Line / Break | Season 3 with Nicholas Goodly

Interview Transcript

Ryo Yamaguchi (00:00):
Hey, everybody. I’m Ryo Yamaguchi, the publicist at Copper Canyon Press, and you are watching season three of our interview series Line/Break, which goes off the page and into the homes and minds of our beloved poets. We began Line Break as a way to connect during the severe lockdowns of the pandemic, and we’ve had so much fun seeing poets on screen, hearing poems, talking about writing, books, and life that we simply had to keep this series going. Thanks for tuning in.

(00:30):
So Black Swim is one of my favorite collections from this fall. It’s Nicholas Goodly’s debut and it is full of so much creativity. As I’ve been calling it it’s full of play and so much emotional nuance to pain and pleasure, the past and future, darkness and perfect darkness. I have been really eager to have this talk with Nicholas and here we are. it’s Today. So Nicholas, thank you so much for being here. What have you been up to this morning?

Nicholas Goodly (00:58):
Thank you for having me. This morning I woke up, it’s a lot later in the day for me than it is for you, so I had time to have my coffee, my little breakfast, get ready for this, read some poems and be prepared for this. So a slow day so far.

Ryo Yamaguchi (01:17):
Oh yeah. God bless slow days.

Nicholas Goodly (01:20):
Yes.

Ryo Yamaguchi (01:20):
Do you have the same thing for breakfast every morning? I’m always into people’s morning routines, maybe because we record these often in the morning.

Nicholas Goodly (01:26):
No, so I feel like when I eat it’s practical and it looks like a caveman eating. It’s whatever I could grab. So I think honestly I just have handfuls of cereal, literal handfuls and jamming it down because I’m like, “Okay, I got food in me, I’m good to go.” So that’s kind of my relationship with food when I’m by myself. So it was not fabulous or exquisite or anything.

Ryo Yamaguchi (01:53):
I mean, it depends on the cereal though, right? I mean, if it’s a handful of Fruity Pebbles, I think that’s kind of fabulous.

Nicholas Goodly (01:58):
I wish that would be the case. It was granola-y kind of stuff.

Ryo Yamaguchi (02:03):
Well, that’s good. Well that’s at least a little healthier or something.

Nicholas Goodly (02:06):
I feel good.

Ryo Yamaguchi (02:09):
That’s really great. Yeah, absolutely. So excited to have this talk and I really mean everything I say about the creativity in Black Swim and things, and I’m trying to think of good ways to get in, but maybe we could do an introduction. I mean, I already kind of mentioned your name, but your name, where you’re at, pronouns that you like to go by, and anything else that you want to intro with.

Nicholas Goodly (02:31):
Sure. Okay. So my name’s Nicholas Goodly. I use they/them pronouns. I was born and raised in Atlanta, but I am currently in Tallahassee at Florida State for a poetry PhD. So like I said, most of my life is writing and reading things that are assigned to me. So it’s a really good spot to be in. I am, in addition to poetry, I also do some performance-based work and yeah, I think that’s good for intro right now.

Ryo Yamaguchi (03:17):
Well, yeah, I’m certainly interested to talk about how you view your whole creative life together, performance work and poetry together. I don’t know if it’s okay to talk about that you have been a librarian and working as a librarian and the book life and stuff. I also want to mention that you’re also the author of the wonderful Black Swim, which I had to customary view here. It’s so beautiful. I love this art. Can you talk about this art at all? Nika King, yeah.

Nicholas Goodly (03:45):
Yeah, it’s Nika King is a visual artist and muralist from Atlanta. I knew I wanted the book to feel like it was from Atlanta from start to finish. So this is Black woman artist that I always admired and see in my art circles a lot, and I just wanted to feel like her this, it’s on the line of abstraction and narrative a little bit, or it feels like it’s open, but it’s not, I don’t know, it’s not too concrete. And I like that idea because I think it kind of reflects the feeling in the book a little bit of giving a lot of the pieces for what feels like something concrete just before you see the exact representative. A combination of representative and abstract I think is a feeling that I think I wanted to go for. And I think her work does that. Something about a silhouette is very open. So I knew that was important for me, but I gave her a copy of the manuscript and told her, whatever you feel I’ll probably go with. So she did this and I really, really love it.

Ryo Yamaguchi (05:11):
That’s so great. That’s the best kind of commission you can get, which is just interpret freely and we certainly try and do that with our designers and things. I love this too. I love what you’re saying about abstraction and representation and I think some of the best art in the 20th century is … I mean, half the fun of, I think looking at maybe a Jackson Pollock or Mark Rod, these famous abstract painters, is that your eyes see the sailboat in it and that kind of thing. It’s such a cool tension. This tension between polarities in the work is a big topic I kind of want to get into, but we’ll hold on for a second, maybe.

(05:46):
I was curious if you could talk a little bit about Atlanta. I mean, when I talked with our sales reps about your book and stuff, Atlanta’s kind of a big part of it and maybe it’s just my enthusiasm for Atlanta and thinking of how there’s kind of this coming home that has been happening over the past many years, particularly for the Black community. Obviously thinking about politics, how maybe the tide’s changing a little bit there. And I’m just kind of curious about the urban south and Black communities in the urban south and artists and all of that. Everything I just said about Atlanta, or correct me if I’m mischaracterizing it, but yeah.

Nicholas Goodly (06:17):
No, yeah, I feel like that’s exactly right. There’s, well, I think a strong feeling of political awareness, especially now that we can see Atlanta’s effect on the larger Georgia, what happened in 2020 seeing, oh, we can actually change the tide of things. That was really a special moment. But we’ve always been, I don’t know, there’s been, I guess the communities I’ve been around engage in a lot of protests or a lot of political activism. A lot of my friends are, if not politics, are not politicians themselves or contribute to organizations that are trying to make things happen. I feel like that might be a specific thing to Atlanta that even artists are aware of their role as political bodies. That might be a good way to put it.

(07:24):
I also think Atlanta is small enough that the sense of community happens really fast so people can move into the city and get roots really fast. And network is one way to put it, but I just feel like a interweaving themselves into what is the family of Atlanta artists that happens very fast in the city and it happens for me, my relationship is the Black Atlanta does that and then Black queer Atlanta does that and then queer Atlanta does that. So there’s all these networks that I feel activated in just by being in that space. It’s why I return there pretty frequently for events, but also just to hear what conversations are happening with my artist friends there.

(08:19):
And I also feel like in a very New York way or old New York way where everyone’s really hungry to make their name, I feel like that’s an Atlanta thing right now. People really are fired up to do their work. You, you’ll get a group of people around a campfire or a bonfire just talking about how excited they are for their projects and having these deep artists conversations that I had when I was in grad school at Columbia. It’s the same feeling and it just happens on a ground roots kind of level and everybody feels like they’re invited into it. I think that’s the Atlanta vibe I gravitate towards. It’s not always the case that’s a best case, Atlanta, but that’s the version I attach myself to.

Ryo Yamaguchi (09:11):
For sure. Well it sounds like it’s often the case and of course, I’m so encouraged by thinking about really inclusive artist communities and also passionate ones where you have … I mean, I’m hearing you describe a community that both is really serious and takes their own work really seriously, but then at the same time, is inviting has this invitation or is inclusive folks. That’s so amazing. I mean, I’m thinking of other kind of midsize cities that, I mean I live pretty close to Albuquerque and I think Albuquerque is really poised to have this kind of … I mean it has for a long time. It has a deep history of arts, but poised for a sort new version of that that could be really exciting. And there’s all kinds of places, but Atlanta in particular, I think it just sounds so important to me. Well maybe just thinking about that context for you and your work, maybe this is a good time to hear a poem if you’d like to read a poem from Black Swim.

Nicholas Goodly (10:01):
I was going to do some ones that I don’t do too often because I feel like this is a space that I could try some [inaudible 00:10:07]

Ryo Yamaguchi (10:07):
Yes. It absolutely is. Okay, awesome.

Nicholas Goodly (10:12):
Okay, good. So this one’s called Black Art and I’ll just read it. Speak dead Blacks. My mouth needs learning from the best blues, a douse of fire there. All along a thirst, this small sadness inherent between my ears. I ask of the grave what I ask of the light, how it reveals the noiseless-ness of skin, how it keeps no poison. There is time to lay it bare, whimsical, and with no meat. Worked through until nothing, a rainstorm. The heavens soak my uncaring socks. This means everything. I am a douser begging the water. I told you from the start, if I do this, you have to take care of it.

Ryo Yamaguchi (11:16):
Oh, that’s so great. I love that poem so much. And I read it this earlier this morning and was really thinking, it actually really activated a lot of thoughts for me. Typically, this is kind of a question I had maybe sort of planned for a little bit later in the conversation, but I’m going to ask it now because I mean, just in response to that poem, which is so awesome. So “Black arts,” there’s so much magic in this book, there’s so much … Here, let me reference my notes here. There’s so many questions I want to ask about the various forms of magic that are here. There’s all this bodily ritual, a tarot is everywhere in the book. I mean you have the douser, the moon, I’m thinking of, these are some of the section titles. I’m the Color of the Hanged Man, which is just such a resonant line. So many things, the tarot line there.

(12:08):
So I really, in particular, I would love to get into the topic of a history or your orientation to the Black occult in particular, the occult in Black communities, in queer communities also. But maybe before we get into that, I kind of want to ask somewhat of a simpler question, which is, do you think of your poems as spells?

Nicholas Goodly (12:31):
I don’t know which one of those is simpler. So let’s see. I think I do, because I think poems are, or at least what I’m trying to do with poems is the sum of the poem is greater than the, or what is it, when it’s greater than the sum of its parts. So I feel like the poems are an assemblage of words. And when these words are together, they either move the person experiencing them or they are speaking to something larger than what’s contained in the words themselves. So if that’s not a spell, then I’m like, what else is there?

(13:14):
And especially if there’s intent behind them in the way that I think a lot of, and possibly my relationship to Black occultism or esoteric ways of meaning making is a searching for a search for meaning. So I’m wondering if the poems are calls into a calling to something that is unknown, to try to get something back. And I think the act of creating it is the something back, if that makes sense. So I feel, I also think I talk about my poems being trying to find new ways of understanding feeling, and a nuanced version of your relationship to your own feelings.

(14:14):
And so I feel like when I have a poem that feels like the feeling, the ability to look at it back, I feel like that’s something magic that happens there, of being able to name something within the self that’s empowering that is, or the ability to do that itself is empowering and the ability to articulate your inner world feels like a type of magic. And I also think it’s a magic thing, if I’m doing that for myself and then if this book is me, me trying to understand my feelings, and then if I hand that to someone else and they understand their feelings better, I feel like that’s a magic thing too, because why does that work? That’s a beautiful thing that happens. So I think all these spaces of why we can’t explain how language activates those things, that’s a type of magic. That might be that answer or a start to that answer.

Ryo Yamaguchi (15:26):
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’s so cool. One thing that’s really changing my mind around as I’m hearing you say this is I think we often think of poetry and all of literature as a form of communication. There’s the author and then there’s the reader, and then there’s this kind of magic, this thing that happens between them. But one thing I kind of hear you saying is it’s kind of more like the object of the poem itself. Is this talisman or an idol or it’s an object that unlocks something in whoever possesses it at that moment or something like that. And that’s such a cool way to think of a poem I think. That in some ways that it’s not an active communication. It’s like this effect that this object has on you or something, a spell that it casts. So I don’t know, I think that’s just a really cool way to think about poetry and true. And it’s true. Yeah. That’s super cool.

(16:23):
The other thing, the other part of this too, is another sort of specific to some of these elements is this idea of divination. I mean you talking about the douser and that kind of stuff and that using calling into a void to bring something back out of it. And that feels a really, feels a really contemporary moment to me that feels like something that’s really been happening, especially over the last 10 years or something like that. Maybe out of a dissatisfaction with the way that the world is telling you how to make it meaningful or something like that. Looking for alternatives. Yeah. Do you view it as an alternative?

Nicholas Goodly (17:01):
Yeah, I think that’s close to what it is. I’m thinking about why I would even bother to study these forms, these occult forms or why. . .why is anyone interested in tarot cards or why is anyone interested in forms of divination? I think, well first of all, if I want to make a connection to a divine that’s outside of structures that were initially given to me, so I was raised Roman Catholic, I went to Catholic school from pre-K through high school. My dad’s a deacon. So I have a pretty good knowledge of the history of a church and the setting of what that is. But I grew up in a setting where, as a queer person, I was fundamentally wrong.

(18:16):
I was trying to describe to someone the other day of when you, you’re growing up and you develop into a person, you’re told, first of all, what you’re feeling, you don’t believe that it … you’re told that that’s not possible. That can’t even exist. Before you even know it’s wrong. You think it’s not even an option. I can’t possibly have these feelings for men because that’s like, that’s impossible. That’s not how a body works. You’re not told anything else and then you’re told that it’s wrong and then you’re like, “Okay, well I can’t fundamentally, I can’t just start out wrong that I feel like I need to do something wrong or I know what guilt feels like and that’s telling me I should feel guilty and that’s not how I feel.” Or I know I’m a good person, I don’t feel like I’m going to go to hell automatically. I feel like I’ve done a lot of good.

(19:07):
So when you start out with this relationship with one structure and you know that can’t be all, and there’s a lot offered there that I do. I mean the book is full of complicated relationships with all kind of things. But if you start out in a place where you are like, okay, this is not all I want to find something where I can feel like I’m starting out in a good place and that I can have a connection to the divine that is my own, that feels like what it feels like when I feel good in the earth and when I feel good in nature and I know those good feelings, how do I connect to that in this divine sense? How do I activate that? How when I’m making art and it feels good, you get a good flow and it feels almost like a divine thing. I was like, I want to know. I want to investigate that. I want to know what that feels like.

(20:11):
So that’s when you can start to study the occult, study things that feel outside of what you were initially handed. And so I feel like I’ve done a lot of picking and choosing or just feeling, I have a lot of play with what’s available to me as a queer person that I can make my own sense of all these things and view them holistically together. And I don’t know, have my own relationship with it. I don’t know if that answered your question, but I feel like-

Ryo Yamaguchi (20:50):
No, no, totally, totally. No, I mean I love this. I mean, you’re talking about really, really hard, but I think this is probably really meaningful for a lot of people who feel that they weren’t accepted for who they were as a young person and what it finally feels like … I mean, again, you put it in a different and super interesting way where it’s not even what it feels like to feel accepted, but to feel in flow in that attunement, a part of the earth and the world, like you’re talking about, there’s this earthiness to it and obviously music and dance and that kind of sense of motion that you’re describing here, attunement. I think that’s so cool. And I mean, I’ve been having a lot of conversations recently more with friends, non-poet friends about this idea of flow and how good it feels when you’re just, nothing can stop you. You’re in it, you’re fully in it. Philosophy of groove is the way I’ve been talking about it, a music thing. But yeah.

Nicholas Goodly (21:51):
Lots of conversations about groove as my dancer self, the poetics of groove seems like it might be its own world that we should maybe talk about one day, but yeah.

Ryo Yamaguchi (22:03):
Oh, yeah. No, I would love that. I mean, we could talk about it a little bit today actually, I think. But well, okay, so this queues up two questions in my mind. One is a question that my colleague Tobi has for you, but I’m going to save that because you’ve also talked a little bit about growing up and stuff, and I do want to ask this question, which we tend to ask at the outset of the interview, which is, so let’s kind of walk back to the beginning here and if you can think about a time, when did you first recognize yourself? When did you first feel like you were in accord with the world, particularly in a work of art? In poetry and in music, in film? Yeah.

Nicholas Goodly (22:43):
Well obviously that changes a lot with different versions of myself that I can recognize. I remember, so I bet Michael Jackson is one just because, I mean, there’s videos of me when I was two or three in a huge hat that’s way too big and sparkly socks wiggling in front of concert videos for hours at a time. Every day for hours that’s what I would do. That’s what, okay Nick, go turn on the TV, go do your little wiggle. Something about how that sense of performance, I mean that’s the reason I found dance. Just what he could do as a performer to connect with people and the way people connected to what he was doing and loved him for his prowess in the field. I was just like, “Holy, that’s just insane.”

(23:44):
I think though, when I really remember a version of myself in middle school where I really, I saw a lot of myself in Andre 3000 with this how to be from the South, and be, I’m not going to say tough, but be, I don’t know, you could be hardcore and soft at the same time, or you could be gritty and flowery and you could be dandy and thug. This blurring of a binary before I understood what that meant. I see it happening in Outkast and I guess the recognition too of just how southern they are. I remember that just made me feel really connected to the work that comes out of Atlanta at that age. I remember seeing myself, a version of myself, the first time was Lafayette from True Blood was the first time I even saw this magic masculine body not taking shit from anybody, but also being fierce and fabulous and blurring a binary line. So every time I grow up or there’s different iterations that I’m like, “I really see that in me.” And I think now there’s a lot more freedom of, if I recognize different versions of myself, I can more freely be like, “That feels like me. That’s me. That’s so me.” It feels a lot more open now that I’m an adult. But I liked when I was growing up, I really held my people close to me, those names.

Ryo Yamaguchi (25:36):
So amazing. I mean like a figure. Michael Jackson, I’m just going back to Michael Jackson is so just such an incredible because, well, I mean it’s so familiar to everyone, but I’m seeing Michael Jackson too, that what you’re saying, that kind of combination of, well, of gender norms in a way. Masculinity and femininity, but toughness and vulnerability. As you were talking about that, I was thinking of some heavy metal shows I’ve been to where it’s like, it’s so hard. But then these are the biggest nerds on earth. These are like, they’re [inaudible 00:26:03]

Nicholas Goodly (26:03):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Metal audiences are like, it’s just a bunch of nerds and I love that.

Ryo Yamaguchi (26:07):
Yeah, totally.

Nicholas Goodly (26:10):
Yeah. It’s the space for them to feel these deep places and I think that’s so important.

Ryo Yamaguchi (26:19):
Totally. Totally. Yeah. And we’ve been talking a lot about things like safe spaces and that kind of stuff. And to me, a metal show is that it’s for that community where they can go be themselves. And of course that’s just an example of among a zillion examples.

Nicholas Goodly (26:33):
Yeah. It’s one of those underrated ones you would only know if you engage with them. You’re like, “Oh, this is actually a really open space.” There’s a lot.

Ryo Yamaguchi (26:42):
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let’s go back to groove and let me get to Tobi’s question here. Cause I think it’s a really great one and this has to do a lot. So the other thing, if I was talking to audience members right now who haven’t read Black Swim, I mean the other thing I would really say about it is that there’s just so much creative force in the way that you think about poetry. You’re trying all kinds of different things formally, there’s sometimes there’s collage-y elements, there’s a lot of surrealism in here, there’s a lot of different tonal stuff happening, that’s actually kind of a separate question I want to get to in a bit, but I really like Tobi’s question here, which has to do with rhythm.

(27:22):
And so me, I’ll just ask it for you verbatim. So I’m just taking a quick stare at it here. So Tobi asks, “Many of the poems in Black Swim are unpunctuated, but with the help of your line breaks and your ear for the rhythms of speech, I feel like I’m carried through the poem by a different logic of rising and falling.” I love the way he phrases that. And this great sentence here, “What internal tunings help you orchestrate language without the visible aids of punctuation?” So I have this sense of your internal tunings and give it a second if you need any clarification [inaudible 00:27:58]

Nicholas Goodly (28:00):
Also, I make the craziest faces, so I know that, it’s probably insane. I feel like … Okay, so I feel like there’s the line, there’s whatever the sentence is, and it’s my job to figure out how it wants to be said. So the voice I hear it being said in, I want to best represent that on the page. I feel like that’s the obvious thing. But I feel like I was, early on, one of my workshop professors was Richard Howard and he was saying he would be like, “The words are good, but the other half of the poem is finding the form for it.” Each poem will tell you it’s own form, but you have to, it’s a whole nother go to shape it in the way that it’s supposed to flow for the reader. I think I gravitate towards these thin lines that are slow moving, but I think it’s dependent on, I might approach pretty meticulously each poem for its voice on a case-by-case basis. But I think it’s whatever voice, whatever that poet voice is, it has a softer quality than if it was just written in prose or something, so it’s my job to really listen to the nuance of that voice in my head.

(29:47):
And it’s weird to say I really like line breaks. That sounds obvious, but I think there’s so much power in a line, the way you break it, you could really set off a poem and have a whole nother meaning just by how it’s cut. And I think I’m trying to consider that with every single line of, so there’s the sentence, then there’s the potential for the break of the sentence, and now there’s three meanings out of these two lines. Now that just trying to capture some surprise in the break for myself, I don’t want it to be, I don’t think my breaks are trying to simplify the lines or make it easier to read. I think it’s supposed to sound like the magic of the poet voice. That seems like two different goals.

(30:53):
So I think there’s a version where I could just be breaking the lines where it makes sense where the comma should go or where the period should go or where the clause ends. But I really want to tap into magic of querying that, querying the line that way. So that’s kind of how I approach form. And maybe I think about inherent rhythm of, I think I’m paying attention to sound a lot along with all the textures of the poem. So the sound of individual line, I’m thinking about … It feels, I mean we talk about play, but it feels, again, that’s another element to play with after the language is made to really play with form. So I don’t think it’s anything new, but I think I pay a lot of attention to it.

Ryo Yamaguchi (32:06):
Yeah, totally. I love the term and I think I’ve heard other folks say this too, of querying the line. And I hear in that in echo, I mean maybe this is because you have callbacks to lots of blues and R&B and stuff in the book too, but an earlier maybe version of that which like blowing a note, something that just gives it that energy, gives it that magic that takes it from the normal to the fabulous to the super normal. That’s so cool. So yeah, that’s so amazing and I that you’re kind of emphasizing that over say readability or something that has this more perfunctory role in terms of the way you think about breaking lines and stuff too.

(32:47):
What I’m really taking away though from what you’re saying though is your process in how every poem’s different, every poem is its own occasion being really present to the moment of a poem. Also, I think this is an idea that I’ve really been grabbing more fast to this idea that a poem really is an index of just a mental moment is an index of an emotional, spiritual moment. It’s kind of the way that photography captures an instant of light. A poetry captures an instant of consciousness or something. And I’m sort of curious as a follow up to that. So what is your writing process? Do you work with prompts? Do you feel that you have obsessions that you’ll kind of work out over a series of sessions of poetry? Or do you think that every single time you sit down it’s just brand new?

Nicholas Goodly (33:32):
I want it to be that. I want it to feel like brand new every time. I get real nervous if I feel like I’ve got a system going, that makes me nervous. But I was thinking when I was preparing for this, so I started my artist career as a dancer first. So I learned how to be an artist from this approach of dance that was very inside out. It wasn’t about, you wouldn’t worry about arriving at a position, it’s about how you got there and how the body fills out from the center to these external points. That’s how I learned to make art first.

(34:14):
So when it came to … I had an injury and then I was like, let me shift to poetry where I can use words and try to do something similar. I remember early on, even in my very first workshop, I wasn’t trying to make good poems. I was trying to best represent whatever the feeling is. That was the priority and not the good poetics. So what happened was like I was one of the last to go in this workshop and I was just like, “My poems don’t sound like their poems.” I was like, I must not be poeming right.” But it was just because it was uniquely, I was trying to be uniquely true to my experience.

(34:57):
So as I’m crafting each individual poem, it’s just using language not in a poetic sense or a logical sense, but a feeling sense first. And then I’ll make, I’ll do the other senses on top of that, but it has to feel like from the inside out. So a lot of times I don’t write until I feel strongly or I may draft things, but it doesn’t feel like a poem until the guts is really directing the show. And then that also means that I don’t know what the poem is doing. Even sometimes when it’s finished and I’m like, well my job’s not the analyzing part or figuring out why this is important. It just feels true and the more true it is, I’m like, then that’s value. That’s the value in it, or that feels like it’s ready to put out in the world.

Ryo Yamaguchi (36:20):
Yeah, yeah. It’s great. I love how this kind of hearkens back to this what we were talking about divination and stuff before. And I love that the gut directs the show or it’s another line that lodge in my brain here that you said was something like, I’m nervous in systems or something, I’m going to kind of a t-shirt that says that. And yeah, and that idea of coming out of the body and particularly the kinesthetic that touch touches the primary perception and then everything else is layered on top of that. I love that idea too.

Nicholas Goodly (36:56):
Yeah. Because that’s how everyone can feel that way. Everyone can feel, they might not know … People can read my poems and they’re like, I don’t understand it, but this line, I really like this image or this texture. I felt that, and that’s a success. That’s a thing that happens. That’s the base way of connecting to people is like, can you feel this? Okay, so we both feel this and if nothing else, let’s start there. That’s empathy, maybe. That’s why that’s important.

Ryo Yamaguchi (37:33):
Yeah, absolutely. That’s so helpful. That’s such a helpful way to think of, I feel like I try to convince non-readers of poetry and non-poets when I’m talking about poetry to this point where it’s like if you’re at a poetry reading, don’t look, don’t search for meaning. Just search for feeling, actually, actually don’t be upfront in it. Just try and relax and let the poem happen to you and just whatever you feel is fine, that’s appropriate. I don’t know. That’s so cool. Well I want to have, okay, so I got to maybe one more question here. And it’s actually at the risk of mongrelizing things too much, I’m going to combine another question that Tobi had that kind of aligned a little bit with some thinking that I was having. And so Tobi’s question is about love and I’ll just read it verbatim. But then I’m going to read a bit of another question I have here and see if I can create one big giant question that’s going to be impossible to answer for you. So we’re going to work on that. We’re going to do that.

(38:28):
Yeah. Okay. So Tobi’s question goes like this. “So love and romance in Black Swim are remarkable for their similarity to rivalry and struggle. So how does violence complicate the pleasure of love for you? How does intimacy recast confrontation?” Tobi’s so good with some of these great lines. So I love that last one in particular, how intimacy recasts confrontation to that I would add. Oh, okay. So another major element I also find in Black swim is actually is the abject. Abject things are written about with this sort of relish. There’s broken teeth, there’s cockroaches, there’s egg shells in the garbage, and then just as often there’s this glittering, often fabulous beauty. So how do you think about these polarities, ugliness and beauty, discomfort and grace intimacy and confrontation? Do you feel that these kind of polarities, are they enemies or do they secretly love each other in your poems?

Nicholas Goodly (39:31):
Yeah.

Ryo Yamaguchi (39:31):
You with me? Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

Nicholas Goodly (39:32):
Yeah, let’s see what we can do. I feel like the relationship between higher selves and lower selves or when you’re at your lower energy or higher energy and putting judgment on that, I feel like that’s the human doing that. And it might not necessarily be how things are in the bigger grand scheme of things. So I think about, I’ve had conversations with poets that they don’t want to talk too much about bodily things or certain aspects of sex or certain … They don’t want to include certain fluids because that’s dirt or that’s, that shouldn’t be in the space of a poem. And I think that’s nuts because it’s real, it’s a genuine part and it’s just as real as when you hit a divine moment, when you feel it your lowest, you are also fully yourself as when you are your highest. I was recently reading a book and a character, a fortune teller, a soothsayer character told another character this you’re not as you are now, you’re not right in the world. You are either meant for the higher world or lower world.

(40:59):
And the character was like, “Which is better?” And then she was like, “Well neither is better. They’re both valuable.” And I think I operate in that space, especially because as a queer person, I was told already a lower self person. So I know I’m not like, I was like am also divine and I’m disgusting and I’m like, I could be both. So I think I have a real, I’m okay with being called anything and resonating with all these versions of self. And I think there’s a lot of value in allowing yourself to feel yourself in both planes.

(41:44):
So I think that that just may be a readiness or my willingness to bring those elements in together. And because I really don’t see them as separate worlds. I think it’s all, Black Swim feels like it put everything in the pot. This is all important. So that’s that. The thing about the intimacy and confrontation, short answer is I’m a Scorpio. Long answer, I think, I don’t know. I don’t think this will answer the question. I don’t know. I’ve had some real interesting experiences with intimacy and closeness and I’ve had various levels of traumas with all those things. And I think I’m really interested that each person’s relationship with these words of love and intimacy are so unique to them. And I think my poetry is showing my relationship to these ideas, that section to you who fit the description. That’s all me thinking about how I try to relate to other Black men in this one, or how I relate to family.

(43:26):
This question of intimacy is something I’m dealing with as a person a lot. And I’m just trying to be honest with the place where I am in it at any moment knowing that people have had experiences that relate to mine or don’t. But I think the offering of my true experience is helpful for other people on their journey to their relationship with intimacy. So it’s something about, I don’t know, I think the poems know more than I do about how I feel about those things and I’m just offering it and hopefully someone else can get some clarity because a lot of times those things are painful. So I think to see it in another person might do something and I say do something and not, I don’t want to say words. Poems are healing or poems are, because I don’t know if … the recognition is one thing and people can do what they want to do beyond that point. But I think because when someone recognizes themselves and someone else, it doesn’t automatically mean community and healing. It could be scary, it could be jarring. I don’t know, when that mirror flips on you, it, who knows what happens. So yeah, that’s my thoughts on that.

Ryo Yamaguchi (45:13):
Yeah, that’s so great. And I was thinking specifically the section that you mentioned, which to you who fit the description, I think I’m maybe missing a word on that, but [inaudible 00:45:25]

Nicholas Goodly (45:25):
I feel like I didn’t say it right.

Ryo Yamaguchi (45:29):
It’s a great … I mean, I would say I could direct readers just to that section if they only have a brief moment of time to spend with the book and hopefully that they can read the thing, of course. But it’s a series of addresses to different folks and there’s immediate intimacy in that. I mean it’s that kind of the whispered message into the ear kind of thing, which is so lovely and intense too, so intense.

(45:53):
But I mean, yeah, also I share your hesitancy to talk about the therapeutic quality of poetry at the same time that I want to believe in it. And I think so much of our conversation today has kind of been about that, about poetry unlocking something, a strength, a way of being a way forward in the reader. And that’s just a wonderful thing. But maybe I’ll close that idea with what you said, which is that the poem is smarter than us and I want to believe that. And that’s what art is here for. I mean art is here for the poem sees you and that’s an amazing thing. Well, okay, so maybe on that point we can, let’s wrap and do you got time for one more poem that you want to read to close us out?

Nicholas Goodly (46:40):
Yeah, I’ll do the other … I think this one’s actually for our conversation, like randomly kind of perfect. So this is Evening Prayer. It’s like one of the last ones in the book. So this is Evening Prayer.

(46:59):
Who bestowed upon me this habit of wanting music from a pin, this addiction to the gentleness of vowels? What are these notes from people’s heads? What is the point of being the last one to speak a beautiful language? I am a fraction of what I could have been. What else can I contribute? I am outdone by children with more to lose, a teenager instructing me how to breathe. These kids are quick, they grab the hands of their neighbors, pull each other safely up for air. There is your enemy and son, your wife and brother, your prize and secret cross, golden fleece and weighted cast. Heaven knows I want this to be a poem people reach for.

(47:57):
How often have I told myself I am not strong? And time keeps proving me wrong. When snow doesn’t come, when I am not enough, let me do the right thing and make a rope of words. Let it begin with me. Even now, there is richness beyond belief, vulnerable warrior. What risk is there? We who already die in so many places, this not even the worst of them. No one line is revolutionary. No one word ever is. I am grateful for not dying yet. I inhale what is in front of me. Everything is changing. Young hearts, any love I can describe for you does not suffice. But you are worth my every effort. One day you will know love like this and write it better than I.

Ryo Yamaguchi (49:02):
Yeah, let’s give it a second there. Yeah, it’s such a good poem. Everything’s so laid out in that poem. You’re so direct and I don’t know, and if it fits our conversation so much, which has been wonderful. I really have been looking forward to this for a really long time. But basically since I read the manuscript a million a million years ago, I don’t know, whatever. I’ve really, really been looking forward to this and it’s been so much fun. And thank you. Thank you for bringing so much of yourself today, Nicholas. And I hope you had a good time too.

Nicholas Goodly (49:32):
Yeah. Not that I was surprised. I just never know. I just know how interviews will go. No, really great. So thank you. I appreciate it.

Ryo Yamaguchi (49:42):
Absolutely. Thank you so much. Well, this is great. And I’ve never really done this before, but I’d encourage everyone to rewind and listen to the poem again. I just think that’s such a good poem. And so go do that and then you sign off and then we’ll see all next time for the next Line/Break. Thanks for tuning in.

Nicholas Goodly (49:58):
Thank you.

[End Transcript]