>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Eli Campbell: I'm am the Programming Coordinator here
at Hill Center, and I'm really pleased to see you all.
Can I ask quickly how many of you are here for the first time?
Excellent.
Well, welcome.
I love to see new faces, and I hope you check
out the programming samplers that I put on your chairs.
There's lots of great new promo
about upcoming events in December.
We have some really cool things going on here all the time.
So, hopefully, we'll see your faces again.
Before we get started, I want
to thank the Capitol Hill Community Foundation,
without whom we wouldn't be able
to offer free programming like this.
They are a rock in this neighborhood,
and we are so happy to be in partnership with them.
Now, I'd like to introduce Mr. Rob Casper.
[ Applause ]
>> Rob Casper: And, thanks to everyone here, Charlotte Harper,
[inaudible], and everyone at the Hill Center
for helping organize this event.
Also, great thanks to the Washington Post
for their ongoing support and to Ron Charles the head
of the Washington Post Book World
who is our moderator and guide.
I'll say a little bit more about Ron
and his extraordinary work a little bit later.
Also, I just want to say, so you know, E City Books is outside
with copies of Ray's books for sale,
should you [inaudible] find some books,
have her sign them, [inaudible].
And, Christmas is coming up.
Let me tell you a little bit
about the poetry literature center
at the Library of Congress.
We are home to the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry.
The only federally funded position for a literary artist
in this country, but we do run events
like this throughout the year now.
We, at the library and the Hill Center, but in D.C.
and around the country, too.
If you want to find out more about our events,
you can go to our website, www.loc.gov/poetry.
And, now, Rae Armantrout let me introduce her
to conclude our series this year.
Armantrout was born in Vallejo, California in 1947,
and grew up in San Diego.
She holds degrees from the University
of California Berkeley where she studied with Denise Levertov
and San Francisco State University.
Her 12 books of poetry include "Partly: New and Selected Poems,
2001-2015", published in the last year, and "Versed"
which received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize
and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry.
Ron has all three of those books
which he will reference this evening.
In 1998, she also published a prose memoir, "True",
and her selected prose was published in 2007.
Armantrout's other honors include and award in poetry
from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts,
two grants from the Fund for Poetry, and fellowships
from the California Arts Council, the Rockefeller Center,
and the Guggenheim Foundation.
For almost 20 years, she taught at the University of California,
San Diego, and now, Armantrout lives in Everett,
Washington with her husband Chuck.
In the four years of presenting "Life of a Poet", I have gotten
to watch Ron work his magic
with over a dozen poets including many old friends.
However, Rae is the first poet that I once interviewed
who I got to see in this year's.
[inaudible] "Life of a Poet" over dinner last night,
I got to thinking about what approach Ron would take,
what topics and poems he'd delve into,
how he'd direct the conversation,
and even how he might ask us to take a break.
And, then, I realized anew how thankful I am
for his vision in this [inaudible].
I'm also eager to see what tonight's conversation will
teach me about Rae's work.
My interview with her nine years ago began and ended
with questions about meaning, from a phone bill to a dream.
And, I bet that by the time Ron and Rae are finished,
we may know more about and be wonderfully mystified
by what our language does for us.
Please join me in welcoming Ron Charles [inaudible].
[ Applause ]
>> Ron Charles: Ron and Rae, huh?
I like that.
Thank you all for coming, very much.
It's great to see you, and it's been a pleasure
to read your poems.
>> Rae Armantrout: Thank you.
>> Ron Charles: Thank you very much for coming.
I've been wanting to ask you, do poems just pop into your head?
You're laughing because that is the opening
of a satirical poem you wrote about being interviewed
by an unprepared journalist.
[ Laughter ]
Would you start with that poem?
>> Rae Armantrout: Sure.
In fact, what this person said was actually not,
"Do poems just pop into your head,"
but "Do words just pop into your head."
And, I kind of assume that words pop into everyone's head.
How else do we ever say anything?
So, I decided that what I would do with this, this was right
after I won the Pulitzer, so that meant that I had
to do a lot of interviews, and some of them were, you know,
the interviewers were prepared.
And, sometimes, they weren't.
Like, the local paper in San Diego came out,
and it's not a terribly good paper.
I'm sorry I just said that.
Anyway. They hate me anyway.
So, I got asked some questions like this, and I decided the way
to go with it when writing a poem was just
to kind of put on a voice.
And, the questions are questions that I was really asked,
and the answers are not the answers I gave.
They're kind of an alter ego answer, a sort of, a kind of,
I imagine myself as kind of a dark persona
when I'm answering the questions.
Okay. "Legacy".
"Do words just pop into your head?
Some may go unexploded.
Have you thought much about your legacy?
I'm a legacy prisoner.
No, I'm not.
What do you call precious?
The precious doesn't get around much, so it stays small.
Or it orbits the same small pronoun, a kid on a carousel.
'Look at me!'
It fiddles with itself, but I've got bigger things
to pick up and put down."
>> Ron Charles: Nice.
Thank you very much.
Now, when you win a prize like that, as you say,
you do get interviewed a lot.
It's one of the times during the year when the audience
for poetry expands very large.
You get interviewed
on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, for instance.
Right? You get interviewed in all the newspaper.
NPR calls you.
The New York Times wants to do a profile, and you have
to explain poetry to a general reader.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: In a way that is sudden and maybe difficult.
You've been associated
with a group called the Language Poets since the 1970s.
That's a particularly unilluminating label.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Ron Charles: The Language Poets.
What else would they be, after all?
>> Rae Armantrout: Exactly.
I've said that many times myself.
I think.
>> Ron Charles: It's not as bad as New Criticism
which is a useless label, but it's pretty bad.
>> Rae Armantrout: Modernism post-post-modernism.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah, so what are the Language Poets?
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, I can talk about what, you know,
I mean, one thing I can say is that we are, or were,
a group of friends who developed an aesthetic together
when we were kids.
I mean, just kids, like Patty Smith, in our 20s.
That's one thing.
We, of course, needless to say,
didn't name ourselves The Language Poets,
because who would do that?
It's stupid.
[ Laughter ]
But, that was something that was a name
that a magazine called Poetry Flash came up with,
and it somehow just stuck.
And, finally, we just sort of accepted it.
And, part of it came from a magazine that Bruce Andrews
and Charles Bernstein edited that was called Language,
but it had equal signs between all the letters
in the word Language.
And, so that was on, that was in New York, and so,
the poets who came to be called The Language Poets were
in either in New York or in San Francisco.
And, I was in San Francisco at the time.
And, you know, we were, we were different, I think,
in our aesthetics, the New York side and the San Francisco side,
but we were also different as individuals.
And, the problem with, you know, group labels is they,
they're kind of homogenizing.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: But, I do think that, you know,
I did learn from being involved in that sort of group formation,
group activity, group thinking together, community.
>> Ron Charles: It's something about you
that would distinguish you as a group, what would that be?
How would you distinguish yourselves
from the Romantic Poets?
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We were definitely not romantic.
I think we were coming of age and forming in the '70s,
and it was, we were coming
out of the period of the Vietnam War.
>> Ron Charles: You were protest poets?
>> Rae Armantrout: Not directly exactly, but we were sort
of dealing with the fact of what happened
to language during the Vietnam War, the spin.
You know, the, having to destroy a village in order to save it.
You know, that kind of thing.
>> Ron Charles: You were [inaudible].
>> Rae Armantrout: The freedom.
>> Ron Charles: The distortion of language.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
The Freedom Hamlets, remember that?
If you're old enough, you know.
So, I think that those were early examples
of what we now call spin, and, yeah, distortions of language
that made us both want to be very attuned to language
and also sort of want to either unspin it
or spin it in a different way.
So, that's one thing, a kind of attitude of suspiciousness.
Like, what did I just hear?
How can I parse that?
You know, how can I think about what it really means
and what the motivation behind that remark might be?
So, that's one thing that we had in common is a kind of desire
that was both positive and negative to look at language
as an object, sort of.
>> Ron Charles: One critic says that "Language poetry intends
for the reader to participate
in creating the meaning of the poem".
Which, I'm going to read that again,
because it doesn't make any sense.
"Language poetry intends for the reader to participate
in the creating the meaning of the poem."
>> Rae Armantrout: Probably readers always do that.
>> Ron Charles: That's what I would think.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be conscious
when you're reading the poem.
So, how did that get to be associated with you all?
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, I think that one thing that a lot
of The Language Poets did is, and this is true of me, too.
>> Ron Charles: Okay.
>> Rae Armantrout: In my own way,
which is not the same as all of their ways.
But, is that units within a poem,
whether the unit is a sentence or a stanza or a section,
the units tend to be sort of semi-autonomous.
They have, they are something in themselves,
and then how they connect with the next unit
or the next sentence is sort of oblique.
>> Ron Charles: Okay.
>> Rae Armantrout: And, indirect,
and I hope that there is a relation, you know,
but it's not, there's not a lot
of walking the reader through it.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: You know.
>> Ron Charles: Different readers can come
up with radically different reactions.
>> Rae Armantrout: Right.
Exactly.
>> Ron Charles: That would be equally [inaudible].
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Okay.
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, I don't know what equally,
but, I mean, there are.
I mean, I think you could, one could push
that argument too far.
I mean, I think there are wrong ways to read poems,
but there is probably a little,
definitely more than one right way.
>> Ron Charles: Okay.
All right.
Want you to read a poem.
There's number three here.
In, where am I?
This is a fairly early poem, I think.
"My Problem".
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
I guess I won't give this any kind of preface.
>> Ron Charles: You can.
>> Rae Armantrout: No.
I'm going to talk about it afterwards.
"My Problem.
It is my responsibility to squeeze the present
from the past by demanding particulars.
When the dog is used to represent the inner man,
I need to ask, 'What kind of dog is it?'
If a parasitic metaphor grows all throughout, good!
Why stop with a barnacle?
A honeysuckle, thrown like an arm around a chain-link fence,
would be far more articulated, more precisely repetitive,
giving me the feeling that I can go on like this while the woman
at the next table says, 'You smell pretty,
and sends her small daughter's laugh, a spluttery orgasm,
into my ear, though this may not have been what you intended.
It may not be a problem
when I notice the way the person shifts."
Can I hold, you want it?
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
>> Ron Charles: [inaudible] held a [inaudible] here.
Now, "When the dog is used to represent the inner man,
I need to ask, 'What kind of dog is it?'" You're demanding,
you're putting some pressure on the language here
within the poem which is about language, right?
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, yeah.
Well, actually, you know, I, for a long time, I taught,
and some of the material in the poem comes from things
that I found myself saying to students.
>> Ron Charles: You demanded particulars from them.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Because, you know,
it's better for a poem to be specific.
Or, I think, actually, at that time, not that it matters,
I was teaching a course called Personal Narrative, because some
of this was actually prose.
But, you know, I'm sort of making fun
of symbols there, in a way.
"If the dog is used to represent the inner man."
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
>> Rae Armantrout: So, that's turning your dog
into a symbol of yourself.
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
>> Rae Armantrout: Which is the way we arrogant humans are.
The dog must be me.
So, then, instead of saying to the student, "Well, you know,
isn't that kind of anthropomorphizing,
sort of arrogant and problematic?"
Instead, I would say, "Well, what kind of dog is it?"
just to, you know, pour them into technically better writing
by making them be more specific.
So, I'm sort of making fun of my own comments in a way.
Not so much making fun of the students.
They're young, but, you know.
But, when you teach, you say the same things, kinds of things
over and over until you get tired of.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
Yeah. I remember thinking each fall, "My god,
these kids haven't learned anything."
They were all new.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Right.
>> Ron Charles: [inaudible] I was talking to last year.
Yeah. I love this poem because it makes me think
about what poetry does in a very clever, creative, specific way,
but it isn't just about poetry.
>> Rae Armantrout: No.
I suppose not.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, part
of it is just me taking in my environment.
I was, as a matter of fact, I was grading papers at a café,
at an outdoor café because I lived in San Diego.
And, there was a honeysuckle,
and there was a woman with her daughter.
And so, everything around me is coming.
>> Ron Charles: Coming.
>> Rae Armantrout: Coming into my consciousness, and therefore,
sort of invading the poem.
>> Ron Charles: Nice.
Very nice.
Here's another one called "Craft Talk" which is very specifically
about the craft of poetry.
>> Rae Armantrout: Right, and that's going to be
in my upcoming book, "Wobble".
I'm advertising it.
Which is coming out next September.
>> Ron Charles: Congratulations.
>> Rae Armantrout: And, this is a prose poem.
So, another thing that happens
to me besides being interviewed is being asked
to do craft talks.
Some of you may be familiar with that, and in a craft talk,
you're sort of asked to say what you think a good poem is.
Or, what poetry should do.
And, I'm not very comfortable
with prescriptions, being prescriptive.
I mean, I have ideas about what poetry can do, but my problem is
that I'm ambivalent about modern ideas.
You know, I'm, as soon as I have an idea, I go, "Is that true?
Wait a minute.
There's probably ways it's not true."
So, that's kind of what this comes out of.
"The Craft Talk.
So that the best thing you could do, it seemed,
was climb inside the machine that was language
and feel what it wanted or was capable of doing at any point,
steering only occasionally.
The best thing was
to let language speak its piece while standing inside it -
not like a knight in armor exactly,
not like a mascot in a chicken suit.
The best thing was to create in the reader
or listener an uncertainty as to
where the voice she heard was coming from so
as to frighten her a little.
Why should I want to frighten her?"
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: Thank you.
And, your poems do that repeatedly.
The voice switches on us in surprising ways.
The tone switches.
These are intentional things you're doing.
>> Rae Armantrout: I hope so, yeah.
[ Laughter ]
I really, you know, actually, that's, that is a good question
because it's intentional, I suppose,
but it's also ingrained.
It's also just the way I am.
So, maybe it's not intentional.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: You're doing it to me now.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: And, you make fun of the idea of the poet
as the authority who's in total control of the language.
In your version, you sort of mock that whole idea.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Right. I mean, I do, I do different voices.
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
>> Rae Armantrout: In my poems.
You know, I suppose, because it's famous,
but the working title for "The Wasteland" was
"He Do the Police in Different Voices".
>> Ron Charles: I did not know that.
>> Rae Armantrout: I love that.
It should have been the title of "The Wasteland", I think.
But, anyway.
>> Ron Charles: No!
[ Laughter ]
>> Rae Armantrout: But, you know,
I do the police in different voices.
So, sometimes, I'll just hear something, overhear something,
or read something, and just want to take
that voice wherever it can go and take it further
and maybe take it to somewhere problematic that it seems
like it has the potential to go.
So, there are, there are plenty of voices
in my poems saying things in a way I don't stand by or mean.
They just, these voices just sort of run to where they go.
And then, I take a look at that, I guess.
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
Right. You say in one poem called "Approximate", "Wait,
I haven't found the right word yet.
Poem means homeostasis."
[ Laughter ]
A word I, I mean, I had a vague idea of what that word meant,
but it's some sort of.
>> Rae Armantrout: Poem doesn't really mean that, of course.
>> Ron Charles: Yes, it's ironic.
It's ironic, isn't it?
In another poem, you write, "A word is mostly connotation.
Matter is mostly aura.
Each poem says, 'I'm desperate'."
Each poem.
>> Rae Armantrout: [laughter] Everything must go.
>> Ron Charles: Yes, about the sale.
What do you mean by that?
"I'm desperate."
>> Rae Armantrout: Part of it.
>> Ron Charles: The "I'm desperate" part.
I like the energy of that, what it suggests about the poet.
>> Rae Armantrout: Can I?
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
>> Rae Armantrout: I think.
>> Ron Charles: That is from "Make It New", right?
>> Rae Armantrout: Right.
"Make It New".
So, is that in, what's that in?
I've lost track of my own.
>> Ron Charles: There's a lot of them here.
>> Rae Armantrout: So, is it in "Next Life"?
Okay. Good.
>> Ron Charles: There?
Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: All right.
Right. Right.
Right. Right.
Okay.
So, "Make It New" is the title of that, and it comes from,
that's one of Ezra Pound's maxims.
So, it's one of the maxims of modernism.
And, you know, when you're making it new,
you have to get rid of the old.
So, each poem says, "I'm desperate.
Everything must go."
So, it's kind of like a yard sale or, you know, a closing,
going out of business sale.
Past has to go.
And, it's sort of, this poem was sort
of also constructed like a road trip.
"The steady pressure on the accelerator can be stipulated
in advance as can the steady bushes,
blurred in peripheral vision."
So, we know what we're going to see on this road trip.
It's, we've seen it before.
We're going to see the same thing.
A diner or a gas station comes up.
Tried evoking it
"while satirizing the impulse to do so."
So, in a way, it's a poem about being jaded until the end.
"What that name will be is the one thing we don't know."
>> Ron Charles: Read the whole thing.
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
Okay. "Make It New.
Shaking the parts of speech like fluff in the snow globe --
the way sleep scrambles life's detritus.
Each poem says, 'I'm desperate,' then, 'Everything must go!"
(To hear something familiar here leads to careful laughter.)
'Go' where?
The steady pressure on the accelerator can be stipulated
in advance as can the steady bushes,
blurred in peripheral vision.
And, someone will have set down a diner or a gas station
at a desolate crossroads and tried naming it
to evoke the whole human situation while satirizing the
impulse to do so.
What that name will be, is the one thing we don't know."
[laughs]
>> Ron Charles: The way you do something and satirize it
at the same time amazes me repeatedly in these poems.
You know, [laughs].
Also, I love the opening of that, shaking the parts
of speech like a snow globe is a great metaphor.
In a poem called "Meant", you write, "'Poetry wants
to make things mean more than they mean', says someone,
as if we knew how much things meant
or in what unit of measure."
Want to read that poem?
That's called, that's in "Just Saying."
>> Rae Armantrout: It's towards the end.
>> Ron Charles: Yes, it is.
>> Rae Armantrout: "Meant.
When the rat rests, its brain runs the maze again,
then runs it backwards, and repeats.
This is early music.
'Poetry wants to make things mean more than they mean',
says someone, as if we knew how much things meant,
and in what unit of measure.
Some chords (crowds) seem sad because uncertain?
-- while others appear quite resolved."
>> Ron Charles: "Poetry wants
to make things mean more than they mean."
Most of us think, "Yes, that's pretty profound."
And then, she immediately makes fun of that, huh?
As if we knew how much things meant or what unit
of measurement we're talking about.
Even that opening line, if you hear it again,
you'll see how funny it is.
"When the rat rests, its brain runs the maze again.
It runs backwards, and repeats.
This is early music."
[ Laughter ]
>> Rae Armantrout: I like, I like Bach and Vivaldi, but,
you know, that's pretty much [inaudible].
>> Ron Charles: Yeah, that's right.
That's how it began, yeah.
In another poem, you write, "The string of words could be a worm
or a needle passing in and out through some hole,
stitching what to what?"
It's like you're about to tell us what poetry does,
you're about to tell us how words connect things
and make meanings, and then you make fun of that impulse
to explain or define what poetry does, even as you are doing it.
You, the way you involve us in that process.
You remember a poem called "Formal Constraints"?
>> Rae Armantrout: Oh, yeah.
>> Ron Charles: "Just Saying"
>> Rae Armantrout: "Just Saying" [inaudible].
>> Ron Charles: Right there.
Even your title is sort of ironical.
[ Pages Turning ]
>> Rae Armantrout: All right.
This one's a little kinky.
"Formal Constraints.
Now the poem is saying what it is forced to say by its history,
its form thus pleasing the reader who knows he can trust it
without being obliged to regard any statements it may make
as accurate or "true."
The poem is ridding itself and us of the burden
of abstraction - a valuable service.
Still a question arises as to how to dispose
of the poem once this divestment is complete."
>> Ron Charles: Explain that poem to us, would you?
>> Rae Armantrout: [laughs] Well,
poems often have formal constraints of some sort.
So, a poem might be forced, in certain ways.
I don't feel that.
I think I suppose mine are, too.
Sure, I mean, I learned a lot from modernism,
from William Carlos Williams and such.
I mean, poems are, you know, have short lines and such.
So, you know, the, whether you're writing a sonnet
or you're writing a, you know,
sort of modernist slash post-modernist poem,
there's going to be expectations, habits,
constraints that you're going to be obeying.
But, I sort of took off from the word constraints
because you hear, you hear that a lot.
You hear in the poetry world
because there could be different kinds
of formal constraints besides the traditional,
besides like a sonnet or something.
You could decide that you're going to write,
like Lyn Hejinian's book "My Life".
You're going to write 37 paragraphs,
each of which is 37 sentences long.
That's a self-invented formal constraint, right?
So, you hear that praise constraints, but, you know,
it sort of made me think about bondage.
And so, that made me think about serial killers.
So, there's a voice going on behind this poem, you know,
like how do you dispose of the body.
It's sort of [laughter].
[inaudible] "Still a question arises as to how to dispose
of the poem once this divestment," which, of course,
means taking your clothes off, "is complete."
So, I don't know whether it's playful or not,
but sometimes I just get a voice in my head that's sort
of the devil made me do it, I guess, but.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: Want to talk about words.
"What can words say?"
you ask in one poem.
And, later in that same collection, you say,
"What can description do?
Tongues tapping the roofs of our mouth to make meaning."
And, that is what language is, ultimately, biologically.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Just tapping our tongue to the top of our mouth.
Want you to read a poem called "Spent".
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
>> Ron Charles: You can see how much I like this collection.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: "Spent".
I want you to listen here to the way the meanings
of words are being flipped line by line.
>> Rae Armantrout: This one, by the way, also sort of came
out of teaching and seeing what my student, who were young,
as you point out, no longer knew about the meaning of words
that I, that they would know one meaning of a word.
In the case of "Spent", it had to do with, they thought it had
to do with money, only with money.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: Which it doesn't necessarily.
But anyway.
"Spent. Suffer as in allow.
List as in want.
Listless as in transcending desire,
or not rising to greet it.
To list is to lean, dangerously, to one side.
Have you forgotten?
Spent as in exhausted."
>> Ron Charles: And a poem, a poet plays
with all those meanings.
Some meanings are contradictory or unrelated
to one another at the same time.
And, this poem encapsulates that in a very subconscious way.
I remember explaining to a reporter
at the Christian Science Monitor
that we couldn't say sucked in the monitor.
He had no idea that that had any sort of obscene meaning.
>> Rae Armantrout: Oh, wow.
>> Ron Charles: It has become so common to him,
that we would just say it.
Mrs. Eddy was rolling over in her grave.
You talk about poems being a cure for loneliness.
In another poem, you write "Language exists
to pull things close."
In another one, you write,
"Pattern recognition was our first response to loneliness."
Such a beautiful line.
>> Rae Armantrout: You got me.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: In another poem, you write, "The feeling
of emptiness is a preexisting condition."
One not covered by Obamacare.
[ Laughter ]
Some lines I pulled out here.
This one. In "With", you say, "I write things
down to show others later or to show myself
that I am not alone with my experience."
One of your poems ends, "So much happiness is caged in language,
ready to burst out anytime and fade."
It sounds so hopeful, and then.
>> Rae Armantrout: And, then, yeah.
>> Ron Charles: It's quite dark.
>> Rae Armantrout: The nod.
>> Ron Charles: The nod, yes.
[laughs] Let's talk about metaphors and what those are.
In a poem called "Versed", you write,
"Metaphor forms a crust beneath
which the crevice of each experience."
I love that more than I understand it.
Can you explain it?
>> Rae Armantrout: I could try.
I thought that was a pretty good explanation of it.
[laughs] Yeah, well, I mean, metaphor forms a crust.
[laughs]
>> Ron Charles: Could you repeat it, please?
[inaudible] move on.
>> Rae Armantrout: I think that a metaphor creates its own kind
of surface, and that metaphors can be clever.
Metaphor, metaphors carry, as we all know,
something across from one sort of realm of discourse to another
and connected to like a bridge.
Typically, you start to write
because you've had some experience,
and the experience may be just a thought or a feeling.
I don't mean something happened
to you necessarily, but it may have.
And, that experience starts you to want to write,
and perhaps you come up with this metaphor.
And, the metaphor is like a little machine.
And, it connects these two things, one to the other.
But, once you've got this bridge, you know,
the bridge kind of goes over the experience, I guess,
meaning the experience is still there inside you.
It doesn't stop being there inside you,
and you never plumbed it all.
I mean, have you?
So.
>> Ron Charles: That's good.
That's very good.
Thank you very much.
I want you to read a poem called "Integer" in "Versed".
This is the book for which you won the Pulitzer Prize, right?
>> Rae Armantrout: Yep.
>> Ron Charles: This second part.
>> Rae Armantrout: Just read the second part?
Okay. "Metaphor is ritual sacrifice.
It kills the look-alike.
No, metaphor is homeopathy.
A healthy cell exhibits contact inhibition."
>> Ron Charles: Read it again.
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
"Metaphor is ritual sacrifice.
It kills the look-alike.
No, metaphor is homeopathy.
A healthy cell exhibits contact inhibition."
>> Ron Charles: You gave us two definitions of metaphor there.
You give one of them.
You immediately contradict it.
Homeopathy is not a word we use very much anymore.
It used to be you would give someone a poison
in a very diluted amount that would induce,
in a healthy person,
the conditions they're suffering from.
And that was.
>> Rae Armantrout: Or, so they say.
>> Ron Charles: And, that was thought
to cure them in some way.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
Those two definitions, why those two definitions of metaphor?
What do you suggesting?
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, I, I can explain the first one.
I'm not sure that I can explain the you homeopathy.
But, "Metaphor is ritual sacrifice.
It kills the look-alike."
Well, I think in metaphor, there's always one term,
or usually, there's one term that's privileged
over the other, you know.
And, what the thing is like usually gets developed further
than the thing, right?
So, it's like the thing, the tenor of the metaphor
which is the sort of technical, literary term.
The thing you're really talking about gets subsumed
by the vehicle of the metaphor
which is the way you're describing it.
That takes over.
It sort of replaces the original.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: And then,
a healthy cell exhibits contact inhibition.
That has a specific meaning.
You know what kind of cells don't exhibit contact inhibition
and continue to grow into other cells?
Cancer cells.
So, I guess the whole thing is sort of playing
around with metaphor as cancer.
And then, homeopathy's a kind of medicine,
so that makes a kind of sense with it.
>> Ron Charles: You say in one poem,
"Do you believe this metaphor?"
[ Laughter ]
And, you once asked an interviewer,
you told an interviewer,
"Metaphor should make us suspicious,
but we can't do without it."
>> Rae Armantrout: I don't think we can.
I mean, I think it's just a natural human propensity.
>> Ron Charles: Jenny Holzer, you know her work.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: I noticed points of comparison between you two.
>> Rae Armantrout: Now, that, I don't know that.
[inaudible]
>> Ron Charles: Particularly in later poems.
Certain lines just sounded very aphoristic to me,
very much like the kind of thing she would put
in lights in the museum.
"What if every moment is a best guess on a pop quiz."
That could be her, couldn't it?
It's you.
>> Rae Armantrout: I guess.
>> Ron Charles: It's you.
"The idea that we can improve is a form of self-grooming."
That's definitely see that in lights at the MOMA.
"To incorporate change without disorientation is to win."
These are very aphoristic lines.
>> Rae Armantrout: It is, but the [inaudible].
>> Ron Charles: But those come to you very.
>> Rae Armantrout: But, I'm sure that the lines
around them destabilize [inaudible].
>> Ron Charles: Completely.
Yes. And, these are in your later poems.
It was not the kind of thing you did in your earlier poems.
What did you learn studying Emily Dickinson?
I know that was an influence on you.
>> Rae Armantrout: Oh, well.
Dick, you know, I don't, I don't know
that I exactly learned technically from Dickinson
because I feel like she is so far above
and so far above all of us.
I admire her so much.
She, her word choice is so original,
like "a narrow fellow in the grass".
I mean, who every would put the word narrow next
to the word fellow?
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: You know, no one.
[ Laughter ]
So, I mean, she is just amazingly original.
I, if I learned anything from her as a young woman,
it would be just her boldness, I guess.
Just her, I mean, whatever she did in her personal life,
in her poetry, she was absolutely fearless.
You know, and so, that was encouraging.
>> Ron Charles: "Necromance."
This poem made me think of her.
>> Rae Armantrout: Oh, that's nice.
>> Ron Charles: Just looked it like one of her poems, but.
>> Rae Armantrout: Oh, you mean "October"?
Okay.
>> Ron Charles: "October" [inaudible] a certain sound.
A certain echo.
>> Rae Armantrout: "October.
Beauty appeals like a cry for help that's distant or inhuman.
So foreclosed.
We say ablaze because we can't stand it.
Red and yellow nearing or nearly turning toward."
>> Ron Charles: That's how the poem ends.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: What we don't know turning toward.
Turning toward what?
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: The leaves,
just sort of about turning leaves
in October, but turning toward.
>> Ron Charles: The images are surprising.
It's both concrete and abstract at the same time.
It points to something very concrete and ordinary,
but at the same time, something very profound in a way
that reminded me of her.
Let's take a break.
Just stand up and turn around.
Don't leave the room.
This is not an intermission.
[ Laughter ]
They just need to stand up and get their, yeah,
get their legs circulating so they don't.
>> Rae Armantrout: I'm going to come disconnect it if I turn?
>> Ron Charles: No, we won't do that.
We won't do that.
[ Background Conversations ]
Okay. That's it.
Sit back down.
I hear Dickinson most in your work when you talk about God
because I could not, I knew
from the memoir your theological background of your parents,
at least, but I could not develop any kind of theology
from the poems themselves.
But, there are references to God.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: In several poems,
and it's a very Dickinsonian approach.
It's ironic.
It's sometimes sarcastic, it's very much an acknowledgement
of His power, and a poke in the divine eye at the same time.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles:
"My self-reflection shames God into watching."
So good. "My self-reflections shames God into watching."
"If we are made in God's image, God is impatient
without really knowing what he wishes would occur."
Wonder if you'd read "Functions" to us.
>> Rae Armantrout: Sure.
[ Pages Turning ]
>> Ron Charles: This is.
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
Here we go.
[ Laughter ]
"Functions.
We inquire about heaven as we might about a nursing home.
Will I get email there?
Will I have insights and someone to be pleased with them?
Will that person be faking it?
Will she be under orders?
Will my words seem foreign?
"Twee, twee!"
some sound insists."
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: Now, Dickinson never would have written a poem
like that.
She wouldn't even know some of those words, and yet,
that's the same kind of attitude.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
That's one thing I, that originally drew me
to Dickinson is exactly that because I was raised in this.
My mother was an evangelical, so, you know,
this kind of very literalist interpretation
of the Christian Bible.
And, I became an agnostic, I guess, at the age of 12.
So, that created some problems in the household, yeah.
And, so, when I first was reading Dickinson,
I saw that she was struggling with that, too.
She was under a lot of pressure
to theologically conform, and she didn't.
I mean, I think she, she doubted God, she also sort of,
she went back and forth, I think
between believing and not believing.
But, she also sort of wanted to poke
at God's authority, you know?
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
"He fumbles at your soul."
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Right.
>> Ron Charles: And acknowledgement of His power.
>> Rae Armantrout: But, also, it seems intrusive, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Yes,
and an acknowledgement of His incompetence.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
That, too.
>> Ron Charles: Which is terrifying.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Yeah, that's another thing is the way
that she just isn't afraid to say that way back
in the middle 19th century, you know, by a woman, too.
Yeah. And, so, I guess my attitude about religion is
that on the one hand, at least the kind of religion that I grew
up with, I grew up with praying.
And so, sometimes, if I really feel threatened or something,
I still have a tendency to want to say a prayer, but then, I,
I mean, it seems to creepy to be
like asking a personal favor of a Lord.
I'm sorry if some of you are no doubt religious, but it's just
so feudal, like feudalistic, you know.
Lord, let me.
And, the whole language, the whole construction of it is
so hierarchical, right, and authoritarian.
And, that put me off.
And, maybe it was an anti-patriarchal feeling
that had that the whole sort of feudal court patriarchy
of religion as I was introduced to it put me off.
But, having said that, there's still, I guess,
a sense of reaching inside me
that doesn't know what it's reaching for.
But, it's reaching.
I think there's something, sort of,
excessive about human consciousness.
It's more than we need to survive, you know, this,
the sense of beauty, right?
The sense of kind of the whole self-consciousness thing
which is so extreme with humans,
is more than we need, really, to survive.
So, what's that for, you know?
I'm not saying, necessarily
that because it exists, God must exist.
I'm just saying that because it exists,
we reach out to something that must be beyond us
or that we wish were beyond us because we have all of this sort
of extra consciousness to play with.
You know, to look at the universe with.
>> Ron Charles: The brain is bigger than the sky.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: There we go.
>> Ron Charles: Oh, yeah.
You write in one poem, "Like God,
I will leave an arc of implication."
>> Rae Armantrout: [laughter] Oh, that poem is, yeah.
I'm "Mother's Day".
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, I sort of play God in that poem.
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: It's such a good comment on the speaker and God,
"an arc of implication".
In "Solution", you write, "You're the thing that waits
to trap each passing thought,
the anxious blank that God loves."
And then, a poem called "Prayer".
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: In a collection called "Money Shot".
>> Rae Armantrout: Right.
[laughs]
>> Ron Charles: A surprisingly crude reference.
Where? Why can't I find it?
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, I wrote
"Money Shot" pretty much during the financial crisis.
>> Ron Charles: Okay, so it does not refer to the?
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, I was certainly aware
of the porn reference, but you know, the money thought in porn,
as everyone knows, I guess, is where the man proves
that he's enjoyed himself.
So, it's about, you know, like, show me the money, I guess,
in the sense, you know, the moment of truth, so to speak.
>> Ron Charles: Prayer.
>> Rae Armantrout: Prayer.
Prayers, actually plural.
"We pray and the resurrection happens.
Here are the young again, sniping and giggling,
tingly as ringing phones.
All we ask is that our thinking sustain momentum,
identify targets.
The pressure in my lower back rising to be recognized as pain.
The blue triangles on the rug repeating.
Coming up, a discussion on the uses of torture.
The fear that all this will end.
The fear that it won't."
>> Ron Charles: I have felt like that often this year.
[laughs] Shifting gears, in a way, are a number of poems
that have to do with physics.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: And, astrophysics.
>> Rae Armantrout: Right.
>> Ron Charles: In a way that sometimes becomes anthological
and theological, but sometimes it's very
surprisingly technical.
Where did that come from?
Did you study physics?
Did you study astrophysics?
>> Rae Armantrout: Not in school.
>> Ron Charles: Astronomy?
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, so, there's a lot
to be said about that.
First of all, I think that I got interested in physics because,
and cosmology because it asks some
of the same questions that religion asks.
You know. How did the universe begin?
How will the universe end?
You know, why is the universe here,
although it doesn't really answer that question, but so,
I think that's where I got interested in physics is
because it asks those really big questions.
And, yeah, I started reading those popular physics books
for lay people.
>> Ron Charles: Like "The Cosmos" and that sort of thing?
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
I mean, you know, Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universes"
and "The Fabric of the Cosmos", and not just Brian Greene.
But, you know, Lee Smolin and Lisa Randall and Carlo Rovelli.
And so, I've read a lot of those books.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: And, so, I picked up some of the lingo,
and I think I know something about it,
but I certainly not an expert.
I mean, to really know physics, you have to understand the math
because physics is math.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: So, basically, when you read one
of those books, and you're not doing the math,
you're reading metaphors.
I mean, you know, physicists are trying
to tell you what they've found out by various metaphors.
And, some of them are.
>> Ron Charles: Actually [inaudible].
>> Rae Armantrout: Some of them are good, yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: Exactly.
And, some of them are good at creating metaphors.
Some of better than others.
But, you know, you're getting a kind
of a metaphorical top layer beneath which is really math.
And, I can't get to the math, but I'm very interested in it.
I, but, also, I read it because it provokes me to write,
and it provokes me to write because I get to a place
that I don't understand.
And, that's, that sense
of puzzlement is often what starts a poem
for me whether the poem's about physics or theology
or even popular culture.
Like, why is that popular?
You know, anything that leaves me not quite understanding can
lead into a poem somehow.
And, since that happens so often with physics books.
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
>> Rae Armantrout: And, once I found out that I could end
up writing a poem by reading a physics book, I went,
"I'll read more physics."
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
It's very surprising to me.
Do you have a favorite here a "Scale", "A Human", "Simple"?
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay, well "Simple" is more
about biology, really, but yeah.
Well, why don't, could we do two, or can we just do one?
>> Ron Charles: Oh, sure.
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
Well, let's do, let's do "Simple" and maybe "Scale".
Sure. "Simple" is in "Versed".
Okay. And, this is dedicated
to my son Aaron Korkegian who's a biologist.
So, this is, we were, I guess we were talking about evolution,
and he thought that I was anthropomorphizing it.
And, I didn't mean to, but that's language for you.
You know, when you, it's hard to talk about processes without,
dynamic processes without speaking
as if there were agents behind them somehow.
So, anyway.
Here's the poem.
Oh, and also, this is, well, we haven't talk
about that, so I won't go into.
"Simple. Complex systems can arise from simple rules.
It's not that we want to survive,
it's that we've been drugged and made to act
as if we do while all the while the sea breaks
and rolls, painlessly, under.
If we're not copying it, we're lonely.
Is this the knowledge that demands to be passed down?
Time is made from swatches of heaven and hell.
If we're not killing it, we're hungry."
>> Ron Charles: Nice.
Now, that opening line is, refers to, like,
how could we have eyeballs or.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Livers or complicated physical things
which started from very simple systems, right?
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: It's the sort of biological premise of evolution.
>> Rae Armantrout: Right.
Right. Right.
>> Ron Charles: Getting at here.
Right. But, you take this in a different direction.
Talk about the direction you take that.
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, okay.
So, this whole book, not the whole book.
I'm sorry.
Like half the book.
Half the book was written in the wake
of my being diagnosed with cancer.
And, not just any cancer, not a common cancer.
No, a cancer no one had ever heard of.
I mean, someone had, but adrenocortical cancer
which is vanishingly rare and also super deadly.
And so, like, almost no one survives.
So, I did, though.
But.
>> Ron Charles: That's great.
>> Rae Armantrout: It's great, but of course,
I didn't think I was going to because, you know,
when I read about it, was like, um.
A 5% maybe survive.
So, I, you know, basically, I was getting my affairs in order.
Even though they got the whole tumor out,
and they didn't see anymore cancer, but the doctors I talked
to went, "Well, we see no evidence of disease now."
[ Laughter ]
But, you know, I was just waiting
for it to come back, right?
So, I wrote this book, or half of this book in, you know,
even for a while after that, I sort of wrote kind
of under the idea that I was going to die.
So, I was, in a way, talking about just sort
of the cruelty of life, I suppose.
"It's not that we want to survive,
it's that we've been drugged and made to act as if we do."
Well, I mean, that's a sort of.
Is that true?
Maybe it's true.
If you think of the sort of biochemicals in our body
as drugs, you know, that we have a reward system.
And, one of the things we're rewarded for by our dopamine
and our serotonin is doing things that help our survival.
Right?
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: Eating, etc. So, in a way, you could say
that we're drugged and made to act as if we wanted to survive.
It's not that we wake up from childhood and we're two,
and we go, "You know what I want?
I want to survive."
It's not like we really have a choice about wanting to survive.
That was foisted on us.
So, the poem kind of goes on from there.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
Let's read one of the more physics-oriented poems.
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
>> Ron Charles: Would that be "Scale"?
>> Rae Armantrout: "Scale".
>> Ron Charles: Or "Conclusion"?
>> Rae Armantrout: Let's go, okay,
is "Conclusion" in "Itself"?
Let's see.
Let me look at it.
Yes! It's kind of, yeah.
>> Ron Charles: I like the way it becomes very theological
by the end.
>> Rae Armantrout: Oh, right.
Right. Right.
>> Ron Charles: Begins with physics.
>> Rae Armantrout: Talk about both of them.
>> Ron Charles: Begins with physics, ends with God.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, it's starts with cosmology, I guess,
and the man I'm referring to is Stephen Hawking here.
"Conclusion.
A man is upset for many years because he's heard
that information is destroyed in a black hole.
Question: what does this man mean by "information"?
The example given is of a cry for help,
but this is accompanied by the image of a toy space ship,
upended, and is thus not to be taken seriously.
The man recovers his peace of mind when he ceases to believe
in passing through, when he becomes convinced
that the lost information is splattered on the event horizon.
The detective is the new mime.
She acts out understanding the way a mime climbs an
invisible wall.
It's because our senses are so poor that, on CSI,
the investigators stand stock-still,
boulders in a stream, while a crowd pours around them.
They pan in slow motion, reminding us of cameras,
then focus with inhuman clarity
on the pattern of cracks in a wall.
God's fractal stammer pleasures us again."
>> Ron Charles: That is a whiplash of a poem.
[ Laughter ]
I mean, I does, it goes all,
it goes all over the universe, literally.
It's always about information, though.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: Turning that turn.
>> Rae Armantrout: I guess you're right.
Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: If you understand, I mean,
and I only have the most basic understanding
of what physicists mean by information.
But, then, you're playing with pop culture in this TV show,
and their information.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: It's a very different kind of information.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, the detectives.
Right. Detectives on TV, and you know, I think this was probably.
I don't really watch CSI, but I must have seen,
you know, a preview for it.
I saw, I'm sure I saw this image where it must have gone
into slo-mo, you know.
And, the investigator was, you know, panning,
reminding us of cameras.
Then focus with an inhuman clarity.
But, this is kind of a Sherlock Holmes moment, right,
of being able to see the pattern.
And, yeah, right.
And, then, you, were you going to say something about the end?
>> Ron Charles: You say something about the end.
I think it's gorgeous and baffling.
>> Rae Armantrout: God's fractal.
>> Ron Charles: I mean, someone's going to use
that as a title for a book someday,
you know, "God's fractal".
It's just great.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah, well, you know, fractals are,
some of you may know, sort of recursive,
repeating patterns in nature.
>> Ron Charles: Every more complex.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Right. And, we enjoy them.
I mean, when you see something that is a fractal pattern,
you're going to find it pretty.
You know, I think that's just human nature.
So, I guess, it sounds, in the poem,
like this is a trick God's playing on us, or worse,
that God's fumbling at our soul.
>> Ron Charles: Yes.
Yeah, well, it sounds like He's in charge.
>> Rae Armantrout: Something else.
You know.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah.
>> Rae Armantrout: He might have his hand somewhere else.
>> Ron Charles: Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: [inaudible] again.
>> Ron Charles: We're God's fractals, in a way.
The ever, you know, ever multiplying complexity
of our own lives and our own thoughts.
Right.
>> Rae Armantrout: Thoughts.
Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: "Arrangements".
One more poem here.
Nineteen. Is that in that book?
>> Rae Armantrout: I forgot.
You know more than I do about this.
>> Ron Charles: Where's 19.
It's in "Next Life".
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
>> Ron Charles: There we go.
"Arrangements".
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
Oh, yeah. This is not one I think about very often.
"Arrangement.
The way the ancient explosion has arranged itself.
At the bus stop: a hunched woman with sparse auburn hair
above a Peter Pan collar, a blue jumper, Mary Janes.
What novelty has always promised,
claiming to first coalesce, make cleave unto is almost
as last scattering surface,
variation in air pressure, angel voices."
>> Ron Charles: That is a poem that begins with the Big Bang.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
It does.
>> Ron Charles: And, immediately moves to a bus stop
which is a big, big jump.
>> Rae Armantrout: Well, the way the ancient explosion has
arranged itself.
>> Ron Charles: We are that.
>> Rae Armantrout: We're that.
And so, what are we?
So, with anything you're seeing is the way the ancient explosion
has arranged itself.
It's this room right here, or at the time
that I was writing this, that's what I looked out and saw.
I guess I was probably in a car when I had that impression
of seeing a woman at a bus stop.
And, thinking, "Hmm."
Well, there's something touching about her, something poignant
that made me remember her.
And, I just thought, "Well, that's, that's one thing
that the Big Bang has arranged is this moment with her in it.
>> Ron Charles: Yeah, it, it's very,
it's a very theological moment to be reminded that everything,
even the most pedestrian moments are arrangements
of that ancient, incomprehensible explosion.
>> Rae Armantrout: It's theological if you think
that God ordered up the Big Bang, but we don't know that.
>> Ron Charles: So, it's cosmological.
>> Rae Armantrout: Or, I don't know that.
Maybe you know that.
>> Ron Charles: No, it's cosmological.
It's anthological or something.
Yeah, it makes us, it makes our ordinary lives seem suddenly
much vaster.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
>> Ron Charles: To attach it back to that.
I want to end with a poem that has nothing to do
with anything we've talked about.
Which made me laugh.
Called "Traveling Through the Yard".
>> Rae Armantrout: Okay.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah. That's a parody.
>> Ron Charles: It's an early book.
>> Rae Armantrout: Yeah.
Okay. Well, this does a version of a famous poem called
"Traveling Through the Dark".
That poem, you probably know it, is by William Stafford.
So, this is "Traveling Through the Yard from William Stafford".
"It was lying near my back porch in the gaudy light of morning -
a dove corpse, oddly featherless, alive with flies.
I stopped, dustpan in hand,
and heard them purr over their feast.
To leave that there would make some stink!
So, thinking hard for all of us, I scooped it up,
heaved it across the marriage counselor's fence."
[ Laughter ]
>> Ron Charles: All right.
[ Laughter ]
It's been such a pleasure to talk to you tonight.
Thank you so much.
[ Applause ]
>> Rae Armantrout: Thank you.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
For more infomation >> UN official: 5-hour humanitarian pauses in Syria not enough - Duration: 0:55. 
For more infomation >> ¿Quieres un cabello hasta 10 veces más fuerte? l Pantene MX - Duration: 0:17. 
No comments:
Post a Comment