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Hanif Abdurraqib on Umang Kalra ("Job Security")
2.3k Plays11 months ago
A conversation I've been wanting to have for a long time: Hanif Abdurraqib joins the podcast to talk about Umang Kalra's poem "Job Security."
Hanif is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, A Fortune for Your Disaster, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and The Crown Ain't Worth Much. He has a new book coming out in March, 2024: There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension. You can find links to all of these titles on Hanif's website. Follow Hanif on Twitter.
If you enjoyed the episode, please share it with a friend, and follow, rate, and review the podcast. Subscribe to my Substack, where you'll get an occasional newsletter to update you on the pod and my other work.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome to Close Readings. I am your host, Kamran Javidizadeh, and I can't tell you how excited I am today to have Hanif Abdurraqib on the podcast. Hanif has chosen a poem called Job Security.
00:00:18
Speaker
by a poet named Uman Khara to talk about today. And we're going to get to that poem in a minute and talk about it as we do here on Close Readings. But before we do that, I just want to tell you a little bit about our guest.
Hanif Abdurraqib's Literary Contributions
00:00:35
Speaker
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, an essayist, and a cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He's the author of two full-length collections of poems. So The Crown Ain't Worth Much, which came out in 2016, and A Fortune for Your Disaster in 2019. He's also the author of three books of prose. So those are They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us in 2017, which is a collection of essays.
00:01:03
Speaker
a book called Go Ahead in the Rain. I really love that book. Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, which was published in 2019. I probably don't need to tell you about it because it was a New York Times bestseller. It was long listed for the National Book Award.
00:01:18
Speaker
And then even more recently, Hanif wrote a book called The Little Devil in America, Notes and Praise of Black Performance, published in 2021. That book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Upcoming Works and Poetry
00:01:32
Speaker
And then I'm especially excited to say Hanif has a book that's going to be coming out, I think, in March of 2024 called There's Always This Year on Basketball and Ascension.
00:01:46
Speaker
my birthday is in March. And when I saw that book was slated for publication in March, I was like, oh, it was very nice of Anif to write a book as a birthday present for me, because that sounds like
00:01:58
Speaker
a book that I need and I will be getting, and I'm happy to recommend it to you without having read it yet myself. And Hanif is someone I've been dreaming of having on the pod for a long time. He's a wonderful poet. I love in particular the suite of poems all with the same title, How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, which appear in A Fortune for Your Disaster. Those poems,
00:02:25
Speaker
They take the full measure of being human. They have a sort of a quiet faith that any real engagement with beauty will inevitably address or maybe not address, but I don't know, hold, perhaps in reserve the knowledge of the world, which is related to what I love about his essays, his criticism.
Hanif's Perspective on Criticism and Art
00:02:50
Speaker
His tastes are so obviously humble and open
00:02:54
Speaker
He is a curious critic. His tastes range from things like, say, Tribe Called Quest to a musical artist like Gillian Welsh, both artists I love. But also, in that open-mindedness, the way it works is he's not just a cipher, he's not just an impersonal critic. I think to read an essay,
00:03:18
Speaker
by Hanif is to be there, to see him there listening. And I think what makes his criticism work is its constant willingness to trace the lines between self-understanding and the attentions paid to beautiful things.
00:03:37
Speaker
whether those things are songs or flowers or other kinds of performance and art. So with that, I just want to say, Hanif, welcome to the podcast.
Emotional Reflections and Global Issues
00:03:53
Speaker
I want to ask you how you're doing today and say thank you for being here.
00:03:59
Speaker
Thank you for having me and thank you for making the time. What, yeah, I mean, in the spirit of honesty, I don't, I'm not doing very well. I think that, well, which I don't think is unique. And I do want to stress that, of course, there are, you know, folks globally who are in more tenuous situations than I am. I am talking to you from a home that is not under threat of bombardment. I have electricity, I have internet, I have clean water. And so, you know, these are,
00:04:25
Speaker
those are causes for gratitude. But I do think the act of bearing witness to the world has caught up with me in a way. I think witnessing is both a responsibility that I don't think is a burden. I don't think anyone should be burdened with the act of witnessing because
00:04:47
Speaker
If we divorce ourselves from the work of being witnessed, then history gets rewritten in ways that are not as generous and ways that are just not real, in ways that don't accurately portray the brutalities inflicted upon the most marginalized folks among us. That said, I do think
00:05:09
Speaker
you know, depending on what is being asked to be witnessed, witnessing can take a toll. And I think, you know, speaking of what one witnesses can take a toll and so all these things, but I'm very glad to be here and I'm really grateful that you took the time to have me on.
The Role of Poetry in Crisis
00:05:28
Speaker
Well, I'm really glad you said that. I'm feeling it too. And when I ask the question, I don't...
00:05:39
Speaker
ask it, wanting anything other than the truth, you feel comfortable sharing. So I appreciate that. And I guess there's a sense in which, I stopped doing this podcast for a little while, I took a little break, just life stuff catching up. And
00:06:02
Speaker
and then rejoining it in a time that feels like a time of real crisis and peril for people, as you say, who have nothing like the security that I enjoy and require to be able to do a thing like this.
00:06:22
Speaker
does have me wondering from time to time, like, should I be doing this at all? And, you know, not to be too cute about it or try to be clever or whatever, but
00:06:38
Speaker
You know, those poems that I refer to, those poems of yours in the intro, are among the things that for better or for worse lead me to think, you know, if we can make the time to talk about a poem, then it might be a worthwhile thing to do. But just more
Journey to Poetry
00:06:59
Speaker
personally, like I just want to say thank you for making the time to be here.
00:07:04
Speaker
Oh, of course. Yeah, I really love the show. And as someone who, you know, I think I'm very moved by and drawn by listening to poets talk about poems in part because of the way that I came to poetry was not through quote unquote formal education or any kind of school. And so, you know, I came to poems just by way of kind of feeling around in the dark and then finding a light switch. And this is this show has
00:07:33
Speaker
has offered that experience or watching people go through that experience, watching other poets go through that experience has been really fulfilling and fruitful. So thank you for making this. Yeah. Well, yeah. So it's been my pleasure. I mean, that literally has given me pleasure to do it. And it's very gratifying to think that it's reached people like you and others out there who find something meaningful in it.
00:08:00
Speaker
You know, like I say, when I invited you on, I was I was ready for anything. And you found and I was really happy about this poet whose work I didn't know at all, which is so exciting. And I wonder, just before we get to, you know, in a minute, I'm going to ask you to read the poem. Do you I mean, can you tell us anything about like,
00:08:23
Speaker
Do you remember where you came across this poem, what you thought of it, or what it was like to encounter it for the first time, or maybe how you've been carrying it around in your mind since you read it? I mean, I know it's a very recent poem, right?
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty recent, although I was familiar with this poet's work a bit before. And so that does bear mentioning. There was a familiarity I had with the work, and so I think there was a way that
00:08:53
Speaker
you know, uh, their name, their name kind of like sprung to life for me, but also I, so this poem was published in protein magazine. Um, I think this year and early this year and protein is, you know, I really admired the work they publish. Um, you know, I don't publish poems as much as I used to. I really don't. I mean, it's a very rare instance. Um, where I published poem and that's, you know, I think that, um,
00:09:23
Speaker
Some of that is just quite simply because I want to make the space for other folks and I'm just selective. I'm selective about where I put my work and protein is one of the rare places I've been published in the last three years. I turned to protein because I think they are publishing poems at the intersection of my political interest.
00:09:51
Speaker
you know, poems that are also just kind of plainly beautiful and articulations around labor and capital and empire. And so, I mean, I'm kind of always tapped in with the things they publish. And if I, you know, if I kind of get busy for a month or so, then I kind of go through the archives and that's a really delightful practice for me. So this came up because I was, you know, I kind of always have a night towards what protein is publishing.
Themes of Job Security and Apocalypse
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah. So you say, um, that you have not really been writing or publishing poems much of late, or I think you said publishing them writing them. Okay. For sure. I've been writing them. Um, but yeah, I mean, it takes, I just, um, I began to think differently about what, what a, what a publication of a poem means. You know, I came up in poetry slam and I had no interest in traditional publication, which meant that for me, um, you know, publishing a poem meant reading it aloud in a room.
00:10:49
Speaker
And that has been a really appealing thing for me this year, particularly when I've been kind of doing these, I've set out to do these way like really more intimate readings, reading for about 50 people, 40 to 50 people.
00:11:06
Speaker
gearing up in part for a much larger, more public-facing book tour next year, but also kind of just reading things that are new and saying, you know, you get to hear this published first. This is published work between us in this room.
00:11:25
Speaker
And I have kind of returned to the excitement of a poem feeling like that. And so that has been really thrilling. And so, yeah, I mean, I've been writing a lot of poems for sure, but I don't know that I've been publishing in the traditional sense that people I think would consider.
00:11:47
Speaker
Right. And I want to apologize to you and others if my dog is audible in the background here. What kind of dog do you have? She's mixed. People ask me that. I say like, oh, a crazy dog. That's what kind. I love her. Her name is Agnes. She's like 50 pounds of quivering.
00:12:07
Speaker
muscle that is just dying for any squirrel that comes across her path or postal worker. She is great. She's great. All right, Hanif, let's think about this poem. I think the first thing we should do, if you'd be willing, is I want to invite you to read it out loud. And I just want to say to listeners that we will put a link
00:12:37
Speaker
to the text of the poem in the episode notes. So if you want to read along, you'll be able to find it there. But Hanif, would you be willing to read the poem out loud? Sure. Thanks. This is Job Security by Uman Kalara.
00:12:57
Speaker
I tell Em I'd love to have something lined up. What a particular post-apocalyptic peculiarity. Comfort in the planned future. The refrain of flaming trees only goes so far. The fire has to stop once it has burnt the last of it down. Are we the last of it?
00:13:19
Speaker
I can't apply for jobs without thinking of the funeral. I tell my mother I am not having children because I don't trust the world they'd grow into. The truth is, I'd rather keep my money, my sanity, etc. We are looking at shirts that go hard online.
00:13:36
Speaker
We are looking at the carcasses of houses. We are looking at each other, thinking of when we could have held hands. What does job security taste like through the smoke? What does apocalypse feel like when it keeps fucking going? What do we call it now? I remember thinking, wow, the kids are calling it an emergency. Wow. The kids are calling it a crisis. Wow. The kids are calling it the apocalypse.
00:14:02
Speaker
What does it mean to name the thing that will kill you? I'd love to have something lined up. I'd love an ending less severe. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What does it mean to name the thing that will kill you?
00:14:20
Speaker
Well, thanks so much, Anif. So that's Job Security by Uman Kalra. Anif, one thing I'd want to know from you first off is like,
00:14:36
Speaker
I'm curious about that kind of gesture in the first line of the poem. I tell M, there's a kind of familiarity in it, but also a sort of anonymity at the same time. Maybe the people in this poet's circle know who that's in reference to, but obviously as a broader public, we don't really. It seems like we're not really supposed to. And I guess I'm just wondering, taking that as a kind of particular instance or detail,
00:15:05
Speaker
um what how does that help you think about how a poet or this poem creates the sense of like
00:15:18
Speaker
My talk's growling at me. You're growling right now. I don't know. I don't think that's Anif. That is not me. That is Agnes. I don't know if you can hear it. The mic might pick it up. My question really, Anif, and then I'm going to mute myself and let you talk, is that little M gesture, or how does that create the feeling of like, oh, this poet is talking to me as a reader in a particular way? What kind of tone is that setting for you?
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, an interesting thing that I think about in my own life is that I've gotten really good. If I'm being frank, I've gotten really good as my work has become more public facing in a way that has brought interest into my own individual life. I've gotten very good at this trick that I call kind of
00:16:08
Speaker
suggesting intimacy, right? So sharing things that feel intimate while really not offering any information, right? So there's a difference between the emotion of intimacy and information delivery. Let's consider the approach of, say, Frank O'Hara, right? Who in a poem like The Day Lady Died is really kind of using that as a container with which he talks about
00:16:33
Speaker
buying things for his friends. I mean, so many of his poems are almost as if we're dropped into conversations and progress. And he uses the full names of his friends, which in turn, even if you don't know them, it feels like you are there present in the conversation. And when he's thinking fondly of a friend, he shares their name to the public as though there is no barrier between the fond thought and you. You may actually, through being present, become the friend who is being fondly thought of, right? Right.
00:17:03
Speaker
What I really love about this gesture is that it Offers that but not fully, you know, I mean it offers You know, I Notice this with writers and I began to do it myself where I sign emails with just My the first letter of my name and I don't know I think I began to do that solely because I saw other writers doing it and I thought oh This is just how writers
00:17:29
Speaker
communicate with each other. This is just the dialogue. This is a container dialogue with which we operate in and so that's what we do. What I love about the gesture here is that it suggests some intimacy at the entryway. But actually,
00:17:49
Speaker
M in this poem is really kind of left behind the
Intimacy in Poetry
00:17:54
Speaker
door. It's like this person is being greeted at the doorway to the poem, but then we step inside the poem and that person is still outside, right? And so this is a nod to say I am
00:18:04
Speaker
not only alone in the conversation, right? Which I think leaves room anytime a poem is populated with another living person, because I think so often poems, another living actual person who is in relationship to the speaker, not like a pop culture figure, or not like a ghost, I mean a living person in
00:18:25
Speaker
Um, even just that single nod to that, right? Which is less has less to do with the person or their initial or that name, the single nod to, I am in community in conversation with in concert with a lit, another living person for me opens the door wide enough to say, I also a living person and perhaps in this, you know, it widens the circle. It widens the circle with the conversations being had, even if, even if we are kind of only at a mention of an initial.
00:18:55
Speaker
Oh, that's so beautiful. And maybe in a way by withholding the particularity of whatever the other letters of that, that follow the M and whoever else that person is, it allows for the reader to step into something like that position or to feel almost as though they're being
00:19:15
Speaker
addressed in that way. I mean, you know, like another thing I'm noticing, it's the word right before the M and I promise we won't keep going backwards. We're going to go forward at some point. But the verb tense of I tell is kind of interesting to me. I mean, it's super colloquial. It's the way people talk. But I feel like the poem would be different if it said something like I told M, you know, but it's like I tell makes it seem almost like it's happening kind of now as the poem. It's like telling M is a way of telling you the reader instead.
00:19:45
Speaker
Yeah, the tense of these things are important, right? Because to use the O'Hara thing, or even to go forward and use someone like Ross Gay, whose work is often, or the population of his poems,
00:20:05
Speaker
are often operating in memory. What he brings up is that even though the people are brought up often with their full names, or even if he doesn't use their full names as just kind of like my friend, you realize that it's operating from the standpoint of memory. I'm not saying that that's
00:20:28
Speaker
there's still real presence there. But in the current tense of I tell, I am in conversation with, again, it says, you are also invited. It's a different kind of invitation. In one realm, we're invited to long for or mourn or miss. In another realm, we are invited to a type of action, I think, an action in progress.
00:20:53
Speaker
Right, right. And so the present tense makes it, if I'm hearing you right, like, yes, it's clear by implication that it's a memory, but it's a memory that is being sort of replayed in the present tense, which allows you to sort of
00:21:08
Speaker
engage with it and turn it into your own present life in some way. Right. Yeah, you could turn, I think, turning inward, I think, while not ignoring what's happening outward, which is the momentum of the poem.
00:21:24
Speaker
good good so so that first that first line break i'd love to have something so if you're not looking there's a line break there something break and then we have quotation marks around the phrase lined up um and then uh a particular and then there's a there's a kind of reflection um after a couple of colons on that phrase so i guess haneef i i want to invite you to to talk about
00:21:49
Speaker
sort of the work the poem does with the phrase lined up, which is not a phrase I had ever before reading this poem thought about in the ways the poem sort of invites me to. And I want to know sort of what that phrase is doing for you.
00:22:05
Speaker
Oh, lined up is, you know what? I'm so drawn to this poem because I am someone who, you know, again, like I don't have any kind of quote unquote, not only formal training and poems, but writing. And I, you know, much of my life I was poor and I worked odd jobs and the whole idea, you know,
00:22:29
Speaker
I think often about times where I worked very briefly would work two very similar jobs. Like me working two jobs wasn't uncommon, but oftentimes they were different. Like say I would serve at a diner in the morning and then work at a call center at night. But sometimes I would work two serving jobs because that other serving job was the one I had lined up.
00:22:54
Speaker
so that if it went better than, you know, you're testing the waters to see like what the tips are like and if the tips were better at that second serving job, then I had that lined up and I could leave the other one, you know? And so what I actually love about the idea of to have something lined up means to kind of plan for a future and to plan for a future means that you are anticipating a future and to anticipate a future is to ignore the apocalyptic realities of the present.
00:23:24
Speaker
or not even ignore, ignore might be a harsh word, to downplay the apocalyptic realities of the present, which we all have, I mean, which, to be clear, we are, many of us are required to do because there's a world that exists outside of us. We have to take, some of us have to take care of children, of elders, of the parts of our world that rely on us at least planning for the next hour.
00:23:52
Speaker
And so for me, lined up is a kind of, particularly because it echoes towards the end, but it operates as this kind of
00:24:08
Speaker
sense of longing, not for the work, right? I'd love to have something lined up to me doesn't mean I would love to have another job. It mostly to me in this poem operates as I would love to have the optimism that would allow me to seek whatever will sustain me in the future. Or I would love to have a belief in the future that is strong enough. Because I think that is what I run up against, right? When it comes to futurescaping.
00:24:36
Speaker
Um, yeah, is, is, is the, so right. So the, the, the implication is that whatever is happening now is, is in durable in, in some way, you know, that, that it's a, it's a kind of, um, a landing spot waiting for you, um, if you need it. And, and that, that suggests that whatever, whatever crisis you're undergoing now is, um,
00:25:02
Speaker
is something that you're going to be able to survive. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I get that, you know,
00:25:12
Speaker
This is what I'm seeing now. I'm seeing this so often now, but now I mean the past month, right? Is people kind of being like, I don't really know how I'm supposed to just do things. I don't know how I'm supposed to just like watch videos of children being pulled from rubble and then respond to an email about whatever or pop in a meeting about whatever.
00:25:39
Speaker
And I think that is our actual natural human, very human impulse, pulling us, turning our faces towards an apocalyptic reality, which I think for many of us we have been conditioned to just endure.
00:25:56
Speaker
And not necessarily even ignore, but just endure. I remember in early 2020, when I would do the thing I would do at night, I would look at the death tolls from COVID early on and just see them ticking up. And then in the morning, I would get up and write. And I remember at a point saying, I can't actually
00:26:17
Speaker
I don't want to separate these two things. I don't want to separate the realities of loss at this scale and then turn my brain towards that of a writer without any kind of, I don't want to divide myself in that way. And so, you know, this is also longing for a pulling apart of those, that division, because I think in order to live in that manner, one might have to divide themselves.
00:26:45
Speaker
Right. I mean, I mean, it's funny because that's exactly the wrong word for it, but maybe you know what I mean. I think as you're as you're saying this, I'm thinking back to the conversation we had before we turned to the poem, you know, in which, you know, you're talking about the kind of the toll or the the burden. I mean, though you wanted to disavow that word, but you're still sort of talking about the
00:27:12
Speaker
the cost of having your eyes open and being receptive to the world and sort of taking that in, as you describe here and now the sort of condition of being human as
00:27:34
Speaker
struggling to do that on the one hand and on the other, do the day-to-day things that only really make sense if there's a future to do them for. I mean, I'm thinking of both things. Go on, sorry. But also the smallness of, do you know the Kate Marvin poem, Why I'm Afraid of Turning the Page? I don't know it. Could you tell us about it?
00:28:00
Speaker
I mean, I'm a big fan of Kate Marvin's work and I actually feel like she's a poet who doesn't
00:28:08
Speaker
I don't know, she's a poet I kind of just like stumbled upon when I was first was learning, you know, I first started reading poems in 2011 and learning how to write them in 2012. And forgive me because I don't remember what book this is in. But whatever book came out around that time of hers, there's a poem called Why I'm Afraid of Turning the Page. And I remember this line so vividly. Another apocalypse in your weird blondness cycling in and out of the march. Down in a bunker, we hunker.
00:28:34
Speaker
can hear the boots from miles off, we tend to our flowers in the meantime. I love that part of that poem, and I wish I knew the rest of it off the top of my head, but I love that part of that poem because
00:28:49
Speaker
And I know I'm like the guy with the flower imagery again, but we tend to our flowers in the meantime suggest a kind of waiting for an assured destruction, but still understanding that one has to do what is in front of them that brings them some small pleasure. Now this poem
00:29:08
Speaker
is operating on the other side of this where it's not necessarily about tending to things that bring you pleasure, but tending to a reality that actually might pull you back from labor, which
00:29:20
Speaker
might open up some time through which you can wait out the apocalypse in the midst of pleasurable things. I mean, I love the part of this poem that's like, I'm not having children essentially because I want to keep my money in my mind, which is like a wild admission in the poem.
00:29:39
Speaker
And one that honestly, like I gotta be, I know we're not there yet. I know we're going line by line and we're not yet there yet. We can skip around a little. Yeah, that's cool. But that's the kind of thing in a poem that's surprising me. And I say this, I'm someone who doesn't have children and also doesn't want children. And I don't know if my reasoning is that sharp, you know, but like it could easily be. And I remember when I got to that line, the first time I read this poem, that admission in the poem
00:30:08
Speaker
I was taken aback by it in a way that was like a kind of how dare they, you know? Right. But then I fell and I instantly it was like that lingered for about five seconds and I was like, I love it. I love it. Like I love because I think that if I if I if I really interrogated myself, my reasoning is maybe not that far off from that. And it is something that is less neat to say. Yeah. In the world. But in a poem, the poem is a place for these kind of
00:30:36
Speaker
If you are not utilizing the poem as a place for really indicting admissions or really incendiary admissions, I mean, the poem can be many things, but it should be a site of that as well. If not, then you're never going to get to do them with any clarity in the world if you don't first rehearse them in the poem.
00:30:58
Speaker
Right. I mean, that's beautiful. I'm not a poet, but I would think, you know, a poem ought to be a place where you can write a thing that you're not sure you even mean or believe or maybe even know what it would mean to say that and then see what you think of it once it's down on the page, you know, kind of experimental sort of thinking. That phrase that you singled out, the truth is I'd rather keep my money, my sanity, and then there's even an et cetera after that.
00:31:29
Speaker
that sort of, it feels like kind of accommodating of, you know, things like that. I don't mind jumping around, though I do have one other thought that I wonder what you would say about with respect to the lined up idea, and I know even that phrase does come back at the poem's end, so...
00:31:48
Speaker
you know, I think we're not gonna be able to talk about this poem without jumping around to some extent. You know, the way my mind works and probably to a fault is that my ears always kind of prick up when I hear things that sound like they could be
00:32:05
Speaker
sort of meta poetic moments or moments that are kind of punning on some of the words and concepts we use to understand poetic practice. So, you know, to me it's like interesting in other words, I'll just say it, that the phrase lined up comes right after the first line break in the poem.
00:32:27
Speaker
I'm thinking about the idea of a poetic line as a unit, right? You know, maybe the one thing that all poems, except for prose poems, of course, which we love, have in common is they have line breaks. And so there is this
00:32:45
Speaker
And because language is linear and unfolds in time, whether it's left to right as in English or right to left as in other languages, there is a sense in which the idea of a line break has something to do with the idea of a kind of future. But then the break is also a kind of
00:33:13
Speaker
I don't know, maybe something like a kind of rupture in that future or a crisis in that future and then there's a starting over, you know, flesh left.
Metaphors and Future Uncertainties
00:33:23
Speaker
So I don't know, for me, so I just wanted to make that observation and then to invite by way of question some thinking from you about like, what's the principle that's guiding like how line breaks work in this poem? Like that second line ends post hyphen.
00:33:42
Speaker
apocalyptic is how the third line begins. But I don't know, I guess I want to just think a little bit formally about this poem too, and also if people aren't looking at it, it has these occasional gaps in its lines, so like spacing out between words. You know, in poetics we might call them caesuras or something, like pauses or breaks within the line. So Hanif, this is just a kind of general invitation to reflect on
00:34:10
Speaker
the line in this poem as a unit of meaning and organization? And what, if anything, is interesting to you about how the line is functioning for Uman Kalra here? Yeah. I mean, a lot of like
00:34:25
Speaker
I like the second line ending on post because I always think of someone being at their post as a type of work. I had like 100 jobs. One of the jobs was that I was a night desk person at a hotel, which is actually one of the best jobs I've ever had.
00:34:45
Speaker
And, um, because you don't really do, yeah, you just kind of see, I mean, occasionally some, something wild will pop off, but most commonly you're just kind of sitting at a desk watching TV for eight hours. But, um, it was always referred to as like, I'm at my post, you know? And so I like playing with that. And I also like, um,
00:35:04
Speaker
the reveal of apocalyptic as we... I'm bad at mindbreaks. One thing that I think I struggle with because of how I'm very grateful for the modes in which I learned poems. But I think one thing that I struggle with is an understanding of mindbreaks, especially because my earlier poems I never wrote using them. So what I tend to most like
00:35:26
Speaker
When I as a reader is a break that feels like a reveal where it feels like Even if the word is not on its own surprising I think the break and presence of it can be made surprising Like I you know sure I read post with that dash there and I can assume That apocalyptic is coming but but when it arrives it's a it feels pleasurable for me. You know is so
00:35:54
Speaker
There's something even if even if it's sort of terrifying. Yeah Yeah, we should we should say that. Yeah, go on. Yeah, there's something. Yeah, I mean, I just yeah, I just think there's something about the way that Language arrives that interests me even if it's something I expect even if it's a word I if it's a word I expect if it's a word that I would place there if it's a word I assumed was coming Yeah, the decision and how to how to line it up is always interesting
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and and as you say it, I'm looking even at the third line. So so the right. The second line goes what a particular post line break apocalyptic peculiarity commands and comfort comfort. Right. Which is another kind of way to feel maybe at the end of a line. I'm actually interested in even what you said, like about being bad at line breaks. I'm not sure. I mean, I have some guesses as to what you might mean by that, but I'm curious about what
00:36:51
Speaker
what leads you to say a thing like that. And also I wonder, like, is there something, you know, you said earlier that you came up not through sort of publishing poetry, but through performing poetry, right? Through a kind of spoken word tradition. And there, of course, the audience
00:37:10
Speaker
can't see line breaks, but maybe there's a way of indicating them with voice or with certain kinds of formal whatever it is that marks the end of a unit of speech. So that's super interesting to me.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, when I was coming up, my earliest poems, I was writing them just to memorize them and I had, and I had, and still have a very, very good memory. And so my poems, um, sorry, there's a siren driving by my house. It feels apt, right? My poems did not really exist on the page at all.
00:37:55
Speaker
You know, they existed, you know, they existed on the page momentarily as long as I could memorize them. And oftentimes I would memorize as I wrote.
00:38:10
Speaker
And so they really went away quick. And so I wasn't even thinking about mind-breaking, just thinking about sound. And I think that so much of my on-page movements now are also governed by sound. You know, I still write my first drafts all in block text. And then I record myself reading the first draft.
00:38:32
Speaker
And then I play it back because I think sound and the voice is revelatory. At least in my work, it kind of tells you how it wants the language to look and move. And so I don't really determine mind breaks until the second draft edits and it's all sound based. It's all based off sound.
00:38:49
Speaker
You read it and then you think, oh, that's where the line break was when you listen to the recording or when you sort of notice what you're doing as you say it out loud. I think what I notice what I'm doing is I say it out loud when I hear, you know, higher inflections in the work or when I feel like the pace is being picked up. And so in moments in reading in this poem,
00:39:12
Speaker
What I actually really love about these breaks is that it does feel, and some of this is because of the structure of the poem, the lines are short. It's like a short line, thin, thin long poem. It feels like there's a patience until it kind of picks up, it picks up pace.
00:39:29
Speaker
around its second act, like we were looking at the shirts. Yeah, I was going to say.
Labor and Security in Crisis
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, the repetition allows for a pace quickening, but early on, I think the brakes are so patient. Comfort in the planned future could be one single line, but I think the colon and the brake, all these things are asking people to slow down a little bit.
00:39:52
Speaker
Yeah. Structurally. Is that your reading of what those gaps are doing in the lines slowing you down? Yeah. As a reader, it slows me down in a good way. It not slowing me down in like a hundred... My...
00:40:05
Speaker
You know, because it's fascinating to me because this feels like a very urgent poem. Like it feels like thematically, thoughtfully, all of it is deeply urgent. But the pace that is being like bought to the forefront through the decisions and mind breaks is actually, I think, encouraging slowness.
00:40:29
Speaker
Or at least, I don't know if slowness, I think patience perhaps is a better, it's encouraging a type of patience. And maybe, yeah, kind of precision or like care, you know, care or something. I think care is the ultimate, you know, care is the thing that takes precedent above all else.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah. I'm curious about that question. I was going to call it a rhetorical question, but I'm not sure that's right. Are we the last of it? Yes. Which I think in order for that question to make sense, you have to remember that right above it there was the fire has to stop once it has burnt the last of it down.
00:41:11
Speaker
Are we the last of it? You know, that's what makes me want to sort of italicize, even though it's not in the poem, the we. So, yeah, what do you do with that question? And what kind of question is that? Are we the last of it? What I love about that is it returns the, well, this poem begins in a very human way, right? The
00:41:32
Speaker
I'd love to have something lined up as a plain human. It's like a human anxiety as a starting point, but then the anxiety turns towards this imagery of fire and trees. The world is burning. I feel like climate crisis, maybe literally, but also a more general kind of the world is burning metaphorically. But I really love the harsh, jarring return to
00:42:00
Speaker
I get pretty anxious about we, the use of a universal we in the poem, but the we works here, I think, because we understand what the it is a little more clearly, or we understand the leap, the metaphorical leap that's being taken with it. We're talking about a fire has to stop once it finishes burning down the last of a forest or the last of what is in front of the fire, right? It is whatever the fire is consuming.
00:42:30
Speaker
Once it finishes feeding on that it will Have to stop or it will eventually stop if there's nothing else to consume the fire will stop so Because we understand that movement because we understand what is being suggested in that movement the we not only Lands more but it's also a little more ominous I think it's a little more frightening to come to terms with the reality that you know
00:42:57
Speaker
And I think it allows a flexibility. The fire becomes more flexible.
00:43:05
Speaker
the image of fire, it doesn't necessarily need to be fire. So there's a flexibility in that too. Like it becomes maybe a metaphor. Right. Right. We return to the kind of broad nature of capital A apocalypse. Right. Once the whatever the apocalyptic, you know, whatever the apocalyptic, not inciting point, but endpoint is, once that consumes, if there's nothing else to consume,
00:43:34
Speaker
That it will it will cease right so so so then we get the the lines that you were referring to earlier the. I can't apply for jobs without thinking of the funeral i'm really interested in the way like.
00:43:54
Speaker
I do a sort of double take there because I think on the one hand, oh, did I miss an earlier reference? But no, it's just sort of unspecified. Like there is a funeral and either it's what, like an actual funeral in the person's life that they've attended and are haunted by or are going to have to attend.
00:44:15
Speaker
or it is a funeral in some non-literal sense. Yeah, you have thoughts about that? Yeah, I think, you know, there's another poem
00:44:36
Speaker
that is recent, I think. Janice Lobos, P.J., I don't know, I think, I don't know how to pronounce her last name, so please forgive me, but it's called There Will Be No Funeral, and it opens with the line, everywhere there's a cemetery and there will be no funeral, which is one of my favorite opening lines in any poem ever.
00:44:58
Speaker
And I always think about the use of invoking the funeral in a poem as a catch-all for a specific set of emotional reckonings or horrors or even kind of like elevating, perhaps a type of elevation, right? Because otherwise,
00:45:19
Speaker
I'm less interested in a poem or even an essay that treats the funeral as a site of excavation on its face. We're not doing a piano man thing at the funeral. We're sitting back in
00:45:34
Speaker
pointing out, you know, I'm interested in the funeral as either an inciting event that takes us somewhere else, or as it appears in this poem, something that has happened in the past that has forever altered the speaker, so much so that they are willing to reference it as though you already understand the degree to which it altered them.
00:45:52
Speaker
And you don't actually need to know anymore. Right, right, right. It feels related in that sense to me to what you were talking about earlier, you know, at the very beginning of the conversation about the way that M sort of creates the intimacy without sort of disclosing information.
00:46:16
Speaker
I'm curious, you know, I was curious about what you said about the we, I sort of, I get, or I think I understand where you're coming from with the sort of suspicion that you sort of naturally feel about a kind of universalizing we. I wonder what you make of those with that
00:46:32
Speaker
sort of suspicion in mind or that kind of skepticism in mind, what you make of the we in the three anaphoric lines. So for people who aren't familiar with that term that we're using, anaphora or anaphoric is the adjective.
00:46:48
Speaker
is a kind of repetition that happens at the beginning of a series of phrases or lines in this case. So in this case, it's, we are looking at shirts that go hard online. We are looking at the carcasses of houses. We are looking at each other and so on. That first line is very funny. So talk about it Heneef. We're talking about internet culture here, right?
00:47:07
Speaker
Right. Uh, first I do want to say the poet, uh, I want to say Janice Lobo Sapijow. So Janice Lobo Sapijow. Um, I can, I can look for a link and maybe try to share that too. That poem, there will be no funeral and, um,
00:47:23
Speaker
You know, I just I love her work. And so I wanted to get her name correct that so okay, so it's interesting to me because as someone who is interested in kind of like rhythm and timekeeping musical timekeeping it allows for this kind of
00:47:41
Speaker
delightful return, or the series of returns, wherein we understand the opening will give us the rhythm we crave, but what happens after the opening? So we are as the opening, or we are looking at the opening, that rhythmic familiarity. It provides that, which satiates my
00:48:04
Speaker
hunger for a kind of a drum solo or a guitar solo, if you will, something that kind of where a note stretches out for a long time. And the note, the note can be the same note, but it bends, you know, or twists or moves a little differently. So there's that kind of intrigues me. And so in that for does that, it has these returns where it's kind of like, we are here, but we're a little different and
00:48:32
Speaker
I personally like how this is kind of tender. I think this is a very tender poem. It's tenderness perhaps no more clear than it is in this moment of anaphora where we kind of go from looking at shirts that go hard online. Yes, it's kind of a
00:48:54
Speaker
a funny internet culture thing, but looking at the carcasses of houses and looking at each other, thinking of when we could have held hands. I actually think that last we are looking does not, you know, like it has to be extended to that.
00:49:09
Speaker
to that of when we could have held hands being its conclusion, not we are looking at each other. Because we are looking at each other on its own without that kind of logical conclusion doesn't actually do a ton. But that second part, again, brings us to the doorstep of some longing, which I think is really vital.
00:49:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's beautiful. And longing for what? Longing for, um, an opportunity for connection that was missed, um, in, in a, in a context where time is running out, maybe. Or, you know, some of this, I also think is a consideration of the time lost while laboring in a world that is speeding towards collapse. Right. You know, um,
00:50:00
Speaker
Again, like I think a lot of what we're seeing, at least I am seeing now with my friends is like, why am I doing the work that I'm doing? Why the world is ending? Why am I doing this, all of this? And so there's also this kind of question of how much time is being lost.
00:50:24
Speaker
that we could be spending with our many beloveds in many different ways. How much time is being lost by the amount of time that we are spending on laboring in a world that is deeply uncertain?
00:50:37
Speaker
Or in that question, what does job security taste like through the smoke? Security in a kind of perch in, let's say, a kind of capitalist system where the world onto which that's grafted is itself kind of falling apart. So what kind of security is that anyway is the idea, I guess.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think now, right now, like no job is secure. Job security is beyond, you know, job security is a myth that I think is perpetuated to keep people working. Job security is a myth that serves the
00:51:28
Speaker
serve CEOs that serve bosses, because the mythology behind it is if you work harder, or if you work hard enough, then you will be granted a kind of eternal comfort in the, you know, in the hallways of the workspace. But really, you know, so much of what this poem is getting at too is that
00:51:52
Speaker
the worker is not viewed, the worker is viewed often as a tool or a device for furthering the profits or the quote unquote value of a place. And I mean that, you know, I mean that with white collar workers as much, I mean that with blue collar workers as much, I mean that with white collar workers. Now, of course there are modes of exploitation that impact some workers differently depending on the labor they're performing. But I think if you are not, you know,
00:52:17
Speaker
There's no job security and the myth of job security will keep you working towards something without really defining for yourself what the something is.
00:52:32
Speaker
Yeah. You know what that makes me think of? I sort of go back to that line that we were laughing at earlier, the shirts that go hard online as a kind of, you know, my first thought on that line is, okay, so what is that a stand-in for? For us, for people, whoever the we are in the poem,
00:52:55
Speaker
being sort of frivolous or finding kind of comfort in funny things together, but as a kind of as a way of pacifying or mollifying ourselves.
Ongoing Apocalypse and Human Connection
00:53:11
Speaker
But I love, and I'm like totally persuaded by your account of how that that anaphoric rhythm that really quickly bends around. And I love that idea of a bended note.
00:53:22
Speaker
into something really tender, the idea of looking at each other, thinking of when we could have held hands. The word apocalypse comes back, and as it did before, it appears right after a line break, which makes me wanna say, the etymology of the word apocalypse means like,
00:53:48
Speaker
it comes from the word for like an uncovering, you know, like a revelation, you know? Yeah. It's like Greek, right? It's the Greek thing. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That's right. That's right. So, um, so it's, it's like, um, apocalypse as not as the, I mean, if you think about it that way, it, it, it would make
00:54:11
Speaker
more sense to think of apocalypse, not as the sudden emergence or appearance of a thing that was foreign and hadn't been there, but the kind of stripping away of some kind of false comfort to reveal the kind of danger that had been lurking all along, you know, but it's uncovered, in other words. And here the kind of question that seems to be being asked is like,
00:54:39
Speaker
Well, maybe we thought of apocalypse as like an event that would happen that would end everything, but instead the condition we find ourselves in is a kind of...
00:54:49
Speaker
Ongoing apocalypse like this is Franny Choi's whole thing. Yeah, right. This is Franny Choi's whole thing I mean, well, yeah, I mean Franny Choi I mean their last book and I think they're I mean most notably most notably their poem the world keeps ending and the world keeps going on Which opens with the line and I hope they don't listen to this because I don't want to fuck up their work or their life Before the apocalypse there was the apocalypse of boats
00:55:16
Speaker
boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky iron, boats making corpses, something about algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of a bomb mosque. And it kind of goes on like that. There was the apocalypse of leaving and having left. Before the apocalypse, there was an apocalypse of planes and pipelines. And to say that all of these things accumulate and create a world that has already ended several times over. It just hasn't ended us.
00:55:46
Speaker
you know, in which this poem taps into is, are we the last of it? Are we the last thing as a collective we, the collective living beings? Are we the last thing at the end of all of this consumption, of all the apocalyptic consumption? And so this poem actually aligns, I recently taught this poem alongside, for any of the world keeps ending and the world keeps going on, because I think they're in conversation with each other.
00:56:10
Speaker
which isn't, you know, there's not a, for me, I don't think it's pessimism. There's a realism in the approach to this work that says the end of the world, we have, we are living in a world that has already been ended, right? And how do we survive the best we can while we kind of wait for the final ending?
00:56:36
Speaker
That sounds horrible, I feel like. Well, that's fine, but what is there to do now?
00:56:46
Speaker
I love what happens in this poem when it's like the central question of this poem is there's seeking a name for the thing, seeking a name for the thing beyond apocalypse is a way to kind of spend time, right? To spend fulfilling time, to name what will kill you so that you can share a
00:57:12
Speaker
bond or a kinship over simply discussing it with someone you love. I really love the kids are calling it this, the kids are calling it this, the kids are calling it this. I wanted to ask you about those lines, so please talk about them. What do you love about them?
00:57:28
Speaker
I mostly adore the kind of awe that, you know, we're talking about a Naffer again, but the kind of wow, the exclamation point for folks who can't see the poem, this kind of revelatory entry that is a bit like, bitingly sarcastic as well. But it doesn't, I don't know how to word this well, it's not a sarcasm that feels harsh, it's a sarcasm that feels very resigned.
00:57:50
Speaker
the kids are calling it this and the kids are calling it a crisis, as if it is someone who perhaps as a younger self also called it these things before they became exhausted by the realities of it. And I come to that conclusion because we come out of that moment of anaphora with the central question of what does it mean to name the thing that will kill you. That means, at least for me, like the speaker has not settled on a name, they have instead settled on a question.
00:58:19
Speaker
You know, which actually, I think, you know, that to me makes the poem far more fascinating than had had the speaker in the poem decided, well, I've come, I've come to a name and I am renaming this and this is, you know, like I love a poem that ends on an unresolved question. And, you know, this, this does that extremely well.
00:58:44
Speaker
But yeah, yeah, no, please. But right, right before we get to that ending, we get the line. I mean, it's a great line break again. I'd love an ending line break. Less severe. Less severe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I remember the first time I read this poem, I got to that line and I was like,
00:59:06
Speaker
Yeah, me too. In poems, I feel like there's not a lot of moments where I kind of happily shrug and say, yeah, I think I would too. I think, yeah.
00:59:23
Speaker
And then that line bends right around into the, into like this job interview talk. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Yeah. Yeah. And I actually like, um, the question for me became less severe than what, but then the poem, everything that happens in every movement of the poem before that answers the question, a poem or a ending less severe than working towards an towards or working in the midst of an ending, you know? Um, right.
00:59:48
Speaker
All of this poem is, I think, truly hovering plainly the idea of what it means to give your time towards workforce labor in a world that is ending. And I say that to say, a couple months ago, my therapist referred to me as an apocalyptic romantic, which means that all of my impulses around romance rely on the reality of the world is ending. And so there's an urgency
01:00:17
Speaker
around my romantics because it is all filtered through the lens of the world ending. I have to grab my friends and hold them close and tell them how much I love them because the world is ending, or I have to tell this person who I've met at a party that I would like to take them on a date because I would not tell them to be fair individually at the world, but the impulse in the mind is that.
01:00:42
Speaker
It's like the scene in a movie where an airplane's going down and you grab the person next to you or kiss the person you've wanted to kiss or whatever. But on a more serious scale. On a much more serious scale. I think that this poem is operating through that lens. It's operating through this lens of if what I understand about
01:01:04
Speaker
the apocalyptic nature of the world we are in is true. I don't have a lot of time. And I don't really want to spend that time in office or at a... And I think actually by doing that, it...
01:01:20
Speaker
I think that one way that labor gets romanticized in this country, I can't speak for other countries, but definitely in America, is because there's this idea about nobility and work. I was actually talking to a friend about this last night. I think if one feels good about the work they're doing, there is nobility, and I don't think any jobs are
01:01:41
Speaker
I don't want to veer into some kind of thing where we're looking down on work because workers are important and workers are vital, but slash and.
01:01:54
Speaker
There is also the impulse in this country that is a little bit more nefarious to me, which implies that one should be defined by their labor. No matter how noble the labor is or no matter how you even feel about it, you can be the person who says, I love my job. I am a teacher and I love my students. I love the impact I have on these lives and I love my job.
01:02:15
Speaker
If you are only defined by your labor at the end of the world, then you have that is treason to everyone you love outside of whatever your container of labor is that's treasonous to the people who are within your reach who are also.
01:02:34
Speaker
waiting victims for an apocalypse. Say more about treasonous. I'm curious about that word. I want to understand. I understand why that might be a sad state of affairs or not what I would want, but the word treasonous surprised me and I want to understand that. I think it's worse than that. I think
01:02:56
Speaker
If I know what I know, if I am witnessing the world the same way that people I love are witnessing the world, and granted, we might be witnessing it at different volumes at any given time, but we're all bearing witness to the horrors of the world and whatever descents into an ending that the world is reaching, the world as we know it at least. And if we have the historical memory of the many ways the world has ended in our lifetime or has accelerated the process of ending, then we actually
01:03:27
Speaker
need each other. We need each other in ways that are not defined by what we produce. I need to see the people I love as something greater than vessels for production of things. And so I think if somebody gets so wrapped up in their identity as a worker slash producer, because again,
01:03:52
Speaker
This is all, even if you are, again, doing work you love, it is not necessarily always serving the self. It is serving someone else who is profiting off of your labor, which is how it works, right? But at the same time, to define oneself by that in the midst of a world that is ending means that there are
01:04:11
Speaker
I think. I can only speak for myself, I guess. If I were to define myself by my work as the world was ending, then I think it would be very painful for me in my final moments.
01:04:26
Speaker
it would be lonely for me too. So by treasonous, I mean you are not allowing yourself the fullness of comfort that is waiting for you on the other side of your labor. And at the end of the world, that will be the end for all of us, or at the end of your individual world. If you outlive whatever, at the end of your individual world,
01:04:51
Speaker
There has to be something touchable that makes it so that you feel your life was defined by something greater.
01:05:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess by definition, in a kind of literal way, none of us has witnessed the end of the world, at least in one sense. In another sense, I guess we were witnessing it all the time. All the time. And if you have ever done something as, I mean, not ordinary is the wrong word, but
01:05:22
Speaker
as old as time and every life or most every life, I think in one way or another will include it as to like see someone die. Then you might know some something about what what it is to to sort of live in the presence of apocalypse.
01:05:55
Speaker
how to, you know, that question you asked, you said that so many people, friends of yours are asking recently, like,
01:06:04
Speaker
how do we keep living our lives now? I mean, that's a very real question. I have one last question for you, Hanif, before I thought maybe we could end by my asking you to read the poem again, but before I get to that, you're talking about just now about,
01:06:32
Speaker
what might be treasonous about letting yourself, letting your life or your value as a human being be defined by the work that you do, the job that you have, or the work that you do, even if it's not a job in the technical sense of things. And the work that you do as a producer of things, I think was a phrase you used. So my question is, how
01:06:59
Speaker
if at all different or what difference would it make if any if those things that you're a producer of are things like art or poems or songs or essays or is that
01:07:15
Speaker
Is that really, am I, is that a kind of a naive question? I don't think it's a naive question. Is that work? Is that the same kind of work or is, you know, might it be? I don't know. No, I mean, I don't think any work is, you know, I don't think it's the same kind of work. There's a difference. I am very aware of the fact that
01:07:35
Speaker
my life is different now than it was when I was working a serving job and a call center job, right? And it would be foolish of me to insist that all labor is labor, but to insist upon to ignore the different tones of labor in the different class. Also,
01:07:56
Speaker
the different class intersections and the different abilities afforded by the intersections of class and work. And so all of that is different, but also, yeah, I mean, I say often, I know people who have heard me do Q&A, have heard me say this often, I would...
01:08:17
Speaker
It would bother me a great deal if I were only remembered as someone who wrote things that people liked. It would bother me a great, great deal because I feel very fortunate that I have a life of varied interest and a lot of touchstones like other people who keep me afloat. I have a community I love and I have organizing community I love and I live in a city I love.
01:08:45
Speaker
And all these things can't just be reflected in my work and then not touched in my real life. I can't name my friends in my work and then not text them back, even though I've not created texting people back. All right. I feel like in this mode of my life and this in the past month specifically, I've been bad at texting people back.
01:09:05
Speaker
But I think I get it. But I want to live a life that is larger than my work always. And that would be the same if that'd be if my work was as a marketing director, or if my work was as a server at a diner, or if my work was working the night shift at a hotel, or if my work was someone who wrote books.
Life Beyond Labor
01:09:29
Speaker
I want to live a life that far outpaces
01:09:31
Speaker
what I produce. So what I'm hearing you say is a kind of response to, a strong response to that line, which I know you know, I feel like it's a version of a tradition, of a line from traditional song, the, you know, from Gillian Welsh's, I dream a highway, Lord let me die with a hammer in my hand. Yeah.
01:09:56
Speaker
You don't want to do that. It sounds like you don't want to do that. Right? That's the John Henry idea. John Henry idea. Yeah. No, no. I want to build a life where I could just stop and do something else if I wanted to. Someone, you know,
01:10:14
Speaker
Every time I finish a book, I make peace with the reality of that might be the last one. Could be the last one, right? Like there's always this year was a project that I dreamed up and pursued. You know, I got to the end of it. I said this, I might not have another book in me. And I, and I have to make peace with the reality that I have given enough. And I've, I've, I've, you know, I have so much gratitude. Most people don't get to write six books, you know? We'll see if we don't get the right one.
01:10:44
Speaker
I think that I really am someone who makes peace with what I have done and have so much gratitude for what I've been able to do. And then kind of much like this poem, I'm skeptical of planning for the future. Because the future feels uncertain in so many ways that don't seem to deserve planning.
01:11:07
Speaker
Well, you've done enough today. I want to thank you for it. Thank you for having me. I really want to thank you for this conversation. I wonder if you could send us out, Hanif, with maybe just, maybe I lied. You haven't done quite enough. Would you read the poem for us one more time? I would love to. I love this poem. I'd love to read it again. Thank you. Job security.
Reading of 'Job Security'
01:11:30
Speaker
I tell M I'd love to have something lined up. What a particular post-apocalyptic peculiarity. Comfort in the planned future. The refrain of flaming trees only goes so far. The fire has to stop once it has burnt the last of it down. Are we the last of it? I can't apply for jobs without thinking of the funeral.
01:11:52
Speaker
I tell my mother I'm not having children because I don't trust the world they'd grow into. The truth is, I'd rather keep my money, my sanity, etc. We are looking at shirts that go hard online. We are looking at the carcasses of houses. We are looking at each other, thinking of when we could have held hands. What does job security taste like through the smoke? What does apocalypse feel like when it keeps fucking going? What do we call it now?
01:12:20
Speaker
remember thinking, wow, the kids are calling it an emergency. Wow. The kids are calling it a crisis. Wow. The kids are calling it an apocalypse. What does it mean to name the thing that will kill you? I'd love to have something lined up. I'd love an ending less severe. What are your strengths and weaknesses? What does it mean to name the thing that will kill you?
01:12:45
Speaker
That was Hanif Abdurraqib reading Job Security by Uman Kalra. Hanif, it's been a gift to get to talk with you for the last hour, and I want to thank you again for it. Thank you. This was a real pleasure. I love the show. It's an honor to be here. Yeah. Well, thanks again. And thank you, dear listeners, for hanging out with us. We'll have more for you soon. Be well, everyone.