Danez Smith: She’s making a list and getting consent twice, she’s Franny Choi!

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) And they put the ho in hotep, Danez Smith!

Danez Smith: And you’re listening to vircus, the povcast where—

(SOUND EFFECT)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: What did I say? Vircus, vircus, vircus, vircus. And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Franny Choi: Hi, Danez.

Danez Smith: Hey, Franny!

Franny Choi: How you doing? How you doing?

Danez Smith: You know, inside this motherfucking house, you know. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Once again. I was talking to somebody the other day and saying, is it quarantine anymore or are we just in here? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: We just live inside.

Danez Smith: Yeah, this is just- this is just the new way.

Franny Choi: I was listening to a podcast recently, and do you know the comedian Naomi Ekperigin?

Danez Smith: No, but I love people named Naomi.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) She’s really, really funny. And she kept calling quarantine “quar.” She was just like, you know, “We’ve been in quar.” “Since being in quar—”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: And I just-I think it’s great. And at the risk of being a copycat, I might start calling it that.

Danez Smith: I love it. It sounds like a new country, you know?

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: There was America. And then after the times, there was Quar.

Franny Choi: Now it’s just Quar. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Just Quar. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Ugh. I mean, it’s also—I think that so many of us are, you know, as the weather is getting well, I mean, it’s been winter for you there for a while now.

Danez Smith: Girl, winter came in October this year. October blizzards.

Franny Choi: Oh my goodness.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: And by the time this episode comes out, it’ll have been winter for a little while for everybody, not just Minnesotans. But it’s like a time when I feel like we’re all starting to transition into, our like, hibernating stage. And like—so I guess I’ve just been thinking about like, okay, what is going into hibernation or like, what is like in hibernation creatively. And not just in my like, literal life, growing more fur and putting on some pounds kind of way. (LAUGHS) But what’s, yeah. What else am I in hibernation for.

Danez Smith: Ooo, what’s sleeping in you. What’s waking up.

Franny Choi: What’s sleeping in you, yeah. Yeah.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Is anything for you in cold storage right now?

Danez Smith: You know, I think so. I mean, creatively for sure. I think this year was so … it was a long sleep creatively for me. I think like I kind of came into the year with, like, I’m going to do this and this and this, and I was doing some of it. And then when quar happened—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Well done.

Danez Smith: And then the quarnation attacked.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And, you know, I feel like I was jostled, but I also felt like brief moments of like, fervor and excitement and need and urgency in the work. But also, I don’t know if it was cut off or just like my artistic spirit felt like it was troubled. And I think, you know, I still am finding these short bursts. And so I really feel like I was worried. And then actually, I want to shout out Will Davis, who’s a theater director and the other fellow through the Princeton Arts fellows that I’m a part of right now. And he was doing an artist talk the other day and he talked about in this remoteness, right, how can we rethink about what art does? Like if we can’t be in a five-person seat theater, we can still, like, make something that moves somebody one on one, you know, or in these small ways, you know? And that’s what art is, just making something that is designed to, like, move or do something for somebody. It’s a gift. And he does a lot of like these gifting projects. But that really, like, woke me back up. And it felt like—I was like, oh, what is like, sort of the smallest or most important something that I can, like, move toward somebody. And that felt like a new type of question. That makes me want to wake up, yeah. And I’m excited to like, I don’t know, I feel like at this point I’m just starting to feel like, okay, I’m good at March at this point, you know? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Right. Like I’ve been doing March for a while and I’m an expert.

Danez Smith: I got March down, you know. And so, like, after you know, after 10 months of March, I think I’m ready for this next round of March, you know?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I finally have, like, adjusted my like expectations for what I can nurse and how much energy I have to do it. Year two of March, I’m like excited, you know, and hopefully the world starts to open back up some, too. But yeah, that’s what I feel like is sleeping in me right now. And I feel like as it’s waking up, it is sort of smaller and quieter in a way that I’ve been waiting for, you know? And that I’m very appreciative of like how soft the edges are in like the stuff that’s coming out of me right now. So that feels like a way of reacting to the world. It’s like, okay, here in the shit, you know, is, I’m finding brevity. Super important. So that’s what’s living in me. Yeah. Little things popping up. Little, little plants, little weeds. What’s sleeping in you?

Franny Choi: Well, I don’t know about what’s waking up exactly, but I think that they’re just projects that I have been like, oh my gosh, have I abandoned this project or is it gone? You know? But I’ve been trying to sort of reconceptualize them as being just like in hibernation, you know, like the bulbs are down there in the dirt. And they’re going to come up, but they just like, are not there right now. So they seem dead, like the trees. I don’t know, for me, I mean, I feel like it’s sort of like a cliché to say like, I’ve got a novel brewing in the back pocket. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But it’s true! I got-I got a novel.

Danez Smith: Ooo!

Franny Choi: Brewing very, very, very slowly. That’s like a project that hasn’t been materializing. But I know that it will. And I know that like, there are lessons from the writing that I’m doing now that are going into that project. It might be like 20 years from now, but, somewhere down the road.

Danez Smith: Hmm, It’s like the cicadas, you know.

Franny Choi: Yeah, exactly!

Danez Smith: Yeah. They come when they’re ready, they make their noise, you know, but like, no second sooner.

Franny Choi: Right. And then they go back down into the dirt.

Danez Smith: They go back down to the dirt. Well we should get into the dirt with our guest for the day. Franny, who is it?

Franny Choi: We are talking to the one and only Aracelis Girmay, a poet that we have been in love with for a really, really long time.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Who moves us in all of the ways into better thoughts and better poems and just like, more empathy and kindness and attention. And yeah, we’re excited to share this conversation with you where we talked about getting down into the dirt and uhm cultivating what is growing there. And also at some point we talked about the ocean. And also at some point, we talked about childhood. So anyway, it’s just a really great conversation. So we’re really excited to get to share with you all today.

Danez Smith: I do enjoy your lead-ins so much. Okay, Aracelis Girmay was born and raised in Southern California. She’s the author of three books of poems, The Black Maria, BOA editions; Teeth, Curbstone Press; and Kingdom Animalia, BOA Editions. She is also the author, illustrator of the collage-based picture book changing, changing. For her work Girmay was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2018. She is the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton, BOA Editions, 2020, and is on the editorial board for The African Poetry Book Fund. For the next few years, Girmay will serve as editor at large of BOA’s Blessing the Boats selections, where folks can submit work until the end of November. Oh, this isn’t going to come out by then.

Franny Choi: Ope. Y’all missed it.(LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. For the next few years, Girmay will serve as editor at large of BOA’s Blessing the Boats selections. For many years, Girmay was the faculty of Hampshire College’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts, and before taught community writing workshops with young people in New York and California. She is currently the assistant chair of writing at Pratt University. This is such a blessing of an interview, just to be able to sit at Aracelis’s feet. And I hope that this conversation blesses y’all as much as it blessed us. And here is Aracelis with a poem.

Franny Choi: Yay.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Aracelis Girmay: This is called “[When I come home they rush to me, the flies].”

(READS POEM)

[When I come home they rush to me, the flies]

When I come home they rush to me, the flies, & would take me, they would take me in their small arms if I were smaller, so fly this way, that way in joy, they welcome me. They kiss my face one two, they say, Come in, come in. Sit at this table. Sit. They hold one hand inside the other & say, Eat. They share the food, sit close to me, sit. As I chew they touch my hair, they touch their hands to my crumbs, joining me. The rim of my cup on which they perch. The milky lake above which. They ask for a story: How does it begin? Before, I was a child, & so on. My story goes on too long. I only want to look into their faces. The old one sits still, I sit with it, but the others busy themselves now with work & after the hour which maybe to them is a week, a month, I sleep in the room between the open window & the kitchen, dreaming though I were the Sierra, though I were their long lost sister, they understand that when I wake I will have to go. One helps me with my coat, another rides my shoulder to the train. Come with me, come, I say. No, no, it says, & waits with me there the rest whistling, touching my hair, though maybe these are its last seconds on earth in the light in the air is this love, though it is little, my errand, & for so little I left my house again.

* * *

Franny Choi: Mm.

Danez Smith: (SIGHS)

Franny Choi:I never feel so fondly of flies as when you’re writing about them, Aracelis. (LAUGHS) Because there are a lot of flies in—

Aracelis Girmay: In my house.

Franny Choi: Oh. (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS) I’m kidding, there aren’t. But yes, there are, there are in that book, a lot of flies.

Franny Choi: Yeah, I guess maybe just, why flies?

Aracelis Girmay: I don’t know except for their everywhereness —

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay:—and, I mean I don’t feel like we have, like our apartment is special in the way of flies, but when we get flies in the house, I don’t know, I’ve just had this feeling these last years, a kind of awareness of them, and of sharing the house with them. The apartment, but also the world. My kids have had different moments where they’ve each been like, “Ah, a fly!” Afraid of a fly and I feel so ashamed, like I’m not teaching them well, that they’re afraid of them sometimes. But I just think, you know, I’m always interested in the things that are dismissed or looked down upon and I wonder about that, which I think so many poets do. And I recently found out, I think last year, that flies are pollinators, which—

Danez Smith: They are?

Aracelis Girmay: Yeah! I was up at Williams and I did this walk. I’m saying that because I know, Franny, are you up there?

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: There was a professor who was giving a talk outdoors. And she was like, yeah, flies are major pollinators. And I was like, I lived my life not knowing this? And, you know, like, so, I think the bees. And we love the bees. Uhm and I was thinking, oh my goodness, of course, they are pollinators and I didn’t know. So there’s that like what we look down upon or what the nuisance is and just thinking more deeply about that. And also just that they are intimate, like they’re in these spaces with us. And when I have the quiet and space enough to really notice them, they’re little, you know, I don’t know what they’re technically called, but what I call hands. And like the beauty of their wings. Or to watch a fly die at the window, which I have. It’s just like, I don’t know, there’s something about the preciousness of small things. I think of Lorca, like, you know, talking about the smallest, smallest things on Earth. So they carry that attention for me.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: Can I ask what brings your attention to the fly? There is such a sense of like everywhere and everything having this safety and this love in your work. I love these poems because it feels like everything in the world gets its piece of love in these poems. I guess, how do you nurture that in yourself to see the fly in that way, right? And how … what is it, I guess, in your work that sort of stops your attention on something as small as a fly, I guess? How have you honed your looking to be that small and welcoming?

Aracelis Girmay: Mm-hmm. Mmhmm. I don’t think I’ve thought about this in this way, but when you ask that, I feel like the true thing that surfaces has something to do with distance and like, loss. You know, there have been moments, I’m thinking about this poem in particular when I walk through the door and there was a fly in the house, and I felt like it’s welcoming me here. But I think that part of that is like a longing for family that’s, you know, people who are far.

Franny Choi: Mmm

Aracelis Girmay: And I’ve felt this way these last couple of months when I’ve been deep in the missing of someone, my parents. There’s a way—I don’t know if you guys feel this way—where I felt, like, stretched with, like, something like missing, which is also loss, which is also having all of those things. And then like when the motion of another living thing or a fly, it’s suddenly like, oh, you’re my family? Which feels like both the fly is not my dad, but also feels like made of the same things that he’s made of, you know. And I think probably something like that, which has some sadness in it, you know, but I think something like that of like, where, where, or how far, how far. And then this version of you here, you know?

Danez Smith: No that feels true. Like it’s like, if you remain open to seeing it, the universe will send you the right medicine for the feeling you’re looking for, right. So like that grief, that sadness. It’s searching for family. And so of course you find the fly, right. And it’s about allowing yourself—at least what I’m hearing and maybe learning—uhm, is allowing yourself to see the fly as like, able, to like fill that ache that I think you’re talking about. Right. Where I think, like most times, if we allow ourselves to sort of be human and hierarchical and shut off, the fly will never be anything more than an annoyance, and will never be sort of an equal that can do something to us.

Aracelis Girmay: Mm.

Franny Choi: Can I- should I- should I ask our question?

Danez Smith: I think so.

Franny Choi: Or do you want to stay on this? Okay. (LAUGHS) I’m always the one itching to get to this question for some reason. But, Aracelis, what is something that’s moving you these days?

Aracelis Girmay: So Kamasi Washington’s “The Rhythm Changes.” That song moves me like in so many ways. Like, I dance with my kids to it. We played it for their birthdays this year. And also it’s like, I don’t know, I just I think I’m just weepy for many reasons, but I just feel opened by it. And I think that there’s a way that when I hear that, it reminds me, there’s something that’s just so epic about it and the strings and the horns. And I think about how I felt when I was young watching The Wiz. Like, it just feels grand and made by people, the singer’s voice, his name, I feel ashamed I’m not remembering. She’s singing a song that I feel I want my children to sing. “Our minds, our body, our genius. I’m here. I’m here.” The whole song repeats this. I love it so much.

Danez Smith: I mean, I love even that title, right, “The Rhythm Changes.” Because I do feel like it resets my personal rhythm and what it does with that bigness. I feel that way about—it reminds me, I think with the strings and the horns and all that, not in sound but just in bigness, of Earth, Wind and Fire. They’ve been a real balm this year for me, just because I feel like I can’t come out of a song with that type of epicness, right, where it feels like, you know, everything is kind of coming into a chord and it reaches this crescendo and you can’t leave that unchanged. You know, there’s no way to casually listen to Earth, Wind and Fire. It’s not in the background, you know?

Aracelis Girmay: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Danez Smith: It takes over, in a way. And I feel the same way about that song, a lot of the songs by Kamasi Washington. I’ve been diving into the album he made with 9th Wonder.

Franny Choi: Wait, so “The Rhythm Changes,” is that in- its it- is it featured in The Wiz? It’s been so long since I—

Aracelis Girmay: No, no.

Franny Choi: Or what’s the connection?

Aracelis Girmay: The connection is just me thinking that. I mean, that’s not the connection. I see a connection in that it just reminds me, the sound of it, the feeling I have, the bigness of it reminds me of songs in The Wiz.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aracelis Girmay: One of the things that I love about The Wiz is that the costumes, the sets—you know, I grew up making collages a lot and playing with scraps and making them into other things. And there’s a way that, like, it reflected that, like these things made up of many parts. I’m thinking of Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, but not just that, like the sets, like you could see that there were traces of things you had in your closets that you could find. Like it felt like I could reach it, and it was reflecting things that I knew. And there’s something that I hold very dear to me about The Wiz that has to do with that.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Aracelis Girmay: I want to play that for my kids and have them be like, reassured and given energy in that way. It reminds me of the energy I felt from watching The Wiz.

Danez Smith: Have they—have you shown them The Wiz?

Aracelis Girmay: Not yet.

Franny Choi: Ohh…

Danez Smith: I’m wondering—I was going to ask, you asked about the song and the question, what is it like, just as a non-parent, sharing art with your kids? Like, what do they teach you about the things that you love and that you love the same? Because you love—this is their jam, too, right?

Aracelis Girmay: Yes! Yes!

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: It is. It is. I mean, I wish you could see them. I wish you could see them. Like my son, you know, we woke up and he was so excited about his birthday. And birthdays are just—of course this year we didn’t have a party, but we usually, we just, it’s simple. We go for a special walk. We play outside. We have meals together. But he’s just so excited that this is the day he was born so many years ago. And then we were like, we’ve got your song for you. And he was like, he just sat there, big-eyed, for a while, and then he starts dancing. And you know, he’s very uhm—he likes to move a lot. But you could see him for a while, just taking it in.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: And then throughout the day he said, “Can we play my song? Can we play that song again?” And he’s shy in his singing still, so he’s kind of singing to it.

Franny Choi: Aw!

Aracelis Girmay: But I feel like, I don’t—I love the questions that they ask when we share things, you know, art that we love, that we’re interested in, with the kids. I love that they ask questions that I didn’t think to ask.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: Oftentimes it’s like, “What does that word mean?” Or “Why would so-and-so do this to that character?” And I’m like, oh! These things I take for granted. And that I have to now try to explain. I don’t have any examples right now, but it feels uhm terrifying and wonderful. It feels like all the things, where you’re like, oh yeah, this world that works like this. That you’re asking me to articulate.

Franny Choi: Yeah. How old are they again?

Aracelis Girmay: Five and three.

Danez Smith: What perfect ages. Ugh. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I know! (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Those are my favorite ages. Those are my top two ages.

Aracelis Girmay: Are they? Oh no!

Danez Smith: For me, in terms of like other people’s kids, like I love—I’m like, bring me your five-year-olds and three-year-olds. Your twos, I’m iffy. Your fours I’m okay. But like—(LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: I wish we were close by and that I could really do that, because it’s been, it’s been a time in this pandemic. Oh my gosh.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Can you talk about it? What’s been—I hate to just ask, like, what is it like right now to be parenting, uhm but, (LAUGHING) what is it like to be parenting right now?

Aracelis Girmay: It’s been intense. We’ve been really staying in and keeping to ourselves, and we miss people. We miss being in the world and touching other people. One thing that I am aware of—this feels like it’s connected to the question about sharing and making art and things, and sharing art that we love with the kids—but one thing, because we’re doing remote school and we’re just together all the time and we’re juggling full-time work for both of us, the parents and the kids are— it’s just, I keep thinking about June Jordan. There’s a piece that’s in the anthology on mothering, edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and two others. Jordan’s talking about capitalism and children and what it means to realize that when you have children as Black people and people of color in the United States, your children become fuel for a system that cares about other people, you know? Uhm… and there’s just this way that I can feel like the pressures that feel unmanageable right now, the intensity of these pressures, I can feel my own frustration about not feeling like I have time enough for the kids, but that I’m like also then taking it out on them, where I’m like, “Ugh, can’t you sit still? Can’t you not do this with your pencil?” And I can feel these things where I’m like, I don’t believe that. Like, I believe this should be joyous and we should be moving. But how quickly I, in my frustration, become like the cop—

Danez Smith: Oof.

Aracelis Girmay: —which has been h-hard to feel that. It’s upsetting to realize, like I’m like, we have so little time to get the things done that we need to get done, and so I’m trying to get us to move in line. And part of what that takes is efficiency and a streamlining and like, these things that I spend so much time trying to, like, think outside of in the making of a poem or the thinking through a system or a government, and the ways that I am replicating that now, especially. I feel differently aware of that in the pandemic. It feels like a problem of the imagination that I’m trying to think about.

Franny Choi: Whew. Oh, my goodness. It also makes me think of the beautiful essay that you wrote for the Paris Review, the lessons with your —with your kids around this summer and the racial justice uprisings.

Aracelis Girmay: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: This is also an essay that we talked about a little bit when we recorded an episode with Ross Gay. And we ended up kind of like, just raving about how beautiful that piece was. But yeah, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what led you to writing that.

Aracelis Girmay: You know, one of my problems—one of my many problems—is figuring out how, where to start a story. Do you guys have that?

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Oh, it’s impossible. (LAUGHS) There’s so many doors.

Aracelis Girmay: I’m like, “I was nine years old …”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aracelis Girmay: To answer your question, and I just like—(LAUGHS)—this moment and the way I would answer how I started writing it was, I was sitting in on a Zoom class with my son, who was five or four at the time. Maybe he was about to turn five. Or he just turned five. And one of the kids in the class, uh, was talking about going to a protest. And, you know, the teacher asked, “What protest?” And the kid who was white, and the teacher is also white started to answer, “George Floyd.” “And what was the protest about?” And this moment where I was like, no. And I muted the Zoom. And have been thinking a lot about what it means to be inside with them all the time. And so getting to these moments, have a sense of what he’s exposed to, which is different. We choose what he watches on TV if he watches something, which he doesn’t, they don’t watch much of. Like, we’re choosing everything right now, which is different from, you know, months ago when we would send him to school and there was like, his life for those many hours was kind of a mystery. What we knew is what he told us and or what we saw in how he was acting. And so just thinking about the ways that people talk to Black kids about race. And really what I mean is the ways that white people talk to Black kids about race. They’re going to get that. Like, they are in the world, but wanting to give him some language, and not just language, but like a framework for knowing that when people say “That’s happening because your skin is Black,” or “This happened because George Floyd’s skin was Black,” that he can say, “Actually, no, that’s happening because of whiteness.”

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: And-and-and really struggling with like thinking about the different ways that people are talking to our young kids about what’s happening and what legacies are carried in the ways that people talk about it.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aracelis Girmay: And how there’s some, you know, it’s inaccurate. And why? Because it’s protecting whiteness and protecting people, white people, from having to feel uncomfortable, I think. And one thing that happened after I shared that essay, somebody like was excited about it and put it up somewhere, in like-like a list of things to read. The way that it was—the kind of summary of it was something about like, I don’t know, I can’t remember now, but it felt like it was somehow blaming white children.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: Like the synopsis was like, and like white children too are such and such. And it was a white person who wrote it. And I felt like they were trying to like, look in a strong way at the problem. But I was like, oh, maybe I need to go back and be, I don’t know, I’m trying to look at the trouble of the ways that we teach our kids to think about race. And that already at this age and from the time they’re born, there are ways that they’re like absorbing from different vantage points and perspectives. Yeah, I’m rambling.

Danez Smith: It’s good rambling. So, no worries. But I read that essay and I sent it to some parent friends of mine. It also sent me back to my own childhood and thinking about, you know, my own sort of developing of a racial consciousness. Uhm…what are you pulling from your own childhood in terms of how you’re teaching your children about race, both good and bad? You know, what are the things that you’re equipping them with, if you feel if you feel comfortable talking about that? And how has it augmented your returns to your own childhood in this regard, because I know you write about childhood so much, and I think you talk about kind of constantly returning to it as a source. So how has being on the mothering side of childhood also like, I guess, augmented how you return to that site?

Aracelis Girmay: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think when I think about that essay but also the ways that we’re trying to nourish our children and also equip them … when I was growing up, there were certainly many white people around and I went to school with many white people, but our like, intimate social spaces of my parents uhm…didn’t have any white people in them. And I’ve been thinking about that a lot, which is different from us. We do have white people in these intimate spaces with us and with the kids. And so there’s a way that I think part of what happened was that that gave us a kind of armor or safety or something that felt like armor safety when we were young, which was like, even when there was trouble between us about hair and color and all these kinds of things and proximities to whiteness, there was a kind of shared sense of our humanity. Like the very basic of like, we are people together. And I think part of what is happening, like when we’re reading books with the kids, and in that essay, I talk about this Malcolm X book that we read half of it. And my son is obsessed with it. And when they ask, like, you know, what famous person—he doesn’t know famous people really, but he was like, “Malcolm X!” Like he’s just—and Malcolm X is on his mind because of this book. It’s like, how do you keep being open to love of everyone knowing these patterns written against you?

Danez Smith and Franny Choi: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: So how to talk about whiteness, but also insist on love that we are loved by our white friends.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aracelis Girmay: And love them and that this is like a long road of thinking together and talking together. I felt like when I was little, I just needed space, like time, quiet. One of the things I loved was just like, scratching at the dirt. Like I-like my grandmother had this little plot of, on the patio, of earth and she would garden a little bit. I could just dig for so long. And I see, like I look at, we go to the park, and my son just, he could just dig for so long. I don’t know. Sometimes he’s looking for things, sometimes he’s not. But I feel like that, like when I think about my writing, that’s the first place. You know, I loved reading when I was little, I loved—but I feel like there’s a connection between how I feel when I’m writing now and what that felt like to just like, look at that dark earth and then like dig. And I feel like giving again the kids the space to wonder and just play and feel small in the world, like smaller than the dirt, like the ocean. You know, I feel like that’s what I’m trying to do in the poems. And I want to give that to the kids.

Danez Smith: Do you feel like a digger in the work? Like not a builder or a creator? It’s a digger?

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS) I think so! I don’t know. I don’t feel like a creator for sure.

Franny Choi: Hm. Wait, why-why not? That’s so interesting.

Aracelis Girmay: Why not a creator? When you say creator, I think of new. What do you think of?

Danez Smith: I guess so. Yeah. Like, I think like creator is like yeah, sort of inventing. Builder is maybe like taking what’s there and, you know, stacking it up towards something else. And then digging is like, I like this thing, I’m going to see what else is there. And like removing the layers. They’re kind of different processes, right? I don’t know. I’m making shit up on the fly.

Aracelis Girmay and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I love this taxonomy.

Aracelis Girmay: What are you guys? What are you, Franny?

Franny Choi: Oh … I don’t know.

Danez Smith: Or base it in your childhood activity.

Aracelis Girmay: Were you panning for gold?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) I think that just like, my favorite thing as a kid for a long time was just like swinging on the swing set as high as I could go. And climbing on things. So—

Danez Smith: That’s kind of what you do.

Franny Choi: Yeah. You think so?

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Swing wildly back and forth, yeah.

Danez Smith: Tentative at first, it’s like, I think I like this idea, I’m gonna try to explore it, and then eventually you get a little, you know, the swing gets—(LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: Oh I love that, love that.

Franny Choi: Yeah like a simple thing, but let’s see how far I can like push it.

Aracelis Girmay: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: And stay right there. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. (LAUGHS) Swinger, I don’t know that feels like (LAUGHING) that word already means something else.

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS) Yeah, yeah.

Franny Choi: But yeah, I don’t know.

Aracelis Girmay: Can you say, Danez?

Danez Smith: I was a science experiment kid, although unsupervised. And so, I feel like a mixer, because that was my thing as a kid, was like, okay, let me put all these things in a bowl. And I always thought smoke would happen, but it never did. (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Put some drain cleaner and some orange juice in a thing and see what happens. (LAUGHS) And I feel like that’s what I do with my poems. I’m just like, okay, here’s the thing. It’s just a metaphor, right? Here’s the thing, and here’s this other thing I’m also thinking about, what energy can I have by pulling the two together closer and tighter. And that feels very much like what I was interested in as a kid, even in terms of my mom’s view of that, too, probably, because I was also like, very masc and very femme at the same time as a kid. And then was interested in like playing with them in a way that, like, didn’t make sense to my family. So it was like, I wanted the Barbie car, but the Power Ranger was driving it.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh right.

Danez Smith: And that also was a kind of mixing that I got to do as a kid. Yeah.

Franny Choi: I love this image of you as a child digging at the dirt, like just getting as close as you can to the Earth. I don’t know, I totally see that in your poems and in your writing, like trying to get as close as possible to, like, the root of the thing, but not in like a, so that I can understand, like, the way the world works or something, but just so I can get close to it. And I actually think, you know, I was thinking about like what I wanted to ask you about writing. The thing that came to me was, there’s like a kind of, I think a way that you stay so close to the thing, and like the thing being the feeling or the thing being like the object in the poem or in the world. And it feels to me like a kind of like just a sort of insistence on honesty at all times. I wonder if you relate to that word “honesty” in the way that you write.

Aracelis Girmay: For some reason, honesty is not one of the words I carry, even though, like, I don’t think I’m dishonest. It’s just like one of the things that I’m often wondering is like, is this what I believe? Like, do I believe this. And then also like, is this one of my languages?

Franny Choi: Hmm. Can you say what you mean when you say that?

Aracelis Girmay: This is connected to everything that we’re talking about, but like, when I went to high school, I went to boarding school at the age of 13 and was like, it’s one of the severances in my life. Like when I think a lot, I feel like I became like in parallel with myself, you know, like I can see the version who went, and wondered a lot—I couldn’t see, but wondered a lot about the version who I would have been had I stayed home. And it was a really powerful, beautiful experience in certain ways, right. I felt really connected to the land. But I also did not know how to think about the wealth that I was exposed to. And culturally, like all of my markers were not the markers of my classmates. And I started to feel ashamed of my markers. The songs that I loved, I listened to quietly. And so I felt very out of place for most—and then found meeting points eventually before the four years were over. But one of the things that happened was that I felt like in order to be there and exist there, I would like get farther away from my root in the way that I spoke and what I shared with others. And so I think a lot about it. Like, you know, James Baldwin’s “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare,” where he talks about the difference between imitating language and coming to a language of one’s own. And I’ve—I’ve said this to my students and I think this with my kids, which is, I want them to always feel like their languages, whether that’s in words or in imagination, that that is amazing. And their own. Like their print. And how incredible to get to be on Earth with this- your print. And so like to not feel like it’s not enough. Or any number of things. And so when I-when I think about when I was in high school, and kind of like, in order to succeed, whatever that was, or like, make it through, that there was like a subterranean language and then a translation that happened. And eventually I found a way to share that subterranean language. It was always there, but I felt like it was not welcome. Uhm…part of my love of poems as a reader is like when you experience another’s language that feels so their own, it just feels like an enormous gift. And one of the things that I’m always asking is like, is this what I believe? Is this my language? Meaning, am I censoring myself? Am I not speaking in the ways that I think, like when I say, I want to reach that violet language, like now I can say that to you two, but I feel like for a while I thought I couldn’t say that, because I was worried that I would just be misunderstood. And maybe I am misunderstood, but I feel more comfortable with that, because I feel like that’s the thing I’m trying to say.

Danez Smith: Mm. How did you sort of arrive at knowing what your language was, right, ‘cause I feel like sometimes, and I see my students doing this all the time, they’ll do something really brilliant and then back away from it, because it feels maybe like it’s not doing that translation work that you’re saying. And they’re still trying to like reach towards this audience that maybe isn’t the most loving for them. Or they just don’t know. You know, they’re just kind of like at that space where they’re developing a voice, and I think there’s another voice in their head telling them that that’s not good enough. They’re like both like, reaching towards a style and also trying to not at all, like, tie themselves down to anything. Uh…so, yeah. How did you learn to, I guess, trust the answers to that question and know that they were yours, right? And how do you—sorry, I keep on adding questions.

Franny Choi: That’s a lot of questions. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) I’ll stop….Let me fucking stop (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: I love it, I love it. Just keep going. (LAUGHS) It feels like you’re building something.

Danez Smith: I am! I’m a builder there we go-but yeah, let’s start there, how did you learn to, I guess, know your languages when they arrived?

Aracelis Girmay: Yeah. Yeah, I still remember reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which, from the time I read it, I was like, physically like, “Whaaa-What!?” And I think part of that was because there’s a way that, when I first read that book, I thought, “Oh my god, these sentences, some of them, they’re so written.”

Danez Smith: I love that, they’re so written.

Aracelis Girmay: Like they’re just like, exquisite. They’re so written, they’re exquisite. And yet they’re also, I’m overhearing them. Both. You know, there’s something about like the aurality of them and the ways that she, it’s like her voice is—at that moment in particular, I was, again, 13. I was like, “What? You can carry the ways people talk into writing?” Like, I thought that was like the most unbelievable thing.

Franny Choi: Mmmm.

Aracelis Girmay:—And I felt like a physical like, jolt. And I feel like… this is just like… about survival, like knowing the things that move you. I feel like that’s what carries me in my grief. It’s so important to know the things that move me because I can go back there, and like, I can lay in the dirt or think about laying in the dirt when I need to. Or I can go watch the birds fly. Like you know, just knowing what moves you, what helps you feel alive or connected. And I think that that’s what I’m after, Danez. So writing is like, I think about Neruda’s work and what I—I love that his words, his nouns are words that many people speak, you know, 50 or more times a day, like “bread.” Like how many people say “bread” a day. Or like that the words, the things that he uses are the things that are used by many. And I love that. I’m moved by that. And so then I can remember—I don’t, it feels very physical.

Franny Choi: Hmmmm.

Aracelis Girmay:— Like the things that make your stomach hum, I feel like those are signs of where the voice, of what your voices are.

Danez Smith: I’m going to play that for my class. Because I feel like sometimes we learn to distrust our own like, uhm… our own excitement about, you know, what makes us like giddy and nervous around our own work. I feel like we were taught to sort of like distrust that a little bit. Or I see the way, in myself, too, about like—it is very physical. It is like sort of, yeah, what brings you your own sort of pleasure, delight and mystery to your own work. Yeah.

Aracelis Girmay: Which I have to say also, like when I was in seventh grade, I got these-I got to choose two new things for school, and I chose these patent leather platform Oxfords—

Danez Smith: Go, girl.

Aracelis Girmay: And a black and white backpack with a clock, like a working clock on it.

Danez Smith: A working clock?

Franny Choi: Whoa!

Aracelis Girmay: And those were-Yes! On the back of the backpack.

Franny Choi: Wow, (LAUGHING) that’s so fly!

Aracelis Girmay: And I have to say, my best friend growing up—and she still is one of the most fashionable, like fashion … like her intelligence, in so many ways, and one of them is fashion, is amazing. That could work for her. I don’t know if it was, or I don’t think it was working for me, but I was into it. But I say that to say also, like, I was definitely trying a thing, right. I was trying a thing. And I think that there’s also something beautiful and goofy and wonderful about that, right? It’s like, this is also my voice trying a thing. If it’s moving you and like, helping you to feel new things, you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah, totally. I remember in like, ninth grade or something, I had been really into, you know, like everybody at that age had read The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe. And I was like, I love this spooky language. I love this, like, the elevated language. I love the intricate rhyme scheme. And so that was like, I was like a little like, yeah, 15-year-old formalist for-for a while, (LAUGHS) just like, trying to write like a spooky dead white man for a few years. And I remember a teacher saying, like, “You should really try to write in your own voice. That would be cool.” And I like, both took that in and also wanted to rebel against it, to be like, “Why isn’t this—why can’t this be my voice? Like, I want to write in my voice, but also like, I want to say, ‘quoth’,” (LAUGHING), you know, like I want to use that word also. Yeah. And I think that now I’ve landed somewhere in the middle. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: But that’s it, right. Like, I think that’s what we’re supposed to do. Poetry is supposed to pull us, like when we first encounter it, like so far into it, that we have to kind of track ourselves back to find our own style within it, right?

Franny Choi: I think so.

Danez Smith: I’m thinking about something Angel Nafis said to a group of folks. It was about—I was sitting in a workshop of hers and … just one, if you ever get a chance to take a workshop with Angel, folks out there listening, do it. But she was talking about just like, the beauty of your own stank. And your own smell on the bones, right.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, wow.

Danez Smith: Like sort of like, we talk about like, this person got they own stank. It’s like, yeah, it might not be perfect, it might not be cute, but it’s mine. You know, and so what are those like, imperfect irregularities, those mistakes, those things about your work that maybe aren’t at first sight the most exciting or inventive or totally new things, but they’re yours. And that’s actually what starts to develop into a stronger representation of like, my language, my voice, is like, this is my stank, this is my mark. Yeah, learning to love like that, that own, unique, imperfect scent of your work. (LAUGHS) Really. Yeah. So that’s what I think this conversation is bringing me back to. What’s your stank? What do you … like, when do you smell yourself? When you’re writing…

Franny Choi and Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: When you’re writing and you’re like, “Oh, I did that shit.” (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: I don’t know, man. I don’t know.

Danez Smith: Are you a parent to your poems? Do you love all your poems equally? Are they all special in their own magical way?

Aracelis Girmay: Uhm No, I feel like, first of all, I love Angel’s description, which also makes me think about Jamaica Kincaid’s— I think it was in The Autobiography of My Mother where she describes the protagonist who keeps smelling herself. She’s smelling like, yeah. I think she, like, puts her hand on her vagina and keeps smelling it like for a-for a certain amount of pages. But I think that there’s some poems where I’m like, oh, I wish I didn’t publish that poem for sure.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: And I think that there’s like an emotional, like, feeling that I’m often after so that it feels more like I feel like I got close to the thing I was saying or something. But it always feels like uhm … I feel like when I’m dancing, I feel something different. Like I could be like, oh, that’s my move, that’s my whatever. I somehow feel with the poems, like, not that. I don’t know how to describe it.

Franny Choi: This morning I was just reading from this gorgeous Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton that you edited. First of all, how what an amazing project. And I know that you’ve been a lover of Lucille Clifton’s work for a long time, so, yeah, can you just talk about what it was like to work on that selected and maybe like new things that you learned about Clifton in the process?

Aracelis Girmay: I was so nervous. I want this effort to honor her, like the effort of the Selected. And there’s so many people who love her work so much. And to select a couple hundred poems felt like an impossibility. I don’t know. I feel very uhm … humbled by the experiences of working on the Selected. And like, I hope this is OK, you all who love Miss Lucille Clifton’s work so much. You know, you’re like, this is my offering, I hope it’s OK with you. ‘Cause so many like…You know, it astounds me that she writes many poems that are like, they look small on the page and they’re just vast. And strange! And like they feel somewhat straightforward, in a way, because you’re like, oh, I know these words. And then you read the line breaks. There are these moments that happen again and again that I became aware of in the last couple of years and had kind of like felt, but hadn’t asked myself to try to articulate what they were. But like, these moments where, like, there might be three nouns and the attributes of one of the nouns is used to describe a totally different noun.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Aracelis Girmay: Like the everything is kin-ness of her work is just like, on the kind of like, on the word level, the diction level, the ways that the lines are broken, so that it feels like—I remember Cornelius Eady when I was in graduate school coming to visit our class and talking about how she was a genius. I hadn’t talked about her work with anybody except for a few friends. And then here’s Cornelius Eady talking about her as this genius. And I remember thinking like, “Yes!” You know? And uhm how she does what she does. I feel like she’s so… clear about some things. And like, so truthful and looks at what I think and what she talks about in interviews as being difficult so clearly. Uhm…The ways that she describes things, her imagination is so particular.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: Yeah. I don’t know. I really—I feel like I’ve gone to school in her archives and in her interviews, and I did not know that part of that would prepare my soul for this year, which has been hard for many reasons. And uhm here I am, like that poem’s helping me to be, no question. So I’m very thankful for the project.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: And now we’ve come to the most chaotic but favorite part of the show where we’re gonna to play a couple of games.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) It is a chaotic part.

Danez Smith: It is, it is. It’s the chaotic, evil part of the show. So we are going to play, uhm first game called Fast Punch, in which we-you are going to decide whether you want to be an optimist or a pessimist and give us either the best or the worst of 10 categories. Aracelis, which would you like to be? Would you like to give us the best of w—

Aracelis Girmay: Pessimist!

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: No, I’m just kidding. Optimist. Optimist.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I will say, great choice. One, we knew you were going to be optimist.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) But two, the pessimist is so hard. The couple people who have ever picked it had such a hard time.

Aracelis Girmay: I can imagine, yeah.

Danez Smith: Because if you have to say the worst poet and then you have to decide (LAUGHS) who you want to be in the world.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Yikes.

Danez Smith: Alright, we all ready?

Franny Choi: Yeah. Do you want to go first?

Danez Smith: I will. First one, best animal.

(TIMER TICKS)

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, no. This moment, just this one second—it’s gonna be different in another second—uhm a horse.

Danez Smith: Mm. Shout-out to horses.

Franny Choi: Best city to visit after the pandemic is over.

Aracelis Girmay: Long Beach,

Danez Smith: Mm

Aracelis Girmay: California.

Danez Smith: Best punctuation.

Aracelis Girmay: Comma.

Franny Choi: Hmm. Best tree, today.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Today.

Aracelis Girmay: This second. Okay, all my answers are this second.

Danez Smith: Yes.

Aracelis Girmay: Joshua Tree.

Franny Choi: Oh, yeah. They’re so weird. Love them.

Aracelis Girmay: Yeah. Me too.

Danez Smith: Alright. Best song to end the night.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, shoot. I hear the clock ticking in my head. Everybody’s going to judge me for this. But for some reason I can’t stop hearing The Boys’s song “Dial My Heart,” which is not my best song to end the night with, but that’s what I will choose.

Danez Smith: Wait, what song?

Franny Choi: I don’t know that song.

Aracelis Girmay: “Dial My Heart.” Oh, you’re making me sing. It’s a great song, but I’m not—but it’s weird. I think it’s the patent leather shoes and my clock backpack that have me back there.

Danez Smith: Wait—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Who are these four high-topped little Black boys in their suits—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: Wait you don’t know The Boys?

Danez Smith: I don’t know The Boys, no.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, my goodness. Well, there you go. Maybe psychically, I knew that I needed to say that for you.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: You really just put me on. I’m like, this is before my time.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh my gosh. Well, that’s what’s weird. I’m like, that’s so, that’s such my childhood. But, yeah. I choose that.

Franny Choi: Love it. Love it. Okay, best way to eat eggs.

Aracelis Girmay: Like chewing or swallowing or—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: Scrambled.

Danez Smith: Best word.

Aracelis Girmay: Ay ay ay. Um … dirt.

Franny Choi: Best body of water.

Aracelis Girmay: All of them.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) Great, that’s—

Aracelis Girmay: Can I say that?

Franny Choi: Yeah, sure!

Aracelis Girmay: I feel like you guys, I feel like, you’re judging me a little.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: No, no, no! You’re doing great. You’re doing an amazing job at this game.

Danez Smith: Alright. Last round, right? Uhm. Best place to write.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, this feels like the easiest one. Facing a window, preferably a window that’s facing West.

Franny Choi: Mmm best thing that lives underground.

Danez Smith: I was about to ask myself, like, who is that? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: Not to-you know, other burrowing animals are wonderful, too. But I think of the insects.

Franny Choi: Mmm amazing.

Danez Smith: You won.

Franny Choi: You won the game!

(ALL LAUGH)

Aracelis Girmay: That’s hard

Danez Smith: Okay, my personal answer, cicadas.

Aracelis Girmay: Ooo.

Danez Smith: I like that they’re timely. They’re like, we come out 17 years apart and yeah, so.

Aracelis Girmay: Oh yeah. They’re so beautiful. 

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Aracelis Girmay: And intense.

Danez Smith: Yeah, they’re sound. (IMITATES SOUND) That’s why I’m like, yeah, this little bug shows up every—on schedule, every, is it 17 years? Did that I make that up?

Franny Choi: I think so.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Aracelis Girmay: I think that’s …Yeah.

Danez Smith: They show up every 17 years just to make a lot of noise and breed, and then they go back.

Franny Choi: And die.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) And die.

Franny Choi: Right, yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, so now we’re going to play This vs. That, a game where we pit two things against each other and you have to tell us which would win in a fight or maybe survive in a struggle. I don’t know. I don’t know exactly how this one will work. But for this version of This vs. That, we have dirt versus the ocean.

(BELL RINGS)

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, my god. Okay.

Franny Choi: This is one of those ones where I’m not sure how anyone could possibly answer it, but such is your burden in this moment.

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: We can’t help you.

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHING) You just said, “Such is your burden.”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: I have to say, hark. So when I say ocean, if I’m thinking about the ocean, am I just thinking about the water part or the sand, too? And like—

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: Hmmm.

Danez Smith: I feel like if you get to think about the sand, too, then the dirt also comes with what grows out of it.

Franny Choi: What? Wow.

Aracelis Girmay: Ohh.

Danez Smith: Right? Like, if we’re including the sand in the ocean, don’t we have to include the trees in the dirt?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: Oh my goodness. Okay, dirt.

Danez Smith: Dirt.

Franny Choi: Why?

Aracelis Girmay: Man that’s such a hard one. Somehow the rain falling made me feel better about the dirt, because you’re going to—basically, really, I’m thinking of ancestry and I’m like, you’re gonna lose people either way, if I have to choose dirt or ocean.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Aracelis Girmay: If the sand is part of the ocean.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Aracelis Girmay: So … so then somehow then I started to walk away from that and started to think about like, elements and that with dirt you get the rain falling and... That’s a really hard one.

Danez Smith: I like it, too, because, thinking about the rain, because it’s almost like, the dirt can take in the ocean, you know. But what do you do when you put dirt in the ocean? It’s just nothing.

Franny Choi: I feel like that’s like a rock, paper, scissors, sort of like—

Danez Smith: It is!

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) —logic.

Danez Smith: You know, like ocean beats dirt, but dirt welcomes ocean.

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: This is complicated.

Aracelis Girmay: Ocean beats it because of the dissolution. That’s what makes it beat it?

Danez Smith: Yeah, I think so. You can’t throw enough dirt in the ocean to change the ocean. You know, it would take a lot of dirt.

Aracelis Girmay: I don’t know.

Danez Smith: It would take a lot of dirt to, like, make mud out of the ocean, you know?

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS) Danez, I feel like we might be talking for a lot of years about this.

Danez Smith: I feel like it, too.

Aracelis Girmay: Right?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) I’m gonna be thinking about this forever.

Aracelis Girmay: Because I’m like, well, what constitutes the change then?

Danez Smith: Oh, yeah.

Franny Choi: Well, we’ll say for the sake of strictures of space time for now, (LAUGHING) we’ll say that we can crown dirt the winner and maybe ocean—I’m sure that ocean will come back for the rematch. (LAUGHS)

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Aracelis, thank you so, so much for spending this hour with us.

Aracelis Girmay: Thank you both for all, for your work and for this and for having me. Thank you. And I changed my mind, I choose ocean.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Aracelis Girmay: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Amazing.

Danez Smith: By the time this airs, that will have switched seven more times. (LAUGHS) I love it.

Aracelis Girmay: Totally. (LAUGHS) I’m just kidding.

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Aracelis, would you read us one more poem?

Aracelis Girmay: Oh, I forgot. Yeah. Yeah.

(READS POEM)

placenta, shed, my

lichen, my book,

my organ, my slop,

your cake my slab,

our moss and eye

and sac of meat

on which the baby fed

from me who was not me

then rode away inside

her own horses, lovingly was

shooed, my garden

nest, that realm, my stray

and matted hair,

your gut and veils,

your hudmo room

of minerals and weight,

my flee and struggle, table,

my splay at which we met

in darkness though I left you there, my sorry,

desiccated by hospital light, 

grandmother, my dog, following

our child out though you knew 

the air would kill,

elder, my elder, 

but also the baby and baby twin,

her mother, her me, her meadow of wild

flowers who,

when I had no hands, no mind,

took care of her and made her live

* * *

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Franny Choi: Aracelis …

Danez Smith: That conversation was so special. I feel like a little rose gold coin right now.

Franny Choi: A rose gold coin?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: What a beautiful, what beautiful metaphor.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Thank you.

Franny Choi: You’re really good at this. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHING) I tried my best. I feel-I feel changed after that conversation.

Franny Choi: Yeah. You can read in her poems that she’s always just showing up 100 percent to the poem, you know?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: And she seems to show up 100 percent to … everything. Like, to the interview, to the email.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Like, she just shows up!

Danez Smith: Like literally the embodiment of the 100 percent emoji

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: A hood legend, Aracelis. (LAUGHS) And came 100 percent to that anthology, too. Have you gotten your hands on that? That Lucille Clifton selected.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Oh my god.

Franny Choi: It’s so beautiful. And her foreword is so beautiful.

Danez Smith: And what like a-like an ultimate book nerd blessing to get to like, shape a thing by one of your formative writers, you know? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god. Whose Selected would you most want to edit?

Danez Smith: Patricia Smith.

Franny Choi: Ohh, yeah. That makes, yeah.

Danez Smith: What it is, is just to say like, this is why this shit is the shit. You know?

Franny Choi: Right, right, right! (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: It’s just like the ultimate stan project. It’s like, have you read this? Have you heard the hits? You know, and like Patricia’s body of work is so massive at this point that I feel like it would be an incredibly hard task. But I would love to make something that could map out her growth, her trajectory to becoming one of our greatest, you know, formalists and lyricists out there. So, yeah, I would be so happy to dig in that archive and figure it out. How about you? Whose stacks you want to be in?

Franny Choi: The one person that I was—because at first I was like, I want to edit Suji Kwock Kim. But that’d just be like, one book, two books, (LAUGHING) you know?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Like, “Have you read this book?”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) A Chapbook. Right, exactly. It’d be like, Selected: all of them.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Tbh, I’d buy it.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHING) I know, right? Just like Notes from the Divided Country, but like, with me in the margins being like, “This one goes, this one stays.”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: But I actually think like the one who—I recently had the opportunity to go through and read all of Bhanu Kapil’s books, or the ones that I hadn’t read before.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: It was so cool to like, track the arc of her several decades long career. I don’t know, I think it would be like, very strange to try to make a selected out of Bhanu Kapil’s books because they’re really just like book-length poems. I think that it would mean that the selected would have to be just as kind of like weird and imaginative in form. And so, that would be fun.

Danez Smith: I think that’s how you honor that kind of writer, right. The engine of the books is so different from book to book, poem to poem, right, that you’re really—in a selected like that, you’re really just watching a brain at work.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: You know, and it’s not, you know, sort of congeals, but it is messy and wonderful. It’s like, look how big this thought has been. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah, totally, totally. So, I mean, and I think she would be down for, quote, selected being something more like multimedia and weird and like more archival and. Yeah. So I think that it would be fun.

Danez Smith: Whoa, a Collected you can touch. Whoa, whoa. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: I love it. Publishers, holler at us. We got editing to do.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: But let’s get out of here. Franny, who are you thanking this week?

Franny Choi: I am going to give a thank-you to chapstick (LAUGHS) for keeping my face, that part of my face, hydrated during the wintertime.

Danez Smith: Yo, shout-out to chapstick. I just got some lip scrub, too, the other day. Trying to get this kiss on.

Franny Choi: Yo! Shout out to chapstick! Oo, shout-out to lib scrub.

Danez Smith: But my thank-you is going to go out to Clinique 72-hour moisture surge facial moisturizer. It’s my shit. And I bought in the airport one time, because I had way too much time in duty free.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And I’ve been using it ever since. And I tried that thing where you be like, well, Ima try to find something else that works, so Ima give this other thing a try. And I tried two things on my face. And I’ve been walking around here with dry cheeks and just unvoluptuous skin for so long. And yesterday, I went and re-upped to my Clinique. And last night, I swear to God, when I put it on my face, my skin was just like, “Bitch, where you been?” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: “It’s been so long! What’s been up, bitch? Yass!” (LAUGHS) “Is it really, is it that old thing back? What u-” So that’s been one of like, the nice controls, of quar, making sure the skin is supple. So shout-out to you, Clinique, for making sure that my shit right. Who else we gonna thank, Franny?

Franny Choi: Shout-out to Clinique, and shout-out to the brand of chapstick that I cannot remember and so we’ll never be sponsored by.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Alright. Well, we also, of course, want to thank our producer, Daniel Kisslinger. Thank you to Ydalmi Noriega and Itzel Blancas at the Poetry Foundation. And thank you to Postloudness. Thank you to our various Zoom platforms and other apps for making sure we can continue to make this work. And thank you to you for continuing to listen to us.

Danez Smith: Make sure you like, rate, and subscribe whatever you listen to podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @Vsthepodcast. And like Franny said, thank you so much for tuning in. We got one more episode for you this season and then like normal, we’ll take a little bit of breaky-break over the New Year and the holidays. Thank y’all so much for riding with us this season. It’s been a crazy year, but it’s been so great to sit down with poets and bring this thing to y’all. Love y’all.

Franny Choi: Love y’all. Be safe.

Danez Smith: See you next time.