06 – Poetic Drive | with Joel Duncan

00:00:00: I'm opposed to Petro-Modernity.

00:00:01: No, not...I mean a boycott it!

00:00:03: Not gonna buy any oil.

00:00:05: there's like no position on the outside of petromodernty and in which you know who we are how we write and move is in itself catastrophe.

00:00:17: My experience now as reader that its'a way with others It''s away beinthe world Its'waytoknowtheworld.

00:00:36: Welcome To Off The Road A podcast about the environmental humanities.

00:00:41: Beyond policy or science, we explore meaningful stories and conversations about climate and culture.

00:00:47: My name is Janis Buschkei And my guest today is Joel Duncan.

00:00:52: Joel and I previously worked together on The Off-the-Road Research Project which looks at how cars in driving change the way people thought about and study the environment.

00:01:02: We spoke about this project at length in an earlier episode with Timo Müller, which you should definitely listen to if you haven't already.

00:01:08: On this project Joel was our expert on modernism and American poetry about cars!

00:01:15: Before we get into the conversation with Joel let me briefly introduce him.

00:01:20: Joel earned his PhD from The University of Notre Dame Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of Konstanz, Germany.

00:01:30: He's the author of Poetic Drive American poetry In The Age Of Automobility which was published by the university of Virginia Press in two thousand twenty five.

00:01:42: So quite naturally todays episode will be about what poetry can tell us About our place in societies And cultures that are organized around driving and cars And how poetry uniquely grapples with the pleasures of driving, but also its social exclusions and it's role in destroying the environment.

00:02:01: With that being said Joel thank you for coming on and welcome to the show!

00:02:05: Thank you so much for having me!

00:02:07: Joel just get into your book a tiny bit.

00:02:10: It is about Poetry & Cars But before we got onto the actual book I wanted ask if there are poems or poets which drives particularly well Metaphorically speaking.

00:02:22: Well, one of the poets I look at in the book William Carlos Williams drove a lot and you can definitely see this sort of His view from The Driver's seat in his poems.

00:02:37: In the way he lineates as poems the images his sense of movement On the page as it were.

00:02:46: so i think He is an obvious example.

00:02:48: i don't actually know about the quality I mean, I have examples of poets not driving well including Williams.

00:02:56: He was a reckless driver and he drove too fast over railroad crossing.

00:03:03: his wife Flossy jumped in the car her head hit the cab on top damaged some vertebrae.

00:03:17: pain from that for the rest of her life.

00:03:19: Another bad example is Franco Herra, he would go home from New York City to Massachusetts and get drunk with friends while it was out.

00:03:36: Ivy Miles, who I write about in the book.

00:03:38: I don't know that they have had any car crashes but definitely abandoned at least one car on the streets of New York City.

00:03:44: so there's a kind of checkered record with poets driving.

00:03:48: Obviously these car crashes also reflected their poetry in some sense right?

00:03:54: But i wanted to go into your personal relationship too cars and automobility just for a tiny moment before we get and ask you what's the first car that ever made you feel something?

00:04:08: If there

00:04:08: is one.

00:04:09: I don't know, i've only owned one car in my life.

00:04:12: it was when i was doing my PhD in midwest ,i owned a gray or silver rather Buick Century which is um...I think it was slightly shorter version of cars often used as cabs.

00:04:29: In the front I had a bench seat which meant that you instead of having The shifter Gear shifter on your right as you're sitting in the driver's seat.

00:04:39: It was on the steering wheel Which meant that?

00:04:41: You could sit three people in the front As well, as Three People in the back.

00:04:46: i only.

00:04:47: i Only have one vivid memory Of using the Benzi in the Front but it Was you know and it was like There was a sense of possibility associated with the Bench seat.

00:04:59: I kind of imagined myself as some sort, I don't know American graffiti character.

00:05:03: you're driving around in the fifties with your date but that didn't happen very often.

00:05:09: And what time were you driving that car?

00:05:12: Well

00:05:13: No!

00:05:15: In my late twenties...I remember turning thirty during my PhD program and i was living between South Bend Indiana where University of Notre Dame is in Chicago, so sometimes I was commuting between Chicago and Indiana.

00:05:32: And i drove the car from Maine originally my brother Leo and I drove it out from Maine to when I started the PhD program in Indiana.

00:05:39: It's funny...I never even saw the car When I purchased.

00:05:42: a friend-of-the family bought it at like a car auction for dealers.

00:05:45: So I just gave a general idea what I wanted.

00:05:48: This car showed up.

00:05:49: so I didn't, i wasn't personally invested exactly.

00:05:54: It was an orphaned car.

00:05:55: You

00:05:55: must have given them very specific instructions when you got that kind of car back?

00:06:00: I did not say I wanted a Benz C. No!

00:06:01: I was a bit shocked...I just come from the UK where people had much smaller cars and I thought this is big cars like.

00:06:09: what do need all these cars for Growing up, we did a lot of road trips.

00:06:14: And I remember that one car had fake wooden paneling on the outside and it was very wide...I remembered that we referred to as a boat with pile-up and chagire in there for example

00:06:29: but seems like its commonality among people who study cars literature culture.

00:06:34: they don't actually have

00:06:36: any other examples?

00:06:41: Yeah, Timo has been on the podcast before.

00:06:43: He never owned a car and so you're one step ahead of him in that sense.

00:06:47: but... And

00:06:51: your motorcycle rider yourself?

00:06:53: I am right!

00:06:54: But it's completely unrelated to anything that i do.

00:06:58: Well that's not

00:06:58: true.

00:06:59: You are focused on oil research.

00:07:02: True That is correct..but i don't ride about motorcycles ..But i'm aware obviously of fossil fuel being burned while write my motorcycle.

00:07:11: And I'm always reminded of Stephanie Lemanager's phrase that our relationship to petrol modernity could be called bad love, because there is some kind of acceleration we get from driving or riding even though we might know it as environmentally problematic and then something will get to in a second.

00:07:31: but also you write about your book which sort of attributes the characteristics about cars, so that is related to cars more generally.

00:07:42: Yeah and with that being said let's move into your recently published book.

00:07:47: it has come out just last year at the University of Virginia Press.

00:07:51: It was called again poetic drive American poetry in The Age Of Automobility.

00:07:57: Would you mind giving us an overview what this book is all about?

00:08:01: Sure I mean people often lay readers.

00:08:07: It may not be familiar with the term automobility, which you and I are probably more familiar through our research.

00:08:14: But automobilty is a term that really encompasses more than just driving cars.

00:08:19: it also includes motorcycles gas stations parking lots oil increasingly electricity so its whole infrastructure around car bus motorcycle that form of transport.

00:08:37: And in the book, I look at really poetry since The Emergence Of Mass Automobility Before The Emergeance Of Mass-Automobility.

00:08:46: Really if mass automobility emerged properly In the nineteen twenties United States i begin just before That with William Carlos Williams and the nineteen teens and move up to the present moment With poets like Claudia Rankin and Eileen Miles and I'm really interested.

00:09:04: different poets have harnessed Automobility, which usually means driving but not only in crafting poetry.

00:09:13: And I suppose you could say it's a sort of experimental poetic tradition at some point In the process of this book.

00:09:22: It was called Experimental American Poetry in The Age Of Automobilty But i moved away from that frame because i found it increasingly difficult to really Say what Was experimental and What wasn't?

00:09:34: But I'm interested in the way that form, poetic form intersects with experience of driving.

00:09:39: So as i was saying before with Williams you know his view.

00:09:43: through the driver's seat.

00:09:44: You can see him trying to inscribe into his poems whether it is short lines or a sense movement.

00:09:56: in the poems, it's not always clear what is the subject of this sentence.

00:10:00: Who is who?

00:10:01: Is the mover here?

00:10:02: The driver or somebody outside of the car catching his attention?

00:10:08: and those formal questions also are part of these larger question around...who gets to drive where-and whens?

00:10:16: around identity And also around ecology.

00:10:20: What do social and ecological effects on mass automobility?

00:10:24: And so, especially the ecological effects become more and more prominent for poets in our time.

00:10:32: Eileen Miles is a poet who has engaged with this kind of... You talked about bad love earlier?

00:10:39: A guilty experience driving.

00:10:42: but contrary to scholars that write about oil literature I make point saying Anxiety has in some form been there from the beginning that even William Carlos Williams and the nineteen twenties was Was moving away?

00:10:58: From mass automobility because of its both it's aesthetic, and It's environmental costs.

00:11:05: And you mentioned before that.

00:11:07: You know you haven't been owning a car for sometime now.

00:11:11: Um and then the book here also say that this is the first book about automobilty an american poetry.

00:11:17: when did your for the first time, think that there's some kind of connection between cars and poetry.

00:11:22: Even though you weren't driving yourself I suppose?

00:11:26: Some of the material in this book emerged from my doctoral dissertation.

00:11:31: I'm thinking in particular... Williams is there at my doctoral thesis but also Frank O'Hara and Charles Holson And i was really interested in fortism as an economic regime.

00:11:47: Marxist critics in particular have thought about the United States, In the twentieth century and mass production and mass consumption.

00:11:57: Could you maybe quickly talk about Fordism?

00:12:00: Yeah I mean it's a term that Henry Ford first used And i think It really speaks to The mass consumption and mass-production inaugurated with the assembly line uh...in Detroit Uh..the assembly of the production of automobiles which was the first really mass-produced automobile that had interchangeable parts and That was affordable for broad sections of the middle class came in nineteen oh eight, so We have Fortism as a motor production but we also have fortism is emotive sort of mass consumption The mass consumption of yeah industrially industrial made products.

00:12:41: But also I think of, you know, suburbia in the United States is a Fordist phenomenon.

00:12:47: The mass production housing.

00:12:49: but even more broadly certain Marxists have talked about like the welfare state and post-war boom as having to be thinking that in terms... As phenomena made possible by mass production at Fordist.

00:13:06: so it encompasses social relations well beyond factory floor.

00:13:12: And so in my dissertation I was mostly interested, and this comes up as well talking about the way that Charles Olson and Frank O'Hara mark precise time.

00:13:25: in some instances actual factory work, but also these areas of everyday life that are affected by this whole complex.

00:13:52: This whole social compact between labour and capital over how people work and how people

00:14:01: consume.".

00:14:03: So even though it's part of your dissertation... How come you continued the relationship?

00:14:12: How different is it from your dissertation?

00:14:14: It's a new book, right.

00:14:37: You know, what you use to get tenure if you have a tenured track position.

00:14:47: I mean...I'm kind of like cooperating in this fantasy land because i don't have the tenure-tracked position but that still has remained model for me.

00:14:56: good scholarship In Sweden where I am now people Yeah!

00:15:02: The dissertation itself is in way considered book.

00:15:04: universities will print hundreds of copies and People do cite and read dissertations too A greater degree than they in the United States, but that doesn't make them better.

00:15:14: I think working with something over many years after the dissertation and rethinking it is going to lead to a better scholarship in many cases.

00:15:26: And what ways are you thinking about topic change throughout your years?

00:15:30: Well my dissertation was focused more broadly on technology and capitalist development of American poetry so i began and ended with Ron Silliman in the nineteen seventies.

00:15:43: The book is focused really explicitly on automobility, driving... In working on it became clear that this was a generative subject.

00:15:57: You start pulling at these threads of just looking for example for car poems And suddenly you see them everywhere.

00:16:07: more importantly perhaps these kind of ambivalent engagements with automobility as both the source of inspiration, poetic drive.

00:16:21: The title of a book speaks to that sense of possibility in driving but also social and environmental conflicts that poets find themselves in the moment of driving or be in a car, put an oil on their tank.

00:16:40: Or having an encounter at parking lot and being stopped by

00:16:44: police.".

00:16:45: So I just found it was really generative that nobody else had looked up poetry particularly this way.

00:16:56: Speaking from sort-of main points what do you think is like the most surprising or cool take away?

00:17:06: Yeah, in some ways it's what I've already been touching on which is the fact that from the beginning From The Emergence of Automobility It has Been Struggled Over Before William Cross-Williams.

00:17:22: you know there was a lot Of Working Class Resistance To The Emergency Cars Which Were Seen As Sort Of A Feet Play Things Of The Rich And They Had Different Conditions Then Than they Do For Us Now.

00:17:33: There were for example associated more with women and it was easier perhaps for women, rich women to drive the early automobiles which many of them were electric.

00:17:46: I have a postcard somewhere of Henry Ford's wife driving an electric car through Detroit.

00:17:55: so the fact that poets people more generally had been struggling surprised me and also became the kind of central argument in a way at the book because I mean, i see myself as dialogue with this field of petrocultures where people are looking at.

00:18:18: The way which oil is animating modernity not least literature.

00:18:26: but often there's a claim among petro-culture scholars that work on literature.

00:18:32: early literature I'm thinking early literature at the beginning of the twentieth century in this case didn't really account for oil properly and is doing some sort of ideological bad work, you know somehow making us accept this regime of petro-modernity.

00:18:54: And i wanted to show that it's not always the case.

00:19:00: people have been struggling in literature with oil.

00:19:03: The oil is there, I think of Joshua Shoes-Dirak asks this question where the oil and modernism?

00:19:08: And so i show that it's there!

00:19:10: It's there in Williams' gas tank...it's here without their Popoei, it's Marianne Moore in early period.

00:19:22: Riders have been struggling throughout the period of automobility which are still with us.

00:19:28: Yeah, and the poetry that you look at in that sense is also very different from some of them or novel.

00:19:35: Novels are people might associate with driving road novels for example like a karaoke on the road I think he mentioned than many people aware off.

00:19:44: but yeah so say that many of this deep the poems in the book they're not really about trips as you said there.

00:19:51: often they don't even leave the car.

00:19:53: maybe day they sit in the corner down even Begin to drive but they still stay in the car.

00:20:00: I was wondering if you could tell us a bit about why that is and what sort of What it tells us about?

00:20:05: The difference may be between poetry novels, But also yeah these poetic engagements with cars.

00:20:10: And would he tell us about modernity more broadly speaking?

00:20:13: hmm That's a great question.

00:20:16: and um i think It.

00:20:19: you know we deserve more attention.

00:20:21: this larger question of genre I mean, we've both appreciated Anne Brigham's book American Road Narratives where she looks at largely novels and films.

00:20:35: And the road trip as a genre!

00:20:39: The way that has also been a place of conflict over values...over identity.

00:20:49: But like you said sometimes in poetry there is no trip at all.

00:20:54: I think immediately of Claudia Rankin, look at some passages in her book Citizen where you know there's a driver sitting still In the driveway reflecting on The experience of racism and the psychic work Of trying to undo it.

00:21:13: or imagine Imagine its undoing.

00:21:15: And then i read that kind of stopped car as an Implicit protest against narratives technological and social progress associated with automobility.

00:21:30: I venture to say, in the book these genres like the novel at least road trip movies they have a horizon right?

00:21:44: They're going somewhere!

00:21:46: They've got to start somewhere...I mean i'm thinking also of free air that early road trip novel, Coast to Coast and the encounters that take place on the road.

00:22:00: Whereas poems are so much shorter there are examples of longer car poems.

00:22:06: Alan Ginsberg's The Fall Of America is a whole book.

00:22:08: he was driving all over the place but in that case his passenger seat A lot times poets partly by virtue of their form people writing short poems relatively short poems in the twentieth century.

00:22:25: They're not poems of expansive trips, but they are poems just getting started or about to drive off-the-road.

00:22:37: I think is a poem that i start with which we'll discuss later.

00:22:41: Robert Creely's I Know A Man.

00:22:42: it's like a poem both getting started and about to crash.

00:22:46: at this moment.

00:22:49: We can read out right now.

00:22:51: Sure

00:22:52: Do you want to go ahead?

00:22:53: I can do that.

00:22:54: Let me open

00:22:56: the... People have a sense of what we're talking about.

00:22:58: Yeah, so Robert Creely American Poet wrote I Know A Man in the mid-Nineteen Fifties.

00:23:10: It's short poem and I recommend listening to him read it.

00:23:14: He has particularly desperate tone.

00:23:18: That is on The Poetry Foundation.

00:23:20: Yeah, the poetry foundation.

00:23:21: If you look up I know a man... You can listen to him As i said to my friend because I am always talking John!

00:23:34: I said which was not his name The darkness surrounds us.

00:23:42: What?

00:23:43: Can we do against it?

00:23:45: or else shall We?

00:23:47: and why Not buy a goddamn big car Drive, he said for Christ's sake.

00:23:55: Look out where you're going.

00:23:57: Wow that was incredible.

00:24:01: It's a great poem

00:24:03: and they are driving.

00:24:04: well there They're driving But they're also talking about driving.

00:24:09: it's like their draw on the road it seems but they're Also saying why not?

00:24:13: Why don't we buy them a goddamn big car at like that?

00:24:16: Like they're in the car talking about buying a car and they're saying, you know drive This imperative which seems to be about to lead them to crash.

00:24:30: It's almost like this poem is crashing into us as readers.

00:24:35: Is there some problem that she used to teach people?

00:24:37: Have you taught Automobility a poetry in automobility before?

00:24:42: yeah when I was at home stance.

00:24:44: I had of course That was really the content of the book And so we did talk about Creely, and I actually read this poem a couple of days ago.

00:24:56: It was World Poetry Day... ...and I did an event at my local public library when I read it.

00:25:01: So we had a little chat about that.

00:25:04: One thing people notice who maybe aren't familiar with poetry is something hard to reproduce on the air.

00:25:14: but you can see immediately these compressed words.

00:25:17: As I said to my friend, where sed is just SD that he's taken out the vowels.

00:25:23: He does that in a second little stanza as well.

00:25:27: This something that really doesn't many of his poems but they mean.

00:25:31: your question this why?

00:25:33: He also does it with your at the end.

00:25:35: so there sense of like compression In the way that he spells words um i think you know and adds...he's trying up the ante to create pathos and immediacy.

00:25:49: But it also puts me in mind of an assembly line, right?

00:25:55: Like if you're thinking about... And I'm thinking of Gertrude Stein here as somebody who also played with words as objects and was aware of this connection between poetry and assemblyline production.

00:26:08: like If You Think Of Letters As Parts Of Words That Your Putting Together In Different Ways.

00:26:14: and maybe like it's an assembly line, you know by cutting the words up.

00:26:19: By having um The sazora with surrounds by taking out the vowels of certain words It is to be efficient.

00:26:28: We also see the constructed nature of the word.

00:26:31: yeah.

00:26:34: Another possibility Is that if we get this feeling Of someone trying To start a car Like revving the engine

00:26:39: Yeah That's what I...that's A feeling i had With the poem too.

00:26:43: For me just because the words are kind of cut short, as you said.

00:26:48: It feels like your really rushing through the poem in some sense and I know that when you now read this out... And i also listen to the Creeley recording he's very deliberate about the line break so it is actually a way of slowing down again.

00:27:01: but if u don't listen or you dont respect the line breaks its actually feels like its really rushing along.

00:27:07: towards what end?

00:27:09: The End Is Uncertainty.

00:27:11: drive he said.

00:27:12: for Christ's sake look out where you're going.

00:27:15: we don't know what this is going and it seems like the drivers are paying attention.

00:27:18: actually kind of scary to think about these guys running someone over any second now.

00:27:24: Yeah, I mean my mind that's a kind metaphor or week in read that as a metaphor.

00:27:29: four post war mass production.

00:27:35: i mean this really moment when When you know our ecological catastrophe is I don't want to say at its peak but it's like that.

00:27:49: That's the moment when the groundwork has laid for Our experience of Petra modern day.

00:27:54: I mean a lot people would point too earlier and i think, that's also right But It's really the II.

00:27:59: Think Of The post-war Moment And You Know The war itself the Second World War as As Somehow Definitional For for where we are now and the resource extraction, and mobility.

00:28:18: Yeah you're making my transition for me because I wanted to speak about a little bit more about oil in the environment novelist or road trip movies and novels.

00:28:38: And you also make the point in your book that some of this poetry is aware of environmental destruction, their experience driving even what they produce on a page somehow related to oil and petrol modernity and fossil fuels.

00:28:53: Yeah I was wondering if could give us examples maybe from the book and explain why poetry in that sense is capable of expressing these anxieties?

00:29:05: Yeah, I mean there are different kinds of anxieties.

00:29:09: I've mentioned William Carlos Williams.

00:29:11: you know he's worried about things like roadside debris traffic the monotony of mass automobility.

00:29:19: And then we get someone like Gary Snyder specifically.

00:29:24: i'm thinking where he's telling people.

00:29:29: He has some lines in tomorrow's song, and says we need no fossil fuel get power within grow strong on

00:29:38: less.".

00:29:40: And so his talking about the costs of automobility is saying that we should walk We should hitchhike but this actually before uh...we had awareness climate change.

00:29:52: for him it mostly a social problem And he's concerned about the oil running out, about peak oil and using more nuclear power when the oil runs out.

00:30:03: So he was kind of very much still in the shadow of atomic weapons in a Second World War thinking about... ...the threat of nuclear energy….

00:30:17: …and then—more on our own time– The person who really is aware of climate catastrophe- In that way we are as island miles who also, I think it might be fair to say is the only poet in the book that's actually composing poems while driving.

00:30:39: So i look at this sequence called LA Driving Poems where they have a little recorder and their recording themselves while driving.

00:30:49: And those poems are really about The way which you're kind of imbricated your part this extraction and burning of fossil fuels, the weirdness in that.

00:31:03: And also how it's inseparable from a composition or poetry without driving.

00:31:14: but there wouldn't be lots other things as well.

00:31:18: So we're going to some examples?

00:31:19: Yeah so read some miles.

00:31:23: I know you were interested number ten ball among others.

00:31:28: So I mean, I read the excerpts from your book and to this morning.

00:31:34: I got a copy of my book here at the library And i think number ten ball is great!

00:31:39: Also more oil as title suggests.

00:31:42: It's also a great poem.

00:31:43: it kind long But if we like We can read out anyway.

00:31:50: Yeah let start with Number Ten Ball.

00:31:55: Sure that's shorter one right?

00:31:58: Okay, Joe.

00:31:59: The floor is yours!

00:32:03: Is there anything about oil?

00:32:05: we don't know already?

00:32:08: Like we're driving on our own limited past something that's ancient like the history of this ball were driving these cars on...the fluid of everything and everybody That ever was here.

00:32:27: We are draining it to just get around And it's nice that I could feel around in the dark to say these things, To touch a button.

00:32:40: To make it light and then go out.

00:32:45: Very Nice.

00:32:46: There is similar logic for this poem.

00:32:49: This comparison has been made with Creely as i know a man Miles is somebody who you know he was a reader of Creely.

00:32:57: I think it's influenced by him, especially in Miles'... It is not as explicit on this poem but very short lines usually.

00:33:06: But the way which the poem performs its own ending then go out.

00:33:12: what's going out?

00:33:13: The light that goes out?

00:33:15: maybe all of us are going with burning off fossil fuels more to a point where perhaps the poem has ended the ending of.

00:33:28: I Know A Man, look out where you're going.

00:33:31: We have those without those verbs go-going...

00:33:35: It's kind like a story that can't be finished

00:33:37: or

00:33:38: it can't fully told.

00:33:41: and also i think they want The Reader to somehow Like.

00:33:48: the power of the poem is in putting the reader In the position of Going And the reader Is going as it were Ceasing to go.

00:33:59: we it kind of like poses the question.

00:34:01: Of well, what do we do after?

00:34:04: The poem is done where are we?

00:34:05: What do we?

00:34:06: what do you do?

00:34:07: and so for an art form that really has very often as a very little practical effects in the world.

00:34:19: You can see your kind of bid for a kind of existential prod if you will of making the reader reflect on where they are in relation to this movement.

00:34:33: And also, making them mindful that they are, in fact, composed with the same stuff... ...that might someday turn into oil right?

00:34:40: For me it's one of the most fascinating parts about this poem To think about oil as a fluid of everything and everybody As it says here.

00:34:50: Then you know how this is being used to drive around.

00:34:54: Clearly this was connecting not just driving to organic stuff that was put to the ground billions of years ago, but it's also sort of imbricating you as a human reader into this thing.

00:35:09: is oil and then might become oil one day.

00:35:12: I mean its' not saying explicitly about what i'm picking up here.

00:35:17: Yeah!

00:35:18: A lot of petro-culture scholars would be at pains in many ways already.

00:35:24: oil, you know it's whatever.

00:35:25: It's in the fillings and our teeth.

00:35:27: I mean people talk about microplastics.

00:35:28: i don't know a lot about that but You Know its in our bodies!

00:35:31: Its in what we wear.

00:35:34: But yes...I agree that Miles is drawing attention to this way.

00:35:41: The short trip In California Is somehow engaged with This expansive history which was hard for us To fathom.

00:35:55: There's a kind of triviality to the trip, also to the poem.

00:36:00: I think there are various valences for this word ball.

00:36:05: The ball is earth but it's like a toy you play with.

00:36:08: It's something trivial Something vulnerable just as the Earth and the poem itself.

00:36:16: And so here we have difficulty in scale Something that i try get at by bringing in Timothy Morton, who also talks about these difficulties of scale especially with the term hyper-objects.

00:36:32: So I think that's exactly what The Poem offers us.

00:36:36: And then in a book you sort of interpret this poem as being or giving an intimate picture with catastrophe.

00:36:45: Could you maybe explain what do mean by

00:36:48: it?

00:36:49: This poem is particular... ...I've had people react negatively towards that.

00:36:56: it's kind of laxadaisical, that is too trivial.

00:36:59: That doesn't make enough demand... Doesn't demand enough of us?

00:37:10: It's nice to feel around in the dark and great we have electricity.

00:37:16: And so I think there are going be different responses To a poem like this.

00:37:22: But if you read as In some way, showing the way in which everything is at stake.

00:37:31: In driving for example that we're making use of this ancient history and getting around And were also part of really dramatic consequences to planet life on it by burning fossil fuels Then its like.

00:37:54: you are right in middle of this crux of catastrophe.

00:37:58: You're creating it, you are feeling its effects and... It is multivalent!

00:38:07: Its not only something that you want to hold at arm's length And avoid..it´s something thats part the creation a poem or your ability.

00:38:17: get around and see friends which also something Miles talks about.

00:38:22: There no like outside where you can say I'm opposed to Petro-Modernity.

00:38:28: No, not when a boy caught it!

00:38:29: Not gonna buy any oil.

00:38:32: there's like no position on the outside of Petro modernity and in which who we are how we write or move is in itself catastrophe?

00:38:41: I wrote a little piece for the blog Energy Humanities And i wrote about an agarious Snyder poem while log truck Drivers rise earlier than students of Zen which ends with this great line.

00:38:57: There is no other life.

00:38:59: And I tried you know, I try to think about what it?

00:39:01: What does that mean?

00:39:03: To say there's another life?

00:39:04: without being complacent i try to argue That It's not complacent to Say but there Is No Other Life.

00:39:10: This Is Where We are and we have to somehow wrestle with existence as is and not pose kind of counterfactuals at the same time that we also, I mean all four having posing radical alternatives to the present.

00:39:31: And then one other things i try do in a book.

00:39:33: it's show how weird and kinda certain sense now were talking about petro-modernity and automobility.

00:39:44: There's like the opposite moment is also there, which is just like oh it's really weird and its contingent.

00:39:51: It has only been around for you know over a hundred years now.

00:39:54: uh...it won't be around forever.

00:39:57: Its strange!

00:39:58: And I think Miles' laxity as a colonist gets little bit at that strangeness Like this kind of frightening.

00:40:06: but it's also weird and pleasurable um..and somehow have to hold both those thoughts.

00:40:17: That's why we have you here to explain these poems.

00:40:23: Should we speak a bit more about your teaching, or should we skip that part?

00:40:29: I don't know if i have anything really intelligent to say... ...I just touched on it in relation of the difficulty of teaching miles.. ..I think would read.... I'd begin with students with clearly more than miles.

00:40:47: that poem is so short and punchy, invites a kind of unpacking.

00:40:55: I think what's difficult about Miles'?

00:40:56: all the references like I don't know it.

00:40:57: Tillman's for example could go find out perhaps or not but really he was more accessible on that level.

00:41:05: there's focus to that poem at least than i can galvanize students.

00:41:12: yeah its almost as though way his driving straight ahead right?

00:41:16: It very pointy In that sense.

00:41:19: Indeed, indeed

00:41:21: Oh okay we can speak a bit about your the poetry you've written.

00:41:27: I don't know if we should talk about...I mean i have nothing.

00:41:30: nobody's read by poetry..i dont think thats interesting topic.

00:41:33: Im sure there is like one or two people who write their poetry.

00:41:39: Has any of your poetry been focused on cars?

00:41:42: Or are trying to separate work

00:41:43: and personal life?

00:41:45: Ive written car poems.

00:41:46: I've probably written more tram poems.

00:41:49: I often find myself writing poems, uh riding the trams in Gothenburg especially when i ride over the bridge.

00:41:56: technically I live on an island Hissingen which is...I think maybe third largest island of Sweden but you wouldn't really notice that your own island.

00:42:04: But I do have to cross a river To get into central city and um I'll either bike or take the tram.

00:42:10: And so When I take the Tram I often write poems crossing the River.

00:42:15: I'll bike on to, there's like a ferry bridge.

00:42:19: There are a couple of... there is ferries especially during the day and rush hour that just have shuttle traffic back-and forth.

00:42:26: then they're free.

00:42:27: so i will bike onto the ferry.

00:42:29: you know your'e on the ferry for less than ten minutes in the other side And On The Ferry ill also sometimes write poems.

00:42:36: Also think about Walt Whitman poem crossing Brooklyn ferry.

00:42:42: So theres something special that trip, whether it's on the bridge or a ferry.

00:42:52: I think being in this space is generative for me.

00:43:00: and we talked before about why our poems less oriented towards destination?

00:43:08: Why are they?

00:43:10: why aren't there so many road trips in the same way that there are novels and films?

00:43:15: And I think poetry, of course the whole road trip genre is about what happens while you're going there.

00:43:25: But iIthink thats even more heightened.

00:43:28: for a lot modern poetry There's like an inherent ambivalence or uncertainty to it A lot of poems.

00:43:42: Do you try to replicate some of the moods and also in terms of their content, of the poems that you study?

00:43:56: In your own poetry.

00:43:58: Well I'm inspired by someone like Ali Miles or Robert Creely... There's a clear tradition there between Williams' Creely Miles short lines.

00:44:09: every day encounters anything can be the poem.

00:44:14: I mean, yeah.

00:44:16: It sounds very grandiose to say that.

00:44:18: put myself in the tradition but then...I write inspired and part by them.

00:44:24: Well you know after this a lot of people will reach your poetry?

00:44:27: I don't where they're going find it!

00:44:28: But if want publish my poetry send me an email.

00:44:34: I wrote blog post about why we read.

00:44:39: because It's like a question for me.

00:44:45: Why do this?

00:44:47: Why read, why write about reading and why write in

00:44:50: general?".

00:44:51: And I suppose it is the question that...I pose because i'm aware of materiality.

00:45:03: And even if they're digital, you know there are material consequences of producing books and I don't have any numbers in front of me.

00:45:10: In terms of the cost to book industry.

00:45:13: Stephanie LaMondager has that nice appendix to Living Oil where she talks about how much oil her academic monograph has consumed.

00:45:27: but somehow in light Of that reality I do find myself and just the massive stuff.

00:45:34: That's produced at me, just how many people we are on the planet in a mass of printed And you know digital texts is producing it.

00:45:44: i do kind of like wonder oh what?

00:45:46: You know why?

00:45:51: So

00:45:52: there're so many books to write.

00:45:57: yeah speaking about reading

00:46:02: Yeah, I mean there's obviously a very intimate experience of reading and i recently had a little Jeanette Winterson kick British novelist and memoirist And she talks about growing up Queer in this small town of Akrington.

00:46:20: It is toward the north of England.

00:46:26: The importance of library She had a very conservative upbringing and no one to turn too, so she went the library.

00:46:33: And she didn't even know what to do in libraries just started reading novels beginning with A I assume they were organized alphabetically by author kind of like working her way forward.

00:46:44: She read practically everything about that library.

00:46:48: It was hugely important for her.

00:46:50: obviously should become renowned writer but also find away into world And I can identify with that in a less dramatic way, both during my own upbringing but also my experience now as a reader is it's a way to be...to be with others.

00:47:10: It's the way of being in world and knowing about the world.

00:47:16: On very practical level you know i want understand the world.

00:47:20: maybe go read book The history of Iran, or I just checked out Sheila Phillips' Patrick's book.

00:47:27: Just a short history of the Soviet Union how it is.

00:47:32: Somebody has to tell me that history?

00:47:34: I can't just Somehow go and relive Twenty-a-century history at the soviet union.

00:47:43: True And in that sense you can also relive what it's like to drive a car.

00:47:46: It's very beginning At the beginning of mass automobility for example.

00:47:50: right

00:47:51: Indeed, you can get closer to something of that experience.

00:47:58: Okay let's move on the final question and I think it is a part many people are interested in especially those who want to learn more.

00:48:06: maybe haven't had chance to encounter some stuff they're working with which book or an academic fiction poetry whatever may be?

00:48:17: Which would you recommend our listeners pick up if poetry and cars or automobility?

00:48:25: Well, obviously my book.

00:48:27: And we should put... I have discount codes that maybe we can put in the notes so people will order if they want a discount.

00:48:40: but there is no other explicitly about poetry not on mobility But If They Want to Read Some Poetry.

00:48:49: One of The Books We've Been Talking About It's A Short little book, Snowflake Different Streets.

00:48:54: It's really two books by Ali Miles.

00:48:57: I think is great!

00:48:59: I would also recommend a writer who to my shame do not discuss at all in the book which is George Oppen.

00:49:09: and George Oppin has a couple of books being numerous and discrete series Which are both production and driving.

00:49:27: And so I think if you want the kind of freedom to read some great American poetry related to automobility that, uh...I haven't solid with my sort of academic prose then i would by all means say go reach George Oppen.

00:49:44: What are their names again?

00:49:47: Discrete series And of being enumerous, I imagine.

00:49:52: maybe you get a collector selected works from George Oppen or see what's on the Poetry Foundation.

00:49:59: Some of those poems will be available.

00:50:02: Okay great!

00:50:03: We'll check it out.

00:50:05: Thank You Joel for coming to our podcast.

00:50:07: It was really nice having you and getting some insights into your book and work overall.

00:50:11: So thank-you

00:50:14: so much for having me.