Episode 652
Rachel Khong, Danez Smith, and Danielia Cotton
Acclaimed author Rachel Khong explores the themes in her newest novel Real Americans, including what it means to bridge cultural and generational divides within families; superstar poet Danez Smith reads from their latest collection Bluff and tells us what poetry can and cannot accomplish; and singer-songwriter Danielia Cotton chats about her tribute album to Black country star Charley Pride, before performing her own track "Bring Out the Country in Me."
Rachel Khong
Award-Winning Novelist
Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. Website • Instagram
Danez Smith
Spellbinding Poet and Performer
Danez Smith is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Homie, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Don’t Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a finalist for the National Book Award. Danez's poetry and prose has been featured in Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, Best American Poetry, and on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Their latest collection, Bluff, was written after two years of artistic silence (during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd) and reckons with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. Website • Instagram
Danielia Cotton
Indie-Rock Singer-Songwriter
Danielia Cotton is no stranger to reinventing herself. Growing up in Hopewell, NJ, Danielia was raised on a steady diet of classic rock behemoths like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. With a powerful first album that launched her career, Small White Town, Danielia was selected as “Artist to Watch” by WXPN out of Philadelphia. Danielia's latest project, Charley's Pride: A Tribute to Black Country Music, pays homage to trailblazer Charley Pride—the first Black American voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame—while infusing the songs with a fresh, modern approach that is all her own. Website • Instagram
Show Notes
Best News
Elena’s story: “The government had been planning it for 7 years, beavers built the dam in two days and saved them $1 million”
Luke’s story: “Jump rope performer used double Dutch ropes to save teen in icy pond”
Rachel Khong
Rachel’s new book: Real Americans
Rachel shares about her research of Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island.
Live Wire Listener Question
What’s something you do as an adult that would shock your younger self?
Danez Smith
Danez’ latest poetry collection: Bluff
Danez references Carl Phillips’ essay “Silence” from the book My Trade Is Mystery.
Danez talks about writing poetry in the context of social upheaval and oppression, especially highlighting the impact of the murders of George Floyd and Mike Brown.
They lean on the work of Black American poets and activists, such as June Jordan, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes, and Nikki Giovanni.
Danez reads their poem “Anti Poetica,” which appears on page 1 of Bluff.
When asked if their work has ever caused pushback from the people in their life, Danez references their poem “Waiting On You to Die So I Can Be Myself” before telling a story about their grandmother.
Then, they read the poem “Ars Poetica,” which appears much later on page 119.
Danielia Cotton
Danielia’s most recent project was inspired by the discovery of a Charlie Pride album under her grandparent’s bed.
She performs an original called “Bring Out the Country in Me” from her latest EP, Charley’s Pride: A Tribute to Black Country Music.
-
Elena Passarello: From PRX. It's Live Wire! This week. Poet Danez Smith.
Danez Smith: I think poems are little vehicles of transformation and humanness. And what do we want out of an argument besides transformation?
Elena Passarello: Author Rachel Khong.
Rachel Khong: I was really interested in the stories trying to tell us about itself, but also the stories that America tells about itself and the stories that that really shape all of our lives as Americans.
Elena Passarello: With music from Danielia Cotton and our fabulous house band, I'm your announcer Elena Passarello and now the host of Live Wire. Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello Thanks to everybody tuning in from all over the country. We have got an absolutely spectacular episode of Live Wire dialed up for you this week. Before we get going, though, we have to start like we always do with the best news we've heard all week. This. This hour. A little reminder at the top of the show that despite what you may have heard, there's good news happening in the world. You just got to be so nice. You got to look hard. Yeah, but we found some Elena. What's the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: I found something pretty amazing. So we have to go to the Czech Republic for this story. To the Byrdie Nature Park, which is this kind of lovely natural space in Bohemia, as it's known. And they had some water areas that needed restoration. They've actually been planning for this restoration for like 7 or 8 years. They raised over $1 million to get it done. But then, of course, the project stalled because there were permit issues. Nothing was happening. But guess what? The restoration is complete and it was done by, I would say, the lowest bidder of workers. They did it for free. What they did $1 million water restoration for free. Do you want to know who they were?
Luke Burbank: Yes.
Elena Passarello: They were eight Eurasian beavers, you know, people called beavers. The engineers of the animal kingdom, they make entire ecosystems. They can build dams that are up to, you know, like seven football fields long that can be seen from space. There's a dam in Canada that has done this.
Luke Burbank: And they're these really complicated ecosystems, right? That they end up by slowing down the movement of the water. All this other stuff happens. I mean, it's kind of remarkable.
Elena Passarello: Yeah. They make the water deeper, which is good for them, right? It helps them evade predators, helps them create cold storage for their beaver lodges. And that, in turn, welcomes a ton of different species. It's also really good for cleaning, keeping things clean, keeping pollutants out, and fire prevention. They're amazing. And also, apparently they work really cheap.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. From a couple of poplars.
Elena Passarello: They were introduced back into the Byrdie Nature Park because they were hunted almost to extinction 100 years ago. But they were introduced back to the park in 2020. So when plans to do this restoration had already taken place and it probably took them a few weeks to do it, it wasn't like an overnight thing, but they're already noticing the differences all throughout the water system. And the director of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency summed it up best when he said, Well, I guess beavers just always know best.
Luke Burbank: Love it. The best news that I saw this week comes from Westfield, Indiana, where the lakes and the rivers can get pretty frozen and pretty covered in ice, but it can still be pretty dangerous, which is exactly what happened not that long ago when a guy named David Fisher, his son Felix, who's in college at Ball State In Muncie. [Elena: Yeah.] Going out to the car to get something and heard a commotion out on this river that kind of runs right behind their home. And he saw basically that somebody's dog had gotten into this icy river and was sort of flailing about and that this teenager had gone in after his dog. And this is what happens a lot with these kinds of things. The dog got its way out of the river. The teenager was now stuck in the river, you know, underwater and getting very, very cold, very, very quickly. So Felix runs back, yells for his dad. David says, Get out here. David immediately grabs two long ropes out of his garage and sprints down to the river. Now, why did he have these long ropes? Elena Because he is a Guinness World Record holding jump rope expert. He is a master in the art and science of jumping rope. He's been doing it as his profession for over 30 years. He's jump rope in front of 10 million people, including Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and at one point, Boris Yeltsin, of all people. He has the Guinness World Record for most jumps while sitting on his backside, which Guinness describes as rump jumps. So this is like the perfect person. He grabs his two extra long double Dutch jump ropes and, as he like, gives one to Felix, who's on the shore and ties it off. And then he gets out there in the water and then he's like kind of low on the ice, is spreading out his weight.
Elena Passarello: He's like rump jump level, right?
Luke Burbank: Exactly. There's a photo of David Fisher establishing the jump jump record, and he's in a position that looks like it would be pretty ideal if you were trying to not break through the ice like this guy has been preparing for. He's been preparing his whole life for this moment. So he gets out there on the ice and he throws the other double Dutch jump rope to the kid who is able to grab onto it. And eventually, after a couple of false starts, they eventually get the kid out of the water. He is unharmed. The dog is okay as well. Everyone is all right. Thanks to David Fisher and his love of jump rope in Westfield, Indiana. By the way, Felix and David both received the Life Saving Citizen Award from the town of Westfield, Indiana.
Elena Passarello: So they should.
Luke Burbank: Rump Jumps and the Citizen Lifesaving Award does the two things now that David Fisher is going to be known for. And that's the best news I heard all week. All right. Let's get our first guest on over. Her debut novel, Goodbye Vitamin took the world by storm back in 2018 when it was named a best Book of the Year by NPR, by Oprah's magazine, by Vogue and Esquire. And this probably explains why her latest book, which is called Real Americans, was named one of the most anticipated books of the year by The New York Times. And they were right. The L.A. Times says it's an irresistible puzzle of a novel. So let's start putting those pieces together. Rachel Khong joined us as part of the Portland Book Festival at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, to talk about the book. Take a listen.
Rachel Khong: Hi, everyone.
Luke Burbank: Hello, Rachel. Welcome to Livewire. [Rachel: Thank you.] Congratulations on the book.
Rachel Khong: Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: Let's talk about the sort of three. This book is broken up into three sections. There's kind of three main characters. There's Lily, there's her son Nick, and then there's her mother, May. Can you lay out who these folks are and what's going on for them in the book?
Rachel Khong: Sure, this book features, I guess, three members of the same Chinese-American family, and it's sort of presented out of order. We start with Lily, who is 20 something broke just out of college. Student when we meet her and in the year 1999, 2000. And then the second section is narrated by her son, Nick, and he's living on this sort of isolated island in Washington. He doesn't know who his father is, and he's sort of struggling to figure out who he is. And the last section is narrated by May, who is actually Lily's mother. And she has fled from Mao's China and sort of carved out a life for herself in America as a really ambitious scientist. And it's about where their their stories intersect, the betrayals, the secrets that happen between these these characters.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Luck seems to be a theme or the question of sort of if you can make your luck or if luck happens to you. I think Mae has, because she's a scientist, is like engineered an entire lawn of four leaf clovers for Lily who thinks that this is just what people's lawn is like. Yeah. And an attempt to sort of push luck.
Rachel Khong: Yeah, I think about that all the time. Like, why is a four leaf clover considered lucky? It's because it's rare, right? And I think sometimes we think of rare things as lucky things, but other times we think of rare things and we think, that's bad, you know? And I think that that's a question that is really interesting to me. Like, what do we value and why do we value it? It's so fascinating.
Luke Burbank: Lily and may have a pretty complicated relationship for one reason that I won't mention as a, you know, spoiler, but also because of like her expectations may have expectations for Lilly, which is something that's often described in like, Chinese-American families. I'm curious for you growing up where their expectations around your life and where did Ryder fit into that?
Rachel Khong: When I was growing up, my parents always said to me, We sacrificed so much for you to be here. They came to America when I was two years old. They did sacrifice a lot for us to be here and to try to have a better life. Right. But I felt this responsibility to be healthier, happier, taller. And I didn't. I'm not taller than my mom. Actually. I'm I'm two inches shorter, unfortunately.
Luke Burbank: Very disappointing.
Rachel Khong: Yeah. It's it's one of the main disappointments, I think. But I think that that that statement is so much pressure. It's so much to live under as a child. And even now, you know, you have this feeling that you need to live or I should say I had this feeling that I needed to live another life because there had been sacrifices made on my behalf. And I think I wrote this book out of just a feeling that I don't know. I wonder who I would have been if I hadn't necessarily had that hanging over me, you know? And writer definitely for an immigrant family is not something that is necessarily on the table. When I was growing up, my I would say to my parents, I want to be a writer. And they would say, you want to be a journalist because journalist, At least that's a job that, you know, you could you could get a paycheck from a pretty regular paycheck. And novelist was just like out of you know, it was out of the question. Nobody was a novelist that we that we knew of, you know. So they've gotten used to the idea. And now now they now they understand what I'm up to.
Luke Burbank: Right. I mean, to see this book, like if they're walking past a Hudson News and it's like, got to be pretty cool for them to see that this dream of yours has become such a real thing.
Rachel Khong: It is really cool. And I think that lately I've been thinking about the reason I'm a writer at all. I think it does have to do with their decision to come here to America. Right. And to to bring me to public libraries. When I was growing up, I was just this very lonely, shy kid. And libraries and books were my best friends. And so my parents took me to the library. They sort of made me a writer. So it's truly their fault.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire Radio from PRX. We are talking to the writer Rachel Khong about her newest novel, Real Americans. We have to take a very quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, Rachel is going to talk about the ongoing struggle of parents trying to understand their kids, which if you have a kid, you know, is an ongoing struggle, especially when there are cultural and generational differences. Stay with us. Much more Live Wire just ahead. Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm your host, Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We're listening back to a conversation we recorded with the author Rachel Khong about her novel Real Americans. Let's pick that conversation back up now. We recorded this as part of the Portland Book Festival live at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. I'm wondering what the research was like for this book, because it really spans a bunch of time, eras and geography. It's, you know, it's rural China, it's New York at Y2K. It's a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. It's Florida.
Rachel Khong: Yeah. I did actually live in Florida for three years during grad school. So that was sort of where the Florida stuff came from. You know, I wrote a lot of this book during the pandemic, and I just wanted to be in other places and in other times. And so it was really fun to get to sort of yeah, to pretend to be in all these places and the research. You know, it wasn't that I just researched everything in the beginning and then wrote the book. The research was happening alongside the writing of the book itself, and some of it was actually visiting the places once I could, once the pandemic was quote unquote over. But it was just a lot of reading books, listening to articles, bookmarking, everything that I could. And, you know, so the there's a laboratory in this book. It's it's on Long Island. In my mind, I was imagining Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which actually was the site of a lot of eugenics research in the early 1900s. And I was fascinated by that. And I wrote that sort of into the book, just like imagining myself there and and deep into writing this book, Cold Spring Harbor actually set up this artist residency. And I applied to it and I went. So in the final stretches of working on this book, I got to go to Long Island, got to route around these archives and, you know, filled in even more details, got to visit the labs of scientists who were so generous. But it felt like it was fated almost, you know, like I had imagined myself there. And then I really got to be there.
Elena Passarello: Did I see that you you also got first person testimonials of like a historical time that you weren't present for, like, oral history stuff.
Rachel Khong: There's there are oral histories online of survivors of the Cultural Revolution. And so that's what I turned to for some of those details of of that period which I. Yeah. I didn't live through. I have no idea what it was actually like to be there.
Luke Burbank: Yeah, it feels extremely rooted, like there's this moment where I think there's this sort of propaganda thing around Mao swimming in the river in the Yangtze or something, and everyone's supposed to be really excited that he's so vigorous and May is like, I don't know about this.
Rachel Khong: Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Is that a thing that really happened? Did you find a photo of Mao swimming in a river?
Rachel Khong: It's a classic famous photo. He's swimming in the river. He's purported to have swam a great distance. But you just see him, obviously, like it's a black and white image of him, his head bobbing in the water. And yeah, I mean, I think I was so fascinated by Chinese propaganda and the stories that China likes to tell in order to sort of, you know, create its image of itself. And I was really interested in the stories China tells about itself, but also the stories that America tells about itself and the stories that that really shape all of our lives as Americans.
Luke Burbank: In in reading the book, because of the way that it has these three characters, Mae, her daughter and then her grandson and what they're all going through. What I was struck by was this this notion I think a lot of us have probably particular a lot of white Americans have that the first wave of immigrants, like a first generation group where maybe there's a challenge with the language, maybe there's a lot of poverty in order to make this dream happen. And you have the second generation, it's better for them. You have the third generation and then it's fine. And what this book tells me is it's really never exactly fine for everybody. I mean, there's no point at which it's like, okay, now it's free and easy.
Rachel Khong: Yeah. I mean, I guess I wonder, is it free and easy for anybody?
Elena Passarello: But it's also so pendulous. Like culture aside, like you see one generation in your book raising their children in a reaction to how they grew up. And then when that child grows up and has a kid, the pendulum swings in a different direction and they raise their child in that way. And you see that child making these vows and making these decisions. So it feels like that's another thing that's never going to be not not never going to be fine. But we're always going to be dealing with like the turbulence of whoever came before us and what they had to react to.
Rachel Khong: Exactly. I mean, I think about I think this book is very much about the struggle for anyone in a family to understand each other. But, you know, more broadly, for any individual to understand somebody else, there's there's so many differences between people, right? There's that sort of generational difference. Sometimes there can be a cultural difference. We just have. Different like reference points. And we have lived different lives. And and it's kind of a miracle when people do actually communicate. Right. Despite all those differences. And I think that that that question of parents understanding their children is something that I'm so fascinated by because parents are concerned. You know, you hope that parents are trying to do the best they can for their child. But even if they do do their very best, it's not necessarily what that child needs because the child is living through a completely different circumstance and a different cultural context or or just generational context. And I think it's it's it's so sad. Right. That you can try your best. You can want the best for your child and not really fully be able to imagine what that child actually needs.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. I think that the key to parenting and by the way, I have it, everyone. Yes. So good news. I've cracked the code now. I mean, obviously, there are always going to be ways in which I'm a parent. We as parents let our kids down. Being open to that reality and acknowledging it seems like the only way forward. Being a perfect parent is not a realistic thing. Being a parent who recognizes our own inability to be a perfect parent is pretty much all you can do.
Rachel Khong: Yeah. Sometimes people ask me, you know, is there any takeaway from this book? And I always say, you know, there is no takeaway. That's not why I write novels. It's not for us. Like a perfectly...
Luke Burbank: Hold on let me scratch my final question. Right. No takeaway.
Rachel Khong: No takeaway. Okay.
Rachel Khong: But I do think the sort of unglamorous takeaway is, I don't know, it's a book that sort of makes a case for humility. The fact that we don't know everything, that a parent can't know everything about their child, that a government can't know everything for, you know, its citizens. And and there are so many limits to what we can know. And I think that as people, you know, we're at this moment in history where we kind of think we can know everything, right? Like we're so certain about science and about A.I. being great.
Luke Burbank: And I think that laugh kind of yeah. Tells you all you need to know about this as of right now.
Rachel Khong: And I think, yeah, I don't know if that's, that's, that's a good thing, you know, to be so sure of ourselves and to be so sure in our own knowledge.
Luke Burbank: The book is Real Americans from Rachel Khong. Thanks for coming on, Live Wire. That was Rachel Khong right here on Live Wire as part of the Portland Book Festival. Her latest book, Real Americans, is out now. Live Wire is brought to you by Powell's Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powell's offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at Powells.com. This is Live Wire Radio from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello. We love to ask the Live Wire audience a question based on kind of what's going on with the show week to week. And so inspired by Rachel Kang's book, Real Americans, we asked the Live Wire listeners, What's something you do as an adult that would shock your younger self? I feel like a lot of adulthood is participating in things and doing stuff that you would have never dreamed of as a kid.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, yeah. When I was a kid, I didn't know what a colonoscopy was.
Luke Burbank: Or like definitely when I was a kid, I would have assumed that at my age I would live in a tree fort and I would do candy all day. And I'm doing none of those things, even though I have the option. Okay, What are our listeners saying are some things that they're doing as adults that would have been a shocking to their younger versions.
Elena Passarello: AJ says their younger self would be shocked because, quote, I own a duster and I actually use the duster.
Luke Burbank: Okay. Like the thing that you dust off, you know, like shelves with.
Elena Passarello: Yes. A jacket. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like I used to walk into houses and never pay attention to the level of dust or anything. I just. I was completely unable to see it. And now, like I read before we started recording, one of my recording devices has dust on it, and it is driving me crazy.
Luke Burbank: Okay, here's the thing. I love going around and dusting. It's very satisfying. But it raises the question, where is this dust going?
Elena Passarello: That's why you got to vacuum it afterwards. My dude.
Luke Burbank: That's the problem. What's something else that someone, someone's younger self, would be surprised they're doing in adulthood?
Elena Passarello: Well, this one hits hard. Sara says, I appreciate naps not as a punishment, but as a precious gift from God.
Luke Burbank: Absolutely.
Elena Passarello: Oh God.
Luke Burbank: I've really been getting into, like, my my short nap game, you know, like there was a period in my 20s I would do more like second sleep, maybe after having a few too many drinks the night before. Like, you just go back to bed for a period of maybe over two hours. How about you? What's your nap strategy?
Elena Passarello: My nap strategy is to put a pillow over my head so and have a cat directly on my chest so I can hold both of its paws with a pillow over my head. And then my husband walks in and he says, it looks like the we're the world's weirdest murder plot because it looks like the cat has smothered me with the pillow. And is that like choking me? But really, I'm just like.
Luke Burbank: Scratchy cats. Nature's white noise machine.
Elena Passarello: Yes.
Luke Burbank: All right. One more thing that somebody is doing as an adult that they would have never expected when they were kids.
Elena Passarello: Poor Jesse. Jesse says, I recently spent $2,000 on a garage door.
Luke Burbank: I'm listening, I've had a couple of homes, garage doors. It's a big part of it. The right garage door. That curb appeal I have I've gone down some garage door rabbit holes that I'm not proud of. It's a topic I think about extensively. This is why we all need to be living in tree houses. Eating candy.
Elena Passarello: That's right. That's right. Minimal upkeep, never dusting. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Thank you to everyone who sent in a response to our listener question this week. By the way, you are listening to Live Wire Radio from PRX. Let's talk about our next guest. The Guardian calls them one of the most important American poets of our age. They've been featured in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker. They've made an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And we're also a finalist for the National Book Award. Their latest book is Bluff. And according to The New York Times, they are, quote, a poet who nurses the tension between art and action and exhorts readers to acknowledge injustice while appreciating the chaotic nature of human existence. It's a lot to digest. We're going to give it a shot. Take a listen to Danez Smith, who joined us at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, to talk about it. Welcome back to the show, Danez. It's so nice to have you back.
Danez Smith: Thank you for having me.
Luke Burbank: This book is is really phenomenal. I'm wondering what it was you were. You've written other books and they've been really well received. What did you want to say with this book that you maybe hadn't talked about previously?
Danez Smith: Yeah. You know, I didn't write for about two years after my previous book called me, partly because I had written three books in five years and just kind of needed to shut up for a little bit. I think that's good.
Luke Burbank: Is that something for a writer that you need to sort of recharge or build up some kind of new experience?
Danez Smith: 1,000%. Carl Phillips has a wonderful essay called Silence and his book, My Trade as Mystery. And I think he articulates really, really well the necessity of having time away from language. So that way when you come to it, you actually have something to say, right? So I think there is like, you know, just that necessary quiet that we all need, not even just writers. Right. To let language and truth marinate inside you where you can also talk too much. J.K. Rowling wrote all those books. And look, she still talks and it's bad now. And so.
Luke Burbank: So you were trying to avoid that trap.
Danez Smith: There we go.
Luke Burbank: Also, I guess I'm maybe on a more serious note, if I have the timeline correct. You're you're sort of a couple of years that you weren't writing coincided with the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd.
Danez Smith: The murder of George Floyd. And I'm from Minneapolis. And so it was in my backyard. Right. And writing felt like the last thing that I should do in that time, right? So I think it felt like a time of action. It felt like a time of strategy of community. Right. And I think by the time I was coming back to poetry, it was like, what? Why? So that's why I think a lot of the book is this struggle with what is the purpose of art, right? Art can't be enough. I am like, you go to the work of June Jordan writing in the 70s, 80s and 90s, you go to the work of Joy and James Baldwin. I just did another project on the work of Langston Hughes. And one of the comments you get all the time is, my God, it feels like they could have wrote this today. Well, that's because progress is literally that slow that the poems of 100 years ago feel like they have the same wants and needs concerns and demands as the poems that we're writing today. And I think I was at a point where writing just didn't feel like the thing to do. And so if I was going to write poetry, I really had to tug at it and figure out what its use was.
Elena Passarello: Do you feel, you know, when I think about arguing, like arguing with yourself, arguing with the world, I think about something that's really not the same thing as verse. What does it look like to try to make something that's a poem that's also like a manifestation of like, you arguing? Well, I think.
Danez Smith: That's what poems do. I think poems are little vehicles of transformation and humanness. And what do we want out of an argument besides transformation? And even if we just think that our partner thinks the wrong thing, you know, we get into that argument until they think the right thing. Right. Right. I love my husband.
Elena Passarello: Do you ever write a poem? Do you ever get in a fight with him? Do you ever write a poem to see if he'll change his mind?
Danez Smith: No. He gets it straight from the cow's mouth and that. But then I write a lovely film about, you know, forgiveness and the difficulty and beauty of love and Elena. To answer your question about argumentation. Right. I think it's good to struggle against something, right? Poetry is an art of epiphany. It's an art of thought. It's an art of saying this was the truth, right? And the best truths in our lives come from a little bit of argument.
Luke Burbank: You know, you were talking about sort of struggling or asking yourself the question of like, if, you know, if poetry matters or what poetry matters. And I feel like that is something that is sort of addressed in like the first poem in this book, which is anti poetica. [Danez: Yes.] Can you can you read that for us?
Danez Smith: Yeah, sure can. This is anti poetica and Ars Poetica is like something that's like about the art of poetry. So this is the opposite of cool anti Poetica. There is no poem greater than feeding someone. There is no poem wiser than kindness. There was no poem more important than being good to children. There was no poem. Outside love's violent potential for cruelty. There was no poem that ends grief, but nurses it toward light. There is no poem that isn't jealous of song or murals or wings. There is no poem free for money's ruin. No poem in the capital, nor the court. Most policy words a devil script. There is no poem in the law. There is no poem in the West. There is no poem in the North. Poems only live south of something meaning beneath and darkened and hot. There is no poem in the winter, nor in whiteness. Nor are there poems in the landlord's name. No poem to admonish the state. No poem with a key to the locks. No poem to free you.
Luke Burbank: That is Danez Smith reading from their book Bluff. You're on Live Wire. That's the first poem in the book. Was that the first poem you wrote for the book?
Danez Smith: Heavens, no.
Luke Burbank: But you wanted to place that one at the beginning of this book, Bluff, because you wanted to start that conversation for sure at beginning of the book.
Danez Smith: Well, let's just get it out of the way, right? Let's just say what poetry don't do. Right. Because then poetry can then take the rest of the 130 some pages to do its thing. Right. And also, I think managing expectations. It is it's also like managing a marriage. Right? I've been saying that it's sort of like somebody once told me when I got married that even if you're doing well every seven years, go to couples therapy. Right. Just the check under the hood. Right. Just to, like, see if there's anything sneaking around. Right. Or even just to, like, be able to talk lushly about how good it is. Right. And so I've been a poet now for most of my life since I was a wee little ninth grader. Have I been purporting to be a poet in the world? And so it was time to, I think, like brush up and like really exfoliate and do something with that relationship. Right? To say that, like, what is the purpose? Right. And I don't make I do make art for art's sake. Sometimes I love writing poems about squirrels. My God, they're so fun. But also, if I'm going to be writing this work that has real demands in the world, right? There's a line in the book that something akin to we want it to stop being killed. And they thanked me for beauty, talking about the poems, right. That when my career sort of took off, you know, the reason I'm sitting on the stage right now is because my poems became important to people after the murder of Mike Brown, after all these murders of black men and women across the country. Right. And if the only thing I have to show for it is publication and acclaim. How wack is that? Like, I want my people to be free. I think we all deserve freedom, right? And so there are these real demands that I have for poetry. And I think coming out of 2020, I just had to brush up against that part of my artistry, right. That that that wanted to be satisfied by a ward, that wanted to be satisfied by comfort, that wanted to be satisfied by the fact that I can do this. But the reason I do this is because I believe that art is not sufficient. Right? But it is one tool that I know how to use to put energy into people so that we can do something about this world where we all deserve to be seen as human. And we see that that is very much up to debate in a lot of different ways across our nation and across our world.
Luke Burbank: We're talking to Danez Smith. You're on Live Wire. Their latest book of poetry is Bluff. We lost the poet Nikki Giovanni recently, and you posted a quote of hers on Instagram. And it was and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand. Black love is black wealth, and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that. All the while I was quite happy.
Danez Smith: Amen.
Luke Burbank: How do you take that into your work to write about the real problems of our society without letting white people think that black joy is not a real thing?
Danez Smith: I think they think it's a real thing. I think the problem is you're never really fully that's not being seen as human. Bit that I'm talking about. Right. So what Nikki's talking about, I feel that right. Even in the way people talk about this book. There's a lot of love in this book. But I think there's a particular gaze that can look at it and only see what is anger and only see what is revolution and rebuttal and, you know, all this stuff. Right. But there's but there's a lot of love sitting in the middle of that. Right. And when you're only able to see people in their anguish and not in the vastness of the humanity, which also includes joy. Right. That's the problem. I think at a certain point, you just can't worry about who's looking at it. It's art. Everybody's going to look at it. And what I need to actually pay attention to is like when the people I want to pay attention to my art are looking at it and reading it. How do they feel? That's the only thing I need to privilege. Everybody else is going to be able to eavesdrop and do what they want to do with it. But I need to make sure that if I have this beloved audience, that they feel the power in the work right and everybody else can misconstrue something because that's what people do. You know, people can't read, you know. So I don't mean that to be like elitist. I just mean that they can't. And so and I can't help that. Right. And so let me just do the work that I must do. And yeah, let's let the mistakes happen.
Luke Burbank: I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but in in the book you have a line about saying that the the challenge with poetry is that you're writing about your personal history. Yeah, but the line between that and the history of, say, your people. Not to be overly broad is a very, very thin line. Yeah. And that in order to tell your personal story, you have to tell a story of a larger group of folks. Yeah. And have you encountered people in your own life who, you know, push back on being part of their your story as published in your books?
Danez Smith: Yeah. There were some awkward Thanksgivings before. There's a poem in my last book called Waiting on You to Die so I can be myself.
Rachel Khong: Right.
Luke Burbank: Like, I can't see. I can't see how that would create any complicated feelings. Yeah.
Danez Smith: And, you know, it's all about, like, you know, complicated queerness and family and love. Right. And one day, my grandma looked at me and just said, So you want me to die? And I look back at her. I said, my God, No, no, no, no, Grandma, you know, that's. That's my girl. You know, we need to talk about. We're tight. That's my lady. I said, no, I don't want you to die. But we had a turning point in our relationship where she had some homophobia that she would just not let go of and I think was just sort of releasing it rampantly. One day I was at her house cleaning out the. All of us were cleaning out our attic. And she turns out of nowhere and says, if Dennard gets married to man, I'm not coming home. And I walked out and I said. I love you so much and I'm the only grandchild you have that is going to come over and move these boxes. And if you want that grandson, then you have to let go of that spirit. And we didn't for a little bit. And now she's back to be my lady, right? And so I told her that day that, no, I don't want you to die. But something in you had to die so that we could have a relationship. Yeah. Sometimes poetry helps that way.
Luke Burbank: Can we hear another poem from the book? This is this one is kind of a seems to be a bit of a book. And the first one that we heard this is I was hoping to read Ars Poetica.
Danez Smith: Yeah. And also, just imagine like this first line. Like this, that was page one. This is 119. So there's been a lot of back and forth about what poetry can do in the world and who's going to kill us and who we should kill and blah, blah, blah a lot. And also, like love and making love and grandparents. Okay, cool. Ask Poetica. Call that others. Even when the fall clears the wrong sky off my mind, the horizon at the end of pity is a useless sun hot headed and bitter born light. Let the daughter rise When my earth meets the clouds What her say? What next She believe in and nurse my big bad for how long I spent making apologies for what I ain't do caught myself sorry for bodies. The nation caught in its borderless mall caught myself washing blood off someone else's hands. I'm off that. That being the mode that made a cage of guilt out my depression, that being what fault I fell into in dress into a lovely but in effective grave. What? I'm sorry for making poetry a house of rebuttals. A temple for the false gods of stagnant argument and dead in feels. Here in these lines, in these rooms, I add my blues and my gospels to the record of Now I offer my scratch gold the blueprint of possible dear reader. Whenever you are reading. This is the future to me. Which means tomorrow is still coming, which means today still lives. Which means there is still time for beautiful, urgent change. Which means there is still time to make more alive. Which means there is still poetry.
Luke Burbank: Danez Smith, Everyone.
Luke Burbank: That was Danez Smith right here on Live Wire. Their new book, Bluff, is available to read right now. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We will take a very quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we get back, we will talk to and listen to the singer songwriter Danielia Cotton talking about the work of Charley Pride. That's coming up here on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Before we get to our musical guest this week, a little preview of what we are doing on the show next week. We are going to be chatting with the New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum. She has this book out that I read it a while ago, but I still think about it so much. It's called Cue the Sun, The Invention of Reality TV. It's a fascinating journey into the origins of reality, programming and kind of what it's done to us culturally. We're also going to hear some music and have a chat with the legendary Portland band and international music sensation Pink Martini. They stopped by to celebrate their 30th anniversary as a band, so make sure you tune in for that next week on the show. In the meantime, our musical guest this week is a powerhouse indie rocker who hails from Hopewell, New Jersey, where she was raised on a steady diet of AC DC Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. When she launched her career with the release of her first album, she was selected as an artist to watch by WXPN in Philadelphia. Her latest project shows a whole other kind of side of her musical background. It's called Charley's Pride, a Tribute to black country Music. It pays homage to the trailblazer. Charley Pride, who was the first black American, voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame while infusing the songs with a fresh, modern approach that is all her own. Danielia Cotton joined us at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon, to talk with us and play a song. Check it out. Hey there. Welcome to Live Wire.
Danielia Cotton: Thank you.
Luke Burbank: Thanks for traveling all the way out here to do this. We really appreciate it. Did I read correctly that this project started out with you finding a Charley Pride album that belonged to your 101 year old grandmother?
Danielia Cotton: No, but she's 103 and she would kill you for those two years. It actually belonged to my grandfather, who was her husband. He's no longer with us. And he hid it under the bed because he was like a closeted country fan. And she when it all came out, she was like, it was my album. And he took it.
Luke Burbank: But I stand by my initial statement that this was your grandmother's record. Why was it the case that I this was when I was reading this interview with you talking about it. It was news to me that as a black person in America at a certain point to like country music was something that you might have to keep from from the wider world.
Danielia Cotton: They moved to Hopewell in about like 1941. And it wasn't like it wasn't like black men were all over the country. Yeah. Giddy up. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't. He was a quiet man. And very much, I mean, the similarity between him and Charley Pride story. He was just. He didn't think about Hopewell as a white town. He just saw ten acres He wanted to buy and raise his kids. And, you know, I think Charley Pride didn't think, this is a white genre. I just like this genre. So they're sort of there in that way. And then they were both like regal, quiet men and. Yeah, and they earned the respect. Charley Pride earned the respect in his genre. And my grandfather, everyone loved him. He was quite a person. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: How do you take your your particular style of music and then take the music of Charley Pride and interpret it in a way that is yours, but still also honoring him?
Danielia Cotton: I think that's a good question because I think a lot of artists that are going into country, I think I don't think I don't like when certain people say it should all be just one genre. I think there is value to all the genres being what they are. But I believe if you go into a genre, you have to tip your hat somewhat to what it is. You can't recreate it if you I mean, you can, but it's not. I don't think it's the way to go in with respect. You know, and I think then you're not really. Doing country music. You have to, to some degree, put a little bit of, you know, in there. So, yeah, I think that that's important and it shows respect and honor for what you're, you know, where you're about to go.
Luke Burbank: We actually here at this very stage, we talked to the photographer Ivan McClellan some months ago about his beautiful book of photography taken at black rodeos. Obviously, Cowboy Carter Beyonce's record has been this smash hit. Do you have any sense that the black country and black cowboy experience is starting to, at least in some small way, get its do?
Danielia Cotton: I do. I absolutely do. Like I had done this project. But there she opened the door. And there's still I mean, we still have to as a race, we're just we're still fighting for equality really on all levels. And so every once in a while, when a door is opened and some respect where we couldn't get in, as many of us try to run through as possible because it will shut again. But I think that, you know, I have to give it to her. She opened that door wider and then there were many that were there. Yeah, but they got the light, you know, shown on them at that point. So you can't, you know, a lot of people like I she done one doing their country you know I mean she her popularity and her stature allowed a whole bunch of people to be seen. I got to give that to her. That's just. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Well, we're excited to hear some music. What song are we going to hear?
Danielia Cotton: This is called Bring Out the Country in Me. And it is basically it's the only original from the album. I want to put one on that was just mine. And it's basically when I moved to the city, I could not be me like I grew up, you know, my other half was born and raised there. And so he was like, why are you, you know, wave to people Like you look down. Like, it was difficult for me, but I stayed me. It actually made me more me. You're you. I'm, like, authentically Danielia no matter where I am.
Luke Burbank: All right. Danielia Cotton right here on Live Wire.
Danielia Cotton: [Danielia Cotton performs "Bring Out the Country In Me"]
Luke Burbank: Danielia Cotton right here on Live Wire.
Luke Burbank: That was Danielia Cotton right here on Live Wire, performing the song Follow me from her new five track EP. Charley's Pride, A Tribute to Black Country Music. And that is going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Rachel Khong, Danez Smith, and Danielia Cotton.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden as our executive producer. Heather de Michele as our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Leona Kinderman is our Assistant technical director. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our assistant editor and our House Sound is by Nate Zwane Lesley and D. Neil Blake. Ashley Park is our production fellow and Andrea Castro-Martinez is our marketing associate.
Luke Burbank: Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Sam Tucker, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This week's episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid.
Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff This week, we'd like to thank member Ken Edwards of Portland, Oregon. Also very special thanks this week to Amanda Bullock, who and the Portland Book Festival.
Luke Burbank: For more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
