Julie Swarstad Johnson:
[00:00:02.60] Thank you for joining us for a new episode of Poetry Centered, the podcast that brings you archival recordings of poets reading their work selected and introduced for you by contemporary poet. This podcast comes to you from the University of Arizona Poetry Center and from Voca, our online audiovisual archive. My name is Julie Swarstad Johnson and I'm delighted to welcome you as we start a new slate of episodes.
[00:00:30.41] To kick things off, we're grateful to have Olatunde Osinaike as our host today. Olatunde is a poet, essayist and software developer. His first full-length collection out late last year is Tender Headed. For this episode, he brings together poems by Patricia Spears Jones, Morgan Parker, and Ishmael Reed, which, as you'll hear him put it, take the harm around us unseriously, even as they consider serious things. Olatunde, thank you so much for hosting us today.
Olatunde Osinaike:
[00:01:06.59] Greetings, folks. This is Olatunde Osinaike coming to you today from Castleberry Hill in Atlanta, Georgia. The first poem I'd like to share is poet Patricia Spears Jones reading “Self-portrait as Midnight Storm,” recorded on Saturday, October 21, 2017.
[00:01:38.16] No portrait is without its failings. The laugh tracks that follow. I know this, well, having chosen to be a practitioner of the self-portrait very early in my experience with poetry.
[00:01:57.40] It's really a silly practice putting all that burden on words to encompass what little we perceive. And I've long admired poets who subvert the conduit of poetry to comment on loss and its wide reach. To transfer energy like heat in a poem, capture it only to hold it to the light for just a moment, to show the reader possibility in a blink.
[00:02:30.94] Lots was happening in October of 2017, though. I remember two specific things that my now wife, then long-distance girlfriend would be special in my life, and that I didn't have a job, or at least one worth holding on to. Life was all transitions, comings, and goings, choices toward my own complacency. Attempts to define or assign meaning to the day's trappings before my head hit the pillow day in and day out.
[00:03:13.50] I should mention that this is a time also when poetry offered itself as that canvas to try thought. Surprise, surprise. Poetry can always be that. If not also for the community, poetry reminds you are listening for.
[00:03:32.98] In her introduction, Patricia Spears Jones remarks her experience of coming from a small town unlike myself. What it is to find all the people you can never find where you're from? I'd found a number of poets the same way. One of which being Spears Jones whose work. When I first started to comb through the archive, I couldn't wait to explore for no other reason than memory and how formative her work was for me when I was just stumbling my way through this poem.
[00:04:10.08] Like others of hers, came offering the wishful figure. Listening I come also upon a fondness for understanding want as opposed to strictly wielding it, what it might mean for words to make clear the path for desire. So here is Patricia Spears Jones reading “Self-portrait as Midnight Storm.”
[00:04:38.28] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Patricia Spears Jones:
[00:04:43.21] “Self-portrait as Midnight Storm.” “Tossing the steel mesh trash cans is so much fun. Not as much as juggling broken umbrellas, or rocking the yellow taxis, or the last of the Lincoln town cars, ferrying passengers drenched and stimulated. The start of a new day and the pitch is black with stimulation.
[00:05:12.03] Shush, shush, shush, shush. My sheets of rain. Shush, shush, shush. Look at the angry boys drunk and holy as they try mimic storm. They're really large guys, huge fist hits a bus stop carousel. It pebbles to the sidewalk, hundreds of green nuggets, his holy hand, unblemished by blood.
[00:05:44.20] Foolish boys. Foolish boys. Your anger is no storm and your howling bears little glamour. The wolves in your throats have long since left you. And here in the rain, your pain is small, durable. And yet the pebbles scatter about reminder of uglier private deeds.
[00:06:09.40] As for my winds, my rain, my tossing back the moon soft gleam means little to windows stood still storm after storm centurions of design. They raised my ire and lash, lash, lash. I throw against glass. The sash a square reflection of domestic armature. As for the painted wood doors, they are so easily broken.”
[00:06:35.39] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Olatunde Osinaike:
[00:06:42.16] Thanks, Patricia. For the second recording, I'd like for us to journey to a Thursday in September, just over a year removed from that last recording. September 6, 2018, to be exact. And Morgan Parker reading “Magical Negro 217. Diana Ross finishing a rib in Alabama, 1990s.”
[00:07:20.44] Parker, who, upon seeing the crowd, welcomed the opportune palm, which would linger next. Turns to the charmed pastime of reading new work. From her, then newest collection of poems, Magical Negro. With another poem, that is near comedy, yet unflinchingly tactical about its usage.
[00:07:55.30] A satisfyingly referential and perceptive text. It's the same collection responsible for helping me understand my own belonging to the audience I'd once considered distant. Understand we are crafting curriculum with these books are our poems, our jokes, our reasons, our confessions only worth their weight if provocative in an acceptable politic.
[00:08:37.50] This poem draws education and imagination in two beloveds onto the sofa to establish comforts contract. And the conditions we agreed to under the guise of depiction. I think what I appreciate most about this poem is its pursuit of description in a world that so often seeks to nullify feelings yet described.
[00:09:09.73] Part epistolary, part ekphrasis. It's a poem explicit in its scrutiny on how we objectify each other. Inviting us through the screen door to a form that so often seems like harmless exercise and contemplation art elided and believed to be proximate to our experienced that we have what it takes to start the conversation. Marvel at its strength.
[00:09:51.48] To be so blunt about the world around us is to be as honest about how we have been treated in said world. How raw and unpleasant we have been with each other. How rude and intimate our assumptions and renderings of character. It bears the question and the thrill of the label, how art can urge us to reconsider our pronounced fictions to interrogate are supposed knowledge and fruitful ways?
[00:10:35.74] So here is Morgan Parker reading “Magical Negro 217. Diana Ross finishing a rib in Alabama 1990s.”
Morgan Parker:
[00:10:56.69] I think I'm just going to read a couple. Do you have my Beyoncé book?
Tommy Pico:
[00:11:01.86] I do have your Beyoncé book.
Morgan Parker:
[00:11:03.08] Maybe I won't read from it. Maybe I'll just read new. Are you guys OK if I do that? Or are people like, Beyoncé, must have pop culture. I don't know. Sometimes at schools, I'm like, OK, I'll do it.
[00:11:16.71] [LAUGHTER]
[00:11:18.50] I'll do it for you.
[00:11:19.53] [LAUGHTER]
[00:11:21.14] OK, well, that's cool. You guys seem like you'll be fine. OK.
[00:11:25.18] [LAUGHTER]
[00:11:27.20] This book is coming out in February. I hope you guys will be around.
[00:11:33.53] [LAUGHTER]
[00:11:34.82] All right. I'm terrified. I'm like, February is coming. People are going to read this shit. And I have never cared less in my life. So I'm like, this is about to be a problem. So the book is called Magical Negro. And there are several poems in the book called Magical Negro.
[00:11:58.05] All the numbers, I had to figure out while I was writing it, what Magical Negro number one would be for me. It's Jesus Christ.
[00:12:07.66] [LAUGHTER]
[00:12:09.29] I will read this one. This one is based on a photograph that is literally my most favorite thing to look at in the whole world. I think it's the most spectacular image in America. And it's Diana Ross finishing a rib in Alabama in the 1990s. Walking down the street.
[00:12:27.51] You guys should Google it immediately. Don't listen to me. Google this picture. She's walking down the street wearing like a negligee and just eating a rib. And it's the most glamorous shit that you could ever imagine.
[00:12:44.78] [LAUGHTER]
[00:12:45.99] So this is “Magical Negro number 217. Diana Ross finishing a rib in Alabama in 1990s.” “Since I thought I'd be dead by now, everything I do is fucking perfect. Walking reckless. And man, I suck their bones until they're perfect. I don't sleep with accolades. I don't get touched in the night. All men do is cry and ask me to be their mama.
[00:13:13.24] [LAUGHTER]
[00:13:15.17] I can't get a decent fuck to save my-- when I think about their feelings, I don't care.
[00:13:20.47] [LAUGHTER]
[00:13:23.74] It's cool. It's cool. Come to Mama.
[00:13:26.63] [LAUGHTER]
[00:13:28.48] There is so much death here. It is casual and almost fragrant. The word "kill" doesn't sound as bad as it is. All my friends are sisters and husbands. I'm afraid to be uncharted. I want an empire in my teeth. But I can't be bothered to wear anything but silk.
[00:13:54.64] I have grown up less mysterious than my myth. All men do is think I'm looking at them. When I think about them tasting me, I mean, don't Google my tits when you can just-- unfortunately, I have a body, and I'm the only one in charge of it.
[00:14:14.29] You know what? I eat the bones, too. I'm in the world. I'm in the world. Nobody cares where I came from.”
[00:14:25.28] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Olatunde Osinaike:
[00:14:32.70] Thank you, Morgan. I'd like to wrap our adventure through the archive with a recording of “Sixth Street Corporate War” by Ishmael Reed read on March 29, 1989. The drive of narrative can be so obedient.
[00:15:02.04] Fickle almost too much at times, pacing romance, horror, all elements of a story and its conundra that find their discipline in the linear. And if we remove the routine or rather made motivation out of our known ignorances, what does that spell for the function of delight? I'm not typically without worry, without fixed awareness of who I am and when I am, which is to say I don't find myself often in the position of endeared power.
[00:15:52.32] In fact, I just quit my job this very day I'm recording. And for those of you who might presume I'm joking, I'm not. But I've been thinking about humor a lot these days. The cliff's particular gift to hold our interest.
[00:16:14.23] And this poem, it comes to us in the shape of the modest rat unsolicited and all as analogy on behavior and the impaired mentality in recognition of the sociocultural breadth, placing those with and those without. How we detach to come to the cinemas made of our identities? This poem, as does most of Ishmael Reed's work, finds its footing in the proposition that the most interesting things about us are quite honestly our contradictions.
[00:17:00.33] It doesn't fancy anything other than the occasion to play with the defeat of our quiet and most casual expectations. I need not be in any room that does not honor my presence. And what better way to feel welcome than to bring company with you that you are familiar with, that you're well acquainted with, knowing how they'll approach the moment the same way each time.
[00:17:30.71] Laughter's aesthetic is broad. But truest to what we mistake to cause it. And I'm not embarrassed to admit I've let loose a laugh in a strange moment. Maybe it's the peculiarity of life that draws it out of me.
[00:17:49.26] What's more real than surreal honor of being willing to take yourself and the harm around unseriously. I encourage you to spend time thinking of your own laugh and what moments you introduce it to. So here is Ishmael Reed reading “Sixth Street Corporate War.”
[00:18:13.82] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Ishmael Reed:
[00:18:16.81] This is Sixth Street Corporate War. Sixth Street Corporate War. Sixth Street Corporate War. Not all rats live in sewers. Some of them dwell in $100,000 rat's nest on the Alameda and drive to work in a Mercedes laboratory rat white. You wouldn't even know they were rats. On the mailbox, it says Mr. Rodent.
[00:18:49.47] [LAUGHTER]
[00:18:52.75] As big as a coffee table book, the only book in the house. He spends his time nibbling rat boy in a rat house with his cheesy rat kitchen, a skimping on a rat sofa or on a bed of rats. Or you might find him at the rathskeller wetting his rat whiskers on rat soup, my favorite drink. Said the shareholder rat, there you go, Bureaucratic rat invested in rat traps. And people live like rats. As years went by, he gained more status until he became the esteemed Dr. Ratus.
[00:19:27.14] [LAUGHTER]
[00:19:29.84] Crashed a Tomcat convention and demanded to be put on the banquet. While this even woke up scrounger or Mr. All Claus, the Toastmaster Tomcat cat napping on the dais after a night of pre-convention howling. "What do you say, boy?" said the thrice-decorated rat scrapper. Rat cocktail, rat of the day, rat a la carte, or rat moose. The other cats, being democrats, cast their votes by secret ballot. Gulp.
[00:20:05.41] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Olatunde Osinaike:
[00:20:13.54] Well, it's been a pleasure. I want to end by thanking the University of Arizona and you for letting time pass with me in your ear and some poems in your heart. It's quite the privilege to have combed through the rich folk archive and been invited to share some poems I've been fumbling through. As is with tradition, I have now the opportunity to share a poem of my own.
[00:20:42.06] Thinking through these poems, I wanted to stay on track with the poem that pivots the spot of self-identification nearing the mark of interrogation extended from the set of poems offered already. And so I wanted to put to voice a poem from my recent book, Tender Headed published by Akashic Books in December of 2023. It's titled “Self Portrait in Lieu of My EP.”
[00:21:15.46] “Nobody stepped to me, unless they got away with the way I cradle the mic because I cradled the mic my way. Nobody gets to question what I feel. Everybody's fluent in silence. I feel like I'm still waiting to come in.
[00:21:36.89] When I speak and the tables have turned, I think I've turned tables. When the beat drops, I let you tell it though. I've already talked that talk is like that. On my resume, action verbs. In my coffee, I recognized even after adding more sugar. In the plastic-sheathed rectangles of our most revisited photo album, a djembe, I played like there was a stop made for me on the Soul Train Line, second cousin to the sun soul. It's a cookout every time I walk outside.
[00:22:19.67] And a reunion for each new dance my brothers and sisters make before I wake up and learn it's choreo. It's like that. And it has been since I found the progression from A minor to G major. And it has been since I froze on the two a mannequin. Since the upbeat of my pulse had a plus 1 added to its thump baby since self-interest, since backwash, since way back, since carburetors mixed fuel with that referendum of air.
[00:22:56.85] Car don't got no roof. It's like that. Like that. Very first taste of hypocrisy. The fetal position practiced and fittingly forgotten when the speakers pick me up with my filth. The things I brag rapped on tempo, a Magna Carta barter. I could call a track if I run fast enough for you to ignore what we've kept 100.
[00:23:27.78] I've said what I said. And now, a bridge where I can check the 1, 2 thrice before 12 hit a u-turn, before it's all sirens and hoping those lights pass me by. It's like that.”
[00:23:44.74] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Julie Swarstad Johnson:
[00:23:53.06] Thank you so much, Olatunde. Two of those poems were familiar to me. But Ishmael Reed was new. And I just always love hearing what hosts put together how things become a new constellation. We're so grateful for your insight.
[00:24:06.90] Listeners, thank you for sharing your time with us. We're glad to be with you again. And as mentioned, this is the first in a new set of episodes. In two weeks, you can join us again for an episode hosted by Mary Jo Bang. Until then, check out our back catalog of episodes and explore Voca on your own at voca.arizona.edu.
[00:24:31.70] Poetry Centered is a project of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, home to a world-class library collection of more than 80,000 items related to contemporary poetry in English and English translation. Located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the Poetry Center library and buildings are housed on the Indigenous homelands of the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui.
Aria Pahari:
[00:24:59.76] Poetry Centered is the work of Aria Pahari, that's me, and Julie Swarstad Johnson. Explore Voca, the Poetry Center's audiovisual archive online at voca.arizona.edu.
