and gentian, open your heart to all creation. Released by scarlet oaks and spruce, the volatile liquid isoprene forms an enchanting blue fog from afar, giving the shape a name. Charlie Hebdo's director said, we have to carry on until Islam has been rendered as banal as Catholicism. Curious about who Charlie Hebdo is, I found out that Hebdo stands for hebdomadaire, meaning weekly in French. Charlie stands for Charlie Brown, the American comic book character who is nervous and lacks self-confidence. Yet with typical American bravado, although one should not generalize about people, he hopes for the best, likes helping others, but can't help himself. Charlie Brown is one who suffers. Good grief, his creator often has Charlie say. Our inhuman creator blows through with nothing to say. Makes nothing of us like Charlie Hebdo is not a real person nor is Charlie Brown. It is we living beings, creating day and night. As many in France masked on the streets singing, "Je suis Charlie," as we're angry enough to burn churches, the teens in court, under cowls, remind me of the other word caul, covering their heads at birth. What if I were their mother? Good grief. Or teacher. The teacher stands naked at the head of the class, turning blue as a dying star. A likeness is shown to the jury. A smile under the hood of someone's son flies up to that image like a startled bird that in a classroom would signify wonder and hope. The smile that is, a bird inside signifies death. Another teacher told me the story of a rabbi who said, after the holocaust, we live in a time of the death of God. Therefore, let us pray. Heavy doors of justice swing open in a violent storm. Faint music sweeps in as night drops an illusion of blossoms on a river. Crackling leaves collapse the bridge to sleep. Autumn has reached the villages on the frontier. And yet it is still a lovely afternoon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is it not? Somehow they coexist." I'll close with two poems. The first of those last two stars, the God Hermes. God of sleep, god of language, also the god who delivers the people who have died to the underground. This opens with poetry's origin story. For the poets in the room, this is especially for you. "The Elusive Pursuit of Happiness." "Hermes wanders out of his mother's cave into his famous story. Barely a day old, he manages to kill a tortoise and stretch for strings of sheep gut across its shell, then plays the first song on the lyre. It seems to come from inside him, a sapphire of energy as Earth once appeared from the heavens. No need to be a thing alone in the dark like a Chinese figure in ink soaked paper. He resolves to live like you or me in a city cheap and easy to enjoy. But street life gets complicated. Silhouettes arguing unto blown lamps, fire alarms, squealing cats, the city overripe with garbage. While walking around for inspiration, you run into him, god of language and sleep. You invite him for drinks. When the visit drags on, you see it's your time as the gatekeeper, sharpening a large knife. To make something worthy of him, you have to kill it. You pound it with your fists and pepper its skin, cook and clean up. Before you present it, the god vanishes, leaving only a message from the dead about that part of yourself you sacrificed. Do not expect to love like that again." I'll close with the closing poem of my recent book, Paper Banners. It takes its title from the acupuncture point that's located at the base of the neck, which in martial arts can be a very dangerous, even deadly point. But I don't mean it that way at all. I mean it just has a passageway. And the title of the poem is loosely translated from the Chinese. "Heaven Rushing Out." Perhaps the philosophers in the room will also recognize some of the references in the poem. "Heaven Rushing Out." "The story begins with philosophy and ends with desire using Wittgenstein's leaky boat that one must repair while at sea. I row with no radio, no bucket. Around the next quickening bend, beauty appears unbound. The great Berg shears into black ocean as a glacial Colosseum and its tourist. Is there a word for facing it? As I looked when I first saw you in sheer clothing and me in dry ice completely rearranged inside saying, take me slowly. And then suddenly a finger stirs the Arctic flow as if in the pool of my cocktail. Fresh melt meets warming water confounding themselves. My mistake as well. Toppling like a drunk overboard to the rest of the world merely cut like a word from a stanza. The detail blurs from here. It seems my darling paces on the shore in a soft shawl and a hard shell of reality. In the worst sort of breakup poem, with no rhyme or reason, our end resists the love of our lives. The only thing harder than leaving first, stiff as a wall of mineral cliff, is the mineral cold knowledge of the survivor trying to herd ice as it melts like thoughts once gathered into facts. The world is everyone who's still here. Ice fishing and burning sage at sea. Scrambling for berries and seeds on farms. The hoarding of walnuts frenzies the throng. One faithful page, hurrying in the wind carries a violin like a burnt wing." Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] I'm going to stand here because I really hope that there are some questions, comments, arguments, whatever, whatever you have. Or I'll just talk on. And you've already heard my New York accent, so I don't know if you need any more of that around here. Yes, please. AUDIENCE: I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your process of getting into new grammar or a new mind, as you say, because I also remember you were here maybe five years ago as well for a reading. And at that time, you were working with the Trixie the Trasher mind and grammar. JANE MILLER: Yes. AUDIENCE: And I was wondering if I heard an echo from that book today in the question and answer format of the third or fourth poem that you read. JANE MILLER: Yes. Yes. I opened with a poem from Trixie the Trasher, and then I picked up on it a little bit. AUDIENCE: Yeah. JANE MILLER: Yeah. AUDIENCE: But yeah, I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you got into the grammar of that project, of this new project and then if that's typical for how you shift between projects or books. AUDIENCE: And can people hear the questions that people are asking? It would be-- AUDIENCE: Should we-- AUDIENCE: --if repeats. We'll have people use the mic going forward. But if you could just-- JANE MILLER: Yes. Well, I was going to paraphrase you, so forgive me. The question is about finding a new mind for a new project and whether anything from the past goes forward and if that's deliberate. And I'm intuiting maybe that's what you were also hinting at there. Everyone will have a different answer who is a practicing artist for a process. And some would disagree that it is important to change from book to book or from dance, project or sculpture. I happen to believe that it is important. And so it's been a practice all my life to try to change from book to book. But really, it is not by any means a necessity and in fact, could be trouble for some people and unimportant. It's just something that I have thought of-- \--because I've associated it so much with my own life and an effort in that space to try to change from time to time and to force it upon myself. Because it's very easy to remain the same, especially if you're a double Taurus like myself. And anyone who in the room who is might understand that. And never mind. That's for another conversation. So to answer your question more deliberately, after I finish any project, I try absolutely not to write, and I secondarily try not to think, which is-- \--it's very difficult to not have any thoughts, ideas, opinions. They come flowing in. Even now, standing here, I have four other things that I'd like to say to you. So it's impossible to control one's mind. And the only thing-- the only hope really is to empty it. And so I undergo a strict process of doing nothing, which again, is very difficult because one always wishes to do something if one is competitive, or aggressive, or curious, or in love, or in pain. There's always something-- So it's a process of it's almost a spiritual practice, although I have no deliberate spiritual practice. But it's almost a spiritual practice to try to get loose and get free. I'll say just quickly, on the shoulders of what I just said, the freedom of the poet-- \--the freedom that a poet experiences is enchanted and radiant because a poem can go anywhere and stop at nothing. And as soon as we start writing, we fall into the old habits that we had before. It's just natural. As I believe, again, I'm no psychologist, but I believe we do that in life too. I think we just-- we just repeat ourselves unless we are conscious of life, as we know, is a process of becoming more and more conscious. There is no other point to it. So that's my process. You could summarize it by saying, stand on one leg and lean over and try and jump and just clear your head. Sometimes it's quite physical. May I hand the microphone to anyone? AUDIENCE: I'll just add to that question, because you certainly do something else after you get rid of your thoughts, or you try not to think because you seem to be using a notebook to get a new voice. And so could we talk a bit about the notebook practice. The-- JANE MILLER: Yes. Absolutely. My notebook is, as you've seen, as I've exposed myself here, is very personal and embarrassing and not scholarly. It doesn't involve research. And so I leave it alone for quite a while also. And then go back as to an old dear friend and pick up where I left off without looking back. And so the notes say, for example, from this book that received as an editor seemed very different from the notes for Trixie the Trasher where I was enraged about life. And the first note in my notebook because I was looking recently before I came here to see who I had been, and a friend had died unexpectedly. And that started my notebook again. AUDIENCE: \[SNEEZES\] JANE MILLER: And I was-- bless you, my dear friend. I was heartsick and literally nauseous every day and angry and all the things that one feels when someone dies. And because it was also a public-- well, it was C.D. Wright. And I had just been with her. And so I was just utterly destroyed. And that began a whole set of emotions that were different from the books that I had written before. So I really do think that life intervenes in the notebook. It just becomes something that you don't even realize until you start looking in the notebook. And I believe in everyone developing a practice. It doesn't have to be a notebook. Some people like to write down their dreams. Some people like to play the violin. Some people like to swim. All these things are practice if they are taken seriously. It's a devotional, really. You might cook with that kind of love or love with that kind of love. I don't want to encourage anybody to be into language before it becomes a necessity. AUDIENCE: Could you write a poem about the books that you've written in the past and who you were in those books? If the projects you're describing are the individual collections, which I was assuming of poetry. And you transition to being somebody else, or you could look back at the person you were in these earlier works. JANE MILLER: I'm-- AUDIENCE: You look perplexed. JANE MILLER: I'm a little confused about the question. Who-- do I look back at who I was? Yes, in shock. Absolutely. I mean, if you don't know the past, you don't know the future. I think it was Bob Marley, the reggae singer who said that. Yes, I'm constantly looking back and not in awe, but in shock and embarrassment. Yes, it's difficult to develop as a consciousness. I can say, oh, that's life's business is to develop as a consciousness. But I've actually struggled being a good person and getting better at that every year. I mean, if I look behind me, it's a train wreck. Fortunately, I've had wonderful friends who have helped me survive my own wrecks, and I think we can all say that we have those sorts of histories, you know. But art has really saved my life. I think that the practice of art has given me a focus, and I have often found myself to be more adult in my work than in my life, which grieves me. And so I usually stop writing at that point when I intuit more in words than I have figured out in life. That's troubling to me because life is much more important than art, despite the fact that art is an absolute necessity. But you have to be alive to do it. And so being a human being is the first calling before anybody becomes an artist. So, yes, I have indeed struggled with who I am. And I do try to look very carefully. I'm joking a little bit about judging myself because I'm actually pretty good at letting that go. But self-awareness is important to me. And I stand here exposed in front of you as soon as I read my work. If I read enough of it, I hope you can tell what's going on with me, that I'm cheerful and so on. AUDIENCE: Thanks, Jane. It was so exciting to hear more of those "Elusive Pursuit--" JANE MILLER: Thank you. AUDIENCE: --poems. On the way-- on our walk over here, you were talking about poetry as, quote, "a lazy sport." And I just wondered if-- I just kind of wanted to ask you more out there, but I'm just asking you here, kind of. I think that touches on sort of thing we were talking about consciousness and the unconscious and kind of bursts of writing and times where you're not writing. But I wonder if you could just kind of expand on-- JANE MILLER: Did I say a lazy sport? AUDIENCE: That's what I heard. AUDIENCE: --said a lazy man's sport. AUDIENCE: Excuse me. A lazy man's-- JANE MILLER: Two witnesses? I deny that. \[LAUGHTER\] No. It was the wind-- the wind. I actually said a crazy sport. No. Yes. Well, you can do as much research and scholarly labors going from library to library and from genius to genius and then search your own soul on paper, endlessly. But that is not writing poetry. Writing poetry-- look at the little haiku, the three line haiku. I always like to present my favorite one. I've managed now to squeak it in yet again for anyone who's heard me present my work. "With a bull onboard boat crosses the river through the evening rain." I mean, what the hell? \[LAUGHTER\] With a bull onboard? How did a bull get on-- there's just endless conversation about how that bull got on that boat and what for. To meet his fate? Someone's dream? Maybe there are a lot of bulls on a lot of boats crossing the river, even as we speak. So why did I call it a lazy sport? Well, you only really write a few words in your whole life compared to anything else that you do. And I've written 10 books and really there aren't that many-- I mean, I've said more this morning and now and will at dinner than, like, half my books. So what the hell? I mean, what did I do the rest of the time? I'm not an Olympic diver. My piano playing is mediocre at best. What did I do with my life? So I've been lazy in that regard. I couldn't run through language. It just doesn't work that way. It's very slow and laborious, and you don't do it very often, and then you throw out most of what you did do. So for myself, I don't write very much. And I feel slow and lazy about it. I guess I don't really mean lazy as the criticism that it might sound like. I should call it slow the slow food movement. The slow word movement is a movement of poetry, unlike that dreadful genre, fiction. \[LAUGHTER\] Which is-- no, it's-- actually, I bow to the fiction writers in the room. It's very difficult to do. Very difficult. AUDIENCE: We have a question from the audience online. JANE MILLER: Oh, yes. Hi, online. People. AUDIENCE: OK. The question is, I have this argument with a friend where I say, you can't write for your most hostile reader. And she says, you should only write for your most hostile. Parentheses, basically intelligent reader. Do you write or revise with any particular kind of reader in mind? JANE MILLER: No. Never. Not once. However, when I'm done, I realize that I do it all the time. I mean, what the hell? Who wants to be alone? It's so lonely out here. When you're writing, you always are speaking to your other self or someone you love or someone you've lost or some idea or to a word. It's definitely a relationship with an other. But you do not realize it. Because if you're thinking about in that way, then that's very prescriptive. And that is not a poem. That is typing, which is important. It's part of the process. But the poem is a great mystery. And the mystery is never really solved. The great poems, I mean, the great poems of which there are few-- which reminds me of the haiku, "With a bull onboard-- \[LAUGHTER\] \--and little boat crosses-- a boat crosses a river through the evening rain." How hard is it raining? Is it pouring? Has it been raining all day? Is it a lovely rain where the bull and the-- whoever's leading the bull, they're enjoying it? Or is it a torrential downpour? Is it winter and they're freezing? Is it summer and they're taking a shower in it? There's a thousand expansions that go on in a great, great poem. And they're not resolved. They're mysterious. But there is a conversation there that poem is having over 100 years and more. The great Shiki doesn't even know. He's gone. But his poem, his poem goes on and on and on. So I would say no and yes. What a terrible paradoxical answer. Typical of poets. Very typical. Slide out the side. Yes, please. AUDIENCE: How would you say your years of teaching have affected the way you approach your own work? JANE MILLER: Ah, yes. I mean, to be influenced by others who are so excited to be studying, not with me. I mean, to be studying and happen upon me. It's the greatest treasure. And it's a pleasure to be open in that way to other people's writing. Yes. Oh, I would not be here. And I mean on Earth. I don't mean at Harvard. I mean on Earth without having been among such wonderful students. AUDIENCE: Just quickly. I remember that haiku from an essay you wrote-- JANE MILLER: Yes. AUDIENCE: --a while ago. And I was just thinking about it and thinking in your-- when I read that essay, which is a long time ago, there's a figure pointing. You must have just been thinking about the haiku and thinking about how it was is raining and is sunny there a figure and are they pointing. And I've got this whole scene in my head. JANE MILLER: Yes, that's the point, isn't it? AUDIENCE: Yes. And then I was thinking about what Amanda said in the introduction that you were going to-- you had an early career as possibly a painter. JANE MILLER: Oh, I would hardly call it a career. AUDIENCE: OK. JANE MILLER: Yeah. AUDIENCE: A dream. JANE MILLER: I would call it a closet. AUDIENCE: OK. JANE MILLER: And I don't mean a homosexual closet. Yeah. I don't mean that. I was out of. \[LAUGHTER\] The painter's closet, yeah. AUDIENCE: I guess then-- maybe this-- I don't know if this is too general a question. But I guess is there anything about the images that you can make in poems as against the images you could have made in your other life as a great painter that we have. What are the affordances that poetry gives to those images? And do you feel like something was lost that painting could have done? JANE MILLER: Well, I loved painting because I could be around other people when I painted, and I could listen to music when I painted. And I really love that life. I wasn't a very talented painter, but I do miss it. And I do think about it. And of course, it did affect me because I was so enamored of it that it got into me and became part of who I am. So I still think in terms of color and shape and design as Amanda. Thank you, Amanda, if you're still here. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. So generous. But poetry-- whether you've trained as a visual artist or not, poetry is an art of description and action. So one must sensorially have an experience, whether it's of this world or of imagined worlds, and somehow be able to translate that into language. Now, whether I got my early training as a visual artist had a direct impact on my work, I'm sure it did. I don't know exactly how I do. Someone once sent me-- I guess they had done a paper on me, God help them, and about the color in my work, which I wasn't aware of. How many times I'd used the color green or blue or yellow or what have you. And I don't know that the relationship is that direct where you could count the number of times and say therefore. But whatever practice we have in life, I think infiltrates our shaping of language on the second draft, if not the first draft. The first draft is made up of other people's words just to get it out. And then you have to clean it up, whether you've overwritten or underwritten. I mean, clean it up in the sense that build onto or like a sculpture would remove. And the second draft is really where all the action is. And anybody who lies and says-- and John Ashbery was just an literal liar. I mean, he was just, oh, yeah, I just write one draft, and that's it. Finished. It's ridiculous. It just doesn't happen. And if it does happen once, bow to yourself and go and have a nice cold beverage because it's not going to happen \[INAUDIBLE\]. And yeah. So I hope that second draft introduces my early love of painting. Exactly how, I'm not sure. AUDIENCE: I'm going to be greedy and ask a quick second question as well. Does-- a lot of great poets that I love don't read well in my opinion. You are not one of those poets. I think your reading is excellent. JANE MILLER: Thank you. AUDIENCE: I would like to know how you learned to do that or if you taught yourself to do it. And second question, do you teach your students how to read and what do you say to them? Because I would love to learn. JANE MILLER: The real secret of teaching is not to say much. And then what you have said, deny. Deny, deny, deny. \[LAUGHTER\] Then the group must reckon with whether they heard correctly, whether you are kidding. I mean, it's a game in that it's a transference of power and information. And the worst thing that the leader can do is hold on to the power. Note to those of you going into the auspicious field of teaching or any-- I mean, that is not going to work. You're going to be found out. Even those among us who are quite chatty and talkative and full of opinions such as myself, I believe have to make it seem as though there's no one right answer. And there's no-- going back to your earlier comment, there's no one right way to give a reading. I try to throw myself into it as I would and fare or as I would the preparation of a great meal just because I want to be alive here now. I'm counting on being alive while I'm living. I really am. I think it's the utmost importance to really be present. And can that be taught? Lately, I think if you take someone by the throat, you could. You could really, like, you know. But you're not allowed to do that in a classroom. Imagine if I went over to this lovely woman over here and just grabbed her by the throat. That is not allowed. That is illegal. And in other words, it's a physical thing. I would like to be able to physically get people involved in poetry, but that is not allowed. So I'm up here talking. I am up here talking. But I love you. I love you for being here with me. AUDIENCE: I have a question-- JANE MILLER: Yeah. AUDIENCE: --regarding that you talked about the first draft, and the second draft process. I just wonder about your revision process. Also, you talked about the underwriting and overwriting. I heard before that you talked about overwriting. You said the revision process is to be Swift and sure because what you cut out, you won't remember. JANE MILLER: Right. AUDIENCE: But what if you are underwriter? Because I have the fortune to read-- to have read some of the first draft of these poems. And I realize-- JANE MILLER: I deny that. AUDIENCE: --there are poems with significant expansion in the middle of it. So I wonder, how did you realize to add more materials to the poem, and what is the process in that? JANE MILLER: The first thing that I do when I finish a draft is to read it backwards and see how much better it is. And until it is not better, I have to keep going. Because really, you could read them two ways, but one way should seem more appropriate. And the only way to get better is to change as a person. So sometimes I wait a while until something significant occurs to me in my life or happens to me in my life. And then I can go back to the work that is in process and add or subtract. It isn't always-- indeed, I have shown you some that I've added to, but sometimes I have had to, more often perhaps, subtract. But for me, it really is a process of something that has not happened to me. Otherwise, I'm the same, the same, the same. And I'm just going back because I have nothing else to do. And I miss it because I do love the process. But it's just-- if you love someone too much, and you're always annoying the shit out of them, and I love you, I love you, I love you, then if you say I love you at a really crucial time, they say, yeah, I know. So I have to stay away from my work until I have developed as a human being. And I don't mean in a great way. I have not solved the world's crisis. I mean in extremely small ways. But it's homeopathic doses. If you just have a small improvement in your own reality, that's enormous. That vibrates through everyone that you know and they notice, and then you fall back, of course. So then it's a long-- that's why writing a book does not happen overnight. But for me, and I was saying this to Sam on our walk that I cannot write for five years, and then write a book in six weeks. It's because I've been trying to live. But not everybody does that, and I don't recommend it. Some people love to work every day because it's just exciting. And then they have to throw out a lot. I mean, whatever works. Shall we have one more before we go our separate-- yes. AUDIENCE: Hi. Yeah, I was-- I kept thinking when I was listening to you read and now hearing you speak, if-- I mean, I'm really thinking about that completely lurid passage from your long, ill advised poem or whatever with the man \[CLEARS THROAT\] who drapes the Confederate flag over himself. And a word you've used before in the poems is like anger. So, I mean, I wonder if you would say or not that men and women have a responsibility to be angry in different ways? I mean, on a selfish level, I'd like to think that I get angry at injustice and all those things because I'm obsessed with the idea of being a good person. But on the other hand, I'm not sure how to occupy a strong emotion in order to sustainably try to write something about it. And on the other hand, I think angry men are scary and dangerous. So I'm not really sure about-- if it's a good thing or not to be an angry writer. Maybe it depends who you are. But-- JANE MILLER: I would suggest that every powerful emotion, and of course, poetry is made of emotion. That is its principal source. Every powerful emotion has to have, paradoxically, its counter in the poem itself, as in life. I mean, all of what I say are my practices about poetry come from what I've experienced in life. I share your experience of anger, and I was talking about that in one of the poems. I'm very angry about certain public current events. But if there is not a counter effort in the poem, it's not a poem, it's a diatribe or a preaching, or I don't know what, a form of journalism or any other thing, but it is not a poem. So somehow you have to find that the nature of poetry is paradoxical, that it is composed of its opposites that somehow come together and expand to make more than the sum of those two parts. And that's where all the mystery is, because what the hell? How did that happen? And again, it's not a conscious thing that you do on paper. It's something that you live, and then you find words for it and that could take many drafts. But many other poets have gotten there and have made great poetry. Is it worth it? Yes, it's worth it. It's absolutely worth it. We are so lucky, those of us who are artists in room or have been and hope to be again that we have this secret life that is allowed. I mean, it's not only allowed, it's encouraged. I'm encouraging you for sure. And I wish you all the best with your work. Thank you for being here today. And thanks for inviting me and Amanda, wherever you are, mwah. Thanks, pal. I hope everyone has a lovely evening. AUDIENCE: Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Center for the Study of World Religions. SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2024. The President and Fellows of Harvard College. See also:- [ Video ](/news-classification/video) - [ Poetry, Philosophy, and Religion ](/programming-threads/poetry-philosophy-and-religion) - [ Poetry ](/programming-threads/poetry)