Title: Whose Words These Are (6): Ron Slate

" I'm Christopher let -- put -- sleep. Aspiring to the wall -- line of New England corporate burgers from right wonderfully. This is open source from the Watson institute. University. The portrait series vehicle whose words these are. On the way to the Massachusetts portrait festival in October. We're looking around and asking where is portrayed in this country in this age this neighborhood. And it runs for eight years ago when he did high tech business strategy. And then again in his first book report street at 855. To keep and -- and his website on the seawall. And and is close reading commentaries. And literary fiction and of the course this is a man of the world. And of the polished to reflective word we that this time the rodeo port bookshop in its."

" slate get us started with the palm or pull it could get you started when you think of the touch -- your own. Reading and writing share well when I think back -- I am in my late teens and on an undergraduate. And I was taking a Wallace Stevens seminar most of Wallace Stevens went right over my head at that point. But the professor would have the campus poets the teaching poets come into the classroom to read their favorite while -- phone. -- and one day -- take Cayman. And his poem was the men on the down to one of Stevens is most humorous poems. And he didn't -- he recited it. He looked out the class and he recited. And I said to myself. That's -- I wanna be able to. Be with people can to use this kind of language to get them educated. At that. And while Stephens for me is my touchdown poet Rita took poem. That you take to it as and if you could only take three okay. I would take this home. By -- click. I think it's from them."

" The eighties. It's beautiful narrative it's called let's steal music. I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person. Yet with all she knows. She literally talks to god. She thinks someone listens in -- On -- cheese and usually competent. -- to. Able to face unpleasantness. We found -- caterpillar. Dying in the dirt. Greedy hands crawling over it. I'm always move to mine disaster always eager to oppose vitality. The timid all so quick to shut my eyes. Whereas my friend who was able to watch. To -- events play out according to nature. For my sake she intervened. Pressuring if you cancel after -- thing and set it down across the road. My friend says. I -- my nice to god. But nothing else explains my aversion to reality. She says -- like the child who buries her head on the pillow so it's not see the child who tells herself. That's light causes. Sadness. My friend is like the mother. Patient. Urging me to wake up and adults like herself courageous person. In my dreams. My friend who approaches me when walking on the same road except it's winter now. She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music. Look up she says it's. When I look up. Nothing. Only clouds snow. The white business in the trees. Like Bryant sleeping too great height. And I'm afraid for her I see her caught in the net deliberately cast over the earth. In reality. We sit by the side of the road watching the sunset. Time to time the silence pierced by bird call. It's this moment -- trying to explain the fact that we here at ease with staff. With solitude. My friend draws a circle in the dirt. Inside. The caterpillar doesn't move. She's always trying to make something -- something beautiful. An image capable. Of life apart from her. We very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here and speaking. Composition fixed the road turning suddenly dark the year going cool. Here in the air the rocks shining in glittering. It's the -- we both love. -- reform."

" This -- love of endings. So much like -- harm from the caterpillar to. The celestial. It's it's filled with and it has it has the one essential thing that I look forward whom I know your interest in that group that question Chris. Which is conflict. And I'm not really interested in. Spiritual uplift learned the necessity of the beautiful although this -- is beautiful. Nor do my emotions have to be fed on the -- find this -- emotional and it's way but the reason I really like it is that there's an embedded unresolved conflict."

" I love that context you said if you're young self zeroing in on Stephens. But go even beyond -- you're such a reader and critic. Locate yourself in this moment your community in that great chain of poetic being. Although it back."

" You know. Well I think first of all and I'm somewhat old fashioned -- in light of -- so lot of things that are going on now on American poetry. It's become distasteful. For some. Poets to think of having to make a statement to the problem. There is. This thing coming out of the academy. That consists of a sort of mistrust of language because. The great powers so around us at great political power is grabbed a language and determined. Its value. So if you can write a poem that resists making a statement. That in itself is kind of subtle political act. But I think that I'm prone to making statements. How would you describe the state of the art that this moment. In time I'm thinking in the United States in 2009. Where we hadn't torture I think I think poetry right now it I see this in the work of -- in quotes is very much affected by pop culture. She -- movies. Daryn there poets today who are. Who to have found a model to be even poetry like Quentin Tarantino does in his movies. Can agree to this. Violence. Violence language violence of the imagery. I'm a reader for what for one of the major. Competition's first for competitions or at least have been for the last four years. And and so I read about a 125 manuscripts during a couple weeks and that we can in December. And I get -- I get a sense of what is coming out of the workshops. And it's so various. So various and effect it is difficult. To. Pinned down particular strains and I think that's really the answer to the question. Just has everything else in the world. From toothpaste to commodities and is niche to magazines now poetry is -- very managed and depending on when workshop you come out of and who your mentor is and and who you who you choose to imitate what your particular identity politics are. You're going to write a certain kind of poultry. -- give -- some of your own work and ecstatic to lose to hear him yeah okay. Well -- I've I'm 59 years old. I I published my first -- at age 55. Which is not so on commentary effect and while -- published his first book and in his mid forties but when you. Are writing in your fifty's. What at what -- myself doing is reflecting the line. And also because. I don't feel that there's a lot at stake from me as far as having to establish. -- voice Tina and I mean I think that this pressure -- younger poet to establish your signature and establish your voice. To create your -- it. And and I don't feel I don't feel the any pressure to do that at all so my books by the way aren't I I think of them. There's a deflection mortgage ports -- whatever whatever I feel like trying out. Although some people may Nazis create variety there but whatever I feel like trying out I just do. And my first book is is quite various so that there -- some poems that -- shamelessly clean to my memory. Just borrow from memory something that already exists and then there -- other poems that are. That are persona poems that are spoken in the voices of the people. That appeal to me for an entirely different reason so. I have found that when people comment on my book they tend to gravitate towards what they think are. The biographical -- because those are the -- once to explain by the way -- the back story. Consumer books okay well please I think that that -- read a poem called coconut grove which is in. The great wave to book that that that Houghton Mifflin published. In April of this year. Coconut grove is in the nightclub fire or somebody else that's right my grandmother and her sister. Died in the fire him. -- It is the second worst. Two catastrophe by fire and in history of the United States 492 people died. Most -- smoke inhalation within a few minutes. In Boston. On on what is now the grounds location of the Radisson hotel. After big football games on camera after the BC holy cross game. And to. I wrote a poem. About the coconut grove fire in the in the 1970s. Publishing magazine. And then. And and I should mention that I stopped writing poetry for almost twenty years in the eighty's and ninety's and when it started up again for what reason I don't know. Found around 2001. I felt that I had to take this up again that there was still. It the material had -- legs early let's put it that way and it was something that I wanted to say about it that com that I hadn't said the first time. So you know into what I get and a lot of poetry reading lot of poetry today that it's based on memory based on anecdote. I get uncomfortable feeling because. Autobiographical poems that that just sort of -- each -- memory to -- tend to fail because they don't. Pulling an additional. -- anxiety and additional. Unresolved. Element to the poem right. And in my first versions coconut grove was I dug it up out of the archives up in my attic. I I side that essentially what I had done was I just reeled off the facts which are horrific you know and which which are in grossing in and of themselves they make a great poem but as far as. As far as the material itself but that's not enough. So I just went back to it and we hoped that in the writing something something. -- would command and so this poem is called coconut grove."

" My life began."

" With the fire. Glimmering in the birth waters. Beyond my bedroom wall. Voices murmured a memory. My father's mother died with her sister the ladies room. He said. If she had escaped to Shawmut street being saved. Nothing would be the way it is. How is it drifted over my route to school. I stared at a wire service photo. Fixed with brutal light. A fire hose snaking through soaked debris. Faces slack with shock. Bodies lead out on the sidewalk. How compelling for a family. To have such a story to relate. Nothing would be probably it is. To speak of a desirable world. To listening boy leaning again. November in Boston. Women collapsed waiting for their coats. The ceilings sat -- billows. Crackled and melted and -- drawn into their throats. Push to wedged in the revolving door. Face pressed against collapse. The fireball. Right orange. Or blue issue with the yellow cast or a blistering white."

" The nightclub. Burned in minutes in 1942. With the civil went acceleration. My grandfather. Sworn and testified. The single night -- judgment. Loaded with an assigned double blame. Corrosive worm of remembrance. Allure of the lurid past. The not nozzles snout Greek dressing down the smoldering street. Adoring the damaged world. We abused. We refused. To let the C wind cleared the smoke. So now it's time to decide how to move within spaces on the sites of catastrophe. How to regard the patriot and the lobbies. Even as we alarms sound evacuations rehearsed the streets filling with imaginary survivors. Just as the boy. Surviving boyhood. Sin and so that's how idiots. Just before sleep settled on him like asbestos."

" Don't we you that is -- 9/11 home yet there it is and it actually was written in response to a beautiful poem by. -- IDF ski which appeared on the back page of the New Yorker immediately after. The catastrophe down there. In which he pleaded with the reader to -- the damaged world he was pleading with us not to get swept up. He and the grief which would lead to the nationalism that would lead to other things it's almost as if which he coming from Poland and understanding. What what the basic human impulses are went something like this happens. Was warning yes to a door that damaged world and oddly enough in my family we we adored it so much. That it became. Such a pop up. Part of the -- personality. That caused a lot of the cheapest and that the pretense of the poem is that the boy took the brunt of the whole thing. Honestly you know too much about technology. And the political world. Given the form that reflects some of those things the modernity. Yeah okay -- slate -- in this book are reflected back -- my years in business. And the recent a lot of technology. Say I mean I'm not technologists and I'm. And what I did in business was -- I took basic writing skills and became a speechwriter and then. Going into communications meaning advertising and public relations and and the Internet Cayman. I got into that. And so on I don't know a lot about technology. To -- in the way I Blair felt about it was that if I could understand the things I was saying about technology than anybody could. If if you could understand what I was writing about technology than. You could understand all there was to know. -- And I've basically C took its technology as a neutral thing. And you really all depends how it's applied."

" So active storm in here called. Here in the great -- called reunion. Which is some. If the frame the frame of the home is that a bunch of people who worked together get together forward. For drinks and and to reflect back on the old times which fits in fact. What I still do with with some of my friends from this that the that the fortune 500 company where where I worked we still get together a couple of times a year. And tell the story its fifth at. So this this poem is called reunion. I attended the reunion. Talk brisk but diluted by time. A colleague raised his glass to praise me his legacy here is legendary. Not one of us knows when I was like. News of former colleagues. Vanished friends. This one was commended that one was broken by onerous obligations. And she is dissatisfied. But no longer deal. Looking down six stories. I saw a woman. Approaching the office tower across the avenue her right arm swinging the other slightly bent at the elbow in motion. He had not released. Suggesting all that remains to be done. Next time I looked out the window. Darkness had taken the city below. There was the time in Sydney in Barcelona. Sao Paulo and -- Apparently everywhere I went I said and did remarkable things. -- laughed above cities. One encountered women with no taste for nonsense. I told the lady in Amsterdam. I was an astronaut she said -- too small I said this is an advantage in a capsule. Crude for savings. Of faces and cities. The memory of my farewells. Makes me -- Their word play so much charm but not much else. United lived in a larger world my worry is paltry and ridiculous. Disappeared in dialogue. And then I was alone. -- pleasantly spent. Of our buildings recorders and movable walls. What I recall is a slender wrist and hand reaching for a slice of toast sliding down the exit ramp of the toaster. The cafeteria. A place of suspensions. Surprising postures and revelations. I was adept at envisioning a world of invention and speed. Then swiftly abandoning it for another. A tootsie no great matter -- and to the world to think you're entering earning providing. The revolving door of the office tower she polarized. And extraordinary pack -- woman starting -- like that. Making me a stranger to our past."

" Thank you too personal sort of questions. One is how a guy becomes a ploy again. In his fifties and what Louise click when Europe models. Had to do it that she was by the end poet laureate I think in a famous poet and she brought you back she encouraged you."

" First why as I said before I don't I don't really no. Clue what to. Precipitated what triggered. The the the ability. To think through language. Again to bring it back because I had really shut down completely. You know it's now I think about. Lines and where it's only all day long I jot things down -- long and it seems strange to me when I look back and I can't I can't figure out why and I have reason to mistrust my memory to -- I have talked kinds of explanations. Most of which conflict with each other as to why I did not -- But when it started I found all of a sudden that I had to I had enough homes. To make a manuscript. And a friend of mind Floyd's glued to put the poet and down and essayist. Suggested that I try to shape that into power book manuscript I had enough work for a book manuscript and so -- you know that led to. The work coming to that the attention of of Louise and down. And I worked with her for a couple years before the first book came out and cheese. I'd pay good money to sit in her workshops at Yale -- you. Because soon. I I did not know how to revise until. I said -- and work with her she's a very sharp teacher great critic. And seem to know exactly what it is that I was trying to do. So it -- work."

" Upgrade the other question is what does it say about you and your work that your daughter. Is new in the cast of Saturday Night Live doing kind of that is the did you always imagined you --"

" I do like to tell a joke by half but Jenny is is a mimicked and actually you know the mean. Actually when I when I -- I like. I'm right I know that you're supposed to just do everything you can to. Not glom on to the the model in the work of another person but. If I see something that really provokes me -- It I I can't deny that it sticks in my head. In in 2001 I was sitting in my office. Andean city. And I knew I was going to be leaving the company that year some time and I open The Wall Street Journal to the arts page -- arts patron journal. And there was a poem by Frederick -- And and I read the poem and I said this sounds familiar and I realize this sounds like me. There's -- there's something about this that that it sounds like me. Since this. I mean he's. His work actually is quite different than mine. But there are some things in my first book that sound like -- I have to admit they just do. They're they're very glib. There they're elusive -- jumper on the page the kind of cynical. That's Frederick signed up so but that's what got me going I think when I -- actually heard an echo of something that sounded like me talking. So have a different view about I'm grateful. You know to having heard that. But that's that's a close second comes to starting point for for having begun again those poems aren't going percent to."

" give you what we call the -- In the road -- questionnaire. As you well as briefly as you can. -- ideal artists in some other -- What I've been writing about photography on my on my website. Robert Frank. And before him want to reference but especially Robert Frank. Mainly because. Quote Walker -- that you you have that sense. This pure pure vision of of humanity and the images themselves are very rich and the and the prince themselves are beautiful but with -- you get that but you also get. The energy the energy of design. So when he when he shoots the city. It's it's remote not only is it in motion -- it seems be going in a certain direction he seems to be -- to know where it's headed. -- and any others in jazz in basketball in sculpture. What. -- the -- musician. I'm a drummer who always wanted to be a piano player. And I just turned. -- music by past refusal who's who created the -- he created the new tango music. He took tango music he took. They need the the kind of rococo romantic Brazil -- Music and he turned it into something. Simple and passionate and melodic. And his his music is wonderful and -- And I also think he he just he took something -- it's something new created a whole genre and his his sounds wonderful and another guy like is Centennial Marconi -- who writes. Music -- movies. What's your talent you most admire. And don't have would love to have. -- I'm not very buoyant. And as I said -- I'm a drummer who always wanted to be piano player this no doubt about that with I wish I couldn't. I wish I could do that -- to have taken lessons. I can read music little but I just never step to it that's one thing. What -- taking note. Of your personalities important thing. I would say nervous uncertainty."

" What's the quality you load in a --"

" While I mentioned that before with. With them celestial music which is. This feeling of unresolved conflict. That that there's this clash of forces that. That is becoming apparent to as you move through the poem and when you get to the end of the poem. You kind of vibrating with that sense of the unfinished. The unfinished business from. -- the -- keeps on going because. The five keeps on going. There isn't there isn't closure and yet formally the poem. And in fact I think the last word of of that poem is endings."

" The love of form -- love of endings -- pretty daring to and poems and call with a line like that. And you have to really have a lot of guts I think."

" What's your motto."

" We do that we want. Because often we said I wish and then I wish I could do this I wish I could swim but the fact is that I don't want to dive into why that's why don't swing. And so there's there is we do we want it seems to me to explain everything everything and it gets us out of having to feel. That we live and higher moral plane because we're always critiquing ourselves and critiquing other people. But we won't end up doing -- thing that we wanted to do even we say we didn't wanna do it because we did it for a reason it's -- we wanna do it."

" Especially in the run up to this tortured festival and lol. I'm asking everybody to make the New England connection. -- the ancestors the row and Emerson and and Dickenson and Stevens. What does that tradition of -- mean to you today."

" So I went to school in western Massachusetts and and one of the poets I loved was Robert Francis who lived in gamers. Yeah and when I have quote him in the second but -- I think of these people who go around -- poetry. Promoting poetry which I think it's a wonderful thing to do but they do it as if Britain you know our life -- and just be rotten if we don't read poetry you know that we must teach poetry we must -- poetry from the illiterates. And Robert Francis used to say it's not my job. To save poetry is poetry strapped since may. In and actually actually poetry has a very economical way of saving. Me saving saving costs. But. I I think the New England tradition is one of of individualism it's not one of group beef up its its its. It's Robert Frost saying when you bring your lame course to market you should get as much as you can foray into the -- it you know well you know you've told them it was --"

" So -- so to speak and you'll visually. Bruntlett -- website on fuel. Is it joy and it's a great pleasure to you read today it's been great Chris thank you very much displeasure. McCarthy added to this conversation -- the problems as."

" The great wave. Of Brown University injury and then -- parent and chemicals. Produced and the podcast. Thanks to the portable and the Massachusetts -- festival open to other players. And thanks to this news who -- the homes but your pin your heart your word processor memory. -- Radio source four and Christian polite thank you during the conversation."