Danez Smith: All these bitches is her trauma, she’s Franny Choi.

Franny Choi: And they’re BTS, Black, trans, and sexy, Danez Smith.

Danez Smith: Yes! And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them. Wow, I have to say, Franny, we sometimes struggle with the “She’s the They’re the—“s but we did it this time.

Franny Choi: No that one, that was a really good one. That was a really good one. All these bitches are my trauma. They really are, you know? (LAUGHS) Each and every one, come in.

Danez Smith: Yes, and I am seven Korean men that might be computer generated rolled into one.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) I’m not convinced they’re real. Like, I saw like a computer generated like Instagram account, and I was like, “Mmm, that skin looks a little bit too supple.”

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: None of these niggas real anymore. I don’t think J.Lo’s real anymore. Beyoncé’s not real anymore. Blue Ivy’s made up, everybody. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah. The CGI influencers on Instagram are really, really quite a thing. Ugh there’s an essay about that. But, today, we wanted to start off talking about what makes us feel like badasses. I mean, we’re recording like right before the election, btdubs. So, I think that this is like a conversation that I feel like I also need right now. But, yeah, I think that we could all use a little bit of badass energy, fierce energy. So, Danez, what besides like poems makes you feel fierce, as they say?

Danez Smith: I was thinking about this when we were talking about it. And the weird thing that came up for me was like, being a grandchild. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) That’s the last thing I’d expect you to say.

Danez Smith: Or like, being the golden child. There’s nothing I think, that gets me off, that I feel like, kind of like more in the pocket than when I’m around the rest of my family making my sector of the family look good. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Ohhh, for sure.

Danez Smith: You know?

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: Like showing up to the other cousins and being like—and I love all my cousins—but just being like, you know, “Hello, my name is Danez, I’m funny, likable. I like just did a cool thing that you probably want to talk about before your next chicken wing. And also, like, yes, I just went and grabbed my grandma water. And yes, I did it in such a cute and sweet and fast and efficient way.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god. Oh my god!

Danez Smith: And so I just leave like, family functions being like, “I was such a good grandson today. Oh, my god, look at me.” (LAUGHS) And I shake my titties all the way to the car while everybody misses me. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I guess I didn’t know about like— like there’s teachers pets, but there’s also like, grandma’s pets?

Danez Smith: Oh, there’s definitely grandma’s pets. Yeah. I’m a mama’s boy. I’m a grandma’s pet. I’m all that like. When it comes to like, oh we’re respected elders in here, we’re like making them feel jovial and seen and also attending to their needs. Oh bitch, I got you. (LAUGHS) Try to outdo me.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Watch me work.

Danez Smith: Watch me work. This is what I do, okay. Like, is there a woman I’m related to over 70 in the room? Let me flirt and help, okay? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) I love it. I love it so much. It’s really, really, really good.

Danez Smith: Yes.

Franny Choi: That’s really good.

Danez Smith: Yeah. Oh, lord. How about you Miss Project Runway? I mean you got many things that you could say.

Franny Choi: Actually, the sewing thing—I mean, I love it, but for, I mean sometimes afterward, if the product hits, then I feel kind of fierce. But mostly I’m just sort of like, “Oh my god, what am I doing,” for the entirety of the process. I’m just like, “Oh, I hope that it works. I hope that something—I hope that I don’t fuck it up.”

Danez Smith: Hmm, not a badass feeling.

Franny Choi: No, mostly not badass feeling. You know, I think it feels more like the early days of learning how to cook, when you’d be like—you’d finish the meal and be like, okay, does this seem like spaghetti?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Kind of. You know?

Danez Smith: Spaghettish. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah, right. Like it passes as a spaghetti, right. That’s how I feel when I make shirts. I’m like, okay, it seems like a shirt, right.

Danez Smith: There’s holes, you know. There’s seams.

Franny Choi: Yeah. It worked, kind of, yeah. But I mostly feel fierce when I’m like, uhm negotiating like, discounts.

Danez Smith: Are you a secret deal getter?

Franny Choi: No, I’m not great at it, but when I can do it, I feel fucking unstoppable. I feel like I could do anything when I do—so like, when I bought my car—

Danez Smith: Walk me through it, yes.

Franny Choi: Yeah. When I bought my car, I bought it from this man who ran an auto shop and was selling this car on Craigslist. I went in with my little like, soft butch baseball cap. I like put on—

Danez Smith: Flannel?

Franny Choi: A denim shirt.

Danez Smith: Okay, there we go. Even better. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Because I was like, I need to look tough.

Danez Smith: Boots? Did you have boots?

Franny Choi: I don’t remember. I probably just had little sneakers. I don’t even know. (LAUGHS) But I went in and I was like, you know, I was like, I’m going to negotiate this car down as much as I can. And I was like, “I need you to put new tires on it if I’m going to pay this amount.” And he was like, “Oh, okay.” And then his wife walked in and he pointed at me and was like, “She’s tough. She’s a tough one.” And I was like, “Yeah, bitch. Yes, I’m tough!”

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: “I’m getting a car!” And then at the end of it, he like, did his numbers again. And he was like, “Oh, I kind of like, messed up on my calculations. This is like a stupidly good deal, actually. I’ve already agreed to it, so I’m not going to go back on my word, but like, this is not a good deal for me.” And maybe he was just saying that. But I have like been riding on that fuel for the past like four years. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yes.

Franny Choi: Every time I think about it, I’m like, I am… a god. I’m just, I’m amazing. I’m a Greek hero. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah, it would make me feel like every time I drove that car I’d save money, you know?

Franny Choi: Right, right, right. The car, by the way, is like, fine, you know what I mean? It’s like, an okay car.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: It’s like a 2010 Civic. Like it’s not…

Danez Smith: A Civic is a good car, though.

Franny Choi: It is, yeah.

Danez Smith: That Civic is gonna last you until your eighth book. Okay, girl.

Franny Choi: Exactly. Exactly.

Danez Smith: That shit does not break down.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: Look at you. I need to bring you the next time I get my car.

Franny Choi: Well we’re very lucky to get to talk to someone who is like, actually legitimate cool.

Danez Smith: Actually a badass.

Franny Choi: And legitimate fierce and badass. Uhm Marilyn Chin, the Marilyn Chin, who both in her poetry and, she reveals in this interview, in real life, throws hands.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Metaphorical and literal.

Danez Smith: Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She earned a BA in Chinese literature from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A noted anthologist, translator, and educator, as well as a poet and novelist, Chin’s work distills her experiences as a feminist and Asian American woman. Her books include Dwarf Bamboo, The Phoenix Gone, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, Hard Love Province, and her new and selected, A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems, out in 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation. She is one of our greats, a living legend, a fierce one. This is literally a hoot. I can’t wait for ya’ll to hear it. So let’s get into it with legend Marilyn Chin, who is going to start us off with a poem.

(SOUND EFFECT)

Marilyn Chin: I’m going to read “Fruit Études.” I’ll just tell you what études are, I guess. In classical music an étude is a study. And it’s a short composition for a solo instrument. It’s often written as an exercise to challenge the skill of the player. Certainly it is challenging to write short pieces about fruit, especially fruit that utters social and political commentary. When I finish with fruit, I’ll move to vegetables.

(READS POEM)

Fruit Études

melon

Melon is hard on the outside

Tender on the inside

She has a magnificent personality

So they bred her with an invasive species

Now, she is seedless and childless

Has become uncouth and jokey

She will die on the vine

___

cherry

Her grandmother says Cherry is sweet and kind

If you ruin her, I’ll come to your house

Drag you out by your ear

Take a hard branch

Off your crooked ancestry tree and beat you blind

And when I’m dead, I’ll haunt you

Curse you

Throw magic spells

Turn you into a hapless

Gonadless monkey

Just for thrills

___

onion (not a fruit)

They chopped off your head during the revolution

Although you have a French passport

I can tell you are a faker from your bad accent

How dare you think that you could float to the top

In the soup of history

___

peach (for paul gauguin)

I shaved off all my fuzz

Even around my navel

Because you are a sick fool

And like shaved girls

You take a first bite

Expecting to get juicy, but instead

You get a mouthful of needles

from a shaman in Tahiti

___

bowl

I’m a cherimoya migrant

Not a crazy rich Asian

Don’t put us all into the same bowl

In a tropical Jamba Juice swirl

* * *

Danez Smith: Yes! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Incredible. (LAUGHS) I literally have never been so excited, delighted, moved, disgusted, and aroused by fruit.

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yo I’ve never seen a poem that includes both an evil cherry, the soup of history—(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: And a gonadless monkey

Marilyn Chin: It was hard for me to pronounce that! Whoever says gonadless?

Franny Choi: Right.

Marilyn Chin: I mean, is that a word? No. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Marilyn, thank you so much for joining us. It is such an incredible honor to be able to be on this Zoom call with an actual living legend.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: It’s so, so cool.

Marilyn Chin: Living legend. I am just ancient.

(ALL LAUGH)

Marilyn Chin: Kazim Ali calls me auntie. I said, you know, you’re—just because you wear a nice dress doesn’t mean that you can call me auntie.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: Kazim is 50 almost. And yet (LAUGHS)—I don’t you know, It’s okay. It’s alright.

Danez Smith: How do you feel about auntie? I feel like there’s a lot of debate among folks about like how people feel about that. I think about it as a term of, like, respect. It’s like, oh, I would like to be related to you.

Marilyn Chin: Oh, yes.

Franny Choi: But is it too much respect? You know what I mean? Is it too like …

Danez Smith: Is it too familiar? You know?

Marilyn Chin: Yeah. It’s also ageism, you know. ‘Cause like (LAUGHS) But, you know, I am an auntie. I don’t have children. I have like a hundred nephews and nieces, you know. And, you know, Snoop Dogg calls his peeps nephews. So, you know, you’re all my nephews. And as Nicki Minaj says, you bitches are my sons.

Danez Smith: All you bitches is my sons! Congratulations to Nicki Minaj for finally actually having a son. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: Oh, my gosh.

Franny Choi: Wow. I also think that “all you bitches is my sons” is really incredible Marilyn Chin energy to put into the world, you know? Because it’s true! While trying and avoid, you know, the ageism of like people calling you auntie—

Marilyn Chin: I know, I’m just teasing Kazim. Yeah I’m just teasing. Just teasing. Yeah. I’m just jealous that she has better jewelry than I do.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: No but I think that it’s—as somebody who was coming up as an Asian American poet, you were and remain like a beacon. You know, I was lucky to be able to have you having already written seminal books of Asian American poetry like, before I knew what a poem was, you know. That was my-that was like my great fortune and my great luck.

Marilyn Chin: Oh, well, thank you so much. You know, my generation, what, Li-Young Lee, who else is in that my generation? Arthur Sze. Garrett Hongo. David Mura.

Danez Smith: Oh, David.

Marilyn Chin: Yeah, they used to send us around. Academy of American Poets sent us around to do readings. And I just remember, you know, eating Chinese food with them. Those guys were big and their chopsticks were faster than mine. And I just had to like, you know, climb over the chair and take my food. It’s just like, yeah, it’s interesting. Like, a poem like “How I Got That Name” became somewhat an Asian American anthem. You know, it’s a 30-year-old poem. And I-I give a lot of readings and people say, “We gotta hear that poem.” And my friends are tired of my shouting out—you know, I memorized the poem—shouting out that poem. They say, “Why don’t you read some new stuff?” But I can’t, because it’s like, invariably there’ll be a young poet who want to hear that poem, a young poetry lover. Yeah. So it’s great to have the selected poems, because what it does is historicizes my work. Yeah, so.

Franny Choi: When you get a request to read that poem, I guess, what is it like? Do you feel any kind of resentment for … or anything for people wanting to hear the old stuff, or—

Marilyn Chin: No, because are you tired of Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”? I don’t know.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Mmm.

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS) They’re tired of playing it, but it is, you know, it’s an iconic piece. You know, it’s an iconic song. And so- so I am blessed. I feel blessed to have an iconic poem, you know.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Marilyn Chin: And there are other poems like “The Floral Apron.” When that came out, women would send me their aprons, you know. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Oh, wow.

Marilyn Chin: And “How I Got That Name,” students would write poems about their names and send-and send them to me. You know, it’s just, it’s all very blissful. It’s wonderful. And I keep writing new stuff. I still have that edge. I have a lot of edge. I guess I just can’t, you know, (LAUGHS) I’m just a wild girl, you know, I still have that wild girl within me.

Danez Smith: Does it change your relationship to the work when you realized so many people were looking to you in that way? Does sort of being a seminal and important poet for folks like Franny, then how does it feel to write about yourself when you know that so many people are kind of looking to you to figure out themselves?

Marilyn Chin: Oh, yeah. I mean, I see myself as an ambassador, you know, for poetry. (LAUGHS) So I write all kinds of poems. I write poems like those nasty haiku. I got mean emails from some haiku society. “How dare you treat Bashō’s frog like that. You sexualized his frog! Ahh!”

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Enemy of haikus, Marilyn Chin. Wow. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS) But in any case, what I’m saying is that I feel that responsibility. To begin with, there were very few of us who got MFAs in those years. I got mine from Iowa in 1980—I finished in 1981 or something like that. But the generation in just a few years before me was Rita Dove and Joy Harjo. I mean, but—and Sandra Cisneros. But they were a few years ahead. And my generation, there were no poets of color in that cohort. So I’m used to being sort of out here on the West Coast on the edge of the universe. I mean, I see myself as a Pacific Rim person. I taught in Hawai’i, taught in Sydney, taught in Hong Kong. I just, you know, I have the poet visa to travel. (LAUGHS) So I feel the responsibility, but I feel the joy. You know, that’s why I appreciate your work, both of you, because you guys are just outrageous. You just go off the edge, you know, and I think poets take themselves too seriously. You know, they’re just, they’re too—you know, they’re stuck in academia. That’s why I travel. That’s why I get off the edge and do weird stuff. And absorb the culture. And enjoy-enjoy poetry. I am the auntie, the sage-like person, Baby Yoda. Not a true Yoda because I missed the Sixties.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: You know, I was a little younger than the true hippies. (LAUGHS) A little younger. Yeah. So I didn’t go to Woodstock, dammit. I wanna see Jimi. I wanna see Jimi.

Franny Choi: Uhm Baby Yoda is amazing. That’s an amazing comparison to make for yourself.

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: We like to ask all of our guests this question. So, Marilyn Chin, what is moving you these days?

Marilyn Chin: Oh my gosh. I’ve been—we’ve been stuck. I’ve been stuck in my house. (LAUGHS) What’s moving me? There’s this duck pond near my house, and I walk every day and I experience the quietude of Wang Wei and Du Fu. And then that keeps me from getting real depressed. And I’ve been watching YouTube. I’ve been watching divas. Tina Turner and Aretha to absorb the goddess energy. And I’ve been rereading Audre Lorde and June Jordan’s essays. I think they’re just so clear and impactful. And not filled with jargon. And I reread Angela Davis’s book on women and the Blues. And Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Woman, Native, Other and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. These brilliant thinkers didn’t get big prizes, didn’t get giant literary awards. But they’re so impactful. And I think I want to give them a shout-out in this. (LAUGHS) But what also moved me is I did this poets.org program, Dear Poet, where students write to the chancellors about particular poems. And for this round, my poem “Hospital in Oregon” was displayed for them. It’s about my grandmother dying in a hospital in Oregon. I’ll just read this little segment I wrote to them in response to their letters about their grandparents dying of Covid and other- you know other… illnesses. I said, “During this pandemic we have lost many of our wise elders who raised us, advised us, and paved the way toward our comfortable futures. Many of us were raised by our grandmothers. Even President Obama moved Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, into the White House so that she could help care for her granddaughters. Grandparents are strong pillars of our society. They should be honored and praised. I am deeply concerned that in this Covid crisis, some people regard our elderly population as expendable. Covid exposed the ageism in American society. We live in a culture that yearns for perpetual youth, a culture in deep denial about aging and death. The white body bags coming out of nursing homes are heartbreaking. Our older citizens are more than a statistic. They help to build the complex and beautiful world that we inhabit.” So this is a little segment of the letter I wrote in response to their letters. Uhm. It’s so heartbreaking.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Marilyn Chin: Those clips of body bags and the elderly behind the windows. You know, I just—

Danez Smith: Thank you for that, that just put my grandmother on my heart really heavy.

Marilyn Chin: Oh were you raised by your grandmother?

Danez Smith: I was, I was. My mother and my grandparents all raised me in one house. Uh, and I see my grandma, and I was thinking, you know, not only those body bags—it was scary, my grandma was in the hospital right before Covid came along and sort of got out right, there was a breakout of Covid at the home she was at like a week after we got her out of there. But I’m also thinking about, like, the psychic damage towards our elders in this time, just to be so fearful of, like, what this thing can do. And to be treated like collateral by a lot of folks, like you’re saying.

Marilyn Chin: Oh yeah.

Danez Smith: And the loneliness. Like, it’s been so weird trying to be both in and out of my grandmother’s life. Just being like, hey, I know we still have a connection, I still do things over there, and I see her all the time. But like, we can’t touch—

Marilyn Chin: Oh!

Danez Smith: I can’t, like, kiss my grandma on the cheek. Or I can’t even, like, run certain favors for her. So now I like…I used to run food that she made to like, her friends houses. And now I can’t, because I’m like, okay, I can’t show up to these other elders’ houses at this time too. And so she’s running around playing Meals on Wheels, which is so sweet. And I love her.

Marilyn Chin: Aww.

Danez Smith: But there is such a … such a violence towards our elders in this time that it’s been really revealing, like you said, to see. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Marilyn, it seems like you’ve talked a few times about specifically connecting with student readers. You find that that’s like a lot of people who come to your work, is younger readers or?

Marilyn Chin: It’s interesting because, lately, you know, there’s many generations. It’s like, yeah, because young readers, they’re forced to read multicultural poetry. So, in the early years, you know, I was included. Yeah. And so, you know, I wrote some really weird kind of experimental long poems that took me five or six years to write. And, you know, but they don’t want to read those. They like to read my short compressed lyrics. And of course, those lyrics, they almost always have messages. (LAUGHS) I can’t help it. I’m just, yeah. The personal is political.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Marilyn Chin: That’s the mantra for my generation of hippies and feminists, right. So they love certain poems. And regarding the generations of teachers, you know, they continue to teach my poems. And so that’s how I’m still around. You see? So, some poets, they want to disavow their first books, but I don’t because there’s a clarity in the poems I wrote in my 20s. They’re surprisingly clear and wonderful. And I can’t write those poems now. Somehow these “Fruit Études,” these latest box poems and so forth, I’m writing them with the idea of beginner’s mind, best mind. Right, just going back to that clarity of Chinese poetry. My undergraduate degree was classical Chinese poetry. So that I go back to that clarity of imagism. You know, I’m creating my Chinese American imagism. So that’s what I’m doing now. So, I write all kinds of stuff, you know. I write some really X-rated stuff that I haven’t published yet. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: They’re like nasty. I don’t know if they’re nastier than you guys. You two are just nasty! I don’t know if I can be that—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Don’t you love it though?

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I mean, you’re kinda… you’re nasty. You’re secretly nasty.

Franny Choi: You’re nasty, too, Marilyn.

Marilyn Chin: I know…

Danez Smith: I was just reading that book, I saw some titties.

Marilyn Chin: Oh my gosh. You know, you saw some hoo-has, too, right? All kinds—

Danez Smith: I saw some hoo-has, all kinds of stuff going on. Stuff was slick and sliding. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: I know, I just. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Can we talk about—so you said that you are making your Chinese American imagism.

Danez Smith: Yes.

Franny Choi: Can we hear more about that? Like, what do you mean by that? And also, what is it to make your own Chinese American imagism?

Marilyn Chin: I read, you know, Pound was a modernist icon. And he wrote all this stuff about imagism, right. And I wanted to—I continue to have an argument with him in my mind, because—he got some things right, I must say. You know, he got about the purity of the image, about the concreteness of the image, letting the image resonate to tell the full story. You know, he did a lot of things right. He was wrong about the Chinese character on many levels. But his poem “River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter,” I love, how he cross-dressed a Tan dynasty woman’s outfit and spoke in her voice and stayed in character. And I thought that was so cool. He taught me about how to use my Chinese American voice, and not to be afraid of what everybody calls Orientalism. Right? Because, you know, I studied Chinese poetry, I know what—I translated poems, character by character. I research Chinese poetry. And so, I see myself as an authority on Chinese poetry, though I don’t write long articles. I want to demonstrate everything in the poem. So that’s why I write a lot of quatrains. I call them Chinese American quatrains. They have that parallelism, kind of a strict parallelism and a little punch line at the end. That’s why I also watch a lot of comedy, because comedy also has that kind of precision. So, the imagist movement was a very short-lived movement. But I want to add to that tradition, to that history. So I can go on and on about it. It’s just, it gets really nerdy.

Danez Smith: And we’re going to make you. Uhm….

Marilyn Chin: No, no!

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) What do you feel like—so I love that quatrain that you use. It does feel like that. And I was reading an interview earlier, you were talking about like this long project of trying to fuse, you know, Chinese and American poetics into like, what is Chinese American. And so I’m wondering—I think you gave us a really beautiful view about what feels…uhm… vibrantly Chinese about the work. But where do you see Americanness sneaking into your craft? When do you sort of pop up and say, oh, I know I learned that from this other canon?

Marilyn Chin: Oh, gosh, how I got that name is actually a dramatic monologue in the Shakespearean Browning tradition. You know, I didn’t write it for the voice like you slam poets, write for the ear. I don’t know how you do that. But I uhm- I write for the page first. So that poem took about 50 drafts or something. But I had the dramatic monologue, Shakespearean, and Browning’s dramatic monologue in mind. So, I am a total poetry nerd. I read poetry every day. Everything contributes to the muse. Everything that I do. I go to YouTube. You know, the other day I found Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, and Sekou Sundiata. How we miss him, how they performed their poems. And I was just totally amazed. I was an opening act for Sonia Sanchez. God help me. She was so amazing. She made me up my game in my performances. She’s wonderful. I know the traditions. My favorite teacher at Iowa was Donald Justice, a Southern formalist. He was a wonderful teacher. And so I have my forms down, my Western forms. So I also write a thing called sonnetnese. Half sonnet, half Chinese lyric. So so yeah, I embed two quatrains, what I call Chinese American quatrains, with parallelism and so forth, and then I wrap it up with a off rhyme couplet or something like that. So that I purposely meld the two, you know, East and West, both sides of my literary heritage. I can’t help but think about Chinese poetry, because when I was two, my grandmother carried me on her back and chanted Chinese poetry to me. She was illiterate, but she had this memory, this magnificent memory. She could rap Du Fu, you know The Book of Songs, and Lao Tzu, and Confucius. I mean, she had this great memory. Yeah, both sides of my literary heritage speak to me. So I’m taking drumming lately. Well, before Covid. And I’m taking a hip hop dance class with a guy named Mike Peele on YouTube. I’m on program number 43. You know so, I do this so I can hear a real beat. So that changes the work as well. So, yeah. Everything feeds the poetry.

Franny Choi: That’s amazing. It’s so amazing to hear you go through all of the different sort of influences that are in your work and they’re so wide ranging. I’m especially kind of intrigued by the way that you brought like uhm Black Arts Movement poets into this conversation. I feel like—

Danez Smith: And other Black artists. The blues is very present in the work.

Franny Choi: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, it’s like an interesting and like, really important, I think, lineage for us to name. When we say like, American poetry, the Western poetry tradition, that’s—

Marilyn Chin: Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, June Jordan used to fly me up to a class, Poetry for the People. She didn’t want me to read poems. She wanted me to teach the students a Chinese quatrain. And then we had an argument. She said, “Oh, you have to be strict that you have to write five syllables or seven syllables per line.” And I said, “No, it’s impossible to translate one Chinese character into one English syllable.” It’s impossible. You lose the richness of the language. And we had this, (LAUGHS) little tiff. You know, that’s kind of a nerdy tiff. But she—she really appreciated Chinese poetry. There wasn’t really, you know, like cultural sharing in those years in the Bay Area, in San Francisco, in California. Which is not, I don’t know if people have talked about that rich area, because they somewhat had the Beats and then forgot about everything else. But there was a lot of, you know, especially with Asian American poetry. And June Jordan, Adrienne Rich, they really took care of me in many ways. You know, Gwendolyn Brooks used to write me little cards, her little green and blue cards every Christmas. I love the Black Arts Movement. You know, I just, I don’t think that’s antithetical to (IN AFFECTED VOICE) Chinese quietude. You know?(LAUGHS) And I love the contradictions. I love all of it. But the secret is, the magic of it, is how to bring everything together in this beautiful vase. And that vase could take different shapes, you know, and that’s the beauty of the editing process. And really, that’s where you develop your craft.

Danez Smith: One thing that I love that you created is this like wild, fierce femme persona in the poems that, I’m surprised, because, watching a lot of interviews with you, you sometimes downplay it. And say that you’re not as wild as the poems would make you think, which I don’t think is true. But—

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: So that’s the outside looking in. And you’ve also talked about how that persona, or that energy, is mused at times from your grandmother, I believe, just the woman she was. I’m wondering, not knowing you so personally, I would say from the outside in, I would say, yeah, Marilyn Chin, that’s a badass motherfucker right there like. You know? (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That’s a wild woman you don’t fuck with. I’m wondering, how have you felt yourself growing alongside that persona? Do you feel like there’s stuff you’ve learned from that character, from writing sort of in her fierceness for so long?

Marilyn Chin: I’m actually a really shy, kind of a nerdy person, you know? I mean, really, I spent my 20s in a dark library reading, you know, weird Chinese poetry, you know.

Danez Smith: Yeah, but then you come out the library, and you look at Ezra Pound in the eye and say, “All these bitches is my sons, you did it wrong.” (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: And a bunch of us, you know, a bunch of us wild women, you know, we worked in this restaurant called Gold Ten, and we took the poor busboy and we ravaged him. (LAUGHS) From head to toe! And yeah, I’ll stop there, but, I know. I don’t know, I just, I think we’re all weird characters. I mean, you know, I would love to have 10 husbands and four wives, but I can’t! I’m too disorganized.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Marilyn Chin: I would be a wilder bitch if I were more organized.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: And I can’t organize my life, so. I can’t clean my house. I’ve been, you know, my house is a total mess. But my poetry must be perfect.

Franny Choi: Uh-huh.

Danez Smith: Yep.

Marilyn Chin: So, you know, I have that edge. You don’t want to mess with this motherfucker, you know. I think I punched somebody during a reading.

Danez Smith: I love poetry fight stories. Please continue. Yes. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: Oh!

Franny Choi: you literally punched somebody during a reading?

Marilyn Chin: Well, you know. (LAUGHS) It was [BEEP].

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Marilyn Chin: We read together at San Diego State and I don’t know, he was really drunk or something, but I had my hands around his throat.

Danez Smith: Yes!

Marilyn Chin: My students had to pull me off, and then he had his hands around my throat! But I realized his neck was really thin and it stopped me. I can’t remember what that was all about, but you know, everybody thinks he’s really funny. I think I’m funnier than [BEEP].

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: You choke stronger.

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS) But in any case, we yelled epithets at each other. I said (LAUGHS) racial epithets. I forget what it was. It was terrible, it was a terrible thing. But it was funny, yeah. On hindsight, it was funny

Danez Smith: In hindsight, that’s hilarious. I needed to know that at one point Marilyn Chin was—had her hands around [BEEP]’s throat calling him a honky. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That is necessary information.

Franny Choi: Yeah, that’s just good for the archive.

Marilyn Chin: I don’t think I called him a honkey, I can’t remember what it was.

Danez Smith: Cracker, there’s not too many for them.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Marilyn Chin: He said something like, “Why don’t you read ‘Slow Boat to China’?” And I said something like, “Why don’t you sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’” or something like that. (LAUGHS) It was just, it was ridiculous! I don’t know what it was. I didn’t call—he didn’t call me a Chinese bitch, or anything. But you know, it was like, we said just something really stupid to each other. (LAUGHS) And then they had to pull me off. And that was, yeah, that was a weird incident. Yeah. But, you know, I have these moments. But basically I’m really sweet, kind, and compassionate. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: If you can believe that.

Danez Smith: I can! This rings true for me, too, because there are some selves that I can’t be all the time that get to live in the poems instead, right. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: Yeah, yeah, right. Right. But yeah, I don’t know if he remembers that incident, but… uh…my students do.

Franny Choi: Amazing. I guess the one thing that maybe I wanted to ask before we move on to games, Marilyn, was like, you know, I feel like you have this, like, vantage point into, if there’s such thing as like Asian American poetry, you know, like if that is a thing that actually does exist in some kind of, like, discrete form, what do you feel that your role within it is these days?

Marilyn Chin: Yeah, I guess I’m the big sister, right? I’m still writing. I’m still writing weird stuff. And I might even write love poems to the wookie.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS) Because I’m Baby Yoda, you know, that could be totally nasty.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Marilyn Chin: But I see myself as an activist and I do what I can for the community. And, you know, I am an ambassador for poetry, I feel. I just love this genre, this genre that gave me this amazing life. And so, yeah, I am one of the big sisters of Asian American literature. I don’t know. Yeah, there should be more of us pioneer types, auntie types. You called me a legend. I guess that’s great. I’m Baby Yoda. But I think, actually, many of us don’t write that much. Isn’t that weird? Maxine Hong Kingston has a handful of books. She was quite prolific, and she said she stopped writing. Or she’s writing something, but she refuses to publish it. I don’t know why, but the moniker Asian American poetry, Asian American literature is so wide, you know? And so, as my poem said, I’m a cherimoya migrant, not a crazy rich Asian. You know, it’s just, that film, everybody’s so beautiful in that film, you know. And rich. But that’s not, you know, ask the Rohingyas. Are they rich, are they crazy, rich Asians? No! You know, they’re oppressed. There’s so many issues to cover. But, you know, I’m happy to be, you know, one of the big sisters of Asian American poetry.

Danez Smith: I would say big sister of poetry, in general, too, right? Because, like, you don’t get to be a chancellor for nothing.

Marilyn Chin: Oh, I’m a chancellor. I’m wearing a tiara.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That’s actually kind of cool. I think you just became a chancellor when I got to see you and the other chancellors read at Dodge Poetry Festival.

Marilyn Chin: Oh yeah.

Danez Smith: That was like—I was like, oh, this is like the coolest. It was so cool. It was like a rock star performance. It was literally like watching like, Stevie Wonder pass the mic to Aretha, you know? It was just like, oh, this is happening. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: That’s right. Tina. Tina wearing miniskirt at 70 years old. Right. See that’s(LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Energy.

Marilyn Chin: Energy, yes. Yes. And I learned from all of you. Your slams, your—yeah, I put on a mustache and I go and yeah. (LAUGHS) Go to slam readings, and I learn about performance. I think it’s an… Poetry has an oral tradition as well, so I want to remind people that it’s an oral tradition. So I memorized a lot of poems. Yeah.

Danez Smith: You’re such a brilliant reader for your work. It was weird to hear you call us like we’re the slammers or the spoken word folks, because I was like, what are you talking about? You’ve obviously…(LAUGHS) you’ve obviously beat us all at a slam before.

Franny Choi: You’re such a performer, yeah! Yes.

Marilyn Chin: This is why I feel so bad. I can’t go out and perform right now. I can’t—I had to cancel al lot of my readings. Yeah, so, it’s just not the same via Zoom. (LAUGHS) So…

Danez Smith: Having become such a legend for us, that’s still writing and still showing us what it means to be that legendary, I think you’ve seen the poetry world shift in such like magnificent ways where, like, hopefully we don’t have to choke [BEEP] anymore.

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) But I’m wondering if you could just leave us with a hope that you wish for, like, the future of poetry. What are we still working on, what do you feel like we could get at in the long run?

Marilyn Chin: Well, there’s so much going on. So I’ve been, you know, looking at different poets’ performances and so forth. And there’s just so many poets of color, young poets writing wonderful works, you know? And I think it’s really wonderful. But you know how it is. The culture is circular. It’s the ’60s, again, with protests, with social awareness, with Black Lives Matter. With, yeah uhm… Yeah, it’s the ’60s again. We gotta get rid of Trump. We’re doing this program on Halloween before the voting. (LAUGHS) I mean, so, so you know, minutes before voting. So, I think we need to be a kinder nation. And just, I think we’re going to get there. And I think the poetry, you know, the literary world, was opened up. I hope-hope that is true. And there’s a great blossoming right now. Don’t you feel that is so?

Danez Smith: Oh, yeah, it feels like a renaissance energy.

Marilyn Chin: Yeah! Renaissance. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, there was a time which I couldn’t get a reading on the West Coast. Why? Because the Language poets hated identity poets. It was just kind of shit like that, you know. And I couldn’t even get a—I mean, it was ridiculous. And so that’s—and then, you know, I’ll be on these panels arguing with Language poets. What kind of shit is that? But then somehow, you know, somehow the discourse disappeared. And it’s okay to write all kinds of poetry. Identity poetry is, you know, in again. But then it might be out next, you know, I live long enough to know that there are trends, right. A lot of poets in my generation disappeared that really—and so forth. Life happens. So who knows? But I think that there’s a great blossoming and I’m really excited about it. Yeah.

Danez Smith: One thing I learned from you and I was reminded of, really by diving into the work again to prepare for this interview, is that you are one of the folks that I think showed a lot of us—I think it’s like you and Patricia—who showed us that we could write poems about our peoples and about our identities, and we could do all this other shit, too. Right?

Marilyn Chin: Yeah!

Danez Smith: That we don’t have to be confined to one interest or to one way to look at poetry.

Marilyn Chin: That’s right.

Danez Smith: That like, I can write my identity politics with messages, you know, that damn near is propaganda for the shit I believe in. And I can also have like, my weirder more out there investigations and all that is valid. And so I think I just want to say thank you for like continuing to show us that we can be many kinds of poets within ourselves.

Marilyn Chin: Thank you!

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm, to be ourselves and also to be really complex and weird along the way.

Marilyn Chin: Thank you for that. That-yeah, you hit it on the nose. That’s perfect. (LAUGHS) That’s what I was trying to say. (LAUGHS)

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Franny Choi: Now we’re going to play a game called Fast Punch. This is a game where we will give you, Marilyn, 10 categories and then you have to tell us either the best of that category or the worst of that category. And you get to choose whether you want to say the best things or the worst things. So which one do you want to do?

Marilyn Chin: The worst things. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: The worst. Okay, great. Perfect. And then the only object of the game is to just answer as quickly as you can.

Marilyn Chin: Okay.

Franny Choi: Whenever you’re ready. Danez, do you want to start?

Danez Smith: Yeah, I’ll start us off. Alright. We are going to start with the worst fruit.

(TIMER TICKS)

Marilyn Chin: Oh, my gosh. The gourd. Ha!

Franny Choi: Worst poetic form.

Marilyn Chin: The … sonnet. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Ooo.

Franny Choi: Whoa …

Marilyn Chin: No, no, because everybody’s doing it, you know? It’s like the hip form right now, you know? (LAUGHS) So, do something else!

Danez Smith: It’s true. It made a comeback and then it came back a little too hard, you know. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: I know, right! (LAUGHS) Like your cousins are doing it. Oh, my gosh.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Worst place to read a book.

Marilyn Chin: In the bathroom. I think that’s—(LAUGHS)—that should be the best place to read a book, but I think it’s just a filthy, filthy thing to do.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Okay, worst kind of music to dance to.

Marilyn Chin: The minuet. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Worst sandwich.

Marilyn Chin: Salami peanut butter. Someone made me a salami peanut butter sandwich, and I had to eat it just to be kind and compassionate.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Worst place to give a reading.

Marilyn Chin: Well I read next to this shark tank once, I think. Yeah, it was, Poetry Foundation sent me to this aquarium in Long Beach. I read next to a shark tank. And there were two people in the audience. It was really weird, okay.

(ALL LAUGH)

Danez Smith: Alright. Worst decade.

Marilyn Chin: This decade, because of Trump! That bastard.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: There you go. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Wow, that was the correct answer.

Marilyn Chin: And Covid. Yeah. Jeez, yeah.

Danez Smith: This decade is really off to a shit start. (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: Yeah, a shit start. Yeah.

Franny Choi: Worst holiday.

Marilyn Chin: I hate Christmas. I’m a Buddhist! I feel like I have to go and buy presents and put up a tree. What? Why?

Danez Smith: Worst misbelief about poetry.

Marilyn Chin: That it’s inaccessible. I think you can find something to love in each poem. Something magical in each poem.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: I feel like I shouldn’t have ended on this one, but worst gum.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Marilyn Chin: Worst gum? I can’t do black licorice gum. Yeah, I don’t.

Franny Choi: Perfect. Great. Wow, yeah. I feel like it would have been better to end on Danez’s, but I-I guess that’s what we got. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: No, we ended on black licorice hate. That was appropriate. Thank you, Marilyn.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Yes, you won, you won!

Marilyn Chin: I won! Bing, bing bing!

Danez Smith: Although I will say, there is this black licorice called … I think it’s Wallaby’s. It comes in a bag at the gas station. If you see a bag of licorice that kind of looks fancy. They also do a watermelon one that’s really good.

Marilyn Chin: Ooo, ooo okay.

Danez Smith: Okay, second game. Alright, now we have come to my favorite and most violent portion of the show, This vs. That. Here, we’re going to take two things, Miss Marilyn Chin, and ask you to put them in—we’ll put them in a round of fisticuffs and you tell us who’s coming out the winner. Okay? So, in this corner today, we have June Jordan, and in the other corner, Billy Collins. (LAUGHS) Who is winning in a fight?

(BELL RINGS)

Marilyn Chin: Oh, June Jordan! Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing!

Danez Smith: It was a small play by play.

Franny Choi: Yeah. What’s the play by play? Why do you say June Jordan?

Marilyn Chin: It’s like, you know, a left hook, up-cut, left hook, elbow and (MAKES SOUND).

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Alright, well, Marilyn Chin, thank you so much for spending this hour with us. It’s just been like—first of all, just a fucking hoot. And then also, just like a high honor and like really, really special honestly to get to hang out with you. Thank you.

Marilyn Chin: Thank you, beautiful young poets! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) And oh, we never got to say congratulations on the Ruth Lilly.

Danez Smith: Oh, yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Marilyn Chin: No, see, I am the Baby Yoda.

Franny Choi: Well, Marilyn, would you do us the honor of closing us out with one more poem?

Marilyn Chin: Okay, of course. It would be my honor to read this poem for Franny and Danez, beautiful, beautiful, wild thing poets.

(READS POEM)

Little Box Opens Up

Little Box talks back

With a new set of teeth

And pink gums

A fake nose and a wax mustache

She disguises her voice

To sound like Groucho

•

Little Box opens up

And cries to her psychiatrist

I don’t know why they hate me

I’m such a sweetheart

I volunteer at the zoo

And teach Mandarin

To their bratty children

•

Little Box is not happy to see you

So she closes shop for months

Years, decades, and two millennia!

She tacks up a sign that says

Nirvana

•

Little Box is undead

She sleeps all day in a coffin

Hands over chest

At night she cruises the mall

For juicy victims

She prefers type A

But AB if she has to

What can you say

Vampires can’t be choosy

She likes your stupid brother

•

Little Box is on the psychiatry couch

Everybody hates me

Nobody loves me

Little Box lies on her side

And spills her guts

•

What’s in Little Box

A perfect orchid

A chocolate-covered strawberry

A new iPhone

With a glittery sleeve

Amber earrings from Pushkin

Keys to a new Porsche

A retro Chanel brooch

A Getty scion’s left ear

A Czar’s penis

Gifts so rare

Please don’t stare

•

What’s in Little Box

Rancid chow mein

A sliver of cold pizza

Last week’s hummus

You’re a starving orphan

From East Brooklyn

And you’ll eat it

•

So you want to fuck Little Box

You want to know her secret

She won’t open up

She won’t give it up

And you are genuinely repelled

By her filthy ribbon

•

You want to DO the Little Box

You are a sorry story

You big creep

Why don’t you get off the couch and find

A real girlfriend!

•

Boss Box

White, square, and without a soul!

•

Please don’t analyze Little Box

She’s just cardboard clogging the landfill

Her mother Precious Jade Purse

Has been regifted

* * *

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: Man, that was a hoot! Oh my god.

Franny Choi: Oh my stars above. I cannot believe that Marilyn Chin, legendary Marilyn Chin of many awards was on our show talking about punching [BEEP]. I think that I levitated out of my body.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: I think I like, astral projected. I just could not believe what I was hearing. (LAUGHING) It was so incredible.

Danez Smith: Look, I had so many thoughts. Like, after that happened, my like second thought was like, ugh, poetry has always been so violent against us and our ancestors. And what a shame that that had to happen. But my first thought, and also my third thought after that one was, “Get him, bitch!” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yes, girl! Mar-Go auntie Marilyn! Yes! Get his ass! I got his hair! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Absolutely. 100 percent. I mean, that’s who I’m putting my money down on.

Danez Smith: Yeah. If I saw that happening in the corner of AWP, I know who—(LAUGHS) you know?

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: You know, if for no other reason than like, I don’t know, it’s gang shit, you know. We out here all day. (LAUGHS) I can’t even put a fancy spin on that. It’s just gang shit y’all.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And I’m glad that she told it, too. I mean like, one, I hope we don’t—I don’t want to, like, scandalize it too much. But I think it’s important that, like, sometimes we hear that like, in the midst of poetry, we’re also still humans having these interactions, too.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Because I often be thinking this. I be like, sometimes, especially in pobiz, I’m like, one of these niggas is going to get knocked the fuck out one day. And apparently it has happened already, so. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Well it’s I think also good to remember that like, all of our like fancy mentors and aunties and legends were and like, are, in some ways, young folks being reckless—

Danez Smith: Yeah!

Franny Choi:— and making young people mistakes, you know. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Good to remember that.

Danez Smith: Please, please don’t talk about the things I said and did in the back of poetry slams when I was 20, you know. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh my god, exactly, exactly. You know?

Danez Smith: Though, one day, you know, invite me on your podcast and I’ll tell you all those stories.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) When, you know, at the end of that conversation, she said that she was the big sister of poetry, when we asked her about, like, the role. So my question for you, Danez, is like, if we’re at the poetry family reunion, the big extended poetry family reunion—

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: —who are you? If Marilyn’s the big sister.

Danez Smith: I’m going to make Dark Noise a like, septuplet. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: And so I’m the one that came out a little weak and like, is now a strong person, but you’re still a little worried because you remember—

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) you remember that they were a fragile baby.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Like you were like a preemie and like—

Danez Smith: Yeah, like all y’all were regular. But I was the preemie.

Franny Choi: You needed those glasses as a little kid—

Danez Smith: Y’all were ready to be born, and I had like a couple of months. Yeah. I came out with glasses. Actually out the womb.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: You know, I had to wear like a special shoe for the first couple of years, you know.

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: My acid reflux is real bad. That’s true, actually.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: So that’s an accurate representation of who I am.

Franny Choi: That’s so interesting. Oh my god.

Danez Smith: It’s like, doing well, a little worried. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Oh man. Yeah, I don’t know exactly about like who I am particularly, but I think that if we’re at the family reunion, then like, we’re part of like a branch of the family, not just Dark Noise, but a bunch of poets around us. Basically like, poets of color, and especially queer folks, and like, not just poets of color. But like, who came out of the slam scene, like all— sort of around the same time.

Danez Smith: Are we like, the grandad’s like, illegitimate child finally joining the family activities? (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right. Yeah. Or we’re like a branch of the family that was kind of like estranged for a while.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: And then somebody like, made contact and like started having phone calls. And so now, like, the Virginia branch or whatever is here. Or like, you know, the New Zealand branch family has come.

Danez Smith: This is my family story. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) You know?

Danez Smith: Yes.

Franny Choi: And we’re there and we’re just like, making too much noise, taking too much food (LAUGHS) or whatever.

Danez Smith: And there’s definitely some of the main branch that’s like, “I don’t like them,” but there’s a couple other ones that’s like, “No, I like these guys. They’re really cool.” (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah. (LAUGHING) Right. Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: “They’re just themselves, you know, like, no pretense,” you know. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right. And then there’s a bunch of people who are like, “Who the fuck invited these people?” (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: I feel like, they’re in this same branch of the family you’re talking about, right, when like slam adjacent folks started getting money that wasn’t normally ours.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Danez Smith: It was almost like somebody like included us in a will and we were supposed to be left out, you know. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Mmm, yeah! Knives Out!

Danez Smith: Aw, I love this made up family drama.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: I love it. Oh, my goodness, yeah. Well, speaking of family and speaking of people who we’re grateful to, you want to thank some people —

Danez Smith: Yeah!

Franny Choi: —and move on outta here?

Danez Smith: Yeah. I’m going to thank Jill Scott, because for the last three minutes, while we’ve been talking about family reunions, I’ve been singing her song in my head. She has a song called “Family Reunion” that’s about a family reunion.

Franny Choi: Ohh.

Danez Smith: And it is a bop. And it’s just about niggas eating greens and fighting over cake and potato salad and...

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: And I love it. And I listen to that song probably once a week, because they play it at the place where I go skating all the time. And so I’m always thinking about that song. And so I’ve been moving my shoulders this whole conversation. So thank you, Jill Scott, for making a song about potato salad that makes me want to see my cousins.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) I’m going to think the city of Brno in the Czech Republic, which—

Danez Smith: What the fuck?

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Which hosted a very large family reunion, a very large and historic family reunion for my ex’s family, who are all descendants of a big family that used to live there and then had to leave during World War II because they were Jewish family, and scattered to the winds.

Danez Smith: Wow.

Franny Choi: And we got to go and hang out in Brno and, like, eat a bunch of stuff and drink a bunch of beer for two weeks. So, thanks Brno.

Danez Smith: Shout-out to Brno. Shout-out to Czech Republic. Shout out to Chex cereal.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah, all of it.

Franny Choi: We also want to thank Ydalmi Noriega and Itzel Blancas at the Poetry Foundation. Thank you to our producer, Daniel Kisslinger. Thank you to Postloudness. And thank you to you all for continuing to hang out and listen to us.

Danez Smith: Please make sure you follow us on Twitter @VSthepodcast and like, rate, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. Y’all, this has been another episode. Thank you for hanging out with us and Marilyn Chin. We hope you have a blessed day wherever you are. I hope that by the time you’re listening to this, we have a new president incoming. And if not, I will meet you all in the bunker in Canada. Love you. Bye.

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