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Morgan Parker
512 Plays5 months ago
Morgan Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and has been hailed by The New York Times as “a dynamic craftsperson” of “considerable consequence to American poetry.”
Parker’s debut book of nonfiction, You Get What You Pay For is available at your favorite bookstore.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Vellante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
What Makes Contemporary Art?
00:00:16
Speaker
I used to work in museums so I think a lot about this and it was contemporary art museums so there's a lot of question about you know like I
00:00:25
Speaker
was in charge of one exhibition where we had to put a burrito on a windowsill every day and that was that was our you know so I have a lot of thoughts and I've had a lot a lot of conversations about burritos good
00:00:39
Speaker
It was not for eating. Although, so I worked in visitor services and programming. So I was kind of the outward facing. So, you know, the curators had us in charge of placing the burrito every morning before we opened the museum and replacing it if someone took the burrito. So often we would have to be like, okay, here's 10 bucks. You've destroyed the artworks. Thank you.
00:01:05
Speaker
not for eating. And of course the artist was like, you have to get the burrito from this place, a whole thing. So, you know, and that's the question, right, of contemporary art, of, you know, found art often.
Art as Communication
00:01:22
Speaker
It's like what is the
00:01:24
Speaker
How is it being displayed? And just by being displayed in a museum, it becomes art and not a burrito. I guess I buy into that in a way, if we are thinking about it as something that's being on display and being presented as art.
00:01:44
Speaker
But I think that goes back to my connection to it, which is really like it's communicating with another person. So the minute that it leaves my computer, the minute that it leaves a studio space and gets offered up to the public, then it has the potential to work on the level of art, I guess.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I asked, you know, it's such a fun question. And I think, you know, the burrito example, it's always like provocative.
The Essence of Poetry
00:02:17
Speaker
And I talked about, you know, Andy Warhol's, you know, Brillo box, which I think is a fantastic sculpture. And I'm still grappling with why I think that or why I'm so attracted to that.
00:02:28
Speaker
And, you know, with different forms of art, you know, with regards to poetry, you know, like I said, I had studied it. And one way I had studied it initially, which really threw me off, is I took an, gosh, an old English, middle English poetry college course, and the professor was like,
00:02:50
Speaker
I don't give a shit what the words are. It was like sound. It was all, everything was sound. And obviously you can read it and see what's the story. I want my head to go with that. But it was such a radical step I took into that and then just hearing the sounds of where that poetry was. I thought that's just so fascinating because
00:03:16
Speaker
enjoying spoken word in that immediacy of voice. I mean, the world seems like super complicated and apps and technology advancing. But at its core, spoken word feels like that same voice, you know, speaking out and has that immediacy to it.
00:03:42
Speaker
Regarding the content of your work, what I find so inviting about it is that it feels comfortable to me in the sense of entering culture and American culture and hearing the Black experience.
Pop Culture in Poetry
00:04:06
Speaker
Within that, it's some hip in a way where I can be entertained by your musical references and really get into that. I wanted to ask you, within the poetry circuit and such, is there this view, when you bring in popular culture, thinking about the snootiness of poetry, is there a battle that you end up in as far as
00:04:35
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you know, referring to culture and talking about Venus Williams and Beyonce where it's kind of like people giving you a little bit of the side eye or something.
00:04:43
Speaker
Definitely. Yes. Less more so now because I've been doing it. When I published There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyonce and it did well, I was like, wow, this means that no other black girl who writes a book about Nicki Minaj or whatever, she won't have to deal with that same thing because
00:05:07
Speaker
I did this thing and it was received as put, you know what I mean? But I got a lot of questions when that book was coming out. And even with my first book of like, is this poetry?
Identity and Art Reception
00:05:18
Speaker
And, you know, I got an MFA, like, you know, like I, yes, it is. There are, there's cystinas in that book, you know, there's a lot of formal stuff happening. And one thing I always pointed back to was, you know, one of my,
00:05:34
Speaker
White ancestors Frank O'Hara who uses pop culture all the time or did and I don't believe had the same sort of scrutiny at T.S. Eliot to go even further back.
00:05:49
Speaker
read the wasteland and we need it sort of like dissected because of the cultural references that are no longer relevant. But now we have Google. So and I really am not that worried that people aren't going to know who beyond you know what I mean? Like that's not, it's really not a concern anymore. And
00:06:08
Speaker
I haven't found, even when folks don't get every reference, I haven't found that they don't understand. It's less about that specificity and more about the fact that specificity is included so that it feels authentic because these are the brands and names and sounds and soundtracks that we're living with. So it's more of an authentic
00:06:35
Speaker
experience that's being relayed rather than something that kind of puts pop culture over here and high art over here.
00:06:48
Speaker
That's not how I experienced the world. And that's not the world that I want to represent in my work because it would feel false. But yeah, it has been a, you know, I couldn't believe getting questions that are like, is this poetry? I'm like, it says poetry on the back of the book. So it is, you know, and it's not, it has line breaks, it has, you know, and obviously, if I were talking about, I have a friend who has a series of poems that are all called Chet Baker.
00:07:18
Speaker
That's not Beyonce, you know what I mean? And I think, and he's not a black woman. So I want, it's hard for me to imagine that at least 50% of the reason I'm getting those questions is because of my identity and the identity of the folks that I'm summoning. If I weren't summoning a rapper, if I were talking about, I don't know.
00:07:42
Speaker
Whatever. If I were talking about Billie Holiday or something, then we might be having a different conversation. But I do find that people have this delineation in their mind about what is pop and what is lowbrow and highbrow, I guess, and never the twin shall meet. And it's disrespectful of poetry or it's disrespectful of blah, blah, blah, and it waters down this. I really don't know because I
00:08:12
Speaker
again, my goal in making work is to communicate and to connect. So that's connection. You can connect on someone on the most surface of levels of like, we've both heard the same song. And then it allows for this sort of intimacy with the reader where I'm able to say much more. You know what I mean? I don't just stop at
00:08:37
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describing pop culture or bringing it up, there are deeper truths in the poem that laying that groundwork of familiarity with pop culture allows me to go a little bit deeper in the poem, I think.
00:08:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I find it just so engaging and inviting because your ideas and what you do sometimes are surprising, and basically what they're bringing in for me and my learning. Sounds strange to say, or maybe it isn't, but I find myself learning.
00:09:17
Speaker
so much through it just by the way of viewing things in a historical context.
Poetry's Role in Society
00:09:23
Speaker
I asked you about art and usually I follow it up with like what's the role of art but I'm gonna ask it like towards poetry you know it's like 2024 here you know poetry always gets a reaction right I adore it you know there's all these tropes and stuff like that but but but poetry is is amazing and we all continue to talk about it but in fact
00:09:45
Speaker
Still here, yeah. It's still here. You know, 2024 here we're recording. What do you think the role of poetry is now? Is there anything different about it now? Or, you know, what is the role? You know, to tell the truth, I think I'm looking at this
00:10:14
Speaker
I have two quotes above my desk I'm looking at. One is June Jordan, who says, I'm going to write to you, poetry is a political action undertaken for the sake of information. The faith, the exorcism, and the lyrical invention that telling the truth makes possible.
00:10:32
Speaker
Poetry means taking control of the language of your life um, I think about that last piece a lot uh in terms of there's so much language of my life that i'm not in control of that I hear that i'm You know so much input that is often really damaging
00:10:49
Speaker
and the power of poetry to reclaim that, to reframe it often, to look at it differently, to use language that is empowering rather than degrading. That is what it can do and be.
00:11:07
Speaker
Uh just by fucking with language, you know, like that that's kind of the possibility behind it just by uh changing syntax you can kind of change the way that you're that you previously saw something um, and that is a form of taking control of because language the
00:11:29
Speaker
what we say and how we say it is so related to what we're thinking. So if we can infiltrate language, then we can infiltrate thinking in a way. And I think a lot about
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, that exorcism, that invention, that telling the truth makes possible. That's what poetry is. And I think, not that the role is different now, but as it was in June Jordan's time, she wrote quite a bit about Palestine, as it was in Nikki Giovanni's time and, you know,
00:12:08
Speaker
in times of Black Revolution, it has always been a form of telling the truth. And it's always been an urgency against misinformation. And we're seeing that played out politically.
00:12:23
Speaker
in just the zeitgeist right now and the cultural consciousness that everyone has. So maybe not that poetry has a different power, but that its power is particularly important right now as it has been in all these other times where misinformation is really at the heart of our fighting with each other. It has the power to be an antidote to that.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, there's a power within it for me. I find when I'm reading poetry, and I'm fascinated by words, just read and read and read. I mean, love words. But within poetry and its construction, when well executed, there's nothing like it as far as
00:13:11
Speaker
I'm being able to explain show many things very quickly and and I see that and and that's why it can be such a Thorough and moving and fulfilling experience the other other piece. I was thinking about like in asking the questions I've been thinking about this Lee lately just the like the philosophy in the background um Philosopher Heidegger with
00:13:36
Speaker
is works on technology, right? And talking about technology and its threat to humans. And this is about a century ago. And I've always found it such a kind of weird twist at the end. And it has to do with truth. And he basically says, particular poets, like they contain the truth, like the heart of it, the entity, the ability to fight back is in poetry. And I was always like really kind of, you know, thought that was like a weird twist.
00:14:05
Speaker
for a philosopher, but I think there's something into it because, you know, outside our voice, you know, if poetry is idiosyncratic in the culture, it comes at the culture in a strange way. And that's why I believe in the power of it, you know, and think that there's something really powerful there.
00:14:29
Speaker
I wanted to ask you about your new collection of essays. You get what you pay for. I'm so excited to hear the expansion out of ideas and just, well, I love the poetic language within an essay as well, so we're not being robbed. Folks, we're not being robbed. We're not at all. I know. Don't worry.
00:14:52
Speaker
Nothing about the really long poetry book to me. Honestly, like now when I read I'm like this is I was using the same muscles same muscles, but just in a lot more words, you know, yeah, yeah, I um and um in in and I just I just uh really uh Adored that book you've been you know, I got some time, uh, you know with you here in chat with you and you've been talking, you know a lot about um
00:15:21
Speaker
about the essays. What's been the feedback? Are people kind of wowed or surprised or they said, wow, this is a nice big book of Morgan Parker expanded out a little bit more. It's been a lot of questions about
00:15:41
Speaker
the differences between poetry and the essay, which is interesting to a point. But I am a poet, and so did approach the essays from more of a lyrical place, which I think made the writing process very frustrating, but also made the book closer to what I wanted it to be. And
Poetry vs Essays
00:16:10
Speaker
It was a little bit of a challenge just to figure out what my voice sounded like in the essay form. And it takes a lot of different, you know, it takes a lot of different registers. And that's not always what you find in a book of essays, but I do that a lot in my poetry books, and I wanted to do that in the book of essays as well to kind of like shift registers, have some tongue-in-cheek language and have some sarcastic language, and to
00:16:36
Speaker
shift within even each individual essay. So I did approach it with a lot of the same techniques, repetition, and longer metaphors. And I read all the sentences out loud, every single one, multiple times. So really thinking about
00:16:58
Speaker
language, not only precision of language and using the exact right word for what I wanted to get across, but also the right sound to the right word. That's something that poets think about. Not all
00:17:15
Speaker
prose writers are thinking on that same level. They're just thinking maybe on the first precision level. But for me, I know that something happens on a secondary level of what you're talking about. That's like, it's rhythm, it's sound, and there is meaning.
00:17:30
Speaker
that can be gleaned in that. It's not something you can put your finger on, but it is a way of reinforcing what's been written, reinforcing the words, you know, the rhythm helps with that. So really thinking about how to use that in an essay was
00:17:51
Speaker
It was really hard because, like you said, a poem is trying to do a lot of things in a really short amount of time. And I wanted to do that, but I also am aware of the constraints of the sentence and wanted to be able to, like you said, kind of stretch out with a lot of these ideas. But parts of that was frustrating because they were a lot of the same ideas that I've talked about in my poetry books, and I had already done so so succinctly. So it was kind of like,
00:18:20
Speaker
How do I step this out and connect all these dots that for me, they're also already right there. So that process was interesting, but it was a fun one because I do think it was a new way of stretching my poetic voice rather than a distraction from it. I really do think that it helps to hone in on that attention to language and rhythm
00:18:45
Speaker
Without the aid of line breaks or with that, you know Having to do that within the constraints of pros I think was a really cool challenge in the end But it has been you know
00:19:02
Speaker
It's been a different reception than my other books. I think this one will take some time for folks to read. It took many years for me to write. And there's just a lot going on in it. So I think there's a lot more conversations to be had around it rather than
00:19:20
Speaker
reaction, which is different than with the poetry books. People are consuming it. They're really getting the punch of everything right away. Whereas with this one, I think it will be a thing where people are taking their time, have to think about it. Maybe it works on them in a little of a slower way. But it has been cool to see the interest in poets writing
00:19:46
Speaker
essays and the interest and trust really in folks like really wanting to know what I have to say on these different topics, not just in an entertaining poem way, you know. So that has been, yeah, just a really interesting and a cool way to interact with old readers and new ones also, you know.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, hell yeah. There was a really poignant part. I mean, there's different essays I could talk about, but just in talking about the Williams sisters and talking about Venus Williams. And it was this idea that you really distilled of the pressure, the absolute pressure, you know, to do things the right way in front of white eyes and in culture to
00:20:37
Speaker
Not be that upset to not manifest too much blackness on the tennis court and the way you conveyed that was really powerful because It it
00:20:51
Speaker
It needs to be described, like the psychological experience. But also, through that, how does somebody become a hero or become a queen in that sense? And you build on that.
The Dual Pressure on Black Athletes
00:21:04
Speaker
I have lived, I have done this, I have done it my way, and I made it through. But the pressure of the outside, not only of performance, but I'm waiting for you to fuck up, black person. I'm waiting for you to fuck up or yell at the lying judge and look at that.
00:21:21
Speaker
Black woman yelling at the line judge I tell you that really brought it brought it home for me because it's a whole dynamic that you're talking about that She has to work and lift in its tennis, of course I mean not even to get into that whole back right not even to get into the historical implications of that and and what is threatened in by just her body being on the court, you know, yeah, I
00:21:42
Speaker
That's the thing. It's like she can't just show up and have a challenging game. She has to have the additional challenge of being a symbol of something. And that pressure is on all of us.
00:21:57
Speaker
it's useful to look at these bigger names and these bigger personalities and see it, but then to apply it to the everyday black person. We're all dealing with this on our levels, on our scales. Maybe it's not a national stage, but there are ways that we're battling, first of all, not only internal pressure. Someone like Serena Williams is
00:22:22
Speaker
probably so hard on herself, you know what I mean? When you're ambitious, that internal pressure to achieve and then you've got this outside pressure that is on one hand encouraging you and wanting you to be this symbol for a whole group of people
00:22:41
Speaker
And then this other group that's putting pressure on you to fail because it's affected and because it follows some kind of storyline that we're used to. And I think
00:22:54
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's what's great about her and that's what's great about Black celebrities that have held on to themselves in a way because we know that they've had to battle so many small and large pressure chambers, you know, and it is
00:23:16
Speaker
unfair but it's something that comes with the territory and I think like you said it's worth talking about because I think it's easy for us to think well you know her only job is to show up and you know when the tennis game but but that's not even close you know
00:23:36
Speaker
I thought that was just really so powerful to think about. It's a dog friendly podcast. Morgan, what's the name of the dog? The dog is a guest now. Shirley. Shirley's on this episode too. I just didn't announce that. That's why it was an intrusion.
00:23:58
Speaker
Um, yeah, but um, no, uh, uh, thank you so much for that. I think, um, uh, in the book, uh, I, I thought about a lot of black, uh, standup comics, um, that I listened to
Poetry and Comedy
00:24:14
Speaker
over time. And then, um, in, in going through, uh, your work, it made me think a little bit more towards, um, not just standup comedy and the, the ins and the ads and what philosophy that there is in there, but, um,
00:24:27
Speaker
You know, also within poetry and the word and to speak to, you know, what is the case. And thank you so much for your
Creating Art from Experience
00:24:43
Speaker
essays. Everybody, you get what you pay for. It's the new essay collection by Morgan Parker. I got a couple quick things for you. Actually, one's not super quick, but
00:24:56
Speaker
question in the show is Why is there something rather than nothing? But I also ask it another way for creators if you so choose is when you create are you creating something from nothing? I Think so. I Mean not from nothing. Right? I guess because it's all from Stuff. Yeah off of past of my life of my internal shit but
00:25:26
Speaker
That's one reason I like being an artist because I like the idea that I can make something that wasn't there before. That is awesome to me. I can't make music, but I like the idea that I can invent something, even if it's just
00:25:45
Speaker
Language, even if it's just a sentence If the page was blank now, it's not, you know, the that is its own magic So it's not from nothing, but it is putting something in place that wasn't there before Which I think is really special. Yeah. Yeah, I'll ask you one weird question Was was Bill Cosby ever America's dad in your opinion? I mean
00:26:13
Speaker
Bill Cosby on the show. Yes. Yeah. I thought he was too. Yeah. But he's dead. That was a cultural piece. Mm hmm. That was a different time. I felt it was. It really was. Yeah. That was pretty.
00:26:26
Speaker
pretty wild. You get into the Cosby stuff in the book and approach it in such a way that I highly suggest everybody read Morgan
Morgan Parker's Influence
00:26:39
Speaker
Parker. I would say then anyways, Morgan Parker, you are my favorite poet. I think you are just a phenomenal writer. I have learned so much from you. And I just want you to know authentically, it is a true thrill for me to have you on this show.
00:26:56
Speaker
Thank you so much. We've never met, but you mean a lot to me. And then also opening up a poetry at this point in my life. I'm a little bit over 50 now, but I was talking about the teens again into poetry. Poetry has always been around for me.
00:27:13
Speaker
It's done something magical for me now and is a really good way for me to get at things, which I kind of forgot about, right? We all forget about that. I wrote poetry when I was 17 and I stuck it in a drawer, but really the power still remains. Yeah.
00:27:30
Speaker
All right. Finally, where do folks go? You can go to Bookstore, everybody, and get these titles. Any bookstore, yes. Bookshop.org. Bookshop.
Where to Find Morgan Parker's Work
00:27:44
Speaker
proceeds there go to your favorite indie bookstores and You can find me on Instagram Morgan Apple zero Yeah, yeah Since I got a new name, so all right. I wanted to say one thing about
00:28:06
Speaker
There are more beautiful things than Beyonce. When I love a book so much and it's like what I want to hold on to. And I'm like, I'm not going to give it away because I'm a collector, which is a form of a session. Yeah, typewriters here. Yeah, there are many more.
00:28:23
Speaker
But I had this, there's some books that I'm like, okay, for the betterment of somebody being able to find this on a used bookshelf, just like I would want to find it on a used bookshelf, I'm going to bring it over and apologize and put it there. So I did it, but it was for the collective and it override my individual need to have that.
00:28:43
Speaker
Right next to me. I still I haven't I haven't given up others are your books yet. So Like that one is one that people are always like well someone stole my copies Someone and they didn't give it back
00:29:00
Speaker
No, I was tearing up as I brought it into policy. The rest of the world, you need this, so it's in somebody else's hand. Everybody, Morgan Parker, great pleasure to talk to you. Great, great luck and fortune in all the work that you do.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:29:19
Speaker
And really appreciate your time. And best of luck with the tours, the interviews, everything you want to do.
00:29:27
Speaker
Thank you. Appreciate you. Take care, Morgan. Have a good one. You too. This is Something Rather Than Nothing. And listeners, to stay connected with us and our guests, visit somethingratherthannothing.com.
00:29:54
Speaker
Join our mailing list for exclusive updates and access to guest created art. If you enjoyed this episode or any episode, please like, subscribe, leave a review on your podcast platform. People really read that shit.
00:30:08
Speaker
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00:30:36
Speaker
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