University Place		Frank X Walker	Historical Poetry		November 10, 2012	UP804    cc >> Frank X Walker and my son Drew and I have been talking since July 2006 when we met at the University of Minnesota for his summer seminar at Split Rock, which was called In Search for Authentic Voices, a mixed genre writing workshop. We've since collaborated, the three of us, on teaching writing and we've joined him on the conjuring process so critical to historical poetry, that reimaging, the researching and remembering, the re-engaging of the voices which make up the full story. We have been honored to read early versions of two of Frank's books of poetry, including the forthcoming collection on Medgar Evers. At this point, I want to turn to Drew Dillhunt to introduce Frank X Walker. [APPLAUSE]  >> I've had the remarkable good fortune to work and collaborate with Frank X. Walker as both a student and as a fellow teacher and poet. Working with Frank in any capacity is an opportunity to enter into a relentlessly rewarding conversation. Frank X Walker has influenced the way I think about writing, teaching, politics, and most especially the interplay between art and the fabric of our human relationships. Most recently, CX and I have had the opportunity to continue that conversation formally in the pages of Verse Wisconsin. I'm eager to see how Frank will help us to further unfold and expand our thinking about historical poetry here today. 

Frank X Walker is the author of six collections of poetry, including Affrilachia; Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, winner of the 2004 Lillian Smith Book Award; Black Box; When Winter Come: The Ascension of York; Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride; and, most recently, Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, forthcoming from University of Georgia Press in 2013. A 2005 recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry, Walker is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kentucky and Director of African American & Africana Studies, and the editor of PLUCK!, the Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture. It's my distinct pleasure to welcome Frank X Walker. [APPLAUSE]  >> You guys! [LAUGHTER] We're going to try to keep this moving. I'm going to open up with, I think, a set of poems that come from the Buffalo Dance and When Winter Come, the York series, to give you a sense of how I use different voices and how the voices work together to advance the narrative. And I'll try to do it in a way that doesn't require too long of an introduction to put it in context. But if you don't know the story of York, you probably know the story of Lewis and Clark. And if you were like most individuals in different parts of the country, that story of that great trek across the United States was usually dominated by these heroic exploits of Lewis and Clark, as if the two white superheroes did it all by themselves and not 42 people and not a 15-year-old Native American girl and definitely not an African American manservant who not only carried a gun and a hatchet, but who was responsible for saving the whole party's lives at least twice through the expedition. And all these details are available in the journals, in the actual journals of Lewis and Clark. But to think about that history and that truth is that most history books, most individuals writing those books made a decision about what parts of the story to tell, and most stories leave out York. 

Some of them include Sacajawea, Sacagawea, it depends on how you want to pronounce her name, but almost none of them had included York in the detail that he deserves and exists. I'm going to open up with the opening poem in Buffalo Dance. It was actually the first poem I wrote in this series that tries to set up the important characters in the narrative and also the relationships. You will hear the advancement of this issue between man and nature. Native Americans and this party of government officials coming across on the great trek by men and women. York will, himself, visit this issue between master and slave, and York is also the only married man who begins the expedition and finishes it. And the opening poem imagines York after a year and a half. They get to the Pacific Ocean, and he's thinking about his wife. And the central issue for York is that he's illiterate, but he's thinking about how to retell what he's experiencing. He doesn't have a Kodak camera. 

He's not blogging every day. [LAUGHTER] But he's watching at least six people journal details, draw sketches, maps, write down details, and he can't do that. So, for me as a writer, I tried to imagine how difficult that must be to know that it may be three years before you get to tell the story, how do you remember all this stuff? So this is him with all opening pressure in the opening poem called Wind Talker. And to help me help you get there, I want to ask a favor of you. For at least the opening poem, I'm going to ask that you close your eyes and try to imagine York, and know that in spite of the images of him that exist in contemporary art, the journals say that York was so large, his physical self resembled an NFL defensive end. But he was so fast and nimble that the natives were surprised that a man so large could move so well and so nimbly. So, imagine this huge man, and he also had very African features. Very dark skin. Very broad nose. So, try to see that man when you hear this voice. 

Wind Talker. If I could make my words dress they naked selves in blackberry juice lay down on a piece a bark, sheep or onion skin, like Massa do. If I could send a letter home to my wife float it in the wind, on wings or water I'd tell her about Katonka and all the wide and high places this side a the big river. How his family, numbering three for every star in the sky, look like a forest when they graze together, turn into the muddy Missouri when they thunder along, faster than any horse, making the grass lay down long after the quiet has returned. How they don't so much as raise a tail when I come round with my wooly head and tobacco skin, like I'm one of them making the -- think me "Big Medicine, Katonka who walk like man." Today we stood on the edge of all this and looked out at so much water, the mountains we crossed to get here seem a little smaller. As I watched fish the size of cabins dance in the air and splash back in the water like children playing I think about her, and if we gone ever be free, then I close my eyes and pray that I don't live long enough to see Massa make this ugly too. That's the opening poem and the first collection, and it tries to set the tone and introduce those important relationships. I'm going to jump forward to the sequel because I had a lot of commentary after putting together a book that was all in York's voice, people wanted to know about his wife, because she's mentioned, she's very central to the story. But none of the scholars that researched have unearthed her name. We don't know her name yet. 

And there was a second issue that happened after sharing this book on the Nez Perce Reservation three summers in a row, they gave me a copy of the tribe's transcribed oral history that talked about York and one of the chief's daughter's courtship and marriage in the tribe. And I had a chance to actually meet descendents of York who were still in the tribe in the Nez Perce Nation, and they're very proud of that. But none of that information exists in any American history book. So, they gave me the information and said do something with it, and that was the force behind the sequel. So, I'm going to open up with two voices. One is several poems by York's Nez Perce wife, and then I'm going to respond to those poems with the voice of York's enslaved African wife back in Kentucky so that you know where they're going. Art of Seduction, York's Nez Perce wife. I know a hungry man's eye can undress a woman from across a smoldering fire, because York did it. When I grew warm to his advances, I gave him permission and invited him over without ever opening my mouth. I looked away, then back, then away, then back, so slow when my eyes returned to meet his, it made his nostrils flare and my heart beat like two drums in my chest. 

He didn't have a courting flute, so the first music we made between us was a way of looking into each other's eyes and exchanging naked promises so full of heat passers-by would swear we were already man and wife. His big hands were rough from a life full of hard work but when they were filled with me each one became a party of men deep in the wilderness intent on exploring every mound and knowing all of the hollowed-out and sacred places.  Lover's Moon. After the redheaded one's bed is made and his stomach full of meat, he gives my Tse-mook-tse-mook To-to-kean the slice of daylight left to do as he pleases. Pretending not to rush back to me, he passes by and nods. After I track him down in the dark, jump on his back and wrestle him to the ground we wander off laughing towards the horses then follow the riverbank upstream, holding hands and looking for a private place to celebrate the way the moon dances on the face of the water. We find a rock to hold all our clothes and play in the shallows like children but after our bodies kiss, we stop to weigh the gift of time alone and grow up real fast.  Midnight Ride. After the fires die down, a moon full of shine allows us to wander off into the night's arms. Urged on by the river and the night's music, our two quickly become one. 

Straddled aboard him a buffalo robe around my shoulders and nothing else I close my eyes and ride low and close, the way a hunter tracks a buffalo in the deep winter snow. Our gentle trot becomes a gallop and after a good sweat our gallop becomes a quiet stand. Then we bow our heads and wait for our breaths to catch up. After a quick dip in the cold river, I mount back up for warmth and we ride slow and long until my legs quiver and York finds the strength to harness himself. When he carries me back home to our mat folded up in his arms like a child we lie down in the lap of the night both empty and full and sleep.  I'm going to skip forward. You can hear that kind of romantic notion. As a bridge, there's a poem that deals with this issue of literacy and illiteracy.  Primer II. This is York speaking. 

I can read the heart ova woman in her eyes as easy as a lie in a man's face. The direction an power ova storm speaks clearly to me from low-flying bird wings. I can dip my fingers into muddy hoof or toe print an tell how many a what I'm gone have for dinner. The thickness a tree bark, walnut hulls, an tobacco worms tell me how ugly winter gone be. I knows the seasons like a book. I can read moss, sunsets, the moon, an a mare's foaling time with a touch. But I would trade all this to know how to scratch out my name as more than a X, to have my stories leap off paper as easy as they roll off my tongue, to listen to my own eyes, make the words on parchment say This man here be York. He can come an go as he please, work for hisself, own land, learn his books, live, an die free.  And the issue with his enslaved wife back in Kentucky is that, like I said before, we don't know her name. So I imagine the perfect place to start her contribution to this kind of love response is a poem called Say My Name. 

This is York's enslaved wife. Folks round here wanna call me Auntie, York's ol' wife, or Massa So an So's niggah wench Like I ain't got a name a my own. Dem don't know how hard it be t'put aside a lil' piece a myself dat nobody can't neva touch but me, a piece big enuf t'wrestle the long hard days an keep itself warm at night, without a man 'round. Dem don't know what it like to stand in the dark night afta night wrapped in dat buffalo robe he sent look up at the stars an wonda which ones is looking down on him an believe if something bad happen to him out there dat I would feel it too When he come home, I don't need him to say he love me Don't need him to bring me gifts, I just wants him to hold me close, make like he glad to see me bend down t'my ear an whisper my name.  But at the same time, considering I just read the poems from another woman, I believe that if two people are really in love that you can't really hide infidelity. It shows up in your eye, in your movement. So this is her responding to that. Unwelcome Guest. I don't think York knowed I could see hur too. Da furst time was in da corna a his eye while he look far off but stare at da plate right in front a him. 

He didn't say nothin' bout hur but da way his lips turnt up at da ends said plenny. Now, I ain't one t'sass. His growl help me to know a slave woman's place so I sits up all night wit both my hands an ears open, waitin' t'catch hur name on his lips. Afta dat, no matta how much he talk a grizzlies, buffalos, big fish, mountains, or ochians she become all I can see all I wants t'know It gets so crowded in our lil' place I swears I can almost smell hur. An by den I knows one a us will have t'go.  Now, she doesn't have a lot of options. She can't take him to divorce court. [LAUGHTER] But she is not without options.  This is called The Sunflower Seed Oil Conjure. First, I gets some fresh well wada an puts it on t'boil stirs up a tea brewed from apricot vine, rattlesnake weed, an plenny a honey. 

Den I sets him down 'tween my knees an wit a wooden tooth comb left t'me by my mamma's mamma commences t'scratchin at his scalp 'til his shouldas look covad wit snow. Den I fills up my wash tub wit boilin' wada doctored wit peppermint root an sets to scrubbin' him slow enough fo' the heat t'open his doors. When his body is clean I starts back in t'work on his head bustin up a mean suds and usin' my fingas to walk up an down his scalp 'til he let loose a low moan an his eyes start t'roll 'round in his head. Afta I rinses and twist alla forest out I starts back in wit warm sunflower seed oil only dis time ev'ry finga make its own lil' circle while both m'hands make bigga ones. an they follows each otha from da stiff tree limbs in da back a his neck, cross his crown t'his soft spot while my thumbs dig in slow an deep where da headaches come on. I pours da extra oil inta my hans an rub his neck an shouldas, down t'his ribs an arms den like a turtle dance I moves back up again. I works slow an hard an afta a while when I gets alla way t'his man sack he open his eyes an be glad its me. [LAUGHTER] So, that probably fixed him, I'm sure. [LAUGHTER] So, I'm going to close with two poems, one in her voice and one in York's voice, that tries to sum up the challenge of having a healthy relationship inside the institution of slavery. This is York. 

To Have and to Hold. It do more harm than good to be enslaved an agree to love forever when there be folks over us with even more power than death to do us part. Being another man's property alls I can promise is when we in the same quarters no one will hold you closer or with more tenderness than me. If ever I have to choose between another day a service an death I will always choose livin'. Even if Massa sell me down the Mississippi tomorrow or pair me up with another woman to breed I will only think on what we had an chase away any thoughts a what we had not. I aims to see you ev'ry Sunday an Christmas but if ever I'm away more than two whole seasons without sending back word, untie the ribbons from that broom we jump mourn for me but a little then set your mind to figuring on how you gone stay warm when winter come. And this is her comment in the same space. Real Costs. Somewhere out dere he learnt t'touch me like I'm a woman an not just some woman. Me. 

In our marriage bed he seem as interested in pleasing me as he be in spillin' hisself. I knew he come back changed when new words fall out his mouf like love an freedom an manhood. An dere come a look in his eye like he own all three free an clear an don't need no papers t'prove it. But it scare me 'cause I seent dat look in many a black eye b'fo white hammas nailed it shut o' leave it frozen open an swingin' t'teach da rest what anything smell like courage cost. I have no doubt he give his life t'stay wit me so I don't tell 'im dat Massa takin' me back down south. I just kiss him soft t'sleep. an stare at him long enough t'call up his face when I gets old an thankful he still be breathing somewhere when winta come. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]  >> You guys survive that? All right, good. >> Thank you so much, Frank. 

That was wonderful. So, one of the things that my dad mentioned at the beginning of the introduction was that we had the opportunity to work with Frank as students, and so one of the things that Frank asked that we would do is to talk a little bit how his work and working with him as a teacher has influenced our own poetry, and then, I think, from there we'll maybe get into sort of the discussion of this idea of historical poetry. And so, in 2006 when I was at that workshop, one of the things that really opened up for me was this idea of the multiplicity of truth that Frank, I think, does such a wonderful job of capturing in his poetry. And I didn't immediately move to writing historical poetry, but I looked more at family history. And I worked on using some of the conjuring techniques that Frank was teaching us to think about conjuring voices in my family, other than my own, and I actually led into a series of poems where I actually spoke through my father's voice to tell stories of family history which is something think I don't feel I would have had permission to do before learning from Frank. And I think since that whole idea of historical poetry is just really infused the way I think about writing and poetry. And I use science a lot in my poetry and the history of science, and I've really begun to think about how can the history of science inform my poetry. And I was recently involved, a few years back, in writing a series of poems about cells and cell biology and the history of cell biology, and I have a background in biology and started thinking about the immortal hela cell line which I really didn't know much about, but I was writing about it and looking into cell biology, then I stumbled, this was in 2009, I stumbled upon the forthcoming book by Rebecca Skloot, who I'm sure many of you are familiar with. And that opened up this whole new historical perspective on this narrative that I wasn't aware of and read that book and immediately was thrown back to Frank's class and thinking about, okay, how do I deal with this? How do I work this into my poetry? And that led to a long poem that I've been working on called Herselves, which is not a conjuring of Henrietta Lacks' voice, and for those of you who don't know, Henrietta Lacks, in 1951 her cervical tumor cells were taken and used to make hela which is the immortal cell line that's influenced science all over the place in lots and lots of ways. And as a biologist, I was never aware of that. 

So, the poem that I ended up writing was really more about, it's almost more, I think, of Henrietta conjuring my voice through poetry to understand this new truth and how that's changed my understanding of that narrative. And so I thought I'd read an excerpt from that poem which a piece of was recently published in the journal Volt. So, the poem is called Herselves, and this is an excerpt called From Herselves. from Herselves to know our lacks to surface a space where caress = reticulum w-here analogy = eros(ion) w--here paradox = verb w---here the cell(f) is at war w----here edge = tourniquet w-----here metadata therefore doubt w------here decomposition is a subset of embrace w-------here cell = body w--------here secession = faith Here [is where] our telomeres shrink the explosion divides my cell(ve)s see it: a blood test: we demarcate an organ system explicate the singular insist the cognates are false a body is a body I remind my cell(ve)s not to speak the voice of others' mitochondrion imply a shared cell(f) blurred in culture / where there can be no such motion as speciation. O Henrietta, the way you've taken this poem infiltrates / my sense of the body where cell(ve)s rendezvous, Henrietta, does appropriation ever become / an exercise in tenderness.  So, I think I'm going to hand it over to CX, who's going to talk a little about some of the influence Frank's work has had on him and I think share a poem as well. >> I deny it. The man had no influence on me. [LAUGHTER] And I say that because it was difficult because I went back to my notebooks and the exercise, and we were talking to Frank and saying, my goodness, did we write a lot of stuff. And it was very influential. 

And the most striking influence, well, first, let me go back to the notebook. I found something in there. A letter I wrote to Frank. I wrote lots of letters to Frank. This is a seven-page letter I wrote three days after the conference. So you can imagine what went on there. I think Frank has them all in a box somewhere. [LAUGHTER] My mother used to have me buy carbon paper for her so she could make copies of her letters. I'm convinced, by the way, I learned how to write first from my mother, second from Frank by writing letters. And I gave Frank a list of nine things that I thought I was learning. 

And the third thing I put was what I have learned about memory, research, and imagination can be a way of writing in any genre. I still have trouble understanding what genre is, but I do understand the influence of memory, research, and investigation and imagination on my poetry.  And what I was going to say is that the thing that astounded me is that when I started searching for poems, I went way back, and I kept coming closer and closer to now. And those of you who know me know that I am-- Drew's obsessed with cell biology, I'm obsessed with glass. And this started because part of my research, I didn't realize it was research at the time, and this is one of the key principles Frank gives us is do your research, is I found myself in Italy about three years ago, in Siena, as an apprentice learning how to cut glass and color glass and make glass and lead glass and build church windows and monastery windows as well as repair some of them in and around Siena. And lo and behold, the glass started speaking to me, and then after I came home I couldn't stop writing about glass. And the thing about that is that one of the things Frank talked to us about, and Drew did too here, is giving voice to the object, but the most incredible thing that happened to me, and this is what I was starting to say earlier that I learned most recently about myself, is how often the object gives voice to my own history. So, I thought I would read a poem, again, recently published in Wisconsin People and Ideas.  And it's one of my glass poems. And, by the way, I didn't know what to do with all my glass ideas, so I started, again another idea that I learned from Frank is using form. 

And I think he'll talk more about this when maybe he reads some of the Medgar Evers poems, but he talks about how form is a way to free yourself up. And so I started a glossary. And this is from the letter W. The poems in this collection, the guide words are the title. So the title of this one is Window - Window, Our Lady. WINDOW To win. To do. To undo. To Endow. To bow. 

To wind down. To want to be like the wind. To hold or stop the wind. To be made of glass; to shatter one Sunday morning. To hold all, as in: He wished to see fall and all through the morning window, but morning decided to move on without him. Also, to be in the window (to be lustful of); to have a window (most often temporal); to go in or out the window (sometimes vulgar); anything resembling the color of last evening's sunset breaking through an open controlled burn prairie. Uncontrolled. In some senses: sinful, stained. SEE: BROKEN, BROTHER/BROTHERLESS, CLOSED, EMPTY, LOST, SOLD, SOUL, STAINED, UNWALL SEE ALSO: DANTE'S COMMEDIA, LONGFELLOW TRANSLATION OF; ST. FRANCIS XAVIER PARISH GRADE SCHOOL, DE PERE, WI (1954-1962)  WINDOW, OUR LADY OF THE BEAUTIFUL Usually: to mother. Sometimes: to other or to hold. 

Implied: to have a son, a brother, or other made of glass. To say, Notre-Dame de la Belle Verrière and mean all these things. To see suddenly. Also, to stand silently, to breathe color, to create colors that don't recognize each other or are easily lead astray. To become daily or silent. To arrive speaking without words. Unknowable. Unseen (in many senses), but can also mean to be seen, as in: I saw you yesterday in the south choir in Chartes Cathedral. Are you still in Bay 14? SEE: ENTHRONED, OPPORTUNE, STONE, UNHEARD OF, UNTOLD, VENERATE SEE ALSO: SISTER MARY THEODORETTE, SSND; MORNING OFFERING; TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, THIRD  Should we turn it back to Frank? I think we should turn it back to Frank. You can deny or explicate. 

>> I take no responsibility for those poems. [LAUGHTER] Can we give them a hand? [APPLAUSE]  I think, for me, before we even finished a week in Minnesota, we had eclipsed the teacher/student relationship and had already become friends because we all felt the same way about words. We would meet after class, lunch over meals, and we would talk about poetry and books and words. And these guys were so insatiable. They wanted to know every single detail. So they made me earn my money as a teacher during that week, and it was absolutely worth it. To think about the way I teach is I participate in the class as a poet also, so I'm also learning something new. If I give an assignment, I also take it. If they share their response, I share mine. That's part of the process for me. 

I think it also allows them to know how close they are to getting it right. And in some cases, their response is better than the teacher's. Even now, after six years, Drew has a poem that I use as an example in my classes back in Kentucky that he wrote as a student in the class, final draft. That's what I mean when people ask me who are my favorite writers, who am I reading now? I always include my students. And for me, that's where the most exciting thing is happening in poetry is right there on the ground at that really hungry, aggressive level that people who have finally accepted the fact that they are poets and have committed themselves to doing it and learning as much as they can, there's a level of excitement that just drives them and it's contagious. So, it was out of selfishness that I've maintained this relationship. [LAUGHTER] And when I finish new books, I would send them to these guys and say, tell me what you think. And they so love having a chance to write on every single poem and page and line to tell me how wrong I've gotten it. [LAUGHTER] But it's been a great friendship, and I'm hoping that you allow us to continue sharing at that level and poetry at the same time. So I'm going to turn it back to these guys to see how you want to proceed from here. 

You want to deal with questions that you have? Or some of the questions may be answered with a poem if they're directed at me. And also give you guys a chance to not wait until the very end. If you have questions already burning that you want to ask, just throw a hand up and these guys will accommodate you. >> In the back. >> Yeah, it's very tempting. [INAUDIBLE]  ...It was supposed to express the unknown. So you are conjuring voices of York, and, to me, one of the questions that come up immediately is in what language, what was his language? So, how does this... [INAUDIBLE] That's my question. >> Frank will respond to your question first. >> If I understand your question, you're asking about York's language? What language he was speaking in? Is that correct? >> Yeah. 

>> Well, what I had access to is the language of African American slaves from the time period that he lived. And this book is set in 1802 to, it goes back a little before that, with flashbacks, but between 1802 and 1832 before York disappeared, and there was the final record of him, depending on which story you believe about how he died. And that's another story, maybe another book. But, the thing about his language is that there's nothing recorded, but we have, thanks to WPA, there are slave narratives in libraries all over the country. And I, actually, made a point to get a set of slave narratives taken from Virginia and Kentucky in the same time period, and then, actually, built a list of words, a vocabulary, a glossary of words that describe everyday activities. Food, dress, life in general. So, I could build at least this general area about where he would have been speaking from to build what I consider his lexicon, and to factor in the fact that he was not a field hand. He was a personal servant to an educated man. He traveled with him. He dressed better than other slaves. 

The fact that he carried a gun and a hatchet kind of questions this notion of what slavery was for him. You have to ask the question, if he had a gun and a knife and it was only him and his master on the road where out there on those trips, why didn't he make a different choice? It defies logic until the further research talks about his family that was also owned by his master, and I can imagine to make that choice to flee to freedom also means that you make a choice to leave this family you already have. So, we know that William Clark owned York's father, York's stepmother, and some siblings. We know that York's enslaved wife was owned by a separate family also in Kentucky, in Louisville, Kentucky, specifically, and what I didn't say when I abbreviated that story that I read is that when York came back from the expedition, the relationship between he and his master changed dramatically because Clark was stationed in St. Louis after that, assigned to St. Louis, and he insisted that York come with him. He had promised York his freedom upon returning, but he didn't give it to him until 10 years later. But during that 10-year period, York was trying to get back to Kentucky to be with his wife, and there are a set of letters in a book called Dear Brother where Clark talks about not being able to understand why York wants to get back to Kentucky to see that woman of his. And that he has to beat York because he allows him to go visit for three days and he stays three weeks and put him in jail for his insolence. So, to me, when I look at that, this is not a disobedient man. This is a man who loves this woman, who's willing to risk his own life, take these beatings in this relationship because he needs to be with that woman and possibly a larger family that there's no real record of. So, I took everything I could that is about research and this historical poetry as a genre is married to the facts. 

And whatever you remember about it, I wasn't alive in 1803 so I have very little memory, but I remember things from school and from other books and from other stories, but once you exhaust those details, all you have left is the imagination. And I think that what ties them together is that you have to create something that still works as poetry, and still has a level of authenticity as opposed to, you're not trying to write the truth, because this is not a history book. It's a book of poetry that uses this historical moment to retell the story. So, if you are committed to authenticity, that means that you need to believe that that's York talking, that that's his wife. That's what his wife would say because if you were a man or a woman in a relationship that's what you would say. It sounds real and believable, and I think that's the biggest challenge for people trying to write historical poetry is to not get caught up in trying to recast it based on the politics of what they want to happen but to be limited by the truth and the facts but still put enough poetry into it and enough imagination that it's elevated to this other space, and it still lives in a way that when you hear that voice you say, I believe that's what York would have sounded like. And I hope when you heard that, that you believed that's York. When you closed your eyes, that you could see something that approximated York, even though we don't know for certain. The fact that he was illiterate, the biggest compliment I ever got was a man who asked me where did I find York's letters at? [LAUGHTER] And then the second question was, but I thought you said he was illiterate, so how could he write letters, and where did you find them? And I could not make him understand that they weren't York's letters. I said, well, I wrote them. 

He said, well, I thought it's York speaking. I said, well, it is York speaking, but it's me writing for York, and he kept getting more confused. I said, next question. [LAUGHTER] We just went around in a circle. >> Can I ask another question that builds on that? When I have researched or written persona poetry, one of the joys, for me, has been that I research a figure, say, Paul Gauguin, and learn all I can and begin to feel like his voice is speaking in my head, but when I write the poems, one of the real joys for me is that sometimes that voice flickers in and out so that there's a real dance between my voice and his voice. And it's a real blending, and sometimes his voice is a little more prevalent or that masculine, French, post-impressionist painter, and sometimes my voice, as a female poet in the early 21st century, is a little more present. And they're kind of doing this tango in the poem. It flickers back and forth. But I never thought when I was writing those poems that anybody was going to include my version of Paul Gauguin in a history class or in an art appreciation class. I know that people have included your work as a way of filling out historical record. 

So, I'm wondering, as a writer, do you feel that your voice blends with York, or do you suppress the Frank X Walker piece of the voice? What's your practice there? >> Well, I like to think that it's all York. I do enough research and the process of conjuring exists, part of the rule is to stay out of the way. You can't accept that invitation to come to the floor and do the tango. They have to dance by themselves. You're going to be present in the title because you get to, that's you. You can't get out of the way from that. But, the truth is, they need to hear, if one of the critiques says it sounds like you said that not him, then you haven't done you job. You have to work so hard that you can't hear your voice. And it's not great for the ego on the front end, especially if you come from a background of writing from the navel and your primary voice is I in your poetry, because this is the exact opposite of how we learn to write poetry for the most part. And we have to really infiltrate that voice to the point where it's really about being so, I think, empathetic that you understand how that person might feel. 

And depending on, this is between you and that person, like, for me, the hardest voice I've written to date was Byron de la Beckwith, the racist who killed Medgar Evers. It's easy to imagine how York felt because I can think, well, as a black man in this situation, it's not a huge leap for me. But it's hard to envision myself as somebody who hates black people so much that I wanted to kill this one. But, on the strength of resarch, that meant the research had to be harder, and it was a longer process. And it happened that the first book that I did in that way was Buffalo Dance, and I taught myself how to do it by doing it. I was so successful that my mother would call me, I would answer the phone, she knew I wrote from 4:30 to 8:00. At 7:59, the phone would ring and I would say, "Good morning, Ma." She would say, "Did York say anything new today?" [LAUGHTER] And I would already have the poem out, and I would say, "Yes, ma'am." "Let me hear it." [LAUGHTER] And I would read the new poem, and she would say, "Read it again." [LAUGHTER] And she would say, "Thank you, have a good day." Click. That's it! [LAUGHTER] And there was, at the same time, I had a friend on the cover of the book, that's the clay version of a 10-foot-tall bronze sculpture facing the river in Louisville, Kentucky, and my friend, Ed Hamilton, created that work, and we were sharing and working on our projects at the same time. So, when I would get writer's block, I would just go to the studio and watch him. The one point that I got really slowed down, nothing was coming out, I went to visit Ed about 8:30 in the morning, and Ed has a process where he covers the clay version with plastic at night. If you know anything about science and condensation, you know that when you take the plastic off, it's going to be wet. 

And I'd seen the armature, I'd seen the physical thing coming together, but I had not seen the face until that morning. He pulled of the plastic and there was York's face for the first time, and water was rolling down his face like he was sweating. And I just got the chills and I said, thanks, Ed, and I left. [LAUGHTER] I'm talking 10 minutes in the studio and I went home and I wrote the rest of the weekend. Just a flood of things came out because I felt like he was even more present. So, at that point, I was out of the way because I had a face, I could hear the voice. At that point, there were enough poems where I felt like, even when I read York, you may have heard a shift in my voice when I read, that's York to me. That's not me. That's not my voice. York's voice is much more masculine. 

[LAUGHTER] My girlfriend would say, don't use that voice, I want to hear the York voice. [LAUGHTER] >> Andy? [INAUDIBLE]  >> I have a question for you, or for any of you, it's true that you can get your voice out of the way in terms of the words and the ideas and so forth, but as you said, you still have an idea of what makes a successful poem, the cadence of how you drift from the beginning to the end, where the line breaks happen, what the syntax is, and I wonder if you ever feel like, if I imagine that writing in someone else's voice is more like spirit possession, it would screw that stuff up. It would throw, one line is way too long, break the second line, and I wonder if you ever have that kind of experience in working with this? All those aesthetic, those purely aesthetic aspects of the poem get thrown into question and come into friction with that part of your voice that's not your personality exactly but the craft part. Does that get messed with at all? >> I'll take a piece of that quickly. Not really because, for me, the heart of the poem happens first, and once it's there, it's like a lump of clay. The crafting, that doesn't take my best self, because I've done it so much, it's like measuring and cutting, applying the rules that apply to poetry. It's like editing somebody else's work. But in the beginning, that's the hard part, trying to get the rough clay down, the raw material, in the right voice. And then the structure and shape is just a matter of choice at that point. I know that on the page, the poems, like all of Sacajawea's voices, her poems all look alike on the page. 

And my goal was that if you couldn't read but you looked, if you had all the poems in front of you that you could decide who was who by how it was shaped on the page even, that's where the craft comes in. There's a poem in the voice of the river in the sequel, When Winter Comes, that's shaped like this all the way down the page, and that's very conscious as a concrete poem to evoke this idea. But one of the things that helps, especially in the class, is having students write, assign a voice, a personality, a mood to an inanimate object. And I use it a lot. The York series has his knife and his hatchet have an argument with each other. One's a feminine voice and one's a brute masculine voice. It's one of my favorite set of poems to read, but that kind of exercise forces you to understand that even when speaking in another voice, that person has a personality and they're in a certain mood and you need to try to show both of those things while telling their story and not let it get in the way. It helps empower the voice. >> I only have one thing to say. I want you to read the river and the knife and the hatchet. 

Would you? >> If there's time, sure. [APPLAUSE] >> Can we do that now? >> You guys are in charge. Can I borrow a book? >> I just think that fits so well. >> Okay, this is The River Speaks. I wish we could put these up so you could see it on the page. The goal here was to try to find a way to tap into the spiritual nature of the whole story. The epigraph is a quote from Langston Hughes: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."  call me the ohio, the mississippi, or the missoura call me wood, teton, yellowstone, milk, judith, marias, jefferson, madison, beaverhead, bitterroot, snake, clearwater, or pallouse call me the wide-toothed mouth of the columbia river call me after my many creeks my great falls my hot springs i am the snow atop mt. adams i am the salty hope in the air at cape disappointment i am she who is the deep and the shallows a thundering waterfall and a quiet storm i am always present in the air, on every tongue in every drop of milk and blood and tear you will find me in every thorn and flower, seed and fruit there is no life without me i am libation and baptismal pool i am your sprinkle of holy water i am older than man and light i am of god, but not god but like god, i am also inside of every man for all are born in me and form there until they are flushed naked into the world and i remain there in them like god until they depart and return to dust captain clark saw me as a great wet road that could be conquered with the rowing and paddling of men under his command so i showed him my many rapids and waterfalls made his men carry their own boats and supplies around me for miles at a time these were the good years white men had not yet studied the beaver and learned how to redirect my paths manage my flow, harness it for their own use attempt to enslave me too captain lewis was different to him i was a piece of art he marveled at the natural falling of my waterlocks and felt humbled by the beautifully carved rock masterpieces that adorn my canyons and walls while i have at most been an open way for the white man to the red man i have been viewed as a helpmate considered a wife carrying their salmon and trout providing for their nourishment and transportation surrounding them moving through them in the heat of the sweat lodge answering their prayers when they dance but the black one was the only one taught to both fear and respect me and though i was the road that carried the ships of death to and from africa's shores i became the waiting outstretched arms for those who refused to be enslaved for those who trusted me to rock their babies off to sleep my ocean floors are covered with his people's resistance i carry their spirit in every splash i make their humming their lost voices their last words have become a part of my sweetest songs when he is whole again when york knows what he is worth, i will well up inside of him and he will hear them sing. That's the voice of the river, and you can hear that that's... [APPLAUSE] Thank you. But that's cast as a female voice, and I'll try to find a hatchet with a little help. 

 I'm looking for The hatchet. >> It's in there. I don't know what page it's on. >> Is it in Buffalo? I should know this, right? [LAUGHTER] >> I think it's in that one. Oh, you have it right here. >> Okay. Let's try the table of contents. That's a good place to start, right?  >> It's interesting how the objects in the books flow together like the river does. >> Found The Knife. The Knife is on 42. 

>> Forty-two? >> Yeah.  >> So, Cutting Back is on 42. That's the response. So, Signifying on 35 and 42. All right, you tell me which is which.  Signifying.  When my onyx captain means biz-ness, when he feel threatened he don't reach for nothing' small 'n pretty he don't bother fumblin' with no powderhorn 'n ball neither. When the choices be life o' death he know he need a steel tooth killer like me that know nothin' 'bout no ticklin' or caressin'. Gentle ain't never been my song. When a grizzly need to be stopped dead in his tracks, already fulla hot lead an madder for it, he gone reach fo' me t' silence his gapin' mouth 'n angry tone. 

He gone ask my steel kiss t' cleave an gash t' hew 'n chop like lightnin' strikes. He gone want me t' get loud 'n meaningful to unlock that monster's skull t' run my tongue 'cross his brain, t' burrow through his ribcage 'til I can taste his heart t' fill the air with blood 'n guts 'til dere ain't nothin' left but a bear skin 'n a pile a steaks. Ya see, killas only respect killas neva nothin' weak 'n shiny neva nothin' that hide 'n spit atcha from behind trees from fifty paces 'n maybe tear a lil' hole in ya flesh. Nah, killin' is what we do 'n the reason he sleep with his fingers 'round my throat.  All right, that's obviously the hatchet. [LAUGHTER] And masculine.  Cutting Back. Thunder might spook a horse, but lightning is the knife that strikes. Death is never simple as that loud-mouthed hatchet makes it out to be. [LAUGHTER] He's just extra weight when there's no killing to be done. 

Big dumb clumsy chopping doesn't require thought or skill. A blade can cut down a tree or a bear or a man, but what else can it do? It can't skin a buffalo or change its wooly back into rawhide. It's useless when York needs to scale and clean a fish or lance a wound. It might hack off a piece of meat but can it peel the skin off a piece of fruit? Size means nothing when the right vein and the blood that courses through it need separating. I can take the hair off a man's throat or slice it open without raising my voice. These fools sit around the fires all night pining for the love of a good woman. And they believe a good woman is always quiet and small and pretty. But they aren't ready for a real one like me, who is as dangerous and useful in the wild as fire is in the kitchen. [APPLAUSE]  >> So, Frank, you spoke a little bit earlier about the challenge of conjuring voices that are difficult, especially ones like Byron de la Beckwith in the new book, and I know we've had conversations about that, and I feel like in the York book as well the voices of Lewis and Clark have not quite that level of difficulty but there's some difficulties that are encountered there as well and how those truths also shape the book in this way that tell these different perspectives and different truths. And I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit, how do you, as you conjure those voices, I'm always amazed by how you can both tell the darkness and the complicity of those voices, while at the same time maintaining their humanity and allowing us to really see them as people even though they're representing maybe something that we find difficult. 

I'm really curious to hear more about that, how you manage that. >> Well, I think it's more of a goal than anything else, because I really want the characters to be believable and human. I needed York to not be a charicature. So, there's humor, there's all kinds of pathos. So, he's in pain and he's deliriously happy. He's missing his wife. He's excited. He feels this full range of emotions that you understand and appreciate, so that makes it accessible to you as a reader. At the same time, because that was established very early on, I knew that any character I created had to also have that same range, even de la Beckwith at the very end, the most recent. The big challenge for me, a lot of people always ask because they believe the women are authentic, there are 12 different female voices in the sequel in the York books, it's my favorite of all of them, but at the same time, it wasn't hard for me to create but not because I have access to the woman inside me, but because I was raised by women. 

I have seven sisters. [LAUGHTER] I have three ex-wives. [LAUGHTER] I'm covered. [LAUGHTER] There's very little I haven't heard in the full range of emotions from every age of woman that I understand from birth to death that I didn't access when trying to make those voices authentic. And I think when I talk about how important it is for poets to live in a world and then to have access to that living when they go to the page, that's one example for me that all the negative things that ever happened to me I think I found a way or poem at some point to write about it or to access it and use it. And so when the poem lands on the page that it ends up being something that somebody else appreciates, it's almost like that pain back then is now worth it. And my mother articulated it best, she had, my first book, Affrilachia, was made into a stage play. My mother came to see it. Sat in the front row and cried all the way through it. And at the end all she could find herself saying was if that's what you get in the end, then all that pain and those things you wrote about that are about me that they were clearly worth it. 

And for her, she was responding to how the audience responded. She got a standing ovation, and she wasn't the only one crying. She wasn't depressed or sad or angry. The tears were tears of happiness, and there was something cathartic about having that pain and those experiences exercised and kind of exhumed and then examined and then kind of laid to rest. Something about putting them in the book that you can, if you can actually articulate what it is, write it down, put it in the book, you can actually close it and put it on the shelf, and that process is almost like a cleansing. You've packaged it. You're managing your own pain. And I think that's why a lot of people go to the page because of therapy. But don't be confused because I get students in my class all the time that that's what they're doing. That's all they're trying to do is write therapy. 

They're not there for the craft part of it because they'll say, well, here it is. And I say, is this the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth draft? They say, oh, no, this is how it came out. This is it. And you haven't gone back? She said, why would I? [LAUGHTER] Now, that hurts as a teacher. [LAUGHTER] To admit that I'm about to beat this student up. [LAUGHTER] In every sense of the word because I really believe in the craft process. I know that that first thing is just, Barbara Kingsolver said a necessary evil, and you need that lump of clay to work with, but it can always be better no matter how you feel about it. If you think it's perfect, leave it alone for a week or a day and come back to it. I know people, if you look at the books I read from, I'm writing in the margins, I've added words, and even in the published form, I'm still trying to make it better. I find things that, it needs a comma here, because there's a comma when I read it, but it's not on the page. 

I want people to appreciate it the way I would like them to hear it. But that's the short answer or response. What was the question? >> I was just curious about the difficult voices and the process of conjuring them and how you manage to get inside of those difficult voices and represent them. >> I would say it's my own humanity. I think, as a father, one of my favorite poems is about my daughter's pregnancy. And it's a series of nine haikus for the nine months. And it really allows me to talk about how difficult it was for me because she was a college freshman, and this was not perfect timing by my standards and my point of view. It's not what I wanted. So I had to wrestle a lot of things, but the product is this perfect grandson. The poem is really about me exercising my own pain and difficulty, at the same time trying to talk about her own difficulty because she's tiny. 

On her tiptoes she might be four-eleven. So to see her and not see a child was hard for me. So this whole process forcing me to see her as a woman for the first time. So we both grew up in this poem in nine stanzas, and I try to put all that into that space. That's one of my favorite things to read. It always embarrasses her, of course. [LAUGHTER] I think we can't not access our humanity, trying to make things feel authentic. And I'm going to read from the Medgar poems, and I'll read first from the most difficult voice, so you can see what I had to go through to make it authentic, and you'll understand, because the darkness of it, how hard that was. >> Yes, that's what I was going to ask you next. >> Is there time? >> Please. 

We're going to give you the podium here.  >> There are audiences so young I have to ask a question, who doesn't know who Medgar Evers is? But you guys look old enough to not have to ask that question.  Byron de la Beckwith was found guilty after the third trial, mostly on the strength of the testimony of an undercover FBI agent who overheard Byron say this at a Klan rally. He said, "Killing that nigger gave me no more inner discomfort than our wives endure when they give birth to our children." Now, hopefully, as a parent, as a woman, that's insulting to you that he would equate what he did with child birth, this beautiful thing. Or even trying to connect the pain because they're such different things. But, for me, it was the opportunity to do what poets do. I think about it as density. These two things cohabitate in the same space. So this is a poem called After Birth in the voice of Byron de la Beckwith.  Like them, a man can conceive an idea, an event, a moment so clearly he can name it - even before it breathes. 

We both carry a thing around inside for only so long and no matter how small it starts out, it can swell and get so heavy our backs hurt and we can't find comfort enough to sleep at night. All we can think about is the relief that waits, at the end. When it was finally time, it was painless. It was the most natural thing I'd ever done. I just closed my eyes and squeezed and there he was, just laying there still covered with blood, and already trying to crawl. I must admit, like any proud parent I was afraid at first, afraid he'd live, afraid he'd die too soon. Funny how life 'n death is a whole lot of pushing and pulling, holding and seeking breath; a whole world turned upside down until somebody screams.  So, hopefully you can hear the darkness in the voice, and I'll read a few more in his voice so that you appreciate why I had to start from there so that, there's an arc in the story that allows you to appreciate the things that happen towards the end. One of the things I could not get around in the research was the presence of the N-word. If you go on YouTube and Google "racist song" or "racist literature" or "racist rants," you're going to hear the N-word almost immediately. 

This is called Humor Me. Byron de la Beckwith. I was raised with the word nigger in my mouth. In this part of the south it's considered our silver spoon. It practically lived in every good joke I heard growing up in Mississippi. The only other good ones were about sex. But I've seen bad jokes about niggers and sex kick all the power of whiskey right off the front porch turn it into something so mean somebody would have to get smacked around to stir that power back up again. Sometimes it was a dog too friendly for drunks. Sometimes it was a girlfriend or a wife who wandered grinning into our man talk and snickered at all the wrong parts. If there weren't no women or dogs around, us men would pile into a truck and ride off toward the coon side of town looking for something funny. 

 A lot of these poems, there's a response poem immediately after. This is in the voice of Charles Evers, Medgar's brother. It's called The N-Word. Charles Evers. Hearing that word launched in the back of any throat brings back the smell of German shepherd breath of fresh gasoline and sulfur air of fear, both ours and theirs. I heard nine brave children walking a gauntlet of hate in Little Rock and four innocent little girls lifted up to heaven too soon. Instead of a rebel yell, I hear a rifle bark. Instead of a whiskey soaked yee-haw, I hear a window break and children sobbing for a father face down in a pool of blood. I hear all my faith collapse on the wings of a woman's scream. I can't hear anything less and absolutely nothing funny. 

 For the sake of time, I'm going to skip ahead to a voice that represents the widow, Myrlie Evers, who has the challenge of having her loved one taken away from her, and in this imagined poem, she's speaking to de la Beckwith's first and second wives, who were all present at the trial. Sorority Meeting. Myrlie Evers speaks to Willie and Thelma de la Beckwith. My faith urges me to love you. My stomach begs me to not. All I know is that day made us sisters, somehow. After long nervous nights and trials on end we are bound together in this unholy sorority of misery. I think about you every time I run my hands across the echoes in the hollows of my sheets. They seem loudest just before I wake. I open my eyes every morning half expecting Medgar to be there, then I think about you and your eyes always snatch me back. 

Your eyes won't let me forget. We are sorority sisters now with a gut wrenching country ballad for a sweetheart song, tired funeral and courtroom clothes for colors and secrets we will take to our graves. I was forced to sleep night after night after night with a ghost. You chose to sleep with a killer. We all pledged our love, crossed our hearts and swallowed oaths before being initiated with a bullet.  And this is that actual voice of the bullet as I imagine it, and the details are taken from actual court transcripts. One-third of 180 Grams of Lead. Both of them were history, even before one pulled the trigger. Before I rocketed through the smoking barrel hidden in the honeysuckle, before I tore through a man's back and shattered his family, a window, and tore through an inner wall, before I bounced off a refrigerator and a coffeepot, before I landed at my destined point in history, next to a watermelon. What was cruel was the irony, not the melon, not the man falling in slow motion, but the man squinting through the cross hairs reducing the justice system to a small circle, praying that he not miss, then sending me to deliver a message, as if the woman screaming in the dark or the children crying at her feet could ever believe a bullet was small enough to hate. 

 Thank you. [APPLAUSE]