Keeping the Knife Sharp

Transcript of episode

Episode transcripts are provided to make this podcast accessible to a wider audience. Please note that interviews featured in this episode have been edited for concision and clarity.

SPEAKERS
Camille Rankine and Hafizah Geter

Hafizah Geter
My favorite joke about Carl Phillips is that, like, he knows more about a comma than I know all about the English language, right? The way he could stretch out a sentence and just build clause upon clause where it's just, like, all grammatically correct, and, like, the clauses are all doing something interesting and different. Like, sometimes it's surprise, sometimes it's acknowledgement. Sometimes it's, like, dismissals.

(Music begins)

Camille Rankine
Welcome to The Glimpse. I’m your host, Camille Rankine.

Hafizah Geter likes a comma and loves a good line break. She’s a Nigerian-American poet, writer, teacher and a literary agent. She’s the author of the poetry collection Un-American, and her debut memoir The Black Period won the 2023 PEN Open Book Award. She’s our guest today on The Glimpse.

(Music fades)

Camille
Hafizah Geter's poetry moves with a surprising stealth, burrowing into the marrow of family, love, and loss, troubling relationships between people and land and nation and tugging at the tether that binds the living and the dead. In her debut poetry collection, Un-American, she reveals truth so acute, so intimate, we catch our breath. Her language is smooth and soft and sharp, a lush instrument that leaves behind the gentlest bruise, an ache that reminds us we are human and alive. Welcome, Hafizah. Thanks for being here.

Hafizah
Thanks so much, Camille, thrilled to be here.

Camille
So you've been in the world of prose for a while, right? You just had your book come out, Black Period, which I highly recommend. Everyone should be reading that, for sure—an incredible work of nonfiction. So do you miss—do you miss us in poetry? Are you going to come back?

Hafizah
Yes, first of all, I'm a poet first. But because I think that, you know, there's a reason people love it when poets write prose…

Camille
We do love it!

Hafizah
Right? It’s the attention to language, but I think that like, you know, poetry is where, like, I keep my knife sharp. But yeah, it's a challenge. But I think that I hope to always be a poet for the attention it gives you to language, for what you have to do, like just on that emotional core. And I think that if there's ever a place you have to learn to trust the reader, it's poetry.

Camille
Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of trust there, I think. I mean, there's so much space, when you are moving away from the sentence, you know, there's so much space left between you and the reader that you're like, meet me here.

Hafizah
Yes. And it's about trusting the reader with a gap that, you know—you essentially build the other side of the bridge and you trust that what the reader has inside of them will create the bridge under their feet to get you to the next point. And that's something that I've always thought about, like, as I write line breaks, because I think line breaks are one of my favorite parts of a poem, because it's like a Swiss army knife. It's just like, actually, this is three poems in one, pick which one you want.

Camille
So what do you feel like poetry can do that prose can't do?

Hafizah
I think that in poetry there is—I feel like there's a very unique relationship between the writer of poetry and the reader that allows poetry to have a one-to-one relationship with almost every single reader and it’s just like—yes, we all understand that. Versus like with some nonfiction, it's just like, well, this is what this is about. You know?

Camille
Right, right. Alright, let's talk about—let's talk about your poem. Can you tell us the poem that you're going to share today?

Hafizah
Sure. So this poem was published in Poem-a-Day and, like, I had no new poems, but I'm just, like, “Gotta come up with something.” And so this is like, my first attempt to be writing, after my poetry book came out and after my nonfiction book came out, especially like—the one and only poem I've written since the book.

Camille
So this is you dipping your toe back in?

Hafizah
This is me trying. And nothing like a deadline to make you rise to the occasion.

Camille
So will you read it for us?

Hafizah
Nope. (They laugh)

Camille
Please.

Hafizah

Praise Song

After she died, I’d catch her
stuffing my nose with pine needles and oak,
staring off into the shadows of early morning.
Me, too jetlagged for the smells a ghost leaves behind.
The tailor of histories,
my mother sewed our Black Barbies and Kens
Nigerian clothes, her mind so tight against
the stitching that, in precision, she looked mean
as hell, too. My mother’s laugh was a record skipping,
so deep she left nicks in the vinyl.
See? Even in death, she wants to be fable.
I don’t know what fathers teach sons,
but I am moving my mother
to a land where grief is no longer
gruesome. She loved top 40, yacht rock,
driving in daylight with the wind
wa-wa-ing through her cracked window
like Allah blowing breath
over the open bottle neck of our living.
She knew ninety-nine names for God,
and yet how do I remember her—
as what no god could make?

"Praise Song" by Hafizah Geter first published on Poem-a-Day.


Camille
Thank you. I feel like this poem, “Praise Song,” it feels like an elegy that refuses the elegiac. Like, it feels like it's really happening more in a space of joy.

Hafizah
Yeah, in grief, you can forget how funny your parents are, especially anyone with immigrant parents, as you know. We literally just, like—idiosyncrasies that they have, like, you know? My mom loved Oprah and McDonald's apple pie, you know? She loved yacht rock so much—she loved yacht rock.

Camille
Yacht rock, that's a great detail, it’s like—”what?” But then when you listen to yacht rock, you know what, I'm like, “I get it. I get it!” (Laughs)

Hafizah
Yeah, but in the meantime, she was like buying black Barbies and Kens and literally stitching them Nigerian clothes to replace with, you know? It was the time when you had to go to like 14 different places to find the black Barbie; Afrocentrism was, like, all the rage. So I also appreciate just the way that, you know, immigrants stitch their lives together, like, for their children. We often think that, like, as the children of immigrants, that we're the ones who do all the assimilation, but like our parents are doing it in ways, too, that are beyond the ways that break our heart—like not giving us their language, and we're also mad about that. But like, that's a form of assimilation.

Camille
Mmhm. Yeah. And I think that there's also a sense in the poem of like—your mother appears in the poem not just as, like, a ghost in the romantic sense. Like, you know, people always talk about ghosts like they're in their nightgowns, holding a candle, and they’re floating. (They laugh.) Like, there's an audacity about her presence which I really enjoy. I think that’s rare, to me, to see that kind of haunting, and I really appreciate that. And I feel like it goes hand in hand with that sense of—not exactly letting go, but as you've described it as, like, getting clear. And I love that moment in the poem when you say that you're moving your mother to a land where grief is no longer gruesome. Like, there's such a relief in that and it feels like it's a mercy for both of you.

Hafizah
Yeah, because, like, so many of like—just like the way emotions are talked about…there is—also talked about through very patriarchal and masculine lenses. There's always, like, the violence of the experience, you know, and it's just like, “I don't want this to feel so bloody anymore.”

Camille
Does that connect back to the title that you chose? Can you talk about that choice of “Praise Song” for the frame for this poem?

Hafizah
Yeah, because, you know, I feel like poets and titles, you know, whatever, like, prose writers are just like, “Titles are so hard.” And it's like, “Now do it 55 times.”

Camille
Yeah!

Hafizah
For one book. For one book. (They laugh.) Yeah. Like, it is truly like—a title is truly an important and instructive thing. But I was also thinking of just like—you know, there's the traditional ideas of praise songs and how lofty they are. And so, like, whenever we think of reverence, there's always something inaccessible and otherworldly of this. It's just like, want to make it as…not like, mundane, but just like, as everyday.

Camille
In a way, the mundane here is elevated to the space of the divine by the form, but also kind of makes us understand that. You know, I think I was talking to another poet, um, Ama Codjoe, who said that, maybe we're living heaven and hell all the time. It's happening on Earth all the time. And so in a way, it kind of reframes those experiences as the divine that maybe we hadn't thought about that way before. And I think that's…

Hafizah
Yeah, and like, I think that there is something just like trying to expand our notion of divinity because I think there is something divine both in pleasure and in something more transcendent, that when you say yacht rock, we all have the same feeling.

Camille
Yes! Yes.

Hafizah
You know, like, we could all connect that like: yes, it's hilarious, but also, like, Footloose is an amazing soundtrack. You know, Kenny Loggins!?

Camille
You know, you know?

Hafizah
Perfection.

Camille
It’s good stuff. It’s good stuff!

Hafizah
Can't be denied. Yeah, and this joy would be like that—because so much of being, like, a black person or an immigrant is so serious. I remember when Green Day's, the album that had “Time of Your Life” on it, when that album—my mother loved that album. (They laugh.) Whenever those songs came on the radio, she's like “Shhh, shhh,” it's just like she loved Shaggy, “It Wasn't Me.”

Camille
I love that, that collection of things that feel contradictory. I feel like that's very much an immigrant-parent experience. You’re like, this and that, really? Okay. Definitely.

Hafizah
(Laughs) Yes, exactly.

Camille
Alright, let's take a little break, and when we come back, we can talk about Carl Phillips and what he is up to.

(Music begins)

BREAK

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We hope you're enjoying The Glimpse. It's just one small part of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. We are the founders, Peter and Cathy Halstead. Our goal is to make poetry more accessible to everyone. And we do that in a variety of ways. Through partnerships, our film series, this podcast, and our website, brinkerhoffpoetry.org. We hope these works will lure you into a parallel universe, the way a Möbius strip brings you into another dimension without leaving the page you're on. Thanks for listening.

(Music ends)

Camille
Alright, we are back. And we're going to talk about Carl Phillips, and I'm gonna make you explain how he works. Right? That's the agreement? (Laughter.) How does he do it? How does he do it?

Hafizah
Click! Click!

Camille
All right so tell us, tell us about the poem that you brought. What are you going to read for us?

Hafizah
So, the poem I brought for show and tell is a poem by Carl Phillips, who is, like, my favorite poet ever. And it's from his book Silverchest. It's called “So the Mind Like a Gate Swings Open.” And what do you want to know about it, Camille?

Camille
Well, I guess I want to hear you read it, and then we can…I want to know everything about it, after that.

Hafizah
Alright, okay. No pressure.

So The Mind Like a Gate Swings Open

When it comes to what, eventually, it must come to,
don’t forget to say to yourself Has it come to this again
already? Look a little lost, maybe,
but unsurprised.
Sometimes it feels like being a carousel horse, but
with all the paint gone strange-like, all the wood gone
driftwood, all the horses I’ve corralled inside me set free,
confused now, because now what? The snow fell like
hope when it’s been forsaken, just before the wind shifts—
then the wind shifts, the snow flies upward . . . I love you
means what, exactly? In the end, desire may turn out
to be no different from any other song—
sing, and be at
last released from it. Not so long ago as I’d like to think,
I used to get drunk in parking lots with strangers: we’d park,
we’d drink, and—and didn’t think what to call it, the rest
that came after, what is a thing like that worth calling: he
took me into his arms? he held me? I know longing’s
a lot like despair: both can equal everything you’ve ever
hoped for, if that’s how you want it—sure, I get that. What’s
wrong with me, I used to ask, but usually too late, and not
meaning it anyway. He touches me, or I touch him, or don’t.

“So the Mind Like a Gate Swings Open” from SILVERCHEST by Carl Phillips. Copyright © 2013 by Carl Phillips. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved.

Camille
Alright. Alright, Carl.

Hafizah
Yeah. Glad they gave that man his Pulitzer.

Camille
It's about time!

Hafizah
One more year and I would have had to cuss the whole system out.

Camille
Honestly. It was getting to be, like, conspicuous at this point. You know?

Hafizah
Yeah, like, there was about to be a revolt among us.

Camille
So, Carl Phillips, favorite poet.

Hafizah
Yes.

Camille
What about this poem? What draws you to this one in particular?

Hafizah
I think it's the same thing that draws me to all his poems, but that always happens so differently each time. My favorite joke about Carl Phillips is that he knows more about a comma than I know all about the English language, right? The way he could stretch out a sentence and just build clause upon clause where it's just, like, all grammatically correct. In, like, the clauses are all doing something interesting and different. Like, sometimes it's surprise, sometimes it's acknowledgement. Sometimes it's like dismissal. Sometimes it's like, it's kind of like this coy “me too,” you know, that I love and that I've never seen anyone who can twin shame, desire. And just like, banal recognition of oneself, you know? “I love you means what, exactly?”

Camille
That moment. Can we talk about that moment? (Hafizah laughs.) I was like, I feel like I've been slapped in the face. Especially with that line break. You know, “I love you…means what exactly?”

Hafizah
“Means what exactly,” but, like, it blows open the question and both dismisses it in this way that only something as big as love can be everything and nothing, you know. It can be something like the currency that we will do anything for and like tissue paper.

Camille
It's a mismatch.

Hafizah
Yes.

Camille
So delicious and unsettling and hilarious.

Hafizah
Yes, like, rarely do you see someone, like, tackle the mania of crush and desire and love in a way that is also deeply serious, you know, impactful. And I feel like with Carl that, like, Carl is never afraid of the hysteria of desire, that desire can make you feel hysterical. Right? And like, how he can inhabit on the page when he writes about shame. He inhabits like, the visceralness of being inside of it, but by the time you're done with this sentence, you realize that it's over, that, like, you're someone who's talking about it from a remove, you know? That, like, in the way he talks about it, like, you see the recognition of shame, but he's just like, “But we're on the other side.” Like maybe not another side, but he's just so matter of factness of it. Like a person who can talk about shame, while invoking shame, while not having you feel the shame. You know what I mean?

Camille
Yeah, he manages to really utilize the sentence, as you were saying, with perfect correctness. But he also somehow escapes that trap of the poem feeling like an accident of prose in lines. It's just—the sentence is doing poetry.

Hafizah
Yes! So often when people write about desire, it's like, precious, you know, but like, he acknowledges that, like, it's actually pretty embarrassing. He's just like, “This is what vulnerability is and looks like,” and, at the end of the day, I've never read a poet where I can, like, read so much about desire and shame and feel the opposite by the time I'm done. Because they say that embarrassment is like a thing that comes from inside; shame is what others do to you, you know?

Camille
I feel like that's one of the things about this poem, like hearing you talk about his relationship to shame and desire. In this poem I feel like there's so much casting off. And it's interesting, like, there's this kind of examination of release, but the release, it's like, “Is it liberation? Is it relief? Is it disappointment? I don't know.”

Hafizah
It’s a shrug.

Camille
It’s a shrug!

Hafizah
It's a shrug. It's just like, Carl’s walking away, looking back and shrugging over his shoulder, and he keeps going. (She laughs.)

Camille
Yes.

Hafizah
And when he talks about shame from his vantage point, you understand that it's something that's done to us. And which means that when we look at it, we can come at it from like, you know, an overhead view looking down, you know, this disembodied view, but we still recognize our body in it, in some way? Okay, so imagine, like, a picture of your heart, right? And then you blow [it] up so you can see all the pixels, right? His poems are able to find one pixel of your heart and be like, “Boom, that one,” you know. In like, my truly baby poet years, like, I would just read his work over and over again, and just be like, (motherfucker), okay, how did he do this, you know?

Even now—even for, like, when I was writing my nonfiction book, whenever I got stuck, I just pull Carl Phillips down and be like, “Show me something,” you know. It's kind of like, you know, like, how black people will have a meal so good, it makes them mad? (She laughs.)

Camille
Yes. Yes.

Hafizah
Yeah, that's what I feel like Carl Phillips’ poem is.

Camille
It’s honestly the best feeling. I love reading a poetry book, and I'm just like, “God dammit. How dare you!”

Hafizah
“This is outrageous!”

Camille
I wanna throw it. I want to turn over a table, just like…

Hafizah
Like, the only time I want to call the cops. (They laugh.) Like, you can see his intelligence moving all through, just, like, the classical education and everything that he knows, but in a way that never alienates you. It's rare that such elevated language and like, just an elevated eye can, like, not lock you out. Yeah, you know, at any level.

Camille
Yeah, I feel like that's a big part of the way that he makes poems. And it connects back to what you're talking about with shame and, and what we take on from the external end, the shrug that he extends throughout this poem over and over again.

Hafizah
Yeah.

Camille
I feel like it’s connected back to that, like: “You're gonna be led into this. Yes, I'm a very smart man. But you're welcome here too.”

Hafizah
Exactly because just like, you know, when people say the work should also show you how to read it, like, the poetry’s gonna show you how to read it, sure. But Carl's actually does in a very precise way, because you get to know how he's using these contradictions to find both, like, agreement, recognition, shame, all of these things.

And so I feel like that's part of, like, why you don't ever feel all locked out of it. Because even though his, like, diction and syntax is so like—you recognize a Carl Phillips poem from a million miles away, but the moment you start, he's teaching you like—he’s not even teaching. He's just showing you that you already know how.

Camille
That's a nice way of thinking about it.

Hafizah
Yeah. I feel like Carl Phillips poems are such strange, lovely places to be, you know, you always feel a little bit, like, off kilter. It's like, a friend who plays like a clever joke on you every time that you're always into, like, yeah,

Camille
It's like, “You got me again, Carl!” (They laugh.)

Hafizah
“You got me again, you got me again!” And at the end of the poem, it's always just like, “What?”

Camille
“What? Carl.”

Hafizah
Exactly.

Camille
Alright, so we’ve figured it out, we understand how he does it, or no?

Hafizah
Yeah.

Camille
Got to the bottom of it.

Hafizah
I've explained Carl Phillips to the world. Sorry, Carl, your career is over. (They laugh.)

Camille
He's just gonna find a new pixel. So we know that's the truth.

Hafizah
Oh my god. Don't threaten me, don't threaten me!

Camille
Yeah, so what are you up to now? What's your next project?

Hafizah
Well, I'm trying to write a novel, and, oof, those are hard. I mean, you literally just have to make up everything. So we shall see. It's like every poet, working on a novel. And then, like, the goal is to slowly try to write another book of poems.

Camille
Yeah. All right. Well, it's been, as always, a delight. Thank you so much for doing this and for talking to us about your poems and Carl's poems.

Hafizah
Of course, this has been delightful.

PERMISSIONS + CREDITS

Thanks for joining us today. I’m your host, Camille Rankine.

Hafizah’s poem, “Praise Song,” was first published on Poem-a-Day.

Carl Phillips’ poem, "So the Mind Swings Open Like a Gate,” is from SILVERCHEST, copyright 2013. It was aired with permission from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. All rights reserved.

Coming up next week, we talk to Chen Chen about petitioning the universe, the joy of tiny ketchup packets, and metaphors for grief.

Make sure to like and subscribe to the Glimpse wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our episodes on our website, brinkerhoffpoetry.org. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us an email at theglimpsepoetrypodcast@gmail.com

The Glimpse is a production of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. I’m your host, Camille Rankine. Our Senior Producer is Jennifer Wolfe; Kat Yore is our Technical Director and mixing engineer. Editorial Director Amanda Glassman is our curator and production coordinator. Amy Holmes is the foundation’s Executive Director, and our co-founders are Cathy and Peter Halstead. Thanks for listening!