AL FILREIS:
I'm Al Filreis, and this is Poem Talk at the Writers House, where I have the pleasure of convening three friends in the world of contemporary poetry and poetics to collaborate on a close but not too close reading of a poem. We'll talk, maybe even disagree a bit, and perhaps open up the verse to a few new possibilities and, we hope, gain for a poem that interests us, some new readers and listeners. And I say listeners because Poem Talk poems are available in recordings made by the poets themselves as part of our PennSound archive, writing.upenn.edu/pennsound. Today I'm joined here in Philadelphia at the Kelly Writers House in our Wexler Studio by Julia Bloch, teacher, brilliant Co-convenor of online poetry communities, associate director of this very Kelly Writers House, co-curator of the Emergency Reading series. Fabulously talented editor, a widely published poet, author of post-psychiatric sonnets, and a series of letters to Kelly Clarkson, whose new book is 'Valley Fever', soon to be published by Sidebrow and who, along with Michael Hennessy, is editor of Jacket2 magazine.

And by Sarah Dowling, author of 'DOWN', 'Birds and Bees, and 'Security Posture', winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, whose work is included in the anthology, 'I'll Drown My Book'. Conceptual Writing by Women, among other anthologies, and has appeared in journals such as Encyclopedia, TCR, Line, and Matrix, and who teaches at the University of Washington Bothell. And by Maxe Crandall, whose chapbook 'Together Men Make Paradigms' was published during the summer 2014 by Portable Press and Yo-Yo Labs and premiered at Dixon Place in New York, and was short-listed for the Leslie Scalapino Award, who was a 2014 Poets House fellow, and teaches writing at Columbia University and is at work on a critical biography, 'Gertrude Stein and Men.' Maxe, I'm so excited about this. I mean, this is really hard to do, but can you give us, like, the briefest one? What are you doing in that book, 'Gertrude Stein and Men'?

MAXE CRANDALL:
This book is looking at Stein's biography, flipping it on its head so that we're not thinking as much about Gertrude and Alice, so much as thinking about the groups and groups of men that surrounded Stein during her life.

AL FILREIS:
Wow. That's great. And you are here all the way from the West Coast.

MAXE CRANDALL:
All the way from Seattle. Yes.

AL FILREIS:
And it's drippy rainy here. So?

MAXE CRANDALL:
So it's nice and sunny in Seattle. And, Julia, nice to see you as always.

JULIA BLOCH:
Nice to see you.

AL FILREIS:
It's great that you get to hang around the Writers House and just to walk in the studio...

JULIA BLOCH:
I love it.

AL FILREIS:
Poem Talk, anytime. Well, we four are here today to talk about a poem by Gertrude Stein called 'How She Bowed to Her Brother'. It was written in late 1931. The text can be found, among other places, in a Gertrude Stein Reader, edited by Ulla Dydo, page 564, in fact. On PennSound's Gertrude Stein page, which was specially edited also by Ulla Dydo, we have a recording of Stein reading this piece, made in 1934, presumably on her visit to the US where she made some other recordings. It is two minutes and 18 seconds long, so here now is Gertrude Stein, reading the first section of a three-section poem called 'How She Bowed to Her Brother'.

GERTRUDE STEIN:
This poetry called 'She Bowed to Her Brother' is an example of the new use of period, in which I used periods to break up the line rather than the commas because periods bring a more complete stop called 'She Bowed to Her Brother'. 

"The story of how she bowed to her brother. Who has whom as his. Did she bow to her brother. When she saw him. Any long story. Of how she bowed to her brother. Sometimes not. She bowed to her brother. Accidentally. When she saw him. Often as well. As not. She did not. Bow to her brother. When she. Saw him. This could happen. Without. Him. Everybody finds in it a sentence that pleases them. This is the story included in. How she bowed to her brother. Could another brother have a grand daughter. No. But. He could have a grandson. This has nothing to do with the other brother of whom it is said that we read she bowed to her brother. There could be a union between reading and learning. And now everybody. Reads. She bowed. To her brother. And no one. Thinks. Thinks that it is clearly. Startling. She started. By not bowing. To her brother. And this was not the beginning. She has forgotten. How she bowed. To her brother. And. In mentioning. She did mention. That this was. A recollection. For, fortunately. In detail. Details were given. Made an expression. Of recollection. Does whether. They gather. That they heard. Whether. They bowed. To each other. Or not. If in. They made it. Doubtful. Or double. Of their holding it. A momentary after. That she was never. Readily made rather. That they were. Whether. She asked her. Was she doing anything. Either. In all this there lay. No description. And so. Whether. They could come to be nearly. More. Than more. Or rather. Did she. Bow to her brother."

AL FILREIS:
At the very beginning, she describes her method and it's not that easy to hear. So I wonder, Sarah, if you would remind us what she says there about these unusual sentences.

SARAH DOWLING:
Well, this was something that really struck me. First, she says that this poem is a poetry, which I think is an interesting way of grouping it along with some of her other works. But then she talks about the use of periods as a way of creating stops within the line, and she characterizes a period as a more complete stop than a comma, which also is another interesting way of thinking about how this poem fits among Stein's other works because I think she's so famous for hating commas and not wanting to use them. But here that view seems to be a bit more nuanced. Of course, she rejects the comma here too, but it's in favor of something that's just stronger, that's more robust than a comma. So for me, that was an interesting moment to hear that description of her method and why this poem is so full of periods.

AL FILREIS:
Julia, is the effect to create a greater sense of fragmentation or is it simply a reading device?

JULIA BLOCH:
Well, I think it's both. It definitely affects how or it affects what she describes as the breaking up of thought. She says the periods break up the thought, so there's a way to break it into chunks as you're reading it. But also as I look at it on the page, it really does break up the story. This is a story that's told and not told. It's she starts and stops, almost like I'm sure we're gonna get to the story behind this piece, but like, she's in the car in the traffic jam, starting and stopping and starting and stopping.

AL FILREIS:
Can the four of us make a little list of ambiguities that are created by those insistent periods? You know, do you wanna throw one out?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Right. Well, first and foremost, it's the question of whether Stein did or did not bow to her brother.

AL FILREIS:
Yes. And what, read a line or two where the period actually contributes to that doubleness.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Did she bow to her brother when she saw him?

AL FILREIS:
That'll do it. So did she. Did she on it's own?

JULIA BLOCH:
Also, she did not bow to her brother when she saw him. She did not, could belong to some other kind of action.

AL FILREIS:
Right. Does she respect the periods in the reading?

SARAH DOWLING:
There were moments where she seemed to emphasize the periods more and moments where she seemed to emphasize them less. But the pauses did seem to track quite consistently with where the periods appear in the text.

AL FILREIS:
And this is an unusual choice she's making in this period, the early 30s. But she doesn't do this again, does she?

JULIA BLOCH:
Well, she also describes it as a new use of periods. So it seems as though. This...

AL FILREIS:
Is just new to her. But new to everybody.

JULIA BLOCH:
Yeah. I mean, this piece is definitely inaugurating a new kind of practice for her. So she sees it as a real intervention.

AL FILREIS:
Alright, Maxe, since you happen to be writing something biographically about men, can we, do we want to talk about Leo? Is this the brother in the story? Does it help us to know about Leo?

MAXE CRANDALL:
This is the brother in the story. Leo Stein, two years her senior. So they were just two years apart. And the story is that they were in the Ford in traffic in Paris. And Alice is looking around at the cars and what have you, and she notices Gertrude stands up and bows and says, "Who did you see?" Stein says it was her brother. And they don't talk about it again.

AL FILREIS:
Ever?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Right.

AL FILREIS:
Now, she and Leo had been very close and then they had a separation in 1913. Word is that Leo did not approve of Alice. He had some very, very nasty things to say about Alice.

MAXE CRANDALL:
And I think, yeah, I think Gertrude also did not approve of Leo's lover.

AL FILREIS:
So they were separated for many years. And then she saw Leo and Traffic and bowed.

MAXE CRANDALL:
And they had had some correspondence, maybe 1916 to 1919 or so.

JULIA BLOCH:
But it's true that after this moment they never spoke.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Sure. And so to me, this is a huge modernist silence between Leo and Gertrude.

AL FILREIS:
The bow is ironic, and it's not a traditional homage, I take it.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah. I think that's one way to look at this.

AL FILREIS:
It's a 'Fuck-you Bow', like, where have you been all my life?

MAXE CRANDALL:
I guess you could say that.

AL FILREIS:
I mean, have you ever bowed to anybody ironically? I have.

SARAH DOWLING:
Oh, sure.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. That's what, this is...

MAXE CRANDALL:
This is a theatrical poem.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah.

MAXE CRANDALL:
This is a poem that's interested in relationships as performance. I love the gesture of the bow as a theater that can be interpreted in any number of different ways.

AL FILREIS:
And is the poem as aggressive as the gesture- the biographical gesture that we, I think, reasonably think is the basis?

SARAH DOWLING:
Well, one thing that I was struck by when I was reading it, and especially in the first section, is she gives quite a lot of different genres for what this poem could be. So it starts by saying it's a story and then she goes on to call it a recollection and an expression, and then she mentions in the kind of intro that it's one of her portraits. And usually, I think of those portraits as being so intimate and having this kind of loveliness to them. So in that sense, it seems a little bit funny that, Julia was saying earlier, here's a story that's not quite going to tell the story. So, for me, there wasn't quite the aggressivity in the poem that seems to be indicated by the story. Instead, it feels almost shameful in some ways like if...

AL FILREIS:
You mean capitulation.

SARAH DOWLING:
Yeah, like if the ironic 'Fuck-you Bow' was not received as such, then what kind of position has she put herself in? Or did the bow somehow communicate more than what was intended or less than what was intended? So it seems as though, you know, it's almost like one of those moments where you do or say something in a conversation then afterwards you think, "Ah, I should have done something else." It seems as though the poem is playing over those anxieties and finding a way to put those anxieties in writing.

GERTRUDE STEIN:
The story of how she bowed to her brother. Who has whom as his. Did she bow to her brother. When she saw him. Any long story. Of how she bowed to her brother. Sometimes not. She bowed to her brother. Accidentally. When she saw him. Often as well. As not. She did not. Bow to her brother. When she. Saw him. This could happen. Without. Him. Everybody finds in it a sentence that pleases them.

AL FILREIS:
When I began reading this poem, I couldn't get past the first line. I loved it so much and was confused by it. The story of how just that alone, I was sort of hoping she'd put a period after that. The story of how.

JULIA BLOCH:
And we know this piece has been published variously without the how in the title. So sometimes it's appeared as she bowed to her brother.

AL FILREIS:
Big difference, right?

JULIA BLOCH:
It's a huge difference because the how is about the way this happened. It's about the mode of the gesture, whether it's the big modernist silence that Maxe described or the tenderness or the gaps in fissures between the periods and what comes after them the aggression, the ambiguity. It's all about the mode. And so Stein is so she does such an amazing job of showing us her practice and showing us her method and the texture of the language. So the how is so necessary there.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. When you get to how and bao you think of a formality and of course, form and formality is everything that Leo sister is all about. So the story of how is the story of bowing or not bowing. The recording that Gertrude Stein made in 1934, in the US gives us only the first section. And I would like to appeal to the three of you just to read a line or two from sections two or three, just to get them in the record. We hope everybody listening to Poem Talk will read the whole thing, but we've only heard the first section. So, Sarah, you have a couple of lines to contribute from later in the poem.

SARAH DOWLING:
Sure. Maybe I'll contribute some lines from part two, since that's the next part. "They were a few. And they knew. Not that. She had bowed. To her brother. There were not. A few. Who knew. That she. Had. Bowed to her brother. Because if they knew. They would say. That a few. Knew. That she. Had bowed to her brother. But necessarily."

AL FILREIS:
That's so great, I love that. Why did you pick that? What's so great about that?

SARAH DOWLING:
Well, just before the end of part one, Stein raises the possibility that the bow could perhaps have been reciprocal in some way. She says, "And so whether they could come to be nearly more than more, or rather, did she bow to her brother?" So for me, that question of whether they could come to be nearly or nearly more seems to suggest, oh, perhaps a bow is a gesture that begets a bow. So, for example, if your little kids do Suzuki music, they have to bow to the teacher and then the teacher bows to them. So there's certain types of bowing where you give the gesture and you get one back. So she kind of raises this possibility, could they come to be nearly more than more or did she bow to her brother? And then suddenly it gets in in part two, to this sort of social perception, who's seen this, who knows this, what story is circulating? And that, to me is a really fascinating moment, where it's not just about what she did, it's about what story is out there, who knows about it, what are the meanings that are attached?

AL FILREIS:
Wow, that was great. Great, perfect selection, and a great close reading of it. You're implying that what Stein is going after or recovering in her own work, ideally, is a conversation, a reciprocality, a reader-writer relationship, a kind of Suzuki bowing, going both ways. They would say. Alright, Maxe, you're up. Do you want to pick a passage, a brief one, and?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah. I'll pick one from part three. "She could think. Of how she was. Not better. Than when. They could say. Not. How do you do. To-day. Because. It is an accident. In suddenness. When there is. No stress. On their. Address. They do not address you. By saying. Rather. That they went by. And came again. Not. As. Or. Why."

AL FILREIS:
Wow, that's very radical.

MAXE CRANDALL:
It gets very radical there at the end. Yes.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. What's radical about it?

MAXE CRANDALL:
The gestures become illegible in a way.

AL FILREIS:
And address.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Address and accident. And then we have the how do you do today?

AL FILREIS:
A return to at least a nod or a bow at social formality, conventional social formality. Julia, you have a passage?

JULIA BLOCH:
Yeah, I'm going to... I'm going to actually go up a little bit earlier. "They were. There. That is to say. They were. Passing there. They were passing there. But not. On that day. And with this. To say. It was said. She bowed. To her brother. Which was. A fact. If she bowed. To her brother. Which was. A fact. That is. If she bowed. Which. If she bowed. Which she did. She bowed to her brother." So, may I just kind of glommed onto the word fact, which appears twice in what I just read? And of course, the piece is so interested in fact and information and we're told no description, at least a couple of times in detail. Details were given, but then, there's no description also. So pieces really resisting that classic portraiture of here are all the details and they cohere and they combine to make up a complete image. So, fact was very surprising to me because when I think of fact, I think of more information or what you get in a documentary-inflected piece. It's less aesthetic, almost. So this is really about literally recollecting an event, reporting on it a little less than giving us an aesthetic portrait.

And what I also found fascinating about this was there seemed to be more and more people suddenly occupying this scene, right? So they were passing. There could be Gertrude and Alice, there could be even... There's another brother elsewhere in the poem, you know. And so the which brother is almost starting to get questioned at certain points in the piece, and all of a sudden I just get this feeling of all these people in this scene, this it's it's a modernist silence because it's a modernist moment. It's Paris in the 1930s.

AL FILREIS:
It's a modernist biography, a biography of a family and of all of Paris if you're stuck in traffic. ell, I have a little passage to contribute. And I'm hoping that people this is toward the beginning of section three, and I'm hoping that we'll all say something about pointing out, pointed out, pointed out. "She bowed to her brother. Was not easily. Pointed out. And. No wish. She and. No wish. Which is. Not easily pointed out. And. So which. They. And. No wish. Which. And not. Easily pointed out. She bowed to her brother. And no wish. And not. Easily pointed out. And no. Wish." Pointed out, what is all this about pointed out?

JULIA BLOCH:
Well, pointing is, of course, a word that we know is really important to Gertrude Stein from tender buttons with system and arrangement to pointing, we're thinking about constructing the image by pointing to it, gesturing towards it, rather than trying to pin it down.

AL FILREIS:
So language theory gets in here.

JULIA BLOCH:
You can only point at things. You can't represent them. There's no real representation. You can only gesture endlessly and point at them.

AL FILREIS:
What's the difference between pointing at someone you see in a traffic jam and bowing to them? Here's a rhetorical question for you. But, you know, I mean, it's one thing to point out. Oh my God, there's my brother. I haven't seen him in 20 years. And it's another thing to stand up and bow. But they're both gestures of pointing, it seems to me.

GERTRUDE STEIN:
"This is the story included in. How she bowed to her brother. Could another brother have a grand daughter. No. But. He could have a grandson. This has nothing to do with the other brother of whom it is said that we read she bowed to her brother. There could be a union between reading and learning. And now everybody. Reads. She bowed. To her brother. And no one. Thinks. Thinks that it is clearly. Startling. She started. By not bowing. To her brother. And this was not the beginning. She has forgotten. How she bowed. To her brother."

AL FILREIS:
This has nothing to do with the other brother, she says in section one of whom it is said that we read, 'She bowed to her brother. Any thoughts on this other brother?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Well, yes, I'm thinking of their older brother, Michael Stein, who was the bankroller of Leo and Gertrude's adventures, not just the rather leisurely life of reading and writing. So the next line is there could be a union between reading and learning. But he also gave them gifts of money that they used to buy paintings for their amazing modern art collection.

AL FILREIS:
So, after the parents, I guess died, he took responsibility for the family business. He was the guy who sort of kept things going and enabled the artistic life of these others. So, is that significant? Sarah, what do you think? I mean, that's a good biographical reading. Now, what do we do with it?

SARAH DOWLING:
I think there is that kind of direct biographical sense, sort of, you know, no, no, it wasn't Michael. He's fine. It was Leo.

AL FILREIS:
It was Leo, who split from me. It was Leo who was rude to me.

SARAH DOWLING:
Yeah, that's the sensation I get. But then, by the same token, I think there's also a sense in which it's about having bowed to her brother and that kind of question or problem or self-interrogation around that gesture. So in a way, the brother himself may be he's a bit of a red herring to this kind of larger question of what was this action. What did it mean? For whom did it appear as a kind of visible act? And in that sense, I don't think it's so much about even Leo, but about the fact that Stein did this and what is, what happens with that.

AL FILREIS:
Julia, if it's not about Leo or if it's not only about Leo but about another brother in this case, a brother who's acting benevolently but patriarchally.

JULIA BLOCH:
Well, the speaker is also acting very tenderly in the two lines that precede this one. "Could another brother have a grand daughter? No, but he could have a grandson." So the speakers really kind of ruminating almost affectionately, what's going on in this other brother's life?

AL FILREIS:
So this bowing is honor-giving, deferential, familial. It's different from the more radical bowing or the ironic bowing that we're seeing elsewhere.

JULIA BLOCH:
Well, at least allowing that tenderness into the poem. I mean, I can't read it directionally in that way, because I think it's too ambiguous. I don't I wouldn't want to say she's citing Michael as the good brother and Leo as the bad, in the same way, that I think Sarah is reminding us that the biography is a bit of a red herring because they're much more important things going on in the piece around the action of bowing.

AL FILREIS:
Such as the ideal of a union between reading and learning, which is a much bigger issue. Can we, let's each try that? Maxe, starting with you, there could be a union between reading and learning. What do we do with that?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Well, I'll give a biographical read on it. I do think that the intense bond that Gertrude and Leo shared was through their education and through taste, their cultivation of taste, whether literary or artistic. And so this in some ways, I like to see that as a tribute. That is a moment of tenderness for me that honors you know, a really intense growing up. They were together all the time by anyone's storytelling.

AL FILREIS:
Sarah, your thought on this?

SARAH DOWLING:
So, one thing that I think is quite interesting about this sort of possibility that's raised about a union between reading and learning, is that she immediately shuts it down, which I think really reinforces a lot of what Maxe is saying. So there could be a union between reading and learning, and now everybody reads and no one thinks. So it seems like she's sort of looking back fondly at this kind of intense bond that was taking place through reading and learning, and the thinking part of it now has fallen away, and that's something to be lamented. So I think, in a way it sort of sounds funny because it's similar to these statements that we so often hear nowadays about the encroachment of digital culture. But I think to think of this in the family sense of with whom did I read, with whom did I learn? Now thinking is gone. There's something very sad about that.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, terrific. Seems to me that she may be positing or remembering some ideal pre-fall, pre-modern, prelapsarian moment where these things were, where there was unalienated thinking and intellectualizing. So, I think psychoanalytically this is one of these little glimpses at something that preceded that fall.

SARAH DOWLING:
I think so too. But what's very interesting is she very quickly asserts how necessary it was for her to push back on that because right after, she says she started by not bowing to her brother. So as much as that Prelapsarian moment was precious, in order for her to continue to develop as a thinker and as an artist, she needed to stop bowing to her brothers, right? She needed to push back...

AL FILREIS:
So, after the separation, which happens to be also a gender separation after the separation, then there was the pointing out. One cannot point out, one cannot do the pointing denotative gesture if you're in this family room where everybody is together.

SARAH DOWLING:
Yeah. Too close.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, very theoretically. Very interesting. Julia, top that.

JULIA BLOCH:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
Do you want to say something about union between reading and learning, or should we move on?

JULIA BLOCH:
I just want to say I have been reading that previous line over and over again. This has nothing to do with the other brother of whom it is said that we read. She bowed to her brother.

AL FILREIS:
That's hard, isn't it?

JULIA BLOCH:
And I think it's a really rare moment in the poem where they're actually maybe should be a period. And then Stein decides not to put a period.

AL FILREIS:
She couldn't resist the rhyme.

JULIA BLOCH:
Before she bowed to her brother. So yeah, you get the rhyme and you get this really difficult parataxis, grammatically, I just haven't been able to parse it. And I think that's important because there has to be something about figures merging there, the narrative getting jumbled up and confused.

AL FILREIS:
This is great. I'm really happy with what we've done so far. Why don't we? You know, we could talk about this for a long time. So why don't we just go around and each of us say one final thing about this? Who wants to start? Maxe, do you have a final thought?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah. I think any talk of Stein needs a little gossip. So, I have a little gossip.

AL FILREIS:
Oh, good.

MAXE CRANDALL:
If we go back to the second line of the poem. So the poem starts, "The story of how she bowed to her brother. Who has whom as his." So Alice claimed that Leo was a whom person- an object, not a who person- a subject. And so I like in the second line, if it's a, you know, a portrait of Leo Stein, according to Alice, was a whom person and we get who and whom in that sense.

AL FILREIS:
Wow. Maxe, did you tell me you put that anecdote together with this poem, huh?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yes, I did, yes.

AL FILREIS:
You did it.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah.

AL FILREIS:
OK, anybody listening to this? If you ever do that, make that point in print, you need to make sure that you cite Maxe Crandall seriously. That was really great.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Well, it's good, you know, when you remember all of the horrible things that people say in this world, it's nice when you can connect them to something else.

AL FILREIS:
But Alice seems to have really zinged it. And in fact, in a way that Gertrude remembered and got. So Alice gets bowed to in the second line of the poem in a way.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah, she's sitting right next to Stein.

AL FILREIS:
That's great. OK, Sarah, now you got to top that. That was really good.

SARAH DOWLING:
Well, I'm definitely not going to top it. But one thing that I think is always nice is to have an animal in a poem. So, I think it's worth mentioning that...

AL FILREIS:
Is basket in here somewhere?

SARAH DOWLING:
Yes. In the third section it says, "To interrupt a white dog. Who can occasionally. In instance. No once counts alike She bowed to her brother. For. And. Counts alike." So that line really stood out to me, because I always love a dog. But I also thought it was very funny that it was the dog who was going to get interrupted here. In my experience, it usually goes the other way, so perhaps the dog could interrupt the bow and run some interference on that. I don't know.

JULIA BLOCH:
It's great to imagine, like the dog's nose pointing at the window...

AL FILREIS:
The basket goes in the car for the ride, I assume.

SARAH DOWLING:
I think I've seen some pictures of basket in the vicinity of the Ford, not in the Ford itself.

AL FILREIS:
Growling at Leo, no doubt.

SARAH DOWLING:
Yeah. Get out of here.

AL FILREIS:
Wow. That's great. OK, Julia, you're on final thoughts.

JULIA BLOCH:
Alright, I can't top that. But I will say I'm struck by the very last line, "She bowed to her brother." So there's no how. So it's tantalizing a bit to read that more definitively. Yes, she bowed to her brother. This happened. It really happened. It definitely happened. This is a fact. But I think we know better whether to... You know better than to read it like that really. I think to me it tonally, rhythmically, it actually makes me feel as though the poem's just going to continue and be circular, because we've already been, our ear has already been trained not to read that literally, not to read that line as it looks on the face of things.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, we know better when we get to it at the end, probably. Well, my final thought is really brief. It's about the word accidentally. It's been mentioned already, but it's so crucial. Whenever Gertrude Stein refers to the word itself, it uses the word accidental or accidentally or some synonym of it because while she's not really an aleatory poet or a chance poet, so much of thematics and then lineation are have the experience of an accident. And in this case, we have an underlying anecdote of them driving around in traffic. And I like the way we are reminded of that at the beginning. Well, we like to end Poem Talk with a minute or two of Gathering Paradise, a chance for several of us, or all three if you're quick to spread wide our narrow hands to gather a little something really poetically good to hail or commend someone or something going on in the poetry world. Sarah Dowling, other than you, yo are Paradise. It's great to see you.

SARAH DOWLING:
You too.

AL FILREIS:
You're doing great things with this new book, 'DOWN' all caps. But other than you, what would you like to say?

SARAH DOWLING:
Well, recently I taught Jennifer Tamayo's new book, 'You Da One' to my 300-level poetry class, a creative writing class, and they really enjoyed it. And it's a great book to teach because Tamayo has done a bunch of videos of her performances that I think really connect with a lot of students, especially students who speak other languages at home or students who have a lot of familiarity with internet cultures. So it went over very well and we had a great session. So, I really would recommend the book.

AL FILREIS:
And the videos are YouTube or Vimeo.

SARAH DOWLING:
I actually found them on her website.

AL FILREIS:
T-A-M-A-Y-O.

SARAH DOWLING:
Exactly.

AL FILREIS:
OK, great. Quick, what are two other books you had your students read in that class?

SARAH DOWLING:
Well, we were going to read Ronaldo Wilson's 'Poems of the Black Object', but it seems to be out of print. But it was very exciting for them to listen to his off-the-dome recordings and to try recording themselves. Another book that we read in that class, which is maybe a bit more of an old classic is 'Myung Mi Kim's Comments'. So we've been really focused on poets who are experimenting with different kinds of language and colliding different kinds of language together. So it's been fun.

AL FILREIS:
Great. Lucky students.

SARAH DOWLING:
Hopefully, they think so.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah, I bet they do. Julia Block gathered some Paradise, please.

JULIA BLOCH:
I just want to give a shout-out to Essay Press, which is a great group of folks who recently relaunched their website, and they've been putting out a series of really fascinating chapbooks, and one that I've been enjoying is called 'Affect and Audience in the Digital Age', and it's edited by Amaranth Borsuk includes Sarah, among others, and it's a series of conversations about what it means to constitute the subject or not constitute the subject in digital works. Works that are engaging with the digital realm that are using found texts that get scraped off the circuits and modes of circulation. And it's a fascinating read.

AL FILREIS:
Terrific. Maxe.

MAXE CRANDALL:
I want to recommend the work of some of my fellow Poets House fellows. I'm really excited about the work of Laura Lorenzo and Jamie Barroso's forthcoming book, 'Cumulus Effect' from Four Way Books.

AL FILREIS:
Fantastic. And so the Poets House fellowship was a year-long thing, where you would go there a lot and participate in their programs and conversations.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah, it was fantastic. Ten of us with special guests all the time.

AL FILREIS:
That's fantastic. Yeah, and people should know this. But to get to Poets House, it's way, way down on the bottom west of Manhattan. And I don't even know what the nearest subway stop is, but can you give us a ballpark? How did you get down there?

MAXE CRANDALL:
Yeah, you get on the two-three train and get out...

AL FILREIS:
All the way.

MAXE CRANDALL:
Walk to the river.

AL FILREIS:
Yeah. So it's we urge everybody listening to go to Poets House. My gathering Paradise is simply to recommend the work of Ulla Dydo, who is, has been at this for a long, long time. And D-Y-D-O. And it's stunning what she's done. She's been very, very serious about it. Not everybody agrees with all of her interpretations, but she's always provocative, always interesting. And she's also the editor of the PennSound Gertrude Stein page and she's contributed notes for each recording. So we're very grateful. A shout-out to Ulla Dydo. Well, that's all the bowing and forgetting we have time for on Poem Talk today. Poem Talk at the Writers House is a collaboration of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing and the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania and the Poetry Foundation, poetryfoundation.org. Thanks so much. This was fun to my guests, Julia Bloch, Sarah Dowling, and Maxe Crandall, and to our engineers, Zach Carduner and Tyler Burke, and to our editor, Amaris Cuchanski.

Next time on Poem Talk, Frank Sherlock, Paddy McCarthy, and Jen McCreary join me in a discussion of a stunning poem, 'The Forgotten Poem' by Guilhot, the late Guilhot. This is Al Filreis and I hope you'll join us again for that or another Poem Talk.