Transcript
Kamran Javadizadeh: Hello everyone and welcome to Close Readings. I'm your host Kamran Javadizadeh and today I'm really pleased to have Lindsay Turner back on the podcast um after, I don't know, passage of time. It's pretty weird stuff, but I think it's been maybe two years since ah she came on the podcast to talk about Elizabeth Bishop today.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um Lindsay is on the podcast um because I've asked her if she would come on to talk about Alice Notley. So this, I think, will be the third in a series of conversations that I've been having with guests about um the poet Alice Notley who recently passed away. i believe it was May 19th. Not sure exactly what day this podcast will come out on, but but yeah, very recently from from today, the day of our recording.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um The um poem that Lindsay has chosen to talk about is a selection from a book called Waltzing Matilda, um the the um the selection that is headed with the date December 12, 1980.
Kamran Javadizadeh: nineteen eighty And um I'll let Lindsay set up you know what that book is like and tell you a little bit about where the selection that she's chosen from that um book fits in here.
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah But let me remind you, those of you who have not, um are not already Lindsay Turner superfans or um have a ah perfect memory of podcast introductions past about who Lindsay is, she's a poet.
Kamran Javadizadeh: She's a critic and she's a translator. She's the author of the poetry collections, The Upstate, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023 and Songs and Ballads, which came out from Prelude Books in 2018. And she's she's also translated countless things from french including Stéphane Bouquet's The Next Loves, which was long-listed for the National Translation Awards, shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, and named a top new york times ah top poetry book of 2019 of the New York Times.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Lindsay is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Case Western Reserve University and lives in Cleveland. um where I think she's joining us from today.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Are you home in Cleveland, Lindsay?
Lindsay Turner: Yes, yes, Cleveland it is.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Hey, Lindsay. um Let me say more before we begin this conversation in earnest. um Lindsay has written about Notley um both in a kind of academic mode and then also briefly, more casually, and much more recently after her passing, after Notley's passing on Lindsay's um quite excellent sub stack and I will um provide links to all of that and I have a feeling that the issues that Lindsay brings up um in all of those venues will arise naturally here issues like labor like motherhood like art making and the interrelation of
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah three um Lindsay's Substack is, um I think, beautifully about many of those things, even when it's not directly about Notley, but but also when it is, Lindsay writes,
Kamran Javadizadeh: writes, among other things, about her experience of motherhood and um sort of ambivalences, interesting ambivalences about that experience, interesting sort of contradictions that are contained within that experience.
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah ah She had a really fascinating post, fascinating ah to me and and and I'm sure to many of you, on thinking about motherhood as a kind of um ontological state versus thinking of it as a sort of relational state. So what does it mean to be a mother versus what does it be mean to sort of be someone's mother or to to to be seen as a mother. and um And it occurs to me that we might think of like the state of what it is to be a poet or a writer of any kind in similar terms you know as as a kind of ontological condition statement about one's um ah ah
Kamran Javadizadeh: fundamental reality versus as ah as a kind of mode that one adopts in relation to other people and other practices and other parts of life. Lindsay writes movingly about how one experiences um about how the experiences that ah one has of such states inflects the experience of the passage of time in particular.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um and And then in relation to some of this, and in ah in a particularly moving post to me, she reflects on the unlawful detention of Mahmoud Khalil,
Kamran Javadizadeh: um who was kept from the birth of his child. um Lindsay, in that um post, writes the following. She says, if what I am saying is that a child's arrival is one of the ways time leaps joyfully forward, then what does it mean that this man was disallowed from the actual living of his life?
Kamran Javadizadeh: This is one of the most terrible deprivations I can imagine, the deprivation of time's forward motion. um That's That's Lindsay on our sub stack. I quote it for you here because since reading that post, it's been much on my mind.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Um, ah Lindsay's way of of um putting into words um the particular cruelty of um of this detention um tied in, I think, to her deep and kind of thoroughgoing understanding of what
Kamran Javadizadeh: what it's like to, uh, to be alive and to, uh, to be alive in a body that is in constantly shifting relations to other people's lives and bodies and, um, to, um, political formations and to, um, and to labor,
Kamran Javadizadeh: um and to children. um So ah when Notley passed, Lindsay was one of the people I wanted to talk to about her because I think um these questions become urgent ones in different contexts for Alice Notley as well.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um I'm really glad to have Lindsay here on my screen and on the podcast to talk with you today. Lindsay Turner, welcome back to Close Readings. How are you doing today?
Lindsay Turner: Thank you. Thank you, Cameron. I am i'm doing well. ah The sun is out in Cleveland, so that's always a good thing. But thank you for that but introduction and for speaking, for dignifying the sub stack, which often feels just like dashing off dashing off some things.
Lindsay Turner: um you know I don't and don't think i understand what it is to be a person, but it's it's nice to have a kind of its it's nice to have a place to put some words while we're all trying to figure this figure all this stuff out.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, sure.
Lindsay Turner: um Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Well, I mean, like a sub stack seems to me like for people who do it well, and I have one that I thought like I haven't added to and in a very long time and that I never did well. I sort of just used it as a kind of um appendage to the podcast or something.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But love for people like you who do it well, It seems to me that it's like one of the modes um that allows for, and maybe like ah podcast is like this too, that allows for a kind of messiness or a kind of casualness um that is maybe a departure from the, for those of us who are writers who publish things occasionally, but from the like the kind of
Lindsay Turner: Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um polish of that kind of writing or the demands of that kind of writing. But that, that at that, you know, if that's some cost that we pay for operating in these more sort of spontaneous modes, that there's some, some benefit that comes along with that too, that it's like the letting in of surprise and of life in, in its various ways. So don't know, I'm ah I'm a fan of your, of your sub stack and people should subscribe to it.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: That's a great segue to Notley because I think so so much of our work across our work is about is about letting in the messiness.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Well, so so let's get there. I mean, tell us um if you would about how and when it was that you came to be a reader of Alice Notley um and sort of like what those early experiences of reading her were like for you.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, yeah. um i've just I was going through my email this morning trying to find the earliest mention of Alice Notley because actually I can't remember.
Lindsay Turner: it's funny. I can't remember whether I read Descent of Allette, which i know I know I read it first. And I can't remember if I read it at the end of college or after college, maybe when I was living in Paris, ah right after college.
Lindsay Turner: but I think that Descent of Allette is a sort of not least starting point and for many people and and, you know, I guess um for good reasons, maybe her her best known work.
Lindsay Turner: um I read that first and it blew my mind. as it i think it i think I think many people have this experience.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um I had never read anything like it. um There isn't really anything like it. um i you know i Because i I had a ah good college English education, I had read my Milton. um you know I had read the classics. I knew what an epic was.
Lindsay Turner: um I knew what a descent into the underworld story was, and I knew how significant it was. And then and then someone told me, I think people had probably been telling me to read The Descent of Allette for a while before I read it.
Lindsay Turner: um and And that work changed my writing. That work and some of some of the some of Alice Notley's work that came out um in the 2010s-ish was what I was reading while I was doing my MFA.
Lindsay Turner: um I just have a copy of, yeah, I think I reviewed Reason, Another Woman, which came in 2010. which came out in two thousand and ten um And ah i was i was doing my MFA at NYU, taking the subway every day back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan, um thinking a lot about about that that ah the setting of a let.
Lindsay Turner: um And really all the work i all the work I wrote in my undergraduate thesis, in retrospect, um it's not very good. um and it But it was it was you know it was writing that needed to happen to get me to the next place.
Lindsay Turner: And it was all really done under Notley's spell.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: the sort of long energetic lines I was just trying to get as much in as possible. And it felt like a i it's the the kind of work you look back on and you think like, well, it might not be very good, but I needed to do it.
Lindsay Turner: um And and so so I think and think Alice Notley, her later work was really important to me. um in that kind of period of my life.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: right
Lindsay Turner: i got to I met Alice in 2013. I interviewed her in Paris for the Boston Review. um and I kept reading her work. And then in later, I guess maybe 2015, 2016, 2017, I was finishing up my dissertation on poetry and labor at the University of Virginia.
Lindsay Turner: And that was when I started reading the early work.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: I had read Mysteries of Small Houses, which is sort of ah ah book that came out that came later, but is a reflection on some on some of the earlier periods in Alice Notley's life. And I thought, well, i should just go read this earlier work if I'm thinking about about labor and about domestic labor.
Lindsay Turner: And I ordered, found a copy, I found copies of Waltzing Matilda. i'm holding I'm holding the book up um because it has this amazing George Schneeman cover um and songs for the Unborn Second.
Lindsay Turner: Baby is the same. These are these like beautiful big kind of off-white and black volumes published by Culture and or this one's culture and one's United um But these books like arrived in my mailbox. One of them um had like a pressed flower in it. it's still there.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um They were just and they were magic. Like I just um I was like, why haven't I been reading this all this time? um they are They are funny, they are beautiful, the poems are a lot shorter.
Lindsay Turner: um i was thinking sort of in preparation for our for our conversation today the way, and this is this is ironic because because I think everything Alice Ali has said and done has been,
Lindsay Turner: about not reproducing the patterns of the past um at the same time across the work there is this kind of um long slow trajectory from lyric to epic that but ah obviously is is is not new um but the these the early books are some of them are are a little bit more lyric they are about about child raising about kind of being poor and broke in New York about
Kamran Javadizadeh: All right. Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: right
Lindsay Turner: especially in Waltzing Matilda, it's sort of cold all the time. and There's always a sick kid. um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, I just, I really fell in love with this work. um I was going to say something else.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Well, maybe while you're thinking of it, I can i can just sort of um
Lindsay Turner: I forgot what it was.
Kamran Javadizadeh: observe in what I've, you know, that and really interesting narrative you've just been giving us so back to you and then see what you think about it, that there's something kind of interestingly to me um off the books or disordered.
Kamran Javadizadeh: I don't, I wish I could use that word non-pejoratively about your reading of Notley.
Lindsay Turner: Mm-mm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Like you say you either started reading her at the end of college or just after college. But what what that seems to imply to me was that like she was not part of the curriculum that you had as an undergraduate.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um And maybe there are kind of institutional or sociological or just kind of accidental reasons for any of that. um But then also, you know, you pick up one book, you kind of move forward and then later you move back earlier into her of. So um ah I think that that there's something kind of um beautifully haphazard about that book.
Kamran Javadizadeh: about that experience of getting to know a writer and, and you kind of casually mentioned within that, that you got a chance to, to meet Notley and to interview her. um And maybe that would be a thing that you could tell us more about, like what was she like um for you to meet?
Kamran Javadizadeh: I think you said back in 2013 for Boston Review um um or, or, or just do you have, did, did, did the thought that you were searching for there come back to you or you have any other thoughts to share?
Lindsay Turner: yeah
Lindsay Turner: It did not.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Okay, well, let's go with the interview question then.
Lindsay Turner: No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure what, you know, your questions are leading us somewhere more interesting anyways. But um I have um a phrase that I pulled from um Alice Notley's introduction to Grave of Light, the kind of...
Kamran Javadizadeh: Hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um selected ah her her selected and and uncollected poems. um And she says, my publish my publishing history is awkward and untidy, though colorful and even beautiful.
Lindsay Turner: um And that's, you know, I think my experience of Alice Notley is isn't in in keeping, I'm sure some people started at the beginning and went straight through, but, um you know, that's in keeping with the way the work came out.
Lindsay Turner: And I have, you know, I went and got from my office, my stack of Alice Notley books.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. Right.
Lindsay Turner: And like, there giant volumes. There are tiny chapbooks published by tiny presses.
Kamran Javadizadeh: right
Lindsay Turner: um There, you know, the the the selected is so, um it's new and selected poems, but there are also uncollected poems in it. Oh, and this is what I was going to say. When I say that Waltzing, Matilda and um Songs for the Unborn and Second Baby are early work,
Lindsay Turner: um They are, but then there's like the early, early work, which is what came out in the phonograph editions um sort of tome. It's like 350 pages long. And that's all the work that came before this work in the nineteen eighty s
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: And thats that i'm I'm less familiar with. um so
Kamran Javadizadeh: That.
Lindsay Turner: So there's there yeah there's even there's a even and what I say that I'm talking about, the earlier poems, especially in relation to, and um especially you know um compared to ah The Descent of the Lead and even at Night the States, there's like an even earlier version.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Sure, sure.
Lindsay Turner: um Yeah. But um you asked about about interviewing Alice.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: i ah I had never interviewed anybody before, and I've actually never interviewed anybody since, and I don't think that I'm a very good interviewer. um And I showed up, I met her in a cafe that was sort of, and one one wonderful thing about Paris is that writers who live in Paris tend to have like their cafes.
Lindsay Turner: um And you kind of know that you're going there to meet them in their cafe and you're not actually inconveniencing them very much or you hope you aren't because they've just basically stepped downstairs to the cafe where where everybody knows them.
Lindsay Turner: I met her on a very, it was very, very hot. There was no air conditioning. um I showed up with like, you know, a notebook and a pencil and she was like, are you gonna record this?
Lindsay Turner: um And I was like, I didn't think I was gonna record. And she was like, I've done this before, I think you should record.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um And so we figured out sort of right there on the spot, um she helped me figure out how to make a ah voice memo on my iPhone.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: or iPod. I don't even remember. um But ah she, she's, and I had like carefully researched all these questions. I'd figured out, I wanted to ask her about like the relationship between disobedience and the epic and all these things. And um like about the conceptual space of the gully in her work. and um And she sort of wonderfully and kindly deflated all of these questions. Like um I was sort of, I remember asking her about the space of the gully and she was like, you don't know what a gully is, like what's wrong with you?
Lindsay Turner: um but She didn't say it like that, but, um you know, she but she you know she she's given many, many interviews um and I think she really enjoys talking about the work and and every question was sort of an opportunity really for her to say wonderful things about poetry, about her own work.
Lindsay Turner: One of the things that really struck me was um how At a certain point, I think this is in the interview, she said, well you know, I don't have a quote project. And then she said, like, my project is to be a great poet.
Lindsay Turner: um You know, she had this this sense of conviction that um I think was really good for me to hear as a young poet.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right, right.
Lindsay Turner: You know, it's as a it's very easy um you know, to to kind of downplay your own poetic work and say, well, I write i write poems and I teach or something like that.
Kamran Javadizadeh: right right
Lindsay Turner: And, you know, I mean, you know, I'm thinking also of Ben Lerner's hatred of poetry or Jillian White's, you know, lyric shame. Alice Notley had whatever, and I think I said this at a certain moment, but Alice Notley, I think, had whatever it is, is the opposite of lyric shame.
Lindsay Turner: um She was just like, I am a poet and I'm doing this work and it is important. um And there is somewhere in another interview or in in one of her essays, she says, nobody wants you to write poetry.
Lindsay Turner: um That's, you know, it's hard. Nobody wants you to do it. People actively want you to stop doing it, but, you know, but it's important. And and and that that sense of conviction was really valuable.
Lindsay Turner: um And then... And then what I remember is um i was I was a graduate student at the time. i was living on like really a shoestring budget, like, you know, count out your euros every day kind of budget. And Alice had ordered a cafe frappe, like this fancy coffee drink because it was so hot.
Lindsay Turner: And it was maybe like five euros. And that was maybe my budget for the entire day. And she said something like, well, I'll let you pay for this.
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah
Lindsay Turner: And I did. And it was it was it was all lunch. And then we walked around a little bit.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Well, she probably thought you were expensing it or something.
Lindsay Turner: I think she probably did, yes. I'm sure she i'm sure she did.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: and then we stayed in touch a little bit.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Uh-huh.
Lindsay Turner: It's still hard for me to think about. you know i always I think one thing that I kept trying to ask her about Paris because I am kind of um irreus irrepressibly in love with with Paris and and in some ways, you know, I was like, you're living my dream.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: You get to just be in Paris all the time. And and I think she, you know, i at that point, at least her her relationship to Paris was like, this is a place where I have an apartment and I have health care. And and but But her presence in Paris became for me very much part of the city.
Lindsay Turner: I didn't see her very often, but I would always expect to see her when I was in her neighborhood. where She had talked to me about jogging in the Boucher Moll, which is a park where I go a lot.
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah huh
Lindsay Turner: And it feels, we'll go back this summer and it feels strange to think of Paris without Alice Notley in it.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Yeah. Well, um thank you for sharing that, that memory, you know, it's, um it's interesting to think of, um I mean, I love this idea that, you know, you came in with the the kinds of students that a graduate student, perhaps the kind of questions that a graduate student had in mind for her.
Lindsay Turner: Absolutely.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. and um And that she punctured that in a way that felt um loving and um or you know um supportive rather than derisive or something.
Lindsay Turner: completely, yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: feels It feels really great. feels really great Um, you know, yeah you came on the podcast before Lindsay to talk about Elizabeth Bishop.
Kamran Javadizadeh: And I was thinking of her when you were talking about how Notley seems to be, seems to have the opposite of what, of, of what Jillian White, um, calls lyric shame. You know, it was Bishop who said, i think in her Paris review interview, there's nothing more embarrassing than being a poet.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Um, And that it's it's, I don't know. I mean, it's interesting the that the portrait of Notley that you're painting for us is one. Now, I don't know, maybe she would have had moods in which she would have ah agreed to something like that sentiment. But in general, it sounds like that is not a position that she would have identified with, that she she didn't think it embarrassing. And I guess I wonder, knowing you as I do, um that, you know, on the one hand,
Kamran Javadizadeh: a poet like Bishop is very important to you. On the other, a poet like Notley is very important to you. Is there any insight you have into sort of what's the difference but between, like what are the different set of factors that produce those very different affects about the vocation, if if that's even the right word for it?
Lindsay Turner: i Yeah, that's a really, really interesting question. and I hadn't thought, you know, they're not they're not two poets I put together, although they're they are two poets who are very dear to me.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Sure.
Lindsay Turner: um I'm tempted to say, and I don't know if this is true. i'll have to I'm going to say something and I don't know if it's true. And so I'll have to think about it more.
Kamran Javadizadeh: It's the best kind of thing to say when you're being recorded.
Lindsay Turner: um
Lindsay Turner: One thing I sort of suspect... that the that one way to think about the difference is bishop Bishop feels to me like a poet of of observation and description.
Lindsay Turner: um i mean, she is a poet of observation and description. um Notley is a poet of observation and description, but also of, you know, of, of of um she also has a kind of Vatic function, right? She hears voices and she writes them down. And and I think she,
Lindsay Turner: um another thing that struck me when I, when I interviewed her, she says, I'm, she said something like, I speak for the dead. I'm here to speak for everyone. And I was like, you what? um But, but that was something.
Lindsay Turner: And it wasn't this, it wasn't like a, no, no, not never.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, impossible to imagine Bishop saying that, right? Yeah, right, yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um And you know, that she said it with, again, with that conviction um that, that she was a person, know, this is this is like, you know, this is like, Plato in the Phaedrus, the the the poet um the the um the poet who is spoken through.
Lindsay Turner: um and and that was how Notley operated, especially in her later work. and And I think i think if you if you have that vision of poetry as you know the poet is the person who who gets to hear other voices, the person who um to whom the dead speak and who then speaks for the dead,
Lindsay Turner: um
Lindsay Turner: then you know then it's not it's less about the work you do than about the about the voices you hear and what's given to you.
Kamran Javadizadeh: yeah yeah
Lindsay Turner: um And i that so that's that's what i maybe will say. ah but and that and that that also, I know that that like I'm worried that i make her sound like she you know that that she's like but she thinks of herself as part of this poetic elect.
Lindsay Turner: um and and And maybe she does, but I think that's a that's for a discussion of of especially the later work and the way the voices work and come in and out.
Kamran Javadizadeh: hmm
Lindsay Turner: but
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: One thing I like about Waltzing Matilda and sort of the reason I picked it is because in the and the poem, Waltzing Matilda, which is in the book, Waltzing Matilda, and you sort of Alice Notley stages this dialogue between someone named anonymous, who is Alice Notley, um asking questions to an advisor, who speaks with a kind of wisdom, but is also Alice Notley.
Lindsay Turner: um And I think it's it's ah it's a moment that seems a little bit like a hinge between the descriptive poetics of of sort of her earlier work and the Vatican later poetics in way.
Kamran Javadizadeh: yeah inside you there are two wolves or there are two poets yeah um it's interesting to me that in that in that way of describing as you just did bishop and notley there's like self-effacement is at work in both cases but it's sort of operating in different ways like um um
Lindsay Turner: Yes, yes.
Kamran Javadizadeh: That's maybe a topic that we could get into. We should invite Jillian back on the podcast and and talk to her about lyric shame and get her thoughts on on this idea as well.
Lindsay Turner: It did make me, I was thinking about her. Yeah, it made me think that someone needs to write the book about lyric, lyric, not shame, um lyric pride.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Lyric pride.
Lindsay Turner: and That's sort of the wrong word, but but about this feeling of, yeah, and there's still self-effacement because you're not speaking, you're being spoken through, but yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. That's, that's what I was hearing you say. Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Um, well, so let's, let's talk a little bit more about, um, Waltzing Matilda and the selection that you've chosen. um i will make, um, a link available to the, to the page, um, uh, uh, from the book that Lindsay and I will be talking about today.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um for people who aren't looking at it right now, it, if, if you know, sort naively you were just to look at this page, you would think that what you were looking at was the typescript of a letter, uh, maybe, right. It's, it's dated at the top. It has a salutation um,
Kamran Javadizadeh: um below that, an envoy and a PS at the very end. um Lindsay, um for people who aren't familiar with Waltzing Matilda beyond what we're about to talk about or the page that we're looking at, can you sort of situate it for us a little bit?
Kamran Javadizadeh: um I mean, you already have done so, I guess, in the comments that you were just offering a moment ago, but um But maybe say a little bit more about you know what this um exchange of letters is like and how that fits into the book and so forth.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, it was just counting. It's 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Waltzing Matilda, poem is sort of 20
Lindsay Turner: it's um waltzing matilda the poem is a sort of twenty page long poem in this book Waltzing Matilda and and the the book itself is is really really formally variable there are some very short lyrics there are some other kind of dated poems there are some very comic kind of plays experimental-ish plays in which like animals talk to each other it's ah it's a little wacky um
Lindsay Turner: But um Waltzing Matilda the poem is, it's throughout, it's pretty earnest. There are kind of three types of, three or four types of writing in it.
Lindsay Turner: um there are datad There are dated poems that are,
Lindsay Turner: that are in keeping with Notley's work around this time, the kind of grade observations about daily life and parenting and sick kids, like I said, sick kids and being cold um with um what Notley is reading, with stories about friends and going to poetry readings and like um and getting drunk and conversations or arguments with Ted, with her husband at the time, Ted Berrigan.
Lindsay Turner: um Then there there are those kind of dated poems. There are a few just like undated prose-y things that are that are similar. um And then they're threaded throughout this is an exchange and the dates are different. like For the dated poems and prose, it's just like 12, 2, 12, 3.
Lindsay Turner: The letter poems are set up more like a letter. So it says December 1980 at the top, December 1980. then the ones that I December 1980, December 12th, 1980.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Dear
Lindsay Turner: and then the ones that i have december eleven nineteen eighty december twelve nineteen eighty um And this is, again, this is anonymous, sort of anonymous woman, and then the advisor, the wisdom. It's sort of like a dear, you know, what's the but's yeah sort of advice column kind of thing.
Kamran Javadizadeh: dear abby
Lindsay Turner: um Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the the letter that's before the dear advisor letter, that's before um the letter of December 1980,
Lindsay Turner: and eleven nineteen eighty um Alice Notley is kind of recounting um going out um with Ted to who was just referred to as my husband um to a to a poetry reading in Hoboken and then getting drunk and then um and then saying or or the next day Ted says to her um that that.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: ah Let's see. ah He said that i said that I'd written a voodoo poem set in New Orleans or somewhere for which I'd surely be assassinated just like John Lennon. um And then her questions for the advisor at the editor are um at the end, do you think I said it?
Lindsay Turner: The thing about writing ah writing a voodoo poem um in new set New Orleans for which she'd be assassinated. du One, do you think I said it? Two, do you think there's something odd about my priorities and values? Three, do you think I'd have had more fun if I'd been fucked up like my husband was?
Lindsay Turner: Or do you see little difference between us? And four, why do you think I might have said it?
Kamran Javadizadeh: All right.
Lindsay Turner: um Yours anonymous. um So it's it's a funny kind of it's a funny kind of letter and also a sort of relatable one in which she's just like, why do you think I said this strange thing?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Great.
Lindsay Turner: Why would I have said this strange thing? I can't imagine that I would have said this strange thing, et cetera, et cetera.
Kamran Javadizadeh: That that to you is a relatable experience. Is that, is that, yeah.
Lindsay Turner: Well, I mean, i haven't, I don't think I've ever been drunk and said that I was writing voodoo poem set in New Orleans, but if someone told me that I had, I would have said, why?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um There's something about, ah
Lindsay Turner: you know, it it's it's a is' a funny moment. um But, i you know, especially if you're, I can imagine being, you know, being a poet whose poems come to them from other places and and and and and having having it be very perturbing um to, um you know, if if if this is a moment when when when the question, when voice is really a question, um having it be very strange for someone to tell you that you had said that you were writing a poem that you didn't think you were writing.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Yeah. um Well, this so that's um that's great setup for the December 12, 1980. I
Kamran Javadizadeh: and don't know whether to call it. Do you think it's right to call it a poem or a page or so selection ah from Waltzing Matilda?
Lindsay Turner: I think it's a poem.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, okay.
Lindsay Turner: It's a page in a book of poems.
Kamran Javadizadeh: the Right, good. Fair enough. We don't need to you don't need to be overly fussy about it.
Lindsay Turner: But that's the kind of the put it all in approach. Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. um All right. So that that's a nice setup for the poem that you've um selected for us, Lindsay. I wonder if I can now invite you to re read it aloud.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, um and just let me tell you first that the PS in the letter of December 11th is PS later. We made love a little while ago and my husband said it was better than both Picasso and Judy Garland, but I guess that's just bragging not relevant.
Lindsay Turner: um And that will explain the PS in the in the advisors letter back to anonymous.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Good. And so, and sorry, and sorry its just just again, before you begin to remind our listeners, right, it I think your contention, and it seems obviously right, Lindsay, is that both Anonymous and The Advisor are like versions of Notley in some way.
Lindsay Turner: ah
Kamran Javadizadeh: but the But that Anonymous, the Anonymous one seems to have Notley's biography, right?
Lindsay Turner: Yes, yes.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Okay. Okay.
Lindsay Turner: and Yes, exactly. And I think it's sort of a question. Yeah, anyways. um I think it's sort of a question about, you know, who advisor is and what kind of what kind of voice this is.
Lindsay Turner: But here's what the advisor writes back to anonymous December 12 1980 dear anonymous. you anonymous To answer your questions in order, one, did you say it? Of course you said it. You either said it outright or said it in his imagination, but either way you were saying it.
Lindsay Turner: Do you think you own yourself? Ha ha. Which isn't to say that you aren't free, but you never know where on earth or in heaven you're going to be free. Two, Your priorities and values something odd about.
Lindsay Turner: Actually, I'd rather like them. Sarcasm and meanness and inability to vomit, et cetera, they just occur and the husband or the babysitter, they can go fuck a duck if they're perturbed. What's odd about your priorities and values is that you don't see that about voodoo in New Orleans, assassination, et cetera. Saying that just occurs too.
Lindsay Turner: What you seem to hate is whatever you don't remember. Oh, let go, let go, dear anonymous. Just imagine what you're doing and saying in my amiable cosmic rambles right now. You just told a drunk panhandler on Third Street that you had the best breasts in the neighborhood and so didn't and would have wouldn't ever owe him oh talentless him a penny.
Lindsay Turner: You just told one of your sons that you loved him so much that you were lost forever, lost forever. You repeated the phrase, trying to find it out. You just told your husband that you were writing a voodoo poem set in New Orleans or somewhere.
Lindsay Turner: but you said that with the rain you occupied a white scared sidewalk there. Three. I see little difference between you and your husband. and You're both big and awkward, sentimental, truth-telling fuck-ups, though you each have a different cover story.
Lindsay Turner: Do not envy your husband the como the cosmos because you put in some time on the bathroom floor. The positions may interchange next time. Four. Why do you mind so much?
Lindsay Turner: Because you had to mind about something because you're alive and a string of words was the easiest thing to mind about. It was just an object. So what if you're obsessive? So what? The wind is beating at the windows and it's cold and trying to tell the truth is boring when there are only two possible truths to tell.
Lindsay Turner: a that your life is subject to the manipulations of the rich and powerful and acquisitive and the interferences of the mannerslessness, the mannersless and suspicious and judgmental and desperate.
Lindsay Turner: B, that you are this minute catching yourself at aging, loving, babysitting, being vain, washing the dishes, being complex, et cetera. Now, I suppose you're asking why B is boring.
Lindsay Turner: It isn't, except when you can't tell it because there's too much of a going on in your life. So buy yourself a Fisher-Price Activity Center, some glue and scissors, et cetera, and get on with it all. Sincerely, your advisor.
Lindsay Turner: P.S. My wife says better than Beethoven and Patti Smith in their garter belts.
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah Thanks, Lindsay. So that that was Lindsay Turner reading ah from Waltzing Matilda, Alice Notley's Waltzing Matilda, a letter from anonymous, or sorry, to anonymous from her advisor.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um Lindsay, one thing that um that strikes me right off the bat in this section is a kind of interesting tension, maybe interesting to me, let's see if it's interesting to you, between ah you know word that we've used before in this conversation, the the mess or the kind of messiness of life being um addressed and described here,
Kamran Javadizadeh: um on the one hand, and with on the other, this this kind of formal um habit of numbering things and um sort of systematizing or trying to kind of provide the sort of structured list and maybe even the kind of formal structure of the dating and so forth of these transmissions is, is, is of a piece with it.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But um I don't know, just as the sort of take the, as a place to, for us to start the, the, the kind of numbering system, you know, that, that first sentence to answer your questions in order one, so on two, so on three, so on four, so on.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um yeah how does that sit with you as you're as you're reading this poem out loud as you're as you've come to know it or whatever
Lindsay Turner: Yeah. um
Lindsay Turner: I mean, this is a funny, that's a funny question because i think so much of of Notley's work is ah is about um disordering and, you know, that her principle of of disobedience is um is throughout, is is resisting forms, resisting all forms.
Lindsay Turner: um And, ah but but it's true that the forms that the forms creep back in you know, and that that's, that's...
Lindsay Turner: I think that's the nature of poetry itself. And it it happens in Notley as much as it happens in anyone is that is that even if Notley's, and I think it's part of the reason her work is so varied, um is that you know very quickly when you start writing sort of against form and into formlessness, if you're writing poetry, you end up back in form.
Lindsay Turner: um and And that, you know, that I think that I think that that.
Lindsay Turner: what's interesting about this poem for me is that I keep, even though it's, you know, even though it's a little silly um and a little slight and, and again, earlier in her work, I keep seeing in it um sort of ah prefigured some of the, some of the trends and and powers of of the later work and of her work as a whole.
Lindsay Turner: And and i that, so, so I would say, I don't, you know, I don't think that it is I don't think that it is the the power of the purpose of poetry to order at all. I think it's more to disorder.
Lindsay Turner: but But the order does creep back in because that's how we communicate with each other.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, I mean, I could ask this question on a grand scale that would make it well, if were somebody to be asking me it in that way, I would find it unanswerable. So I'm to try to ask it in the in the more kind of local down to earth way here as I can.
Kamran Javadizadeh: So if if that's the case, like if there's this sort um tendency or or um impulse towards disorder with the kind of ordered form nevertheless creeping back in.
Kamran Javadizadeh: what is that like what is that ordered form doing here? Maybe maybe ah maybe ah the but the better way to ask the question is this. It sounds to me like the advisor is, if I were to kind of generalize about the um the kind of advice that's being given here, it seems to me to be of the type that is like reassuring that,
Lindsay Turner: Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: don't worry about it so much kind of advice, right? um and And I guess I wonder, like, if you to the extent that you agree with that, and you gave us a little assenting, so that's good, I feel better about myself now.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um To the extent that that's right, um what is like the breaking like what is the worry that's being responded two that that's being, you know, that, that the advisor is reassuring anonymous about, like, is there some unified underlying worry that is being responded to here?
Kamran Javadizadeh: And, or and, or does like the breakdown of it into four constituent parts in some way um help to make it real or interesting or kind of palpably felt to you here?
Lindsay Turner: You know, there's, this is because Notley, Notley is, throughout, i think her her interviews and her essays, I'm thinking of the essay Poetics of Disobedience, there's sort of like such a system of ah values and beliefs.
Lindsay Turner: um
Lindsay Turner: i wish I wish I could refer to, there's a moment in one of Not Lazy's either essays or interviews where um where she takes on the question of the of the sort of autobiographical self.
Lindsay Turner: And I think she's really not interested um in in the I as something, as a kind of entity. ah that is the starting place for writing poetry.
Lindsay Turner: um and And it seems to me that what In a sense, what advisor is pointing out is that anonymous has gotten a little bit too concerned about having control over her own eye.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: um Because anonymous wants to, anonymous is worried that the eye, she is going around doing things or saying things over which she is not totally in control. And what advisor comes back and says is basically, of course you are.
Lindsay Turner: Don't worry about it. um You're in my imagination doing and saying things. You're in Ted's imagination doing and saying things like, Don't worry about it.
Lindsay Turner: And then the other thing that um ah that that that the advisor saying is, and this is, you know there's a sort of irony here, um both in the in the one, two, three, four form, and then the A and the B kind of things that are being pitted against each other at the end.
Kamran Javadizadeh: right
Lindsay Turner: um Basically, Anonymous is saying, get back to work, go back into the mess. like um you're every, you you know, the the life around you is very interesting.
Lindsay Turner: um Don't listen to the the rich, powerful, acquisitive, whatever. um Buy yourself a Fisher Price Activity Center, know, get on with it all. Like, and that's the, I love, love, love that um that kind of metaphor for making poems like some glue and scissors.
Lindsay Turner: And, you know, I think of kids kids making things with glue and scissors, right? It's very messy. And I don't know, actually, i when when i don't know when Alice Notley started making collages.
Lindsay Turner: um But, ah you know, that that glu the glue and scissors now reminds me of her of her later collage work.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The um the the A and B and the the sort of interrelation of the A and B at the end, it certainly seems to be a part of it. look like can we Can we talk a little bit about the um about what you take to be, i mean, I know you said something before we started, ah before we dove into this about like the question of who the advisor is. And I i suppose what you don't mean by that um is like,
Kamran Javadizadeh: you know, what is their identity or what is their name or do they correspond to some person in Notley's life, but but rather more like what kind of tone are they taking with Notley or with ah Anonymous, I should say. um ah I'm thinking in particular here of like the do you think you own yourself, ha, ha, moment from from early in this in this poem.
Kamran Javadizadeh: I wonder if you might ah just ah try to address the the the tone or the spirit of the advice that's being given um in addition to or as sort of underlying the the substance of it that you were just addressing.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, yeah. um You know, and I someone probably Nick could could say better than I, you know, when when kind of visionary voices start coming into not least work.
Lindsay Turner: um But this this again, this this voice seems to me to be a kind of middle ground between, um you know, between just a kind of dialogue between like, you know,
Lindsay Turner: um ah past self and and slightly wiser self or like hungover self and and sober self or um insecure self and more secure self. um There would be, there's definitely a way to read it as a sort of self, self talking to self.
Lindsay Turner: But but and the advisor seems to have a kind of, again, like um almost cosmic wisdom that's
Lindsay Turner: that again that that that pretends the nature of the voices that that come in and later and later work um yeah
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. Right. um is Is the impression that the advisor has lived a kind of, has under their belt the kind of experience that that Anonymous is only kind of grasping at here?
Lindsay Turner: Possibly, possibly. It's hard it's it's hard to tell. Anonymous doesn't of doesn't give a ton of information about Anonymous's own self.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: ah There's a moment, I mean, and what and what is given is is very funny. There's a in the the earlier exchange, she's talking about her. um This is,
Lindsay Turner: Her kids have had fevers throughout. And then and then there's a moment she ends she ends a letter saying, I came upstairs and swept the floor and chatted with my own sick kid whose temperature is a little over 97. I took my own for kicks and it was exactly it was exactly the same as his. It's cold, man.
Lindsay Turner: and then And then Anonymous ends their next letter saying, PS, my own temperature is a perpetual 101 degrees. um So, yeah, it's I think there's there's something humorous in the construction of Anonymous.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: And it it seems to me also, again, this is this is projecting and it could be, this is a this is a way, in some ways, this is a way of making the Vatak mode, of making the visionary mode um a little bit humorous, of tempering it a little bit, of you know in in in several senses of the words, domesticating it.
Lindsay Turner: um the the voice you know The voices in in later works would never, um I don't think, although they're they're they're so they're so varied that maybe they would, but I ah can't see them kind of being ah even like personified in this way or bantering um or being, there's something very there's something very charming, I think, about the exchange between anonymous and um and advisor. And there are charming moments in in some of the later poems, but I think the stakes lie of those lie elsewhere.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. um to Can you say, um can you unpack a little bit the the various senses of the domestication ah that you were just gesturing towards?
Lindsay Turner: Yes, yes.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, we i I think the first sense is domesticate in in a more colloquial way that, the you know, Alice Notley's work and and and certainly the experience of seeing her read um is, you know,
Lindsay Turner: how her work is whether or not you you quote unquote believe in the existence of these voices or whether you believe that she's communicating with the dead, like that's sort of irrelevant because when you see her, but you know when when she read poems or when she was writing, um those poems are have absolutely, they absolutely have the conviction that they are, that the voices are real.
Lindsay Turner: um And that's how the that's how they they get on the page. And there's a wildness and a power um and it can be scary and spooky.
Lindsay Turner: And so in some ways, this this this voice seems to be a little bit smaller, a little bit more domesticated in that it's less scary, less spooky.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: um and then And then I mean, domesticate in in terms of just domestic, right? That this advisor is kind of stooping the way that to ah to listen to Anonymous' is sort of complaints about everyday life um and and responding to them in in kind.
Kamran Javadizadeh: right
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. um Yeah, i think I think I've heard Notley say about this book, and this I should say, there's a nice recording from Waltzing Matilda on the Penn Sound Archive that I can provide a link for as well in the episode notes.
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah But that before she begins that reading, she says something like, you know, she'd been growing, um you know, she'd been trying to find um time and space to write, but um but that she was finding it very difficult to do so because of the kind of chaos that was ah rampant throughout her home. um kids, um you know, around everybody had a cold, um Ted acting, you know, um unruly in one way or another.
Kamran Javadizadeh: and that the the the the sort of solution that she came up with, or the only kind of path forward that she could come up with was to include those voices or to sort of you know, put those voices down into the poem to make them part of the poem.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. ah ah i'm so I'm struck. And and and so i you know I think we see record of some of that here, I imagine, ah you know or like i can I can see how we would elsewhere in the book as well. um you know One thing I was struck by in listening to you, Lindsay, talk about the relationship between ah advisor and anonymous is that in some ways it's like this kind of recognizable and um, recognizable relationship, uh, the, the fact that names aren't given, but that one is anonymous and the other is, is, is named by their interestingly sort of relational role, you know, um, you know, can one ontologically be an advisor anymore than one can ontologically be a mother is question, uh, for you, um, is, uh,
Lindsay Turner: Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: is and So so that's ah that's a familiar kind of ah relation between two people or a familiar kind of discourse between two people. And it has a rich history in poetry, too. I mean, I don't know that she's thinking of it necessarily, but I'm thinking of something like Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, something like that, the the kind of advice-giving mode from...
Kamran Javadizadeh: that That typically works, right? The advisor gets their authority and the ability to address the advisee in this way, because in some sense, they have the the wisdom that is the benefit of of being older or and being more experienced. That is like, you are going through, you person asking me questions are going through some kind of crisis. Well, I've been through versions of that myself. I know how they turn out.
Kamran Javadizadeh: So let me tell you your future in some way. What's a kind of a like, I think what what i what I'm also hearing you get at in this business of like, well, that's so in a way, a way of domesticating something that's actually a little bit wilder that's happening within the one person.
Kamran Javadizadeh: I mean, it would be it it would be one thing and a lucky thing, I guess, for a poet to have a trusted older advisor that they could turn to in moments of self-doubt or crisis.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But to the extent that the advisor here is is, like as you were saying, internal to Notley, that she's kind of fictionalizing fictionalizing it or projecting it into this other figure, there is something kind of wild and um hard to explain about it that um that I just, as somebody who...
Kamran Javadizadeh: myself, like, I lack that kind of conviction. i don't know where one would summon it, um or where it would ah arrive from. I guess I just want to pose that to you as a question, like, where, where is it you think that um that that the kind of ability to to sort of speak with the reassurance of like, I've been down that road, I know the future, here's, here's what you need to know or be comfortable with.
Kamran Javadizadeh: how How could that be like generated from within rather than you know from, don't know, Rilke or someone?
Lindsay Turner: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, then that's that's the question, isn't it? And i think i think I think you're right to bring up the other examples of of of dialogues like this. um And I think that you put your finger on, I think, what made me say pretty easily, oh, this is a poem, because I think that she's using here the dialogue between older and wiser and younger and naive as a form, as a poetic form.
Lindsay Turner: as a poetic form um
Lindsay Turner: It's so, this is so interesting. And it I think one of the reasons I picked it and and one of the reasons I loved it is because what she's, what what Anonymous seems to be looking for, right, is just, as you said, like reassurance.
Lindsay Turner: how and and And I think it is tied in with ah with what you you spoke about in Notley's introduction to that recording, which is the the perennial problem of the ah the care ah the carer writer. you know, there's not enough time. There's not enough time.
Lindsay Turner: how can I do this?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: um and
Lindsay Turner: And that it is tempting and I think Anonymous is anonymous is tempted to say like, how can I, what is the elsewhere here? Like what is the wisdom? What is oh,
Lindsay Turner: um oh you know, help anonymous, you know, tell me where, tell me where the other things lie so I can, so I can get there and write about them.
Lindsay Turner: And what anonymous turns around and says is no, no, like, write about what you're living, you know, get back to the mess.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Sorry, you said what anonymous, turns you meant what advisor?
Lindsay Turner: Um,
Lindsay Turner: what it is Sorry, one advisor turns around and says, yeah um trying to tell the truth is boring when there are only two possible truths to tell, etc., etc., etc., that you are catching yourself at aging, loving, babysitting, being in vain, washing the dishes, being complex, etc.,
Kamran Javadizadeh: trans Yeah, yeah. Right.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Hmm.
Lindsay Turner: I suppose you're asking why it's boring. it isn't, except when you're too distracted by other by these other things um to realize that your life is interesting. um And so what you know what anonymous is advice is, is basically like you already have what you need to write poetry.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: um Just go back to the life you're living.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um Forget about the distractions and that
Lindsay Turner: ah you know so anonymous is like anonymous doesn't say i yes i have been there i will tell you how to get out of it anonymous says i yes you are there go back to it
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. And that that's that's so lovely. And that it in question here, well, I mean, it's presumably it's lots of things, but among them are like the chaos of a of being the carer, as you say, or the or a mother in a house with small children, other people, bills to pay and whatever else kind of demands that that come from domestic life, right?
Lindsay Turner: Right, right, right, right, right.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, and I think so often the the tension that gets posed in poetry would be on the one hand, on the one hand, the poetry of of daily life, and two, on the other hand, the poetry of like spirituality and wisdom and speaking for the dead and all of that.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right, right.
Lindsay Turner: And this seems to me the part to be the part in Nali's work where they they come together and you see that that they're not alternatives, but they're parts of the same coin.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. I think...
Lindsay Turner: halves of the same coin, sides of the same coin.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Sides, yeah. Sides, I think. um I think, you know, I found myself thinking just now of that kind of self-mythologizing account that Sylvia Plath gave at the end of, you know, what turned out, of course, to be the end of her life, sadly, where she's, you know, writing these poems um as though kind of you know, fueled by some kind of um divine spark or something, but that to do so, she's like, um she's waking up before the kids wake up.
Lindsay Turner: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: She's writing until they wake up um that once they do, it's sort of like breaks the spell and in some way. And she's, and and of course, like, As I say, this is a self-mythologizing account. i think plath and I don't want to reduce Plath to caricature either. i' mean I think there are all kinds of ways in which daily life and the children and so forth become part of the poetry that she's writing at at that time of her life as well.
Lindsay Turner: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But just in that kind of myth of like... hoping the kids stay asleep long enough for me to write, you know, a few more lines of this crazy poetry, this elsewhere poetry I'm i'm writing is is is, if I'm hearing you right, not the advice that's being given here. The advice is rather like there is no elsewhere.
Kamran Javadizadeh: The elsewhere is like turn around. It's back in this place you're trying to escape from.
Lindsay Turner: I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's right. I think that's what Anonymous says. But it doesn't mean, I mean, you know, it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean, it doesn't make the problems go away. It doesn't mean that there's suddenly plenty of time to write poetry. It doesn't mean you can do everything all at once. But, um but it does mean stop, stop looking for the elsewhere.
Lindsay Turner: Stop, stop trying to cordon this, all of this out of your, out of your poem. Stop, worry stop worrying about it. Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm. The moment that the kind of movement that comes towards the end of this poem, the so what if you're obsessive, so what? can Can you say more about what you think the, um what the word obsessive is doing there? Like, obsessive in what sense? Or... um do you have any thoughts about that?
Kamran Javadizadeh: That that moment moment also seems to me like a ah ah moment where the um where the register changes slightly, you know, like the um the wind is beating at the windows and it's cold and so forth.
Lindsay Turner: Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Seems almost like it's a different kind of voice that's coming in here for the moment. I wonder if you have thoughts about that.
Lindsay Turner: It does seem like a different kind of voice.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: And this happens a lot um at in Notley poems. There's often a kind of real um incredible turn towards towards a a sort of, beautiful there's a beautiful lift off at the end.
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: And it it happens to in Waltzing Mathilde and then elsewhere in the work. there are other There are other places where that happens. Yeah, i um i love that I love that shift. I love that moment at the end. I find it really, really,
Lindsay Turner: i find it really really beautiful. I remember when I was a PhD student giving, i had to give like a talk about my dissertation and this part of this quotation made it in. And I remember just sort of like reading it um as I was, you know, slogging through these having to read aloud these pages of my own academic prose and then getting to this end and getting really getting really choked up um as i was as I was reading the poems um and thinking, gosh, this is so much better than anything that I'm doing.
Lindsay Turner: um But that, oh, you were asking about obsessive.
Lindsay Turner: I don't know what that word is doing there. I think i think the worry in the other in in the in the letter to advisor is like, do you think I'm just being obsessive about this remark that I might not might or might not have made? um Am I being ridiculous? Am I being silly?
Lindsay Turner: um
Kamran Javadizadeh: What it would mean to be obsessive, I guess, would be to like be paying too much attention to something that doesn't merit it.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, I mean, it's a it's gendered. Yeah. I think so.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right?
Lindsay Turner: And it's I think it's gendered too, right?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Good.
Lindsay Turner: Like um that all of all of this is couched in the language of, am I just being a silly, obsessive woman?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um Am I just obsessing over something that my husband said?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: Should I just get over it? And then of course, you know, Notley is, is um is very, at least it later, has you know, frames this work as being deliberately, her word is disobedient, right?
Lindsay Turner: She's putting things in poetry that haven't been there before.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um And she says that at a certain point, she started, that in order to write about the life that was in front of her, she had to disobey everything that she knew about poetry. um And and we you know we think about her in the context, I know she you know and in the context of people like, well, obviously the New York School for whom it the the daily in poetry was ah but that was a a normal, you know that's sort of where poetry was for them, but maybe not.
Lindsay Turner: um not the gendered dailiness. um But then also, you know I think some of our early influences where people like often at Creeley, it's hard to imagine them putting that that kind of messiness into the work and or the the language poets as well.
Kamran Javadizadeh: yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um and And so that, to me, that word obsessive is ah is a gender marker of she says, like, am I putting too much worry and too much mess into these poems and the answer is no.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. um is is Is the idea that the... um would we Telling the truth...
Kamran Javadizadeh: is that the is that Is that to be opposed to the the being obsessive? Or no, that's sort of another... for I mean, is there is...
Lindsay Turner: I think it's another, yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I think you understand what I'm asking.
Lindsay Turner: I'm trying to, trying to tell the truth.
Kamran Javadizadeh: because Because she... um Because I suppose one person, you know, a person who might worry, am I am i ah obsessing about something? so Should I just let it go? the the the worry that that that person might have is like, well, do I sound boring?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Am I boring you? am Am I being boring? am i being boring
Lindsay Turner: yeah I don't know what the status of That's an interesting question. I'm not sure what the status of truth there is is at the end. Trying to tell the truth the truth is boring when there are only two possible truths to tell.
Lindsay Turner: um and then and then And then the flip is that be that it isn't boring at all.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But then at the end, yeah, go ahead.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: so
Kamran Javadizadeh: It isn't boring. it Now I suppose you're asking why B, namely that you are this minute catching yourself at aging, loving, babysitting, being vain, washing the dishes, being complex, et cetera. Why is that boring? It isn't, except when you can't tell it because there's too much of A, namely that your life is subject to the manipulations of the rich and powerful and acquisitive and the interferences of the mannersless and suspicious and judgmental and desperate.
Kamran Javadizadeh: So, B, the kind of, or I suppose, if I would be to like overly simplistic or schematic about it just for the moment to get it straight in my head, B, the kind of um messiness of um domestic life and of aging and of you know everydayness isn't boring,
Kamran Javadizadeh: except when you can't tell it because these larger forces from outside are impinging too much on your life. So what you need to do is to like shield yourself from them so that you can sink into the here and now, which isn't in fact boring if you pay the right kind of attention or enough attention or something.
Lindsay Turner: Yes.
Lindsay Turner: Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is you know, I, I, when I wrote my dissertation, I was sort of trying to figure out, um trying to work my way towards a theory of of sort of domestic and reproductive labor.
Lindsay Turner: um and And then, you know, the it's it's it's been here all along. it's here I think it's as well theorized here as as it is as it is in really anywhere else, which is that the work itself isn't boring. It's that the the work has been, um you know,
Lindsay Turner: in in the and in the greater and more terrible economic system in which we live, um this this work, ah there's so much noise around it and so much, ah ah there's there's the forces that tend to dismiss it or,
Lindsay Turner: un-glamorize it or whatever are so strong um that it it has become, it has it has been diminished or the the experience of it has been diminished for so many people buy these by these greater economic forces, but the work, but that in itself, um the the the quality of this work is actually quite interesting, especially for poets.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah. Has it been for you?
Lindsay Turner: It has been, it has been. And I think that's also been the um been the twist in my own life that Notley is very good at revealing. I've been very open about this in my sub stack, but as you but you mentioned, but like I wasn't ever sure that I wanted to have a child.
Lindsay Turner: And i you know I'd read all the all they wages for housework, all the um all the you know the the slogans, they call it love, we call it unwaged work. um all the descriptions, even in poetry, um the the kind of mythology is that um is that taking care of children is drudgery and it will it it it has the potential to you know, to to sap your energy and kill your poetic spirit and um and should be kept very far away from the writing of poems. And my experience has been really the opposite is that it's rewarding, rewarding and beautiful.
Lindsay Turner: um There's still never enough, there's never enough time to write poetry, but there was never enough time. There's never enough time in general.
Kamran Javadizadeh: yeah There wasn't enough time before you had a child.
Lindsay Turner: Right, exactly.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um I think I heard you say earlier that um when you when you came to Waltzing Matilda and the work that was published in in its sort of environs, you know, Notley's work that was published around that same time that you thought like, oh, this is the like, why but why haven't I been reading this all along?
Kamran Javadizadeh: um But that was, i forget the chronology of this, before you had a child.
Lindsay Turner: It was.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, it was.
Kamran Javadizadeh: so So, so, so I guess then, then, you know, you, you, you know, went through the kind of state of indecision and the, all of the uncertainties that, um you know, came along with in fact, having a child and um as you, as you were experiencing things,
Kamran Javadizadeh: things you had, I'm imagining now, this is a question, I guess, in your back pocket, this sort of reading of Notley going through some of these things, was it, did did you find that the poetry, maybe not just Notley or not just Waltzing Matilda, but this kind of thing that had become by then, had had already become by then a kind of subject of study for you, did you find that it was,
Kamran Javadizadeh: um kind of giving you a language for experiences that were happening, um you know, this minute, to quote this film, you know, like in in the moment, you know, or I don't know, is that not, is that too, too, am I being too cute or something?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Did did it not really work that way?
Lindsay Turner: No, no, no, no. It's a really interesting, it's, you know, this is what I've been um wrestling with is, you know, it's it's a very funny experience you um to spend a long time sort of doing academic work on a question, you know, and the question of for me was domestic and reproductive labor and and coming to a sort of conclusion about it, which is that, um you know, domestic and reproductive labor like poetry tend to be undervalued.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um And, um you know, I, i But I was still searching, I think, for a way ah way to think about how how they might be similar um or how they might how they might fit together.
Lindsay Turner: um And i think i think um I think in this in this case, like a lot of my a lot of the work I did as a scholar um ah obfuscated rather than revealed what I was trying, what what what um with the actual state of things, I think I sort of ended up thinking, well, this you know reproductive labor is is you know is drudgery, is is boring. I think the answer is to,
Lindsay Turner: I guess what I'm saying is I think the the answers to what I was trying to um explain or explore where were there in the poems all along, um but I couldn't quite see them. And then, yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Oh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: And so it's been really interesting now to go back to back to the poetry and say, oh no, this this um this tension that I thought I was exploring, the tension between the work of ah ah um you know the the work of domestic labor and the work of writing poetry, these two things,
Lindsay Turner: are actually very deeply rooted sometimes in the same place, rather than being pitted against each other.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I'm sure i I want to say on the one hand, I have a feeling you're you're kind of um not disingenuously, but but but all the same, sort of too too modestly underselling your your academic, ah you know or the the the kind of critical handle you had on on on things.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But but i I see your point all the same. i'm not i don't mean to you know and invite you here to say, oh, no, no, no, or
Lindsay Turner: no
Kamran Javadizadeh: ah You know, because because I think part of what I've been um picking up but again and again on and in this conversation, it's interesting to be having this conversation with you in particular, Lindsay, is like that, you know, I mean, as someone who like wears multiple hats, one of which is like as a critic, or the other is as a poet, um that, you know, what i what I think I'm hearing you say is like, in some ways, the poetry understands something better than the criticism does or than yours does.
Lindsay Turner: Yes.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um ah i I have, like, I think sort of in general, two more questions here, and I'm not i'm kind of not sure what order to ask them in, but let me try with this one first.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um the the The list of three things and really it's more than three because then et cetera comes at the end of it but the so buy yourself a fisher price activity center ah sorry a fisher price activity center some glue and scissors et cetera and get on with it all um is there something like and interest like is that list ah how many ways can we read it in? or Or is there like, I mean, if we were to take that, like, is there a way to take, glu you know, I know you mentioned the glue and scissors and Notley's interest in collage maybe earlier too, as I think you said something to that effect.
Kamran Javadizadeh: But i I wonder also about the Fisher Price Activity Center it's like such a It's a funny kind of dropping of a name brand and a kind of um thing that, you know I guess, the equivalent of which you could now go into like a Target or something and buy um seems to to be...
Lindsay Turner: Yeah. yep
Kamran Javadizadeh: a funny kind of thing to drop at the end of a poem. So so I guess i I wonder what, if anything, you make of of those particular things that are being offered by the advisor at the end of this poem as advice.
Lindsay Turner: it's very it's it's very It's a very funny moment, the Fisher-Price Activity Center. um you know I think there's ah there's some place in, um in I think it might be in the Poetics of Disobedience, maybe it's somewhere else, but where she says, basically she says something like, there were no babies in poems that went you know in in in the 70s and 80s.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: And I actually am not sure that's true. I think there have always been babies in poems. But ah um I'm pretty sure this is the first occurrence of a ah Fisher Price Activity Center um in poems.
Kamran Javadizadeh: right
Lindsay Turner: you know And I think it's the the question of like how do you get, can you put something in a poem um and and and have the poems still work?
Kamran Javadizadeh: who
Lindsay Turner: um you know if you are writing about about dailiness if you are writing if you're if you're a kind of new york school ish poet um you know if you think of like ah all the marvelous particulars of a frank o'hara poem um there's no fisher price activity center in those either right this is about as far away as you can get from um i don't know like a what is it like a bottle of strega or something
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah, I was thinking of like a ah brand of cigarettes or something, you know, right.
Lindsay Turner: and Right, right, right, exactly.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Yeah.
Lindsay Turner: um ah But that, you know, it's, and like Fisher Price is, it's still, um you know, like a plastic and bright primary colors. It's sort of garish. It's not um not not an object that you would expect to be dropped into any poem, but there it is.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Right.
Lindsay Turner: And not only is it there, but it's also kind of um ah being associated with like what you'd need to do to do the work of poems.
Kamran Javadizadeh: yeah Yeah, that's great. um Well, well then then my other ah question for you is, you know, and this is like, we've I've had now on the podcast three conversations about Notley. um I think it would be a mistake for me to think, oh, because there were three that...
Kamran Javadizadeh: magically somehow I've triangulated, you know, the poet that Notley is. I think one thing I'm learning again and again about Notley is that she's, um, she, she defies easy categorization um, and that, you know, you,
Kamran Javadizadeh: I think you you you could have put the the three poems you know without a name attached to them in front of somebody who'd never heard of Notley, and they would have supposed they'd been written by three different poets, ah maybe.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um Having said that, the the first two poems in this sequence of conversations have been in one sense or another elegies you know the um at night the states um an elegy for um for her husband um the descent of a let you know in some important sense occasioned by the death of her brother
Lindsay Turner: Mm-hmm.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um is And this poem seems to be about like new life and um and and not to be sort of elegiac in in those kinds of ways.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um And i you know i i i i suppose this is just an invitation, Lindsay, for you to say something about... and I hope this is not too too big or ungainly a question to ask you here at the end of this conversation about, you know, like how or to what extent like you think that the knotly of waltzing Matilda, notwithstanding the ah difference in poetic mode or topic or occasion that I've just um articulated is in fact, in some sense of a piece with the um but that elegiac poet of, at night the states or or the descent of a let, you know, poems that, the descent of a let you said, I think was the the first poem that really sort of wowed you.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um seems quite different from this poem. I think probably there are lots of things you've already said in this conversation that suggest to me ways of thinking of this work's relation to that.
Kamran Javadizadeh: but um But is there something here that you'd want to say about how Welting Matilda fits in alongside a poet who might have seemed to listeners of this podcast until now to be a poet who was kind of fixated on death and loss and grief and so on
Lindsay Turner: Yeah, that's interesting. I think Notley has spoken about about turning points in in her life and career being the death of Ted Berrigan, which is obviously after this poem and the death also of her, is it...
Lindsay Turner: the death of Kate, ah her brother, and also the the the death ah of Kate Berrigan.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Our brother, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: And all of those, I think all of those are after, now i've I'm the, I can't remember Kate Berrigan, but I think all of those are after this poem. And so it is true that this, um you know, that the the poems in this book in the early work of the 80s and the early early work of the 70s are, um i think it's i think it's, you know, I'm sure there are places that where where there are elegies, but I,
Lindsay Turner: eight they do seem to me to be less, um but a little bit less interested, or to be less, less interested in death, or death seems to be less present in them.
Lindsay Turner: um But I think they're absolutely, you know, i I was thinking about about that question, actually, how does it all, how does it all go together?
Kamran Javadizadeh: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay Turner: um And and one one, answer is probably just the energy and the plasticity of language. and you know not least Notley's work is, by its nature, it's so varied and so committed to to what she called disobedience, right to to taking new forms, to breaking forms, to putting things in poems that weren't there before, to doing new things with form.
Lindsay Turner: to you know the The energy of the phrases and the sentences and the lines, the variation, the vocabulary, all of that is, I think is is it's really ah ah unparalleled. Like the work just never seems to run out of steam.
Lindsay Turner: and I think another, and then another thing is the is the sense of conviction. um and and it's you know it's possible that one of the reasons I'm drawn to waltzing Matilda into this moment in it is it could seem a little bit like a wobble in conviction, but um or a moment of, a moment of not not doubt, there's never there's hardly the ever, i don't think I can ever remember reading like self doubt or doubt in poetry and Notley, but you know, a moment that ah it's a poem that depicts, you know, someone um someone questioning, someone trying to figure things out.
Lindsay Turner: um but But what comes back and again and again and again is this conviction is this conviction that the work that's being done is is the work of poetry and that it's important and that Nali is herself, you know, um the person to do it.
Lindsay Turner: And and that that's what she did.
Kamran Javadizadeh: I love that a wobble in conviction.
Lindsay Turner: Yeah.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um and and And then as you say, it's it's restoration. um Well, this has been a really fascinating conversation, Lindsay.
Kamran Javadizadeh: I wonder if you wouldn't mind ending it by reading the poem again so that we have it again now in in mind with but the conversation fresh in our ears.
Lindsay Turner: Of course.
Lindsay Turner: And thank you, Carmen. This is really, really fun. And now I have so much more to think about. December 12, 1980. nineteen eighty Dear Anonymous, to answer your questions in order, one, did you say it?
Lindsay Turner: Of course you said it. You either said it outright or said it in his imagination. But either way, you were saying it. Do you think you own yourself? Ha, ha. Which isn't to say you aren't free.
Lindsay Turner: but you never know where on earth or in heaven you're going to be being free. Two, your priorities and values something odd about. Actually, I'd rather like them.
Lindsay Turner: sarcasm and Sarcasm and meanness and inability to vomit, et cetera, they just occur. And the husband or the babysitter, they can go fuck a duck if they're perturbed. What's odd about your priorities and values is that you don't see that about voodoo in New Orleans, assassination, et cetera.
Lindsay Turner: Saying that just occurs too. What you seem to hate is whatever you don't remember. Oh, let go, let go, dear anonymous. Just imagine what you're doing and saying in my amiable cosmic rambles right now.
Lindsay Turner: You just told a drunk panhandler on third street that you had the best breaths in the neighborhood and so didn't, wouldn't ever owe talentless him a penny. You told one of your sons that you loved him so much that you were lost forever, lost forever.
Lindsay Turner: You repeated the phrase, trying to find it out. You just told your husband that you were writing a voodoo poem set in New Orleans or somewhere, but you said that with the rain you occupied a white scared sidewalk there.
Lindsay Turner: Three, I see little difference between you and your husband. You're both big and awkward, sentimental, truth-telling fuck-ups, though you each have a different cover story. Do not envy your husband the cosmos because you put in some time on the bathroom floor.
Lindsay Turner: The positions may interchange next time. Four, why do you mind so much? Because you had to mind about something because you're alive and a string of words was the easiest thing to mind about. It was just an object.
Lindsay Turner: So what if you're obsessive? So what? The wind is beating out the windows and it's cold and trying to tell the truth is boring when there are only two possible truths to tell. A, that your life is subject to the manipulations of the rich and powerful and acquisitive and the inferences of the mannersless and suspicious and judgmental and desperate.
Lindsay Turner: B, that you are this moment catching yourself at aging, loving, babysitting, being vain, washing the dishes, being complex, et cetera. Now I suppose you're asking why B is boring.
Lindsay Turner: It isn't, except when you can't tell it because there's too much of a going on in your life. So buy yourself a Fisher-Price activity center, some glue and scissors, etc. and get on with it all. Sincerely, your advisor.
Lindsay Turner: P.S. My wife says better than Beethoven and Patti Smith in their garter belts.
Kamran Javadizadeh: Thanks again, Lindsay Turner. That was great. um I learned a lot from you as always, and and I'm sure our listeners did too. so I want to thank you for coming on the podcast and um listeners, thank you for spending the time and thinking about this marvelous poet along with us in these last three episodes. I, um as I said, I think at the beginning of the first of them that I recorded with Nick,
Kamran Javadizadeh: which was now in in my time, I don't know, about a week ago. i i really felt the absence of having these conversations um in my life, and I'm really grateful for the chance um to continue to to have resumed having them in the last week or so.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um i mean very much to keep going i can't um promise necessarily how regularly the episodes will appear but um but i really love um i really love doing this work and i'm so grateful that there are people out there who enjoy listening and seem to be getting something out of these conversations too so if uh If you stay subscribed and all of that, um it's my earnest hope and expectation that that you'll be rewarded with more conversations soon.
Kamran Javadizadeh: um But in the meantime, be well, everyone, and thanks again.
