University Place

Writing Wisconsin's Communities

[Jane Elder, Executive Director, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters]

I’m Jane Elder. I’m the Executive Director for the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and I want to welcome you all to our talk tonight: “Writing Wisconsin’s Communities.” Tonight, we’re very excited to hear from four lively Wisconsin poets. Together they will discuss and explore the relationship between creative writing and the diverse communities we live in.

At the Wisconsin Academy, we’re known for the programs and publications that explore, explain, and sustain Wisconsin thought and culture. The work that we do and the events that we host, like the one you’re attending tonight, are all designed to bring people together at the intersection of the sciences, arts, and letters to inspire discovery, illuminate creative work, and foster civil dialog on important issues.

Tonight, I’m very happy to present our panel of poets. Kim Blaeser lives in Lyons Township, midway between Burlington and Lake Geneva. She’s of Anishinaabe ancestry and a native of White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. She’s a professor of English at U.W.-Milwaukee and currently serves as Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate.

Fabu lives in Madison. She served as the city’s first Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2011. She’s provided creative education to schoolchildren, women, and African American communities for more than 20 years.

Dion Kempthorne lives in Richland Center and is professor emeritus of English and former C.E.O. Dean of U.W.-Richland Center. He’s at work on essays on Emerson and Thoreau, as well as a memoir exploring the personal benefits of reading and writing poetry.

Timothy Yu lives in Madison. Hes – he is associate professor of English and Asian American studies and director Asian – of the Asian American Studies Program at U.W.-Madison. His current research project examines the emerge- emergence of Asian identities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia and explores how poets of Asian descent navigate these identities through poetic form.

We bring you this talk tonight as the final part of the Academy’s spring series titled Writing Wisconsin’s Future. And we thank everyone who’s attended and supported these talks, which have demonstrated how writing in our state has provided a critical contribution to Wisconsin’s culture and our ideas about the kind of state we want to become.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Academy, membership, or its programs, please find me or any of the other Academy staff here tonight after the talk and please also take home the complimentary copy of our magazine Wisconsin People and Ideas on your seats or at the back table.

Tonight, we will first have a lightning round of readings featuring each individual poet. And then Kim will lead our panel in discussion and then open the floor to questions. When you ask your question, because we’re taping tonight, please wait until the microphone has reached you before you begin. And just a special courtesy, if you are asking a question, please make sure it is a question and not a speech, testimonial, or soliloquy.

[laughter]

You know our audiences, don’t you? We’re also selling some of the poets’ books across the hall in our James Watrous Gallery this evening, and after the conclusion of the talk, the poets will be available to sign any books here on stage. So, please welcome Kim Blaeser.

[applause]

[Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate]

Good evening. Thank you all for coming out. It’s wonderful to have you here, even if Carrie Underwood is playing elsewhere.

[laughter]

So, in advance of talking tonight about Writing Wisconsin’s Communities, I thought I would begin with a poem that characterizes both specific communities and a sense of global belonging.

“Fantasies of Women.”

They say – there was an old woman who lived in a shoe children, spanking, bed, no food it’s an old story, one to rival the Peter tale who kept his wife in a pumpkin shell, or Jack Sprat who cov – coveted all the 90% lean cuts of meat, while his ever-expanding squat round wife tumbles over the sides of a tiny kitchen chair over-filling the page on which she is drawn. We keep turning that page, but one caricature follows another.

Some claim – women always were the delicate sex- fainting, timid, helpless souls you know that line the length and breadth of those whose names have scrambled the letters of femininity into unrecognizable derivations, Annie Oakley, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Rigoberta Menchu, Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In pants or full veil in every state of dress or undress, Cher’s navel, the jewel on Cleopatra’s forehead burn like all beacons of dissent.

I heard – A nation is never defeated until the hearts of its women are trampled upon the earth – this one I believe for I grew up among women who could swallow a raw heart whole or in infinitesimal pieces, deer heart, rabbit heart, turtle heart and did swallow and chew, chew and swallow their own red hearts beating for survival, for survival, for survival, for survival. And this is the single story we write with our lives, women of travois, ox, or minivan, of African brown barefoot toes, bound Chinese feet or seventy-five dollars a pop Birkenstocks. Together we walk our houses of history, track true the paths of indentured servants, girl babies slain and buried, this black dirt of bias exposed, overcome in story cycles of scarlet fecundity, told through the fires of many tongues and translated again in the labor of women.

Now we sing – There was a young woman who lived in a shoe-obsessed, commercialized, overstocked world –

[laughter]

– she had many children and knew just what to do – raise them to share the burdens of all the people, to unearth the fantastic lies they were taught to walk upon, to devour fear, chew and swallow, and to cast their hearts for survival.

Thank you.

And my second group of poems are actually a selection of haiku.

And I thought one of the communities to which I feel I belong is the community of nature. And haiku are often described as a hand beckoning, a mirror wiped cleaned, a door half-opened. And within the sort of cycle of seasons that we in Wisconsin experience, there are many moments that are a particular kind of transformation, or an opening of a certain way of being in the world, or an invitation. And so, that is what I’m thinking about as I read these haiku. And just to say that I was taught that haiku should be read twice. The first time we – we get it with our mind; the second time with our heart or our soul.

“Bronze Lumen.”

Tick of sap dripping, now flutter-drum of partridge, palette of spring trees. Tick of sap dripping, now flutter-drum of partridge, palette of spring trees.

Morning lake a mirror, where sandpiper bends to water, brown beak meets brown beak. Morning lake a mirror, where sandpiper bends to water, brown beak meets brown beak.

Copper crane bodies, ride impossible stilt legs, across fields of June. Copper crane bodies, ride impossible stilt legs, across fields of June.

Small fox backward glance, tail burnished by autumn sun, feet first into leaves. Small fox backward glance, tail burnished by autumn sun, feet first into leaves.

Hills a smudged sorrel, evening canyon spools light, air holds drum and sage. Hills a smudged sorrel, evening canyon spools light, air holds drum and sage.

I’m going to stop. There’s a couple more but I want to move to my third poem, which demonstrates the possibility of writing Wisconsin’s future and the activist role of poetry.

So, in January of this year, you may remember there were several educational events, resistance events that were held to raise awareness about a bill that could have put native effigy mounds in jeopardy. And for one of these public events, this was one held at the native mounds at Lake Park in Milwaukee, I wrote and performed this poem.

It has an epigraph from Allison Hedge Coke’s collection “Blood Run.

Our wealth depends – Our wealth abounds within what we preserve.

“Tribal Mound, Earth Sutra.”

We remain wealthy beyond measure, the past-ancient treasure we protect. What power resides in earthen mounds? Ancestors, wisdom of clan relatives, astrological continuities, portal to spiritual realities. Effigy of bird, panther, rabbit, bear, the hungry rise of Earth imbued with sacred life, monument, transcendent force. Name this site holy. Stand with me here, a fragile human thread, Earth Sutra. This curved land, an ageless link, we a small vibration, one song among the many. Sing this song now. My heritage, yours. Shape in consecrated breath words that mean belong, honor, courage, praise, believe, protect. Transform with me here, become in this sanctuary, rich in memory, humble before mystery. Open the medicine pouch of your voice, stand firm together, defend this treasure. Yes, we remain. Migwetch.

[applause]

[Fabu, former Madison Poet Laureate]

“For we are God’s pawns, Ephesians 2:10.

I write to encourage, inspire, and remind. In writing Wisconsin’s community, it is important that everyone is included, and the truth of their contributions are shared. Two of Africa’s gifts to the world was an advanced system of agriculture and the African explorers who came into North America free before Columbus.

“Dis ‘Merica”

One day we be in village livin n free, livin n free. Nex thin come buckra slavers carrying death in long shiny chains. Souls begin dyin from first chains pon we necks, arms, feets. We cry out for help in many, many tongues. Buckra starves n beats we, walks we walks til feets be bleedin, walks we walks to where we not know. On ship we rot n stink below, mens, wimens, chirens, mamas wid belly full of chile all hate every rockin dat take us far from home. Sellin block we no remember, small pain agin de trip cross de ocean we people piled high in water graves. Massa starves n beats we, works we works til hands be bleedin, works we works for why we not know. Already hearts is dyin from first chained feets step pon dis land, dis ‘Merica.

In the 1800s, the Macaja Revels camped outside the village of Madison while looking to buy land. So, African Americans came free and enslaved to Wisconsin because of cheap land, free education, and safety from enslavement.

“Macaja Revels Camped at a Stream of Water.”

In Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin there is a notation that a Black man Macaja Revels, born in 1800 on the Cherokee reservation, migrated to Dane county and camped at a stream of water eighteen miles north of the village of Madison. Macaja traveled on to buy land elsewhere. There is no record of physical description; light, dark or medium, what he accomplished or who his parents were. In 1800, a Black man was both an oddity and invisible, but the land welcomed him. The land was cheap, fertile with plenty, there was schooling for children, and protection for escaped slaves. So, Macaja could rest briefly. Who remembers Macaja Revels, Black settler in the 1800s who camped at a refreshing stream eighteen miles north of the village of Madison but moved on, maybe knowing there would be no welcome in Madison? Who remembers that Black people came to Wisconsin to be free?

So, the Civil Rights Movement moved us from segregation, and, once again, there were the issues of land, and freedom, and human rights. This is an abbreviated poem.

“Marching with Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

People forget that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s voice was fed by millions of whispers. Black folks whispering across America. In the cotton fields of southern towns. In the factories of northern cities. In prisons or in public. In shotgun houses, tenement buildings and projects, folks whispered, “This ain’t right how we treated.” Reverend King’s voice gave sound to the tongues of our grandfathers and grandmothers, silenced by lynching, segregation and the terror of Ku Klux Klan ghost riders. His voice gave sound to our fathers and mothers swallowing down racism and injustice again and again. This was the time when most were shut up or shut down by fear. The march came like the Mississippi River in flood season, folks spilling out everywhere. Reverend King was far up front with the “hoity-toities, and it was us, the hard working regulars, in the middle and the back. His voice came in waves. Freedom ran through our veins causing us to march straighter and sing stronger. Then we heard shattering glass. Screams burst as tear gas popped, spreading quickly when Memphis police waded into the crowd swinging wooden batons, whacking brains and flesh. The running began and we were pushed toward the river. I thought we surely joining the ancestors at the bottom. My sister grabbed my hand and said, we gonna make it. Blood in the streets. Folks limping and holding broken body parts. Paddy wagons stuffed with Black people. We are no longer deaf or mute but loud in remembering these times.

In 2016, Madison, Wisconsin, has joined other cities and police departments in killing Black men, like Tony Robinson. My last poem –

“Beloved Sons”

My aching ears hear, Thunder across mountains. To warn you Storms are coming. Young, Black Male. Won’t let you hear Clear wisdom, From your mothers. My crying eyes are etched, With the horror, Of lightening striking you, Dead again and again and again.

[applause]

[Dion Kempthorne, Dean Emeritus, University of Wisconsin – Richland Center]

I’d like to ask all of you to be children again tonight. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that all children are foreigners and he also said that in the beginning every word was a poem. So, the first poem I want to read is for and from my little grandson. It should be headlined, “Four-Year-Old Poet Works Room.”

[laughter]

But it is just called “Sammy.

Sammy says all his chickens are brown except Sarah who doesn’t have a color because she’s zigzag. Says Aunt Mary sitting there knitting, is twisting pencils. Says Uncle Jim is picking his teeth with an olive poker. Says the doctor who stitched his lip where Bailey bit him blindfolded his mouth. Says the rain- says the rains frying bacon.

[laughter]

As readers and writers of poetry, if you can’t get a preschooler to help you out, I think you should at least consider getting a dog.

[laughter]

This poem is called, “How to Start Your Poem.

Let your dog run, see where it goes what it turns up, what it brings back, a hollow yellow ball, a blue baby shoe, a rabbit-skin glove, the thumb torn off, a shimmering starling, fluttering in its mouth, a broken wing, its eyes sparkling beads of ebony, its burnished beak locked open, a tongue inside.

This next poem is for all the kids who were born in the year 2000 and have spent their whole life hearing concerns about Homeland Security and who will this year be getting their driver’s licenses. It’s called “Contrition.

The three teens I saw yesterday cruising in their rusty hearse, with “Last Responders” smeared in red in the rear window, I see today have overcome their coarse ways, by printing “Just Buried” there instead, in trig white letters trimmed with white crepe paper wedding bells, to further rehearse their comic prologue to their tragic road ahead.

I trust many of you, if not all of you, have read Robert Frost’s famous poem “Mending Wall.” It begins with the line – “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” and it ends with the line – “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Reading this poem in terms of our current politics of building walls and shopping for political identities caused me to flip the M in mending and the W in wall and write this poem that I call “Wending Mall.”

Wending Mall, something there is that loves a mall, craves its caverns of gadgets and perfumes and suits and dresses and beds of all sizes, yearns for its press of passing fancies, packed in desires of buyers eager to decide what to wear instead of suicide, instead of ending it all, finding what it is that loves a mall.

I feel in – in this age, we’ve experienced a time of self – self-serving apologies, particularly with the campaign at full – full flower. It’s a time when who knows who next might go on C.N.N. or Twitter to ask for not just forgiveness but for worldwide forgiveness. So, I just want to let you know that I myself feel sorry for everything I say –

[laughter]

– including – including what I’m going to say right now, which is in this poem that I call “Apology.

So many things I say I don’t mean to say, so I don’t know why I say them, they just come out like mice at night, like the mouse in my car I caught in a Victor trap, wired to the socket wrench, under the driver’s seat where he – I don’t even know why I say he – came for fast-food leavings and found the peanut butter from the jar of it I keep handy, in case in the middle of the night I think a snack of it between crackers might help me sleep.

This next poem –

[laughter]

– It’s okay to laugh at these. I think humor is the –

[laughter]

I think, yeah, I think humor is my idea of the highest form of seriousness, actually.

[laughter]

I think it’s – its a visible God that we have.

This next poem is about the magic of feeling dead and alive at the same time. It features two of my favorite Americans – Abraham Lincoln and Elvis Presley. It’s called “Elvis and Abe.”

Elvis and Abe stay for breakfast after the convention of impersonators at the Best Western and we gape at them in their staged radiance astonished to see how in form they remain over eggs over easy with toast and coffee; how Elvis pats his hip to muted melodies; how Abe pets his beard of mystic memories; how sad they are the other’s dead; how glad they are to be alive; how like past lovers together at last they lean in to listen until their temples touch.

The final poem I want to read is focused on the dilemma that perhaps some of you have experienced in – in the vision world. The problem of double vision, and the equally difficult problem of a divided mind. I hope you can see what I mean. This poem is called “Eye Exam.”

Man, I’m failing this test so bad. I don’t know which is better, this way, or this way?

[laughter]

A, or B? C?

[laughter]

or D? 1, or 2?

[laughter]

3, or 4? Try again, 4?

[laughter]

or 3? Is one a little better? Well, I’m not sure. All I can see is that I am always an answer behind, which isn’t quite what I mean. I mean things can seem good in different ways; say, one can be smaller, but clearer, the other bigger, but blurrier. So, I guess I could go either way and just make the most of it, as in that tantalizing road-not-taken poem, where as soon as you take the road not taken it’s not not taken anymore.

[laughter]

So, right away you want the one you didn’t take back.

[laughter]

But picking a road, picking a road isn’t quite what it’s like. Maybe it’s more like falling in love. You can’t easily realize what’s completely clear up close or faraway, not even if you squint or wink to glimpse what’s missing. I mean, if feeling sure is what you’re looking for, you better close both eyes while kissing. Thank you.

[applause]

[Timothy Yu, Associate Professor, English and Asian American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Good evening and thank you all so much for choosing us over Carrie Underwood.

I am going to read some poems from my new book “100 Chinese Silences,” which has a very Madison origin. About five years ago, I guess now, when Union South opened, the former Poet Laureate Billy Collins came to do a reading, and there were about 1200 people there, which was quite remarkable, and I was one of them. And Collins wrote a poem in which he talked about the 100 different kinds of silence, according to the Chinese belief.

And I thought for a second, and I said, “Well, I’m not a total expert on all things Chinese, but this doesn’t sound totally familiar to me. And then at the end of the poem, Collins says, “That thing about the 100 Chinese silences, I just made that up.”

[laughter]

And I thought, Oh, my goodness. So, I vowed at that moment that I would write these 100 Chinese silences.

[laughter]

And the – these poems are all parodies or rewritings of poems by other poets that talk about China or Asia in some way. And I discovered there are quite a lot of them. So, this is “Chinese Silence No. 1,” after the poem that started this, Billy Collins’ “Grave.”

What do you think of this poem?, I asked the tomb of my unknown grandfather with its livid quiet marble. A Chinese silence fell. It dropped from a glowering tree to perch on my shoulder. We looked at each other. It would have been hard for a stranger to tell one of us from the other. We both looked like monks or scholars or like piles of drowned bones laid softly on the loamy earth. My grandfather said nothing. His Chinese silence coiled its tail into the shape of a long-lobed ear, one of the one hundred American signs for anxious virility. Then the silence fell into a cardboard box full of other silences. Like blind puppies they squirmed and snuffled for their mother. OK, I just made that last part up.

[laughter]

But you must admit it was a fabulous metaphor. No? Oh, now I see. You are just as Chinese as all the other silences – the Silence of the Heavily Armed Gunboat, or the Silence of the Drunken Mariner, or my grandfather’s silence, like the Liberty Bell, only cracked right through.

This is “Chinese Silence No. 22,” which is after Billy Collins’ poem “Monday,” which is based around basically a set of cultural clichs about different – different groups. So, I thought I would riff on that a bit.

The Italians are making their pasta, the French are making things French, and the Chinese cultivate their silence. They cultivate silence in every Chinatown on the persimmon of earth – mute below the towers of Toronto, silently sweeping the streets of Singapore clear of noisy self-expression. The Americans are in their sport utility vehicles, the Canadians are behaving reasonably,

[laughter]

– but the Chinese remain silent maybe with a cup of tea or an opium pipe and maybe a finger puzzle or water torture is involved.

[laughter]

Or maybe the Chinese are playing the Chinese game of ping-pong, the pock-pock of the ball against their tight-lipped mouths as their chefs dice scallions and bean curd. The Chinese are silent because it is their job for which I pay them what they got for building the railroads. Which silence it is hardly seems to matter though many have a favorite out of the 100 different kinds – the Silence of the Well-Adjusted Minority, the Girlish Silence of Reluctant Acquiescence, the Silence that by No Means Should Be Mistaken for Bitterness. By now, it should go without saying that what Crocodile Dundee is to the Australian and Mel Gibson is to the Scot, so is silence to the Chinese. Just think – before I invented the 100 Chinese silences, the Chinese would have had to stay indoors and gabble about civil war and revolution or go outside and build a really loud wall. And when I say a wall, I do not mean a wall of thousands of miles that is visible from the moon. I mean a noisy wall of language that dwarfs my medieval battlements and paves the Pacific to lap California’s shores with its brick-hard words.

So, after I exhausted Mr. Collins, I went on to the many other poets who have thematized China in various ways. This is “Chinese Silence No. 32,” which is after a poem by Alan Shapiro called “Flowerpot.” This poem was published not in the too distant past in Poetry Magazine and featured liberal use of the somewhat outdated term “Chinaman.” So, that became the thematics of the poem.

I lie back in the sagging mattress that
Holds the bell of my body like a bell
Unrung for fifty years, and wonder
If it’s still okay to call someone a “Chinaman.”
I guess these days they don’t all wear coolie hats
And hide their blushing faces behind bamboo fans.
But when I turn on my television, they all still look the same
The same as when Fu Manchu Ran his long fingernails across a white man’s chest.
Someone is saying something about
The balance of payments and our national debt.
I remember when it was just the Russian bomb
That scared us, and not the silent Chinaman. (I can say that, right?)
Dark empty eyes slanting down into the void.
I fear that he will swallow me whole,
My snuffling nose, my trembling arms,
My bones in the rickshaw of his gut.
And everything in the world I know
Falls like a hail of missiles into
The Chinaman stomach that will never fill.

And the final poem I’ll read is, of course, by the – the originator of this entire tradition – Ezra Pound. This is after Ezra Pound’s “A Ballad of the Mulberry Road.”

The sun has gone down on the “thing itself”
To look on the short men of China,
For they have a daughter named Kuanon, pretty girl
Whose name I have just made up:
“Silent One,” For she feeds poems to maggots.
She gets them from the rough hem of my gown.
With gut strings she breaks the warp of my poems.
She makes the claptrap of my poems with the boughs of Frazer
And she piles skulls up on the back side of my fan-piece.
Her earrings are made of ears.
Her underskirt is a black steamship hull.
Her overskirt is a notebook dyed poppy-red.
And when Americans hear her silence
They throw down their poems.
They rend and curse their manuscripts.

Thank you.

[applause]

[Kimberly Blaeser]

So, first, I just want to thank the poets for sharing that wonderful work and to say, isn’t it diverse?

[laughter]

Right?

And it feeds into the first question that I wanted to bring up when we’re talking about writing Wisconsin’s communities because I think the diversity in Wisconsin is sometimes overlooked. And our state is often consumed in media under this sort of universal label of the Midwest, right?

So, I wanted to ask if you could talk a little bit about how your own writing is aware of or pushing against that more simplistic Midwestern stereotype, and is it or how is it engaged in creating a sense of community or place?

[Fabu]

Well, it’s a fairly easy question for me to answer because I remember when I was coming to Madison, Wisconsin, to attend graduate school, my southern relatives asked me, Were there any black people up in Wisconsin? And I really think that that’s been the view of the Midwest, especially in Wisconsin and Iowa and some of the other states. Who are the people that live there? And so, it’s been very joyful for me, as both a scholar and a poet, to unearth the truth about African Americans having been here since the 1700s as traders and trappers and translators and about cities like Freedom, Wisconsin, being named after African Americans. So that in my writing what I have done in terms of broadening people’s perspective about what the Midwest is, is simply to give voice to the people that have always lived here. The people that were always, for example, Wisconsin neighbors.

[Timothy Yu]

I think I can speak a little bit to this from my own experience growing up in the Midwest. I did not grow up in Wisconsin, but I did grow up in – in Illinois. And I did have the experience of often feeling like I was the only Asian person in my class, the only Asian person in a given room. You know, the demographics of the area I grew up have changed somewhat, but I – I think that I did always have that experience of feeling like I was, you know, an anomaly. That I, you know, was – was unique to some degree. And so, I didn’t grow up with any kind of strong sense of an Asian community around me.

Now, when I came to Madison, I – I found that a lot of my, you know, a lot of my Asian American friends on campus had the same experience coming to Madison. That they came here, and they felt as if they’re, you know, they – that – that sense that, Oh, well, are there Asian people in Madison? You know, Can- Where – where are they? And, of course, you know, again, just, you know, as Fabu was saying, this is – of course, Asians have been here and have always been here. And, indeed, I’m actually collaborating with a colleague right now on a project that is about Asian American history in the Midwest. It’s called Performing History. And basically, my colleague has been looking at various archives around the Midwest, including the Wisconsin Historical Society, and finding, you know, records going back to the 19th century of Asian students, Asian farmers, you know, Asians throughout the Midwest in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.

And so, those histories are there, but I – I do think that we often struggle against this – this image that, you know, both, you know, white Wisconsinites and people of color in Wisconsin have of the state that, you know, those communities aren’t there, those histories aren’t there. And, of course, you know, we know we have, you know, a large Hmong community in – in Madison and throughout Wisconsin. Certainly, around the university we see a lot of Asian Americans, and I do know a number of other Asian American writers in town. But – but, at the same time, I – I think it’s something that – that certainly the Asian American writers I know in Wisconsin do – do struggle with a bit. That sense of, you know, where is my community and how do I find it, how do I make it?

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Wasn’t there an anthology something like, “I didn’t know there were Latinos living in Wisconsin?”

[Fabu]

Yeah.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Yeah. I think it went something like that. But, of course, native people have also always been here. And even, you know, beyond race, I think we have a diverse culture in Wisconsin, and I’m not sure that that shows itself to the larger world.

[Fabu]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Dion Kempthorne]

I might just throw in –

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Sure.

[Dion Kempthorne]

– in kind of an inverse way, I think I was raised in country schools in southwestern Wisconsin and was the dean at the Richland campus for 12 years or so. And we worked so hard to have diversity. I guess what I’m saying is that when I was boy, I guess our foreign exchange student was one kid’s cousin from Dubuque who came and stayed with us for a week.

[laughter]

That didn’t seem like the whole world, even to us as we were trying to study the map. But the little campus in – in Richland I think has done more to create diversity by importing it. We’ve had students from I think like 60 nations or something, and they’re about 10% of the student population there. But I think it’s credit to the world and all – all the students that come to Wisconsin that they’ll come to that campus for a year or two years and live with our families. And the – those of us who I think have tended to be isolated by an agricultural culture or a part of the state have been greatly enhanced by the engagement, I guess.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Good. Well, I know that there are these other kinds of communities too that I think of. Like I think there is a Great Lakes culture. Right? And there is a Northwoods culture. And there – so, there are other kinds of – of parts of our environment, but I think that they’re not divorced from the sort of broader human preoccupation with things or global concerns. So, I think that sometimes the picture of the Midwest is as cut off, right? And I – I think maybe as writers we also try to overcome that sense of isolation because we are complicated and we’re ancient and we’re brilliant.

[laughter]

[Dion Kempthorne]

Well, yes, and then – and then on that side of it, there is a culture in the driftless area that the people who come from Pakistan and Uzbekistan learn a lot about. I mean, we have like one of the only mastodons found in North America that – that used to live out there 10,000 years ago. But there really is a culture, I mean of the land and particularly of the driftless area. David Rhodes’ novel called “Driftless” actually did the very smart but cagey thing of naming the town Words, Wisconsin. In that part of the state, there’s a lot of interest in literature. Ben Logan’s book –

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right.

[Dion Kempthorne]

– “The Land Remembers” is kind of a classic on the way in which the land itself – you cultivate it, but it also cultivates you and it changes you forever. So those are strong things. There’s a – theres a person out there now who’s written a book, some of you may know it. I just learned about it recently, and the man lives about three miles from my house. That’s how isolated we tend to be sometimes. But his name is Mark Shepard, and he’s written a book called “Restoration Agriculture.” And it’s really a tremendous book about how to turn, you know, what’s been kind of over-farmed or exterminated grasslands and corn crops into veritable Edens. I mean, it really is an effort to return in a productive and aesthetic way the land to – to a new – I guess it’s the original sense of beauty but also a kind of productivity, with all of the organic farms and things out there. So, agricultural settings are – are resonant with all kinds of meanings and interests.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right. And not as simplistic –

[Dion Kempthorne]

– in nature.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

– as they’re sometimes represented.

[Dion Kempthorne]

No, not at all.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Very complex, actually.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right. Yeah.

[Dion Kempthorne]

If you watch my beavers build the dam on my trout stream, you could see that Frank Lloyd Wright, who was born in Richland Center, could learn a lot about roofs from them.

[laughter]

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Well, so, you know, I guess another question is whether, as writers, you see yourself either engaged with or displaced from Wisconsin’s different communities.

And I was interested, for example, if there are rural/urban splits, as you might be alluding to, or the racial divides. I thought it was a really lovely line that you had where the land welcomed the figure, but – but they knew they would not be welcomed by Madison. And I just thought that was really an interesting moment in that poem.

But so, are there certain breaches that you find challenging? And are or how are conversations about race and communities changing in literature?

[Fabu]

Well, first of all, I’m thinking here of my grandfather on my mother’s side, my maternal grandfather, who was a farmer. So, when I came here, I didn’t feel – I felt actually welcomed when I saw land and green and crops and the whole organic movement. It was nothing that was unfamiliar to me. So that, for me, I actually think, I mean, one of my favorite sayings is – I – I was actually born in Mississippi. So, you can take me out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of me. I’m not an urban dweller, for instance. I feel like I can make my way in the city, but it’s the land that I love.

And I also understand the historical connection of many people, including African American, to land, especially with my grandfather being a farmer and being raised on a farm. So that part of the – the fascinating thing about Wisconsin, and I’m thinking about elders in the community who actually grew up on farms here and were part of the two African American communities that existed in the 1800s. And one of them, Mrs. Mildred Green, who lived to be in her 90s, said that when she grew up on her farm and she said they had what everybody else had. They had the same, like, pretty much the acreage. They had the same way of living, the same clothes, that she didn’t even know that she was African American until she came to Madison, to the big city, and it was pointed out.

And I sat there trying to wrap my mind around how that must feel just to be absorbed into a community and to just truly be neighbors. And you don’t have to necessarily conform, but you share a very similar lifestyle. So, I’d like to say that one of, I think, the things I’d like to see in terms of Wisconsin and writing as Wisconsin is an acknowledgment of what is real and what is true and what are the connections, even as we celebrate the uniqueness of people.

So, in writing for Wisconsin, I feel that I write here as I would be writing as if I were in Mississippi. When I was in Cable, Wisconsin, I saw – I saw the same kind of street with – with businesses on each side as I would have seen in Como, Mississippi, and I really marveled at that.

[Timothy Yu]

Alright. I think this is – this is a fascinating question for – for any writer because, you know, writers are always – I mean, I think we often have this myth of writers that theyre – we’re kind of sitting alone in our, you know, in our rooms or somewhere trying to come up with ideas, but – which we are of course sometimes. But poets, I think especially, rely so heavily on community, on, you know, groups of other writers, groups of other poets and often identify themselves very strongly that way. But I – I think any writer always has overlapping communities. That there are different groups that you’re apart of and different, you know, communities and audiences that you speak to.

And one thing that has really struck me being here in Madison, I – I guess I’ve been here about seven years now, and thinking about, comparing it, say, to living in – in Chicago and the – the scene there, was that, you know, you could – you can live your entire poetic career in a place like Chicago or in a place like New York and really talk to only one poetic community. You know, you – you talk to only the, you know, the other writers who are kind of sympathetic to you. And you can – you can do that. That’s possible because there’s – theres enough of you.

You know, Madison – the Madison scene, I think, is – is just at kind of the right size. You know, and again, I’m – Im saying that, you know, perhaps it is a slightly smaller scene, but this is a benefit of it. That there is some sense that we do all need each other to some degree. And that I see, although they’re not perfect, and these, you know, these audiences still – certainly when I do a reading at U.W.-Madison, you know, it is usually to a primarily white audience. But I – I do think that there is more – there – I have seen more efforts from different communities to try to talk to each other, to do events together. You know, I know I’ve read everywhere from, you know, this kind of setting, to the university setting, to in a bar, to someone’s apartment, to all of these kinds of different venues. And there’s a sense that there’s – you know, I – I do sense a little bit more of an – an openness of different communities wanting to hear each other and interact together.

Now, I – I – that’s not to make it sound kind of utopian or perfect, but I do think that there is, you know, one of the strengths of the scene here that I see is that there – there is more conversation, I think, across different writing communities.

[Kim Blaeser]

Well, I – I certainly think that as I’ve been traveling around the state as Wisconsin Poet Laureate, that’s what I’ve discovered is I’ve been fascinated to find pockets of poets everywhere where I didn’t know they were. And I especially enjoy if they have an open mic as a part of the event I’m involved with because then I get to hear all those different, you know, kinds of poets and voices and subjects and so on. And, also, to see sort of the dynamic that you’re talking about where these people are all living in this community and they probably all belong to the same little group, and yet they’re not cookie cutter poets, you know. So, I think it’s really interesting.

Yeah.

I – I was thinking about this sort of divide also, you know, as that – to acknowledge that there is sometimes that thing we have to overcome, you know. Because I was thinking about my own writing and – and how does my writing acknowledge that or how does it – it take account of that. And I was thinking of lines like I have a poem that says, Water rich but money poor. You know, it makes a certain kind of statement. Or a line from another poem was – Studying in school to be ashamed. So, I mean, those sort of express or betray a certain kind of disenfranchisement that I have to say I’ve also experienced in my life. Right? But writing those lines – I think the – the act of writing those lines then becomes a tactic for a change. Do you know what I’m saying? So that – I think of – of the role of the writer as not simply to accept what we encounter but to – so, you know, the affect of affective. The writing should be beautiful as language. It should do something in the world, right? So, sorry, I didn’t mean to not to take your account in this discussion. What would you like to say?

[Dion Kempthorne]

Well, I was just thinking about community. And I – I guess I’m from the lonely guys school. [laughs] One of my – one of my favorite American philosophers, Lily Tomlin, said, You should always remember we’re all in this alone.

[laughter]

And, you know – and – and it’s a good first thought. It – it really is. And Emily Dickinson didn’t have a poet’s community. I mean, and her poem I remember reading when I was a boy in I think it was eighth grade, and I didn’t understand much, but it was, you know, I’m nobody!

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Who are you?

[Dion Kempthorne]

Who are you?

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Are you nobody, too?

[Dion Kempthorne]

Are you nobody, too?

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Then there’s a pair of us

[Dion Kempthorne]

Then there are two of us – theres a pair of us

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Dont tell

[Dion Kempthorne]

Don’t tell! Theyll advertise

[Kimberly Blaeser]

They’d banish us, you know?

[Dion Kempthorne]

Alright. And – and I still – I still hear her – her admonishment next, you know? How – how dreary to be somebody! Public, as a frog. Right? Croaking the livelong June into an admiring bog! Right? I mean, there’s something in writers that wants to be weary of audiences also.

And, you know, by the time I was in Madison, we didn’t have then what we’d call, you know, Black writers courses when I was a kid here going to school. But I remember a professor introducing Langston Hughes, and he read the poem Impasse. I don’t know if you know that poem. I – I won’t get it verbatim, but it’s – its got that still powerful lonely address. And it is, you know, I could tell you who I am, but I don’t want to, and you don’t give a damn

Now, as a child, as a boy growing up – and these stick with me to this day when I’m writing. And I’m for community, mind you, as I’m sure Emily could have used a lot more of it and so could Langston Hughes.

[laughter]

But I was wondering – I was wondering so then – so then Who are these people talking this way? And I – I got thinking, Well, I’m not a reclusive little anemic white girl in a house on the third floor in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I’m not a Black man living in Harlem. But why are they saying the same thing I’m thinking?

And I think that’s a good time – good place to start. I don’t think community starts with groups. I think it starts with a real abiding sense for the ultimate individuality of each of us, the loneliness, the way in which even two people in love rarely work out. I mean, so trying to get to the Carrie Underwood in this traffic.

[laughter]

And – and not have road rage. I mean, you would think –

[laughter]

– I mean, I don’t know. What I hear people talk about, like Well, and then we’ll check with the international community? Like, and what might that be? You know what I’m saying? And we hardly check with our neighbors.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right.

[Dion Kempthorne]

I mean – I mean actually, Mending Walls is a wonderful poem. And I was – I mean I wrote that little poem – my poem isn’t wonderful. But that poem is the kind of poem that Congress ought actually seriously to discuss when they’re discussing immigration. I mean, it is intellectually and emotionally complex. And it’s about what does it mean, the separation?

[Timothy Yu]

Actually, they quote that poem all the time.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Just a minute, youre against it, youll – before –

[Timothy Yu]

Yeah. They – they, actually, they quote that poem all the time. They just get it wrong.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Oh, is that right?

[laughter]

[Timothy Yu]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I – I actually I – in my – in my Introduction to American literature class, I – I teach Frost. And, you know, I – I think one of the senators from Arizona, I think it was Jeff Flake or something, you know, in one of the debates about building a bigger wall on the Mexico border said, Well, of course, as we all know, good fences make good neighbors.

[laughter]

And, you know, as anybody who’s read the poem knows, that it’s like No, that’s not the point.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Its ironic. Its ironic.

[Timothy Yu]

That’s – thats what the other guy says. We’re supposed to be critical of that. But, like so many Frost, you know, lines, it’s, you know, its very easy to just take it at face value. So, unfortunately, they – they – they do know that line; they just – they just get it wrong.

[Fabu]

They just interpret it wrong.

[Timothy Yu]

Yes.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Well, its the – it isn’t Frost’s line. It’s Frost quoting the old guy –

[Timothy Yu]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Dion Kempthorne]

– who lives there and insisted on the tradition of fences.

[Timothy Yu]

Right. Right.

[Dion Kempthorne]

So, it isn’t even Frost speaking.

[Timothy Yu]

Right.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right.

[Dion Kempthorne]

I read an essay recently, I think this is – is kind of on the point, in terms of the value of literature in creating community. It is that you really can, in a way that’s not offense to anybody, as it says in that poem, Beware of who you’re likely to give offense. You don’t want to be offensive to anybody. But literature really is intellectually and emotionally complex and it concise and clear in a way that draws people to it. I mean, not a fence perhaps, but an actual holding of hands.

Jay Parini had an essay in – I forget the magazine. It was sent to me by a friend. But he said he was reading just kind of out of the blue to his literature class Yeats’ famous Second Coming poem. You know, “The center cannot hold; the ceremony of innocence is drowned; and what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born. And Parini said he asked the class, or classes as I’m sure you’re teaching, sometimes a group of sophomores are 18 or 19, and he said, Now, what do you think was the historical climate that created this poem? And the boy in front said, Well, it’s about Donald Trump, isn’t it?

[laughter]

Well, the point being is that, as Ezra Pound said, News stays news. I mean, Yeats knew ahead of time. I mean he – I mean, the boy who said that was in fact wrong, but he was in spirit right, I think.

[Timothy Yu]

Yeah.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right. Well, I guess I want to kind of jump to talk about maybe cultural sites and natural areas of our state and how we have this great richness. And I’m wondering what role you think writers play in helping to shape the knowledge or the relationship we have as citizens with either the history or the places of our state. And I’m – Im wondering, to what extent do history and place inform your work? And – and if it does, in what ways?

[Fabu]

Well, it really does inform my work. And it’s something that I’m very happy about because I like it to deliberately inform my work. I enjoy taking scholarship, learning things, especially about African Americans. And I just say that because I do find out that most people don’t know who African Americans are. The width, the breadth, the depth. And so, for me, it’s a way of not just affirming others but affirming myself in this journey called life.

And so, I’ve been listening to people talk about, you know, the solitary nature of writing, which it is, and yet how you always are connected to community because our relationships with people, hopefully, give you life and increase your understanding. But – and when I said at the beginning I write to encourage, inspire, and remind, that really is the truth. I like to encourage people to always have hope, but I also want to remind them of the past while they stand firm in their present. And to – to just even imagine – of course you have a future. And that’s why it was very interesting, this topic about writing Wisconsin, and also thinking about what the future might be for people in this state.

It – because I think about my grandparents who actually saw an inter-segregation in their lifetime. Or my mother who said she walked to the back of the bus. She told me that experience of how it felt to get on a bus and drop your money, and as soon as you started walking with me in one hand and my brother in her arms how the bus driver would press his foot on the accelerator, and she’d have to lurch and – and try hard not to drop us as she walked to the back of the bus. So, when I look at their generations and how they, through their very valiant work and work with other people who are like-minded, they saw in their lifetime change, which is so wonderful.

But I also acknowledge I don’t see that in my lifetime. In fact, I’m seeing a reversal. And I feel that as a poet it’s critical to talk about that. To acknowledge what is good and wonderful, but also to be clear and honest about what is not.

[Timothy Yu]

You know, to I – I think to follow up on that, I – I do feel like in a lot of ways this book came very much out of my own scholarly interests. My own sense of the – the history of these ideas. And – and, you know, I – I do think that a lot – in a lot of cases what I was doing was I was looking at the way in which, you know, contemporary American poets talk about China, talk about Asia, think about these ideas and then trying to kind of excavate the – the history behind that. So, when, you know, – I – I think that in a lot of the poems that I look at, contemporary American poets want to just talk about ancient Chinese poetry. They want to talk about, you know, Li Po and Du Fu. And, you know, but then – then, to me of course, there’s all this intervening history and that – that really, to me, resonates in a very different way and I think to an Asian American reader resonates in a very different way. And its that – I – and so, I do think that there is something kind of pedagogical or instructional in the way that I write these poems because I am trying to reveal a certain – a certain literary history at least.

You know, I – and – and so, that – that I do think is part of the – the goal of the book. And I – I do think that it’s interesting to think about the way in which even a single word resonates very differently for different kinds of audiences. So, there was this incident that some of you may have heard about relatively recently that Calvin Trillin, the very well-known writer, published a poem in The New Yorker that was called Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet? And Trillin’s poem was about different kinds of Chinese food and all these new kind of regional Chinese cuisines that are, you know, sort of coming to New York. And he says, Oh, you know, when are they going to run out of these different new provinces? And of course – and at one point he made a reference to Fujian province, as, you know, this is where the latest food came from. And, of course, that’s where my mother’s family comes from. So, to me, you know, when he says, Oh, Fujian, and that’s, you know, just a food to him, but it’s, you know, my family’s, you know, poem to – to me. And so that was how I read the poem. That was how it resonated to me.

And so, I felt like in responding to the poem, I needed to – and, you know, it made me think about the history of immigration, about a poet friend of mine who is from Fujian and is sort of fighting deportation right now. And, you know, these are the resonances that I have when I hear that, not – not – not food.

So, I – I think that it’s important to, you know, to my work to try to excavate those histories behind these kinds of words. And – and I guess that is where, for me, the writing and – and the history do intersect.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Yeah, I – I agree too that I think there are times when I’m thinking about, you know, when you were saying it’s not – it’s history that is close to us, that – that we know. For example, today I was sitting with the Center for 21st Century Studies people in Milwaukee, and we were talking about this upcoming indigeneitys conference and talking about how do you get students, you know, young students, students who are now of college age, to realize that things like, for example, boarding schools are still, you know, these are like my aunts and uncles who were boarding school era people. It’s not – its not from another, you know, lifetime or two ago. It’s like people we – we still know who have had these experiences. And I – and I think sometimes there is an invitation in poetry that allows a certain kind of – of experience or access or entrance into these, you know, sort of vital experiences of people that are – that is not the same if it’s – if its read about as a history or report or sort of a journalistic kind of way because there’s not that stridency.

There is – there are openings for the – the writer or for the reader, listener, to imagine for themselves. And so, I – I – at least that’s how I think about it when I’m – when Im trying to work with those subjects that I don’t want to, you know, give an oration. [Laughs] I want to, you know, maybe drop some images and open a door about something. And I – and I think it’s always a challenge. It’s always – its always an attempt to somehow allow the work to be informed by, but not owned by, these ideas. Right?

So, that’s where I’m always bouncing on that border somewhere. But – but my work is always about, I think, inevitably always about place and history. My latest book was Apprentice to Justice, and in there I have these sections because I believe we’re apprentice to place. We’re apprentice to history. We’re apprentice to story. We’re apprentice to people. And that’s sort of how I – I understand our relationship to our own identity and how, you know, the lens through which we see the world, right?

So, I guess, I had a few more questions, and maybe we could jump to one more, and then leave time for the audience to – to ask questions as well. But thinking a little bit more broadly about writing, I wanted you to consider the various debates that we’ve had in the public arena in recent years, and we can say also in this, you know, election season, and I’m wondering for you – and I know that you – you – several of you have touched on this a little, but what role does activism or resistance play for you in writing? Are there ways that – and maybe this is something that I was just introducing by way of my own account as, are there ways that creative work or literary events can engage the public around ideas or actions in the way that the political process cannot?

So, you know, why do we do what we do instead of make political speeches? [Laughs]

And maybe – maybe just to say, Audrey Lord says, Poetry is not a luxury. And I believe that, you know, we need poetry in our world to cast light, and if we have that light, we see in a new way. And then maybe also build something new in Wisconsin’s future, in our nation’s future, in the world’s future.

[Fabu]

It’s true what you’re saying. I think one of the most shaming events or shaming feelings for African Americans happens around enslavement. And I remember when my son was in kindergarten, a little girl came up to me and said, Do you know that your people were slaves? Now, she’s five years old, and all that she knows about me is that at one time my people were enslaved. So, then I got down so I could see her face and said, Did you know your people were enslaved? Did you know that’s where we get the word slavery from? And my people were also kings and queens, leaders. So, when I did this poem Dis’ Merica which is one of my favorites, I take what other people think is the worst, the language. So, if you’re put on a slave ship and you’re traumatized, how are you supposed to speak, you know, the English that everyone else is speaking? So, you know, I take the language and I say in this poem something very important about an experience that happened to us but that you need not be ashamed of, or you need not feel holds you down or keeps you from being whoever you want to be in the world.

So, I give voice to something that people kind of, again, whisper about. And I say what I know could have happened as a creative person because in this poem I was saying even though I’m several generations down from slavery, what must it have felt like? What – and by going through that experience, I feel I give honor, as Ms. Malaylay calls them, to the honorable slaves. But I also, as a scholar, talk about that is where we get the word slave from, from a blonde, blue-eyed people, that everybody has been enslaved. It’s not just my experience. It’s a human experience. So that, in looking at, you know, these kind of complex questions about Why do we write poetry instead of politics, because in poetry we invite you into the experience. We let you see what we see, feel what we feel, hear what we hear. And, to me, that is the beauty and the healing part of poetry. It brings you in to the experience. I’m not telling you what you should think or feel. I’m not. I’m actually even not trying to persuade you. I’m simply inviting you into an experience through words that I feel and that I’ve entered into. And I feel the worth of the poem is how well it’s able to do that for you. If it makes you think in a different way you’ve never thought, then, to me, that’s a very successful poem.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Well, let me just say, when I was, and – and it may sound as though I was saying it jokingly, asking you to be children, but it’s exactly what comes to mind with me every time I write. What is the word for that? I mean, in that little Sammy you would call knitting twisting pencils. See, he’s going to be a Shakespeare. He swings at it. I mean, he’s just invented a term for – for something. But – but – but what you’re saying and whatever the subject, I think its – it is, without end, fascinating what a word is. What – what does it mean we make a sound for that? And then why does that sound have such power? I mean, in the power not only in lullabies, but in laws. I mean, if you want to change the world, I guess, then you write new laws in one sense. Laws are written in words also.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right.

[Dion Kempthorne]

I mean, we always say we are a nation of law or a nation of laws, but we’re actually a nation of words, as we must be. It’s the way we communicate in legal and – and poetic ways. So, I mean, it just gets – as a writer, of course, you’re always searching for what would be the right word and then what would make it right, I mean, the context. And the issue, you know, should the N word be in Huckleberry Finn? I mean, this stuff, it just – it just never ends because it’s a social event, you know, as well as an intellectual remark. And most of us, first of all because I already apologized blanket-wise to the world –

[Laughter]
– most of us don’t quite know what we’re saying. I mean, I’m trying to understand Amanda and I can’t even understand myself.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Right. Right.

Well, you know, I – I liked what both of you are talking about, though. The idea that the language is not the final thing. It is – the language is a gesture, right? And poetry is a gesture. And – and if we follow the gesture, then we’re invited into a reseeing of the world, right? But it’s – but its – it is something that we, as you’re suggesting, Fabu, that we share with the reader/listener. That it’s not something that we accomplish in the poem. The poem is an opening up of a new vision or an invitation to see something differently, and I always feel like it – it is only completed in this sort of reciprocal relationship with somebody on the other side.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Abraham Lincoln – and I – I – I agree completely with you. That, I mean, that the word isn’t the thing necessarily. But the word does become something that we live by. And I think, say, the poetry of the Gettysburg Address, I mean we like the proposition in the Gettysburg Address, you know. And we – I also like the prepositions and the proposition. I mean, I think the power, in many ways, is that its – its pillars are grammar. It’s kind of an eloquent language. It says, of and by and for the people. I think Lincoln himself said that the Declaration of Independence – if you – we always quarrel about, Is there a national religion? And, of course, there isn’t supposed to be one. But he called the Declaration of Independence America’s religion. That this is – and he meant it in that this is the spirit of this country. That all people shall be equal, right? And that they shall have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But anyhow, the power of words and then the feebleness that I find in myself, as a person trying to use the right one, I mean, it’ll take up the rest of your life when you start thinking about it.

[Timothy Yu]

Yup.

[Dion Kempthorne]

And you also won’t want to do much else.

[Laughter]

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Did you wanna? Go ahead.

[Timothy Yu]

Yeah, just to add quickly. I mean, I – I think also we shouldn’t – I think often we imagine that poetry and politics can be very distant from each other. That poetry is something that, you know, speaks to a kind of smaller audience and can’t reach these kinds of large, you know, public audiences. But I – I think we shouldn’t underestimate, you know, poetry’s continuing ability to really actually to – to make a public intervention, to speak to a larger audience. I mean, you know, again back to the Calvin Trillin thing.

So, you know, when I read the Trillin poem, what I did was I wrote, because this is apparently what I do, I wrote a parody of it as a way of responding to it.

[Laughter]

It was – and it was put up on a 0- on a well-known Asian American blog called Angry Asian Man.

[Laughter]

And then – and then the – the – because apparently, I guess that’s what I am – and – and then the next day I got a phone call from an N.P.R. producer who said, I want to do a story on this on All Things Considered. And I said, Are you – is this a joke? Are you kidding? No, he really wanted to do a story, but then this was interesting. Then during the interview, he said to me, Well, you know, dont you think – why are Asian Americans making such a big deal about this? You know, why are people so upset about this poem? Do you think that – shouldnt – maybe shouldn’t Asian Americans be focusing on like more important things? And I said, Well, we’re talking about it, aren’t we? You know, this – in debating about this poem, we were debating about immigration. We were debating about racism. We were debating about, you know, you know, a kind of – the – the domination of, you know, our culture by certain images of whiteness. We were debating about, you know, really serious issues. It seemed like we were debating about a – a silly poem, but in fact we were having a much more serious conversation. And we were having it in a way that if I had, you know, gone somewhere and made a big speech about stereotypes, nobody would have listened to it. But because we were having this, like, poetry battle, you know, it actually got more attention. And so, that – that was totally fascinating to me, but it also said to me that, Yeah, you know, sometimes at certain moments, a poem can really do something in a – in a much more direct way than we might – we might expect. So that – that gave me, you know – that was a hopeful outcome.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

That’s I – thats great. And maybe that’s a really good statement about writing Wisconsin’s future. I mean, that we do have that power. And so, I think I’ll let Wisconsin, the people of Wisconsin have a couple questions. If you would like to ask anything of the panelists, feel free.

[Audience member]

Hello. So, I’m going violate the first rule that you gave us about questions. I just want to say that I am really enjoying and encouraged by this multicultural panel about Wisconsin’s future.
And just hearing all of your voices is very encouraging to me and encouraging about where we’re going as a state.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Thank you. Great.

Other questions or comments?

[Laughter]

[Audience member]

Hi. Thank you very much for being up here and taking your time and – and expression to all of us. I would like to comment what the writers displaced in Madison. Would you also consider that it would be a professional displacement if you’re displaced because of your profession as well as another person who’s a basketball player or an engineer or any other profession that – that would be more of a societal – and by joining associations and groups that that’s how you become less displaced?

[Kimberly Blaeser]

So, if I heard that question correctly, is asking regardless of what our profession is, is the way that we connect and feel less displaced is to become a part of organizations or associations. Is – is that the question?

[Audience member]

Yes.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Okay. What do you all think? I mean, the organizations in themselves are not the answer, of course. It’s the people in them, right? And it – so, it is that – still that necessity of making connections, and sometimes, oddly I think, we do that by throwing our poems out into the world. Right?

[Dion Kempthorne]

Sure.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

That that becomes a way of hooking or making a connection with someone else. Any other thoughts that you might have? I mean, are we displaced than engineers? My husband is an engineer. [Laughs]

[Timothy Yu]

I mean, I think my – my – my answer to the question is yes, sure, of – of course. But I think I have a more specific answer which is that, for me, one thing that made a huge difference to me as a writer was actually becoming part of an organization of Asian American poets. There’s this national organization called Kundiman, which is an organization that was founded by a couple of Asian American poets who said, you know, We – we need to have some kind of group. We need to have some kind of, you know, community. And they founded a group that was around this annual retreat that they have, you know, every year where, you know, established writers and younger writers kind of get together and have a few days of workshops and whatnot. And when I first participated in this, I went to it, and I started going to it, and I thought, you know, What – what do I have in common with other Asian American writers? Why would I want to go to this – this – this community? And then I got there, and after a few days I thought, Oh, my goodness, this is what I have needed for such a long time. And, you know, I didn’t quite know why or what it was, but for whatever reason, having that community became incredibly important to me and I think, you know, really helped me, you know, write this book.

So, but – but interestingly there is kind of – then that becomes kind of localized too because, you know, several people who I knew from Kundiman now live in Milwaukee and, you know, live elsewhere in the state of Wisconsin. And so, we formed kind of a – a local version of this community that’s been really important to me too. So – so yes, I – I do think that that is one way in which we can fight that isolation to some degree.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

Other questions or, if not, I guess I’d like to thank you. Oh, there’s one more. Perhaps we could take one more.

[Audience member]

Thank you. As a – as a consumer and not a practitioner of your practice, is there a way where you think in writing your poems you could put a little more humor in it? And so, we’re laughing a little more often. And sometimes it seems a little heavy. I’m not a poet, so I don’t want to be critical. But just, is that possible?

[Timothy Yu]

I thought my poems were funny.

[Laughter]

[Kimberly Blaeser]

I guess everyone has a different idea of what’s – whats humorous. But I think we all do that at some point, you know, And maybe I felt like Dion especially was funny tonight.

[Fabu]

And also, I need to just tell you as a poet, every time I’m going to read, I think about my audience, and I think about what I want to say. So, I choose poems based on that. So, I was just at a poetry conference this weekend. I decided I wanted to be loving, and I chose some poems that expressed that. So, I feel that that’s part of the poetic experience, to make a decision about who your audience is and what you feel that’s important for you to share and to say. So, that’s also a part of, I think, the poetry repertoire. We have many, many poems on many, many subjects. And I felt at the conference by pulling out a poem about love, that people would be looking at me and say, What? What? Fabu’s writing on love? Of course, I write love poems. Of course, I write poems about family and friends and humor and joy because these are all a part of the human experience. However, tonight, I carefully and seriously chose what I would like to share.

[Kimberly Blaeser]

We thank you all for coming out. Appreciate your attention, and thanks so much to my fellow panelists.

[Fabu]

Thank you, Kim. Thank you very much.

[Dion Kempthorne]

Thanks.

[Jane Elder]

Please join me in thanking this wonderful panel again.

[applause]