Poetry Centered

TC Tolbert: Deep Presence

September 09, 2020 University of Arizona Poetry Center Season 1 Episode 6
Poetry Centered
TC Tolbert: Deep Presence
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

TC Tolbert shares recordings that express a willingness to be deeply present, including a poem by Akilah Oliver that records intimacy with grief (“Selections from the Putterer’s Notebook and ‘An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet’”), a poem by Rigoberto González that brings exquisite specificity to a migrant’s narrative (“The Bordercrosser’s Pillowbook”), and a Marie Howe poem that demonstrates the power of staying with a constraint for as long as you can (“Magdalene—The Seven Devils”). Tolbert closes by reading “Dear Melissa,” an epistolary poem to an earlier self.

Listen to the full recordings of Oliver, González, and Howe reading for the Poetry Center on Voca:
Akilah Oliver (2010)
Rigoberto González (2010)
Marie Howe (2012)

Listen to a 2011 reading by TC Tolbert on Voca.

Julie Swarstad Johnson:

Welcome again to Poetry Centered, the show that brings you guest curated selections from Voca, the University of Arizona Poetry Center's online audiovisual archive of poetry. Our guest host chooses three recordings to introduce and then finishes up the episode by reading a poem of their own. Today's episode features TC Tolbert, who currently serves as Tucson's poet laureate. TC identifies as a trans and genderqueer feminist, collaborator, mover, and poet. And he's the author of the poetry collection Gephyromania. From Voca, TC brings us poems by Akilah Oliver, Rigoberto González, and Marie Howe. TC describes his admiration for Akilah's willingness to be deeply present, and I think you'll hear that willingness across the poems TC chooses as well as in the poem that he shares at the episode's end.

TC Tolbert:

Hey, y'all, this is TC Tolbert, and I am recording on Sunday, June 7th, sometime in the evening as the sun is setting. I'm sitting here in a blue and white polka dot chair watching a hummingbird catch its breath while there are some fires in the background. They're burning up on Pusch Ridge, just outside of Tucson, Arizona. This selection is by Akilah Oliver and it was recorded on January 21st, 2010. It is, it's a long piece. It's about 12 minutes long, but it's what she calls a collaboration between two distinct pieces that she's written, one from The Putterer's Notebook and another from A Toast in the House of Friends. I chose this piece because being in the audience for it a decade ago, I can still hear the reading in my head, especially the line,"I am extending to you this, uh," that repeats, in my brain, wherever I go, in particular, when I'm sort of falling in love with some very small and disappearing moment, which I guess all moments are constantly arriving and disappearing, but it's, it's such a profound grief and love song. And I consider this reading to really be a transcendent experience. It certainly changed my relationship to being in the room with poetry. I think there was something about the way that she took these individual pieces and brought them together to give them a new life in the reading that they, a life that they didn't have on the page and that they didn't have to have on the page, that they could exist in a new way, merged or collaborated in this reading. That has absolutely changed my relationship to poetry and really to grief as well. Another thing I want to add about listening to this recording by Akilah is she died almost exactly a year after this recording was made, and she was young. She was 49. Most of her work dealt with grief in some form or another. Her book, A Toast in the House of Friends, is dedicated to her son, her brother, and her mother, all of whom had died in her lifetime. And, you know, she's intimate with grief. And she's also willing to be deeply present, and that's something that I just admire about her work. Every time I return to it, or it returns to me, is this continual presence with the present moment. And a lot of time that means engagement with repetition, which can feel like you're sort of knocking up against something that won't move, and a pain in this case, or, you know, a loss that, that won't budge, really. And yet, you know, she continues to sort of stay with it and you feel it loosen, open or transform. So I just feel deeply grateful that I had the chance to experience her work in person and for this recording, because I want everyone to get to hear her voice and to hear her read.

Akilah Oliver:

So I'm going to start off by reading some poems from a project that's been in the works for about two and a half, three years now called The Putterer's Notebook. And, I guess it's an anti memoir, but then I forgot what that means. So it's, basically the ideal is to think about narrative and recreating the body of a life through the questioning of that life and through the dispersions of narrative. And the primary question that drives this book, The Putterer's Notebook, this very, very long poem is from Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community, where he poses the question about what is the primary duty of repair. So that's what kind of got me into this particular investigation. And at some point I'm going to collaborate The Putterer's Notebook with a section from A Toast in the House of Friends, called the, what is that section called? Aha. I love this title too,"An Arranging Guard of Angels Thusly Coming to Greet." So, I'll switch texts back and forth eventually. As if lateral lines and neo nationalism were essentials, the world tipped around an image of you, I create on the train collecting ruins. This is an epistemology of forget, or then curiously, I am a system of relations later, devotion, Los Angeles, treacherous, a surface recedes, a narrative of whoever collects shorelines, a disassociation between forms. You my ongoing query. What do you dream? We who had, who are at opposite ends of a myth of lineage requiring negotiation. All of these abstractions in my teeth, I could tell you stories, you skiver. I will talk while we work. For example, I am seduced, or I offer me as proposal. We don't recognize ourselves as vulnerable, landing here at the airport. I hide at a newsstand for hours waiting for the terror to fade. My raw sexuality watches horses sleep in Jersey. I attempt I to degender violence, to know God. I remember your body asleep in aspersions. You told me about a childhood in Minnesota, and I thought of the movies. And I thought of how tough it is to learn to read, knowing ultimately I would betray you. And I thought of death again, as a way of looking through funny mirrors or the tight rope and the angelic failure to catch you. But even now, when it's all said and done, I missed the momentary frail vision, the chaotic bodies and hip black split shimmering down Bedford like apparitions, like liars. I had expected to find allies there. Unforgivable violence, something dropped, untouch, inhabit a queered, more plural. I'm here, Teresa Hotel that collapsed, shining prince, Castro, all of us fatigued, the century. I as in not Freudian mistranslation. When is the tipping point? New York, I've been back back many times, sacred heart, been back back many times, eluding, best time. Then Concord, then hairdressers remembering, smell. Burnt alterity I'll never leave you no matter what. When I saw you, your said architecture, I shook, I architecture, shook house, a dangerous weave, house, a dagger, a dagger. Yes, yes. It mimics this body of public adornment to speak up in relation to scale. In the Charltons clothes, I collect epigraphs to mark this form as urgent, sinking, replicable, and twisting like nightmare. Seeking solitude, nostalgic and post-colonial light. I am not seeking more than an indicate of our love that broke an umbiblicus, left ungrounded for so many refuse season. A bargaining chip between us. Beautiful boys, girls. Beautiful, beautiful boys, girls. Beautiful. I am extending to you this, uh. I am extending to you this, uh. I am extending to you this, ah, ah, ah. I am extending to you this, ahh. Traveling to and away then I was carrying the baby in my arms. And as I said that, the energy shifted again. Desire is not clean. Desire is not clean. Desire is not clean. It's not clean. It's not clean is not desire. Sing. And once again, leaving, this filmy mist that surrounds day. Let go. No, stay here in me a little longer. Keep you here in my body. A little longer on earth. I didn't expect to be in this temple. I want you to tell me things like, it's so beautiful out there. You'd tell me when you tell me things. It's your innocence and complexity that floors me. Are you my ancestor, my angel, my guide, my chosen one in this cycle of little deaths. Even now. Yellow shirt days. Vando days, hush mouth days, mistaken days, grace days, go days, thank you days. Little days, days of let me go days up. Ah, beautiful boy days, beautiful girl days. Then I command the stage again as embodied activism this time, a gone time from a before then, if so, therefore, without pretense, nothing or used this phrase, this constituent, this color lily I've never seen before, a calculated blue. I was considered a last resort. I was considering going there over by the lost boys, but I didn't know how to speak of a genocide that wears by face a calm and then temple. Anyone please. We used to pray like desperados then silence as charade to lay upon, beautiful girls, boys. Beautiful. I'm extending to you. I'm extending to you this, oh. I am extending to you this, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh angels. Can you spare? Just one. Can you spare? Just one. Can you spare just one. Keeping time with angels. Beautiful boys, girls. Beautiful. All around me. Keeping time all around me. My sweet one. Who's that? Who's that? My sweet one. My sweet one. Always eyes. Not one. Both. I have bathed your feet and here in the fifth chamber, see you walking in spirit all the way up there. I have baptized your testes and stomach with eucalyptus kisses. Beautiful boys, girls. Beautiful, beautiful boys, girls. Beautiful. I disrupt my imaginary. My marketable language receives you, tattered one. Is this ending good, to be good, to be unknown, to be broken, to be century, to be just here. Be good earth. I've been back back many times. I've been back back many times. What is the primary duty of repair? Where is your embodiment? This small obsession of becoming and collapse, or the desire to be in the world as image or as voice or a knowing or known clatter, prostration the world. In Madrid, we made a mistake unable to be big about and admit we claim holy connection, drunk all the time, closer to thee, leaning towards Madagascar dust mites. And I meant so many times to. A laceration and drained just yesterday. Then by morning again, suspicious and not reflecting a shine. You send those comrade poems, coupled, crumbled, and I should be, but I'm not saying. Just tell me what happened that night of the full moon as if amnesiac and unable to sort. Alternately then, how nice it is to sleep, doing a share to darkness or spruce is a street to go down, to look for. So impossible. Ann sends a quotation in the midst of words I wanted, in the impossible break of a single line. Had beautiful teeth. I break while inventing Kentucky bluegrass and alcoholism. Who knew what a bestseller either of those would be. I'm laughing all the way to the bank, as they say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How come you want to treat my baby so bad? How come you want to treat me so bad, baby. Good to you. Have I been? When we were practicing human? My father told me so many stories with place names, Michigan, Lake. Given names, all laid out with punchlines or morality moments and I don't remember any of them. Only Lake Michigan, where I could never imagine him rowing with a picnic basket. My mother, a calm. How much time is enough time. All I think I feel I've stolen from someone who's already said it before. As if the mind were a doubt, this is the thing. I'm trying to understand how much I loved him, her, them, they, and how badly I expressed me, then something would be salved, silly, California, vomitous, paradise. To sleep, I must resolve to kick someone's ass. In the dream, all this terrain is familiar to me, not saying, doused in incorrect light, suspended. I don't know what I did before one o'clock. Heartless bastards. Up here, airless, but tight, flying, not like a bird, rather entrapment, airborne, ulterior contradictions the air below clouded, cushioned, a scenery that has seen itself, but likes to reminisce, irritated at signs of time streaking over brokerages. It's Boston, bellows the clouded mirage. I have no emotional comment. Departure, conditional to love. And to a result of.

TC Tolbert:

This is Rigoberto González reading"The Bordercrossers Pillowbook," which comes from his book Unpeopled Eden. And this recording was made at the Tucson Festival of Books on Sunday, March 14th, 2010. I chose this poem because right away it interrupts and counters the over simplified, dehumanized narratives that get told about migrants across media. There's this constant attempt to erase the specificity of migrant narratives, the nuance, the relationships, and the details that make up a life. And in this case, a border crossers life, a migrant's life, the details and specificity of which we simply don't see enough of across media, across our art forms. And then to get this queer representation, this, the queer migrant journey. It's exquisite and, and deeply important and intimate. So that's the thing I would have readers listen for, is how these lists of sometimes seemingly banal things become so incredibly expansive. And how in trying to put them in their own categories, such as things that shine in the night, by placing them next to each other, how quickly they sort of supersede their own boundaries. And they, there is this porousness to every item on the list and it just grows and grows. And the connections are suddenly so clear and strong, which is of course pushing against the entire concept of borders in this just beautiful, powerful, powerful way. The final thing I want to add about Rigoberto's poem is that I teach it quite a bit, but I also continue to learn from it. In particular, the way that it zooms in and he layers an image next to image, concrete item next to concrete item without commentary. And it's a real powerful reminder for me, how proximity creates relationship. And when an item returns and it's in a new context or, you know, proximal to new or different things, how it shifts meaning or intensity. And it causes me to go back and reread and see how each item in the list existed in a different place. And what was the tonal impact or the urgency next to other things in the list. And so I just think this poem is an incredible teacher of many, many things.

Rigoberto González:

These are all poems from my fourth collection that I'm working on, and I wanted to try them out. It's so different, you're trying them out in front of your computer at home. You know, they sound really great, but I will send, you have the pressure of all these ears and you have to be a little more attuned to the work. So, I'm going to end with this long, I began with a long piece and I'll end with a long piece. It's called"The Bordercrossers Pillowbook," and it's modeled or inspired by the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon. Things that shine the night. Fulgencio's silver crown when he snores. The moon glaring like the coin of Judas, all the smaller metals we call stars. My buckle, the tips of my boots, the stones in my kidneys, an earring, a tear on the cheek. The forked paths of the zipper, the blade of the pocketknife triggering open, the blade of the pocketknife seducing the orange, the blade of the pocketknife, salivating. The blade of the pocketknife. The word México, the word migra. Things are afraid to move when they sleep. The owls carved on rock. Fulgencio. Me. Things that forget their shapes. Snakes, our bedding, our clothes, the shadows twitching by the fire, the skin of the rabbit, its flesh. An apple, the orange, the jacaranda behind the house, the roof, the clothesline, the curtains, the door that swells in the heat, the pipes that shrink in the cold. The couch, the table, the lamp, the dominoes, the dishes, the children, the wife, the neighbors, memory. Things that make noises at dawn. The sun, as it rips away from the horizon. The sun, as it pounds against my skin. The sand moaning with my weight, my weight moaning with the sand. The stones in my kidneys, children waking up in the homes we left behind, the footfalls, the footprints, the foot. Fulgencio's prayer without saints or God. Things that open like flowers in daylight. Fulgencio's eyes, Fulgencio's mouth as he yawns. The buttons on his shirt, the orange peel, the campsite, the desert, the world, the jacaranda behind the house, the roof, the clothesline, the curtains, the door that swells in the heat, the pipes that shrink in the cold, the couch, the table, the lamp, the dominoes, the dishes, the children, the wife, the neighbors, memory. The white sparks in my brain, the red sparks in my heart, the stones in my kidneys. Things that travel at the speed of silence. Air, sand, heat, light, grief, memory, thought, Fulgenico, me. Things I would say to Fulgencio, if I could say them. Let's go back. Let's keep going. Stop. Run. I hate you. I love you. Get away from me. Hug me. Kiss me. I'm sorry. Hold me. Hold me. Hold me. Things I want to polish clean. An apple and another one and another. My buckle, the tips of my boots, Fulgencio's forehead, our tracks in the sand, the ring on my finger, the horizon, its infestation of green cars, the word wetback, the voice, the bullhorn, the officer, Fulgencio's tears of shame, the sores on his shoes. The sound of static, of running motors, of running men, the jacaranda behind the house, the roof, the clothesline, the curtains, the door that swells in the heat, the pipes that shrink in the cold, the couch, the table, the lamp, the dominoes, the dishes, the children, the wife, the neighbors, memory, the stones in my kidneys. I'd set them in gold. I'd set them in gold, and try to wear them like teeth.

TC Tolbert:

This is Marie Howe, reading"Magdalene—The Seven Devils" on February 16th, 2012. I chose this poem because I'm pretty much bonkers about it. I have tried to memorize it several times, and the first time I heard it was on a podcast and I started writing it down as soon as I could to try to get the words into my body, to really begin to understand how she had created this structure and was able to, within this structure, cover a really wide and delightful and contemplative tonal range. You'll hear in the recording audience members laughing and then moving into a reflective silence and then laughing again. And no matter how many times I've read the poem or how many times I listen to Marie Howe read the poem, I feel those movements as if for the first time. One of the things this poem really teaches me is the power of staying with the constraint as long as you can. And then recommitting to it when you think you can't handle it anymore. So there's this insistence of the form and then also you see the insistence of the voice as it sort of breaks out of this form, especially right there at the conclusion. And just how satisfying both of those things are, the constraint and the final eruption from the constraint, which brilliantly includes a nod to the constraint that it just broke. And there's no way I can talk about this poem in this particular moment during the COVID-19 pandemic and not talk about the way that she seemed to anticipate this moment with the section about,"I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive and I couldn't stand it. I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word, cheesecloth to breathe through that would trap it, whatever was inside everyone else that entered me when I breathed in." Those lines and that voice, the way that it sort of stumbles over choosing its words and trying to make sense of this psychological state, and the reality of sharing the very air that people are breathing out, this was stunning to me the first time I heard it five years ago, and now I read it and I can't help but think Marie Howe saw the future, which is both terrifying and really quite comforting. So thanks, Marie Howe.

Marie Howe:

I'd like to read a new poem, which is in the voice of Mary Magdalene. We don't know much about Mary Magdalene except a very, very few references to her. In of one of the references, it says, it's from Luke chapter eight, verse two, where he refers to Mary called Magdalene from whom seven devils had been cast out. So this is a poem where Mary talks about what those seven devils are. She's talking to us."Magdalene—The Seven Devils." The first was that I was very busy. The second, I was different from you, whatever happened to you could not happen to me. Not like that. The third, I worried. The fourth, envy disguised as compassion. The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid. The aphid disgusted me, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. The mosquito too. Its face. And the ant. Its bifurcated body. Okay. The first was that I was so busy. The second that I might make the wrong choice, because I had decided to take the plane that day, that flight before noon so as to arrive early and I shouldn't have wanted that. The third was that if I walked past a certain place on the street, the house would blow up. The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing. The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living. The sixth, if I touch my right arm, I had to touch my left arm. And if I touch the left arm a little harder than I first touched the right, then I had to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even. The seventh, I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive and I couldn't stand it. I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word, cheesecloth to breathe through that would trap it, whatever was inside everyone else that entered me when I breathed in. No, that was the first one. The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened? How had our lives gotten like this? The third was that I couldn't eat food if I really saw it, distinct, separate from me in a bowl or on a plate. Okay. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list. The second was that the laundry was never finally done. The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did, and then if people thought of me as little as I thought of them, then what was love. The fourth was that I didn't belong to anyone. I wouldn't allow myself to belong to anyone. The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn't know. The sixth was that I projected myself. The sixth was that I projected on to others what I myself was feeling. The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying. The sound she made, the gurgling sounds, so loud, we had to speak louder to hear each other over it. And then I couldn't stop hearing it. Years later, grocery shopping, crossing the street. No, not the sound. It was her body's hunger. Finally evident what our mother had hidden all her life. For months, I dreamt of knuckle bones and roots. The slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth, by what grew underneath. The underneath. That was the first devil. It was always with me. And that I didn't think you, if I told you, would understand any of this.

TC Tolbert:

This poem is called"Dear Melissa." And it's from a series of poems written to my birth name in which I am trying to sort of meditate on the person that I was, the name that I was called for over half my life, and bring her and that self into the present and sort of show her around. So this is titled"Dear Melissa." A gray horse painted on the side of a building. Holy, to be caught, abandoned, inside the self, every neck and back muscle quivering. My white face over your white face. Who would not crack, if they needed to, the shell of a walnut with the heel of a boot.

Julie Swarstad Johnson:

Thank you so much for hosting us today, TC. This is the end of our first season of Poetry Centered. And we want to say thank you so much to you out there for joining us on this adventure. We hope to be back with a second season later this year. Subscribe to the show through your favorite podcast app to get the latest updates and perhaps some bonus content between seasons. You can always visit us at the Poetry Center's website for past episodes, updates, and plenty of poetry related content. 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 people. Poetry Centered is supported by the work of

Diana Marie Delgado:

Diana Marie Delgado

Tyler Meier:

Tyler Meier

Julie Swarstad Johnson:

And I'm your producer, Julie Swarstad Johnson. Explore Voca, the Poetry Center's audiovisual archive online at voca.arizona.edu.

Introduction
Akilah Oliver's "Selections from the Putterer’s Notebook and 'An Arriving Guard of Angels, Thusly Coming to Greet'"
Rigoberto González's "The Bordercrosser’s Pillowbook"
Marie Howe's "Magdalene—The Seven Devils"
TC Tolbert reads "Dear Melissa"