AL FILREIS: I'm Al Filreis, and this is Poem Talk at the Writers House, where I have the pleasure of convening three friends in the world of contemporary poetry and poetics to collaborate on a close but not too close reading of a poem. We'll talk, maybe even disagree a bit, and perhaps open up the verse to a few new possibilities. And we hope, gain, for a poem that interests us, some new readers and listeners. And I say listeners because Poem Talk poems are available in recordings made by the poets themselves as part of our PennSound archive writing.upenn.edu/pennsound. Today I'm joined here in a Zoom session hosted through the Kelly Writers House, by Eric Sneathen, a poet living in Oakland, who, with Lauren Levin, is editing 'Honey Mine,' the Selected Fictions of Camille Roy forthcoming 2021 from Nightboat Books, and with Daniel Benjamin edited 'The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture,' Wolfman Books 2017. His first book, 'Snail Poems,' was published by Krupskaya, and whose most recent chapbook is 'I Fill This Room with the Echo of Many Voices.' And by Trisha Low, author of 'The Compleat Purge' Kenning Editions, 2013 and of 'Socialist Realism' Coffee House Press, 2019, whom I'm pleased to recollect spent some years doing great things here or nearby here at the Kelly Writers House. Then earned a degree in performance studies at NYU and who currently lives in the East Bay of Northern California. And by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, who with Erich Kessel Jr. edited the Soberscove Press book of Gustavo Ojeda's sketches called 'An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979-1989,' scheduled for release in November 2020. Very exciting. His most recent book of poems is 'Losing Miami' published by The Accomplices. And his next poetry book to be issued by Nightboat is called 'Madness' and is scheduled for early 2022. Gabe, hello. Congratulations on these forthcoming big things. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Hi, Al. And thank you. I'm glad to be here with you. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah, I mean, I think we can take the scare quotes off of here (INAUDIBLE) with you. Trisha, it's good to see you. It's really been too long. You used to hang around in the East Coast more, but now you're far away. But it's great to see you. 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah, but the Writers House always feels like home. The rocking chair in the kitchen is still there where I used to do my homework. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah, totally. Well, you just said the totally right thing for, to begin Poem Talk, making me feel all warm and fuzzy. And Eric Sneathen, we are seeing each other for the very first time, but thank you so much for joining us for this session. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: Hi, Al. It's really great to see you. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah. So today, the four of us have gathered here to talk about a poem by Kevin Killian titled 'Is It All Over My Face?' Question mark. The poem appeared in Kevin's 2008 book, 'Action Kylie'. The six-minute and 46-second recording of the poem with a little bit of an introduction we're going to hear comes from a reading he gave at Robin's Bookstore here in Philadelphia in 2007, a little before the book came out. This great reading, this great recording we're about to hear appears with nine other readings and several recorded talks and interviews on PennSound’s Kevin Killian author page. So here now is the late and much-missed Kevin Killian performing 'Is It All Over My Face?' (RECORDING BEGINS) 

KEVIN KILLIAN: And this one is called 'Is It All Over My Face?' This is also a name of a song by a composer called Arthur Russell. Did anybody know Russell or his work? OK, great. And this details, a brief affair I had with Russell way back in the day. Arthur Russell died of AIDS about, in '92. Spring. And 'Is It All Over My Face' is like, he was a avant-garde cellist, and he was also a disco producer. And this one is one of his disco songs. "Is it all over my face? You've caught me love dancing." (LAUGHTER) Spring 1978, me clutching old copy of 'Gay Sunshine,' on Verso, Allen Ginsberg's poem 'I Lay Love on my Knee'. I nursed love where he lay. I let love get away. I let love lie low in Stony Brook, Long Island, where once Denise Levertov nearly expired of an illicit passion in wartime. And that's where I was going to school at the time, Stony Brook. Spring so difficult to keep Allen Ginsberg's rhythms out of my head, the numb, dumb beat that he compared to the stroke of a cock, the pulse when you're holding it up or out in front of you. His affect was strong, unruly. He was so used to getting what he wanted, indeed maybe it's a Buddhist trait, their accent on humility, some kind of bizarre coverup for this emotional thing. He was away on business. And the back story is like, I was, I wanted to have sex with Allen Ginsberg, like a notch on my belt. (LAUGHTER) And Allen was then touring with Arthur Russell, who would play the cello while he, you know, recited his poems. And he would, like, fob me off with Arthur Russell, who had really bad skin. He was like, why don't you two get together? (LAUGHTER) Always the two tails of his beige trench coat disappearing into subway car doors. That was Allen, like, he was always walking away. Is it all over my face, that when I talk with you, I feel myself grow red, your wispy beard and the heavy smell of cigarette smoke. With you I feel the obviosity of Ginsberg's doggerel verse grow into baton-like accent and stricture, like it is going to pound me to death. Is it all over my face? You've caught me love dancing. (SINGS) Everything returns again. Everything comes back, the return of the repressed, (SINGS) both the laughter and the rain. (SINGS) She is living somewhere far away. (SINGS) Hey. And I send her this poem to give her options, to ask her in my lonely way. Today the skies are over our little park are grim, pink, streaked with black and white like a cat, and nothing, nothing can hold back the rain. I could see through the clouds to this place where Arthur Russell brings his hand around my cock, his cello wet with tears, and now he's gone. I told my friends, he is not the boy for me. (SINGS) Desirée, you know how it hurts me. He caught me love dancing. Heeding the warnings of Allen Ginsberg, the American Buddhist poet who predicted that their love would lead to untold suffering. He and Arthur Russell lived apart from the day they were married. His death from AIDS in April 1992 inspired some of my own most beautiful work. My own premature death in June 2004 marked a great loss to contemporary Buddhist poetry. (SINGS) Where do I run to? (SINGS) Is it real? 15 stitches across my face, one for every man that hurt me. 15 apparitions I have seen, the worst, a coat upon a coat hanger. Players and painted stage took all my love, and not those things that they were emblems of. Is it all over? My face feels scarred, my teeth stretched across Botox and bandages. In the silhouette he casts the window of a moving train. Moving faces. Temporary hookup. He touched the other side of my face. Red maple, pepperbush, cranberry. I should say, these are the native plants of Long Island. You won't know that. Red maple, pepperbush, cranberry. Is it all over the Internet? Series of short, sharp, abdominal pains. Is it common lingua franca the way my soul seeks to engulf you? Is it all over my face? The shame of belief, the way the ears of George Bush Jr sprout from his head, for he fears the angel. Is it all over the world? The red maples of Xanadu, cranberry, the simple gift of Long Island, almost the way Arthur Russell, Lou Harrison played on it. Allen Ginsberg all noble. Arthur Russell, Lou Harrison played on it till sunset, spring 1978, and far away fingerprints for Kylie Minogue on cat-tails still finds a way to haunt me always and forever. 

AL FILREIS: I don't usually start Poem Talk by saying this, but I just have to say, this poem has got everything about it that I admire about poems in different ways. But I think, I know we're going to get deeply into it. I know even before we start talking that we all four of us feel that this is a very powerful poem. But let's start with, by a little twice round compiling of some references because Kevin really is really referring to a lot. He's building a scene in several time registers. So let's go twice around, lightning round, real fast, each of us. Just throw out a reference, almost like annotation. Gabe, you want to start? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Sure. I'll start just with Arthur Russell, who has, after he passed away from AIDS, become a really big figure nowadays. But he was an experimental musician, but he made this disco track with Loose Joints. It got a very famous remix by Larry Levan, and it's really that chorus of just, is it all over my face, you caught me love dancing, over this, like, four-on-the-floor beat, so. 

AL FILREIS: Perfect. Good way to start. Trisha. Another one? 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah. I like doing this because it's kind of like gossip. And I hope someone has the Denise Levertov reference because I looked it up, but I couldn't really find it. So if anybody knows what that is, I want to know. I want to know about how she nearly expired of an illicit passion. I guess the Allen Ginsberg's poem, 'I Lay Love on my Knee,' we could talk about how that's very Blake-y or inspired by Blake. I actually was unfamiliar with that poem. I had to look it up, and I was surprised by the kind of stringent cadence of it. And I'm interested in talking about that in relation to deck later. I'm excited about it. 

AL FILREIS: Great. And, quick note to the footnote, Trisha, he read that poem at readings often, and it's (CROSSTALK) to me that Kevin must have heard it at the reading. Alright, Eric, your turn. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: I really wanted to point out "my own premature death in June 2004". So Kevin had a heart attack around that time. And so when he's thinking about death and kind of reflecting on it, of course, he's thinking about his own kind of near-death experience. 

AL FILREIS: I think later I'm going to bring up the topic of whether this poem can be called an elegy and a pre-elegy at the same time, which, of course, is very powerful when we think that Kevin is gone. OK, my turn for a reference. Well, I just, I think I wanted, it's a weird reference, but it's "the obviosity of Ginsberg's doggerel verse". I mean, I think people who know superficially about Ginsberg think of him as (UNKNOWN) long-line guy. But he was very devoted to the Blake-ian ballad, of course, and sang them. And I think at this time in the late '70s, that's a lot of what he was doing in performance. And I'll just throw out that I think that-- this is in the lightning round. Sorry, I broke my own rule. When Kevin gets to the numb dumb beat of Ginsberg, his own lines become Ginsberg-ian the to his death from AIDS in April 1992, is, of course, referring to Russell, but it's a Ginsberg section, and those two lines operate in terms of indents, just like a Ginsberg line. So I think Kevin is trying on the Ginsberg line. So, anyway, alright, one. Another round. Gabe, a reference? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah. Most of what, I think actually, all of what Kevin sings in that line are songs by The Left Banke just sort of like, I don't know, I kind of think of them as like Baroque Beatles. And the two songs specifically are 'Pretty Ballerina' and 'Desireé'. Those are the songs he's referencing. 

AL FILREIS: OK, great. Trisha. 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah. So towards the end of the poem, "fingerprints for Kylie," that's referring to, you know, Kevin's muse, Kylie Minogue. Everybody has their favorite pop star. Personally, I'm indebted to Britney, but I respect Kevin's love for Kylie. And also just for kicks, 'Xanadu,' the Olivia Newton-John movie of epic proportions. We can talk about that later, but just two pop cultural references towards the end. 

AL FILREIS: Oh, excellent. Obviously, the Kylie reference is important for the book. Alright, Eric. Another annotation? 

ERIC SNEATHEN: I was interested in, of course, the opening lines about 'Gay Sunshine,' which was like the West Coast gay lib periodical. Very hippie-influenced. 

AL FILREIS: Berkeley, right? 

ERIC SNEATHEN: It starts in Berkeley and then it moves around, Winston Leyland eventually takes it over. But I guess what I liked about this opening is that for most of the poem we're situated on the East Coast at Stony Brook, where Kevin eventually goes ABD. He moves to San Francisco to write his dissertation, supposedly, and then just stays here forever. So he opened this poem with this kind of gesture towards a future, his future in San Francisco. 

AL FILREIS: Perfect. OK. I'm going to do not so much an annotation, but a way of turning toward a topic for us to talk about. I don't know Kevin's, the facts of his life well enough to know that whether the 15 stitches across his face refer to encounters where he has been beaten up or harassed by gay bashers, or whether it's a metaphor that gets us back to his face. But that stanza, for me, is, the poem really turns to some deep register. "15 stitches across my face, one for every man that hurt me." So I guess I want to turn that and open it out to the three of you to talk about what that violence means in the context of sex with Arthur Russell and the, really, the general story. Gabe, would you start on that, do you mind? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah. So Arthur Russell for me is somebody who's very much obsessed with, like, how love shows or how feelings kind of show on the surface. So another great song of his is, 'Hey! How Does Everybody Know,' which is like, hey, how does everybody know that, like, I love you if you don't? Like, how is everybody-- how can everybody tell that? So there's this constant theme in Russell of the physical manifestation of intimacy. And I think Kevin kind of twists it in this nice way where it's a bit more violent. It's a bit more, I would say a little melodramatic, right? You know, like that kind of, like, the people, the men who hurt me. Who knows if that's lovers or enemies or whatever? And I like that. So it's kind of an interface with Russell. It's kind of an interface with his own relationship with Russell, but it's also a way of thinking about the... I don't know, the physical life of intimate memory. 

AL FILREIS: I want to connect it back to the death by AIDS. I mean, it really very deliberately, as Eric suggested, times are changing here, constantly. We have '78, which is the first interaction, we have the death in '92, and we have various presents, present times. But for the moment, let's focus on his death from AIDS in April 1992, and the next stanza is "15 stitches across my face". So Gabe, Trisha gave, Gabe suggested that the "15 stitches across my face" is possibly men that hurt me in the act of loving. And yet we have death by AIDS before that. Any thoughts on the juxtaposition? 

TRISHA LOW: I think Gabe is right in the sense of looking towards that violence, the violence of "15 stitches across my face" as something that's a little bit more melodramatic. Not that the violence of AIDS isn't real, but just that it was more pervasive than just "15 stitches across my face," right? And there's something that feels really kind of like decorative or baroque about naming those injuries and naming those love affairs. Right? I mean, I think that the later part of that stanza is really interesting to me. "Players and painted stage took all my love and not those things that they were emblems of." The way that a lot of Kevin's work feels to me to deal with loss is to kind of, like, fill it up with these very specific reference, right? Like, these sorts of shared reference from the community sometimes maybe, or a personal reference in order to kind of betray a feeling without having to refer to the emotion directly. Right? And I think that that's something that is a big part of what is so powerful about this poem. The loss is also contained in what's, like, comedic or flexible or parodic. Right? It's not just a poem about AIDS or about loss or about absence. 

AL FILREIS: Eric, can we go from there, what Trisha just said, to the apparitions? "15 apparitions." So apparitions are representations of people no longer there, they're ghosts, they're illusions. So look at the, Eric, look at the tense. So we have his death from AIDS. So he's reading this poem or writing this poem at the time of the Kylie book or performing it at Robbins in 2007, looking back on the death in '92 and uses the past tense, inspired. Then when we get to the 15 stitches, he deliberately in those first two lines, does not use tense. So we don't know where we're floating. And then "15 apparitions I have seen," which is a retrospective version of the past tense. So the apparitions have to be the ghosts of Russell and others who are gone. And then we get the self-elegy, the pre-elegy of himself. Can you help us-- I'm probably all wrong in figuring that out, but I'm just trying to pass along to you the job of figuring out... How many? This is an incredibly, a poem above, an incredibly complicated recollection and time movement. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: Yeah, I think the thing about Kevin's poems is, like, you as the reader, don't always know if what you're reading is an illusion, a citation, or something incredibly specific from his own life or a figment of his imagination. Like, you're moving between all those possibilities at once. And it's very easy to feel like, when I read his poems, I sometimes feel duped (LAUGHS) in that kind of movement. What I like about it being 15 apparitions is that it's more than has been accounted for so far in the poem. Like we don't have 15 people that he's talked about, but it's also, like, a number that is, we can count to easily. It's really specific. And so, like, this loss is larger than what the poem has already accounted for, but that largeness is not, like, infinite. It's actually really specific, and it's probably something lived. What he sees, right, is a reminder of absence. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah. I just want to say, like, I think connecting also to what Trisha was saying, that line "15 apparitions I have seen, the worst, a coat upon a coat hanger." It's almost (UNKNOWN) in the sense of being like, do you think, like, what's the worst ghost? Like, the coat on the coat hanger almost doesn't fit that role. Like, it almost seems a little funny, but you can understand how a coat on a hanger would be an apparition in the sense that it's covering something that should be a body, but it's not there. And I think I just want to mention, like, those lines of his death from AIDS in April 1992, etc. There's a lot of kind of like wearing of, I don't know, many hats or wearing different kind of costumes. Like, I kind of read that first line as almost as if he was speaking as Ginsberg or speaking as somebody who kind of knew Russell in a particular way and made work out of him. And then I wouldn't describe Kevin as like a master of Buddhist art. So the imagined death of himself is like kind of a fun-- 'cause he's also kind of making himself Ginsberg, who died in, like '97, I think, and then Lou Harrison, who is at the end of the poem, died in, like, 2003. So there's a lot of these kind of Buddhist, gay New Yorker deaths that Kevin is putting himself in. So it's a little bit, yeah, there's a little bit of like costuming and there's a little bit of humor in how sad this can be. 

AL FILREIS: It's possible that the coat upon a coat hanger is Ginsberg, who is always seen walking, moving away with his trench coat. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Right. Right. 

AL FILREIS: You know, the ultimate loss there. Trisha. It... "is it all over my face". And then the poem end, we don't have to spell that out, we know what it is. But it, "it" is a very big word in Kevin Killian, because he's just such a master at that openness. And at the end, we have three Ginsberg-like stanzas where you get the line on the left and then the indents, which either mean it sort of run on with minion or it's something else. But "is it all over the Internet," "is it all over my face," a repetition of what it is in the title and then "is it all over the world?" So how does it function? 

TRISHA LOW: I mean, that's a big question, right? I mean, the openness of it. But I do, I mean, before I answer that question, I do want to go back to something that Eric was saying about how sometimes when you read Kevin's poems, you feel duped. Like, I am very interested in this idea, right? Because it relates to "is it all over my face?" Like, what is the authenticity of what is all over my face and what is not, right? Like how can that change from moment to moment or from text to text or from one costume to another or from one poet author to another maybe. We can talk about that as well, right? In terms of queer kinship, is it all over my face and the kinds of fluids that might be on one's face, blood or cum and, you know, if those things belie a certain kind of lineage or heritage in terms of queer sexuality? And you know, I went back to 'Fascination,' which is, you know, Kevin's most latest autobiographical work. And I read the piece about Arthur Russell 'Triangles in the Sand,' because I thought that it would give me a few clues as to what what the truth of this... the truth of this poem is not possible! Not possible, I don't believe in that. But I was curious to see if there was any gossip that would kind of, like, elucidate my reading. And all that I found was, like, more and more possibility, like, more and more implications that could have been drawn from every line in relation to events that might have been real or might have not been real or might be memories or fiction. 

AL FILREIS: That is so great, what you're saying. I miss being in conversation with you. That was so great. You know, I'm not going to let go of the it question, I'm going to come back to it. 

TRISHA LOW: Oh yeah. 

AL FILREIS: But actually, it just occurred to me to invite all three of you briefly, please, to say something about the factor of, you've been using the word gossip, let's just stay with that word. You know, Kevin would always interrupt his, and people can just go to PennSound and listen to all the readings, always interrupt with basically annotations that are mostly gossip. Can you all speak to the quality of that? It's very much a part, we could have cut that out of the recording, but, of course, we shouldn't because it's part of the home performance. So, Eric, you first. What is the role of Kevin interrupting himself to explain stuff? 

ERIC SNEATHEN: Well, I think about his role as an author with these poems, like, it is his mind, it is his sentiment, it is his genius that brings all these allusions together. There's really no reason that Kylie Minogue should be in this poem, for example, except that Kevin is here, so Kylie must also be here. 

TRISHA LOW: Yes. (LAUGHS) 

ERIC SNEATHEN: So those go together for me. But what I think was really interesting is it's this really short stanza "red maple, pepperbush, cranberry" that he's like, you wouldn't know what this is, these are the native plants of Long Island. And both of the recordings on PennSound, Kevin gets the same annotation that these are the native plants. And I think that's really interesting because what it shows is on some level, he knows that he's building into these poems a certain kind of opacity that he then, maybe heroically, (LAUGHS) kind of explains for us and demystifies for us. These are performance scripts as much as they're poems. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah. I-- 

AL FILREIS: Gabe? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah. I was going to say, I mean, Kevin was such a ham and I feel like I almost can't talk about his performance style without mentioning that he is, like, I don't know, he's like, he was to me, in my mind, he was like, campy and sort of very grandiose and kind of funny. And I think, like, that reference that you just mentioned, Eric, like, I find the line, the way he describes it, "you wouldn't know that," it's kind of funny because it's not just like, oh, here's a thing that probably your average person doesn't know. I didn't know it. But it's like, you wouldn't know that, but I do. And so then he's also kind of mixing in his singing and he sings some things that are from songs, but he also speaks some things that are from songs, and he kind of varies it up a little bit. And so, I don't know. It's like I feel like his readings are always very oriented towards the communities that he was a part of, in the sense that he was constantly referencing people he knew and he was kind of trying to make that the social world of the poem, like, really available to people. But at the same time kind of making it its own performance, like the social aspects of it and all the references were its own performance in itself. I think that's kind of what Eric is saying. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah. 

KEVIN KILLIAN: (SINGS) Desiree, you know how it hurts me, he caught me love dancing. Heeding the warnings of Allen Ginsberg, the American Buddhist poet who predicted that their love would lead to untold suffering. He and Arthur Russell lived apart from the day they were married. His death from AIDS in April 1992 inspired some of my own most beautiful work. My own premature death in June 2004 marked a great loss to contemporary Buddhist poetry. (SINGS) Where do I run to? (SINGS) Is it real? 15 stitches across my face. One for every man that hurt me. 

AL FILREIS: Trisha, this question is right up your alley. This idea that narrative in poems should be inclusive of all kinds of things that are in the poet's mind is something that's influenced you. Anyway, go. Go anywhere with this. 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah. I mean, like Eric, I did listen to, like, several different performances of this one poem. I mean, Suzanne Stein, when I was reading it, Suzanne Stein mentioned to me that like, you know, it's so interesting. She sees, you know, it's all over my face on the page, the poem on the page, and she has a very specific memory of, like, the exact cadence that Kevin would use, right? And I think that everybody has that memory. It's kind of like a community sense memory because this poem is valuable and important socially, right? Or like a kind of, like, encapsulation of what Kevin meant to us in some ways. But I'm really interested in what Eric's saying about how, like, you know, in all of these different performances, like, there are certain interventions that are scripted, right? Or like, there are certain kinds of explanations that Kevin really, really does always do. And why is that? Right? So many of those comments, even though they're the same, read very differently based on the audience. Like it's Kevin's commentary is very much to build a certain kind of camaraderie. And in the recording that we just heard, you know, the native plants of Long Island comment felt a little bit more subdued. But then in the other recording, it's very much a joke with a younger audience where-- And then Kevin makes this comment about how, like, oh it was, like, a very '70s thing to, like, name the plants in your poem. (LAUGHTER) And so it's really fascinating to see how these comments play very differently in those different social contexts over a period of time. Like, they do feel kind of haunted if we're going to talk about ghosts in that way, right? Like, these comments kind of haunt the poem with different contexts and, like, build up over time. I feel like, especially now, listening to Kevin read this poem, it's like there's no way for it to not be a very emotional and haunted experience. 

AL FILREIS: Yeah, emotional and haunting. I guess it's the right moment to talk about the elegiac, elegy, and even pre-elegy in the reference to his own near death. How elegiac is this poem? Obviously it is. How pre-elegiac for the poet is it? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: So it's written in the sort of memory of Russell, of Ginsberg, and probably of Lou-- I mean, Lou Harrison plays a much more minor role, but it's written about lovers past and a lover that didn't really happen because, as Kevin said, Ginsberg sort of pawned him off. But it's also, I think, about, like, I kind of think of it as like the gay art-making groups, you know, like, Russell and Ginsberg were working on something together and they were trying to come up with something. And Russell was working with, you know, these, like, gay disco producers to make something. And I honestly, I think of it kind of as like gay people working together and sort of one of the things that I think is sitting in this poem is, not just AIDS, but really just, you know, death in general and how it affects kind of these art-making communities and practices and collaborations and things like that. And Kevin's poems are collaborative without being collaborative in the sense that they are overpopulated, they're so full of stuff. And though he's kind of the master of ceremonies, like, he's constantly populating it. So I do think it's elegiac in that sense, and in the sense, also, that there's so much time mixing, we've been mentioning that. But as we've been talking about it more, I realize how honestly hard to track it is. Like, I kind of feel like if you came at this poem and you tried to, like, map it, it would be almost impossible. Like, you're suddenly in the '70s, you're suddenly in the '90s. And it's what Trisha said about the plants being a '70s thing, I was like, oh my god, what is going on here? So. (LAUGHTER) That's another kind of elegy sense. 

AL FILREIS: I agree with you. I'm going to turn to Eric on this. I agree with you that the timestamps are hard to track. But he does deliberately leave dates in for you and then refers to one that I'm going to talk about in a second, openly, generally, so you can kind of know where you are. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah. 

AL FILREIS: And in that sense, I'm going to toss out this idea that it follows the traditional elegy in a way, in that the traditional elegy goes back to the time of the person lost, then goes to the present of the loss, and then looks to the future. You know, the world will go on, that's the traditional elegy. Now, this isn't traditional, and that's totally in that sense. But we have spring '78, which is where an elegy would begin, a memory, a very specific memory. And then we have, today the skies, today has to be the time of the writing of this poem, even though it may be Long Island, which is a later memory, but actually, it might be the present of the composition of the poem, the time when he's remembering, possibly. "Today the skies over our little park are grim." So you get the pathetic fallacy of the sad weather. And that is very traditional. And I just marked that 2007, the time of the composition of the poem. And then we get to the death of, by AIDS, of the main character, Arthur Russell, and others in 1992, which tries to pick up what the world is going to do after that community has been destroyed. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: Yeah, it's interesting when you lay it out like that, it does seem to progress in a actually rather straightforward linear way. Like, we begin in '78, he'd leaped to '92, and then we're at 2004, which is when the poem is first published. But I think that in thinking about elegy, the idea of sleeping with Ginsberg is really important. Because to sleep with Ginsberg is to, you know, according to gay literary myth, is to like sleep with somebody who slept in an unbroken chain with people back all the way to Walt Whitman, right? So that's kind of like what you secure in sleeping with Allen Ginsberg as a kind of transcendental sex life. (LAUGHS) Transcendent sex life. And I think that immortality is really important here. And the fact that Kevin misses out on his chance to kind of become part of that lineage is very important. 

AL FILREIS: In a way he broke the chain of witness. Right? 

ERIC SNEATHEN: (LAUGHS) Or he let other people join the chain. I-- (CROSSTALK) 

AL FILREIS: Eric, does that-- sorry to interrupt. Does that connect us to the quality of pre-elegy? You know. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: Well, I think you were you were asking questions about AIDS earlier. And I think that what this poem makes me think of is, like, I think especially for Kevin, but maybe also for many gay men, like, thinking about their lives and their deaths, especially after the epidemic. Like, these things could not be separated. I think that Kevin indicates that by kind of bringing in Arthur Russell and pointing to his death in '92. But you also can't think about AIDS in this poem without also going a little further back and thinking about gay liberation, which is what we get with the 'Gay Sunshine' poem. Like, there's a whole reality that seems to kind of collapse in on itself and be lost. It's not just about the particular reality that AIDS foreclose, but this kind of whole, like, utopia. 

AL FILREIS: The reason I used, and I didn't mean it snarkily, the phrase "break the chain of witness," referring to bearing witness to establish a connection all the way back, especially of a world that's lost. That's the language of the survivor. It's a phrase coming out of the now long tradition of Holocaust studies or genocide studies. Right? But so we do have a kind of genocide in the background, and we do have survival. Trisha, take this anywhere you want. 

TRISHA LOW: I mean, I just want to, I mean, just in terms of my thinking about this poem and in terms of elegy, I mean, there's lots of connections that we can make, too, in relation to Jack Spicer, who Kevin Killian really admired and who was really the master of the elegy in certain kinds of ways. Especially romantic contacts, one-night stands, not really deaths, right? I mean, so that kind of plays into what Eric is saying about how, like, you know, the romantic loss, the romantic loss of Ginsberg or the loss of literary romance in a certain way could be, like, kind of elegy. But I think that when thinking about the AIDS crisis, and in thinking about the way that queerness is so often figured in relation to loss or great loss or loss of a previous identity or loss of access to, like, a previous life or, you know, I rub up a little bit against that, personally. So, like, I think that when I read this poem, what I read is so much more that's given in return in relation to loss. You think about, like, the all the different lines of queer legacy that are being drawn over this poem. Like, even if it's snarky in relation to Ginsberg or, like, you know, really about how he wanted to sleep with Ginsberg, like, those things are kind of like, quintessentially queer. Right? A kind of kinship that's, like, not the same as other kinds of literary kinship. And then, like, at the end of the poem where he's talking about Arthur Russell, Lou Harrison played on it, Allen Ginsberg, all noble, like, he's drawing his own genealogy. There's something about this poem that makes me feel less like it's about what you've lost than it is about what you've gained. I guess that's what I wanted to say. That it feels like a poem more of legacy than it does of loss. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: I very much agree with you, Trisha. And I think that, going back to what Eric was saying, I think what's kind of funny about the rejection by Ginsberg is, like, that Russell's the Plan B or whatever for Ginsberg, right? But Russell makes quite an impression on this poem, on Kevin. And Russell is, honestly, I think Russell's a better artist than Ginsberg. But that's my... That's me. That's me. And I want to think about just impression for a second, because I think, like, one way of saying what you just said, Trisha, about this poem being about legacy, is also a poem about kind of impressions made by people onto others. And I think one of the things that's very iconic about Arthur Russell, in maybe a negative sense, was his face, which was, like, he had very bad acne scarring and he was very insecure about it, and people kind of commented on it. And I think, like, this is a poem that is about the face and about seeing emotions in the face, about seeing history in the face. There's literally scarring that Kevin kind of talks about for himself. And then the song is, 'Is It All Over My Face,' can you see it on my face? And so I think this poem is really about, like, the way people kind of imprint on each other. And Kevin is maybe kind of a, I don't know if relishing is the right word, but he's really, like, kind of wading in all of these impressions and all of this, like, transmission, to use the kind of Ginsberg sex term, among these communities of people. 

TRISHA LOW: Mm-hm. 

AL FILREIS: I would like to ask us to go once around in response to a question I'm going to pose, and then once more around with final thoughts. So something you wanted to say but didn't have a chance. I ask this question very lightly because you may or may not want to get into the way it feels personally, and particularly given the apparitions. So the voice of Kevin Killian, as I hear it, having heard it a number of times in performance, that voice, hearing it again and hearing the end of the poem still finds a way to haunt me always and forever. That's a voice, that's the Killian voice I'm hearing when I read that now. So I ask, what is it like for you to admire a poet, and then go back to a poem, being asked to talk about it at length for Poem Talk, now that the poet himself is gone? Gabe, do you want to try that? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Yeah, I can start. I think once you become friends with a poet and talk to a poet, like, sometimes you can forget how good their work is and you can forget the actual craft level stuff. So I thought that one of the reasons that, you know, I wanted to kind of do this poem and talk about it was I wanted to pay attention to it. Because I think Kevin's work resists close analysis in some ways, partly because of the duping that Eric talked about, partly because of how kind of wide it is aesthetically, but... and how narrative and kind of free-flowing it is. But I think, actually, it's a sign for me of, like, a kind of respect to put the poem under the, I'll say it in one word, duress. I'll say in another word, kind of like closeness of analysis and say, like, how did this poem get made? What's happening in it? So, I think for me, it was, it was pure enjoyment, I think. 

AL FILREIS: Lovely. Thank you. Trisha, your thoughts on this? 

TRISHA LOW: I mean, I guess, like, I have a little bit more of a specific experience of it because I listened to it after, like I said, I read 'Triangles in the Sand,' which is the account of his experience with, Kevin's experience of Arthur Russell. And a lot of that piece, or a part of that piece, is hearing about Arthur Russell's death and then thinking back upon their time together in life with a reasonable amount of ugly feeling. Right? Which is something that I really value about Kevin's work. Right? Like, he talks about how, like, in some ways, like, Arthur Russell's acne made him feel more attractive, and that he was kind of this foil in a certain kind of way, like, he was so cool, but at least his skin was bad. But also, like, losing touch with Arthur Russell and how it felt to hear about the death in relation to that. Right? And I think that... Yeah, this is, I mean, it's hard to talk about, right? But it's like, I think that when you listen to someone's work in relation to their death, in relation to, you know, deaths that have come before that and people's experiences of it, you think about regret. Right? In certain kinds of ways. Or like... all the kind of, like, what could have been about life. Right? Not in a specific way as in like, oh, I would have done things differently. But just because life is over and there are no more opportunities to really engage in a different way or in a way that you might have wanted, maybe. Right? But I think that... One thing that I really liked listening to it was that it felt like... it felt like a myth or something. It felt like Kevin had become a myth. And I think that he would have liked that. I think a lot about-- (LAUGHTER) Yeah. I think a lot about myths and how, you know, I think Bob Gluck has a line in one of his pieces, I can't remember which one, about how it's like an imaginary resolution of a contradiction. And I think that when you think about death, it's just, like, irreconcilable. Right? The fact that, like, I sent Kevin a Christmas card that played a 'My Little Pony' tune and then, like, now I'm listening to this poem and he's not really there anymore and he's like a, this figure, right, that's different. Like, that's not, that's not reconcilable. But in a certain way, like, the space of the poem or the space of Kevin as myth is doing some imaginary work that I also find to be, like, important and interesting and, in some ways, soothing. Yeah. 

AL FILREIS: Eric, you can pass or try this. Totally up to you. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: I mean, I listened to this, these recordings, right? And my first thought is he's missing and that feels wrong and that feels really hard. I miss him a lot. One of the things that I love about the recordings is the laughter, that you can hear an audience responding to him. You can... there's just this record that he was such a ham and that people clearly loved him and his work. When I was thinking about this poem this morning, I was thinking, like, there's something about his poetry that's like being flirted with by, like, a really smart person. And I don't always know what's happening to me, but I know how it makes me feel. Right? And that feeling is so undeniable. And I kind of feel like that's the "is it all over my face" thing is just like there's something about my response to this that I just, I can't hide my enthusiasm for it, and I can't hide the way it makes me feel. 

AL FILREIS: It's what we aspire to in our admiration of poets and poetry, that feeling that you've just described. I'll just add my, to this round, my favorite line in the poem, which I think just proves, as so much else in Killian does, that he's just a great poet. In an elegy, to have a line that just sits out there, "cello wet with tears, and how he's gone". That is just a damned fine moment in the poem. It precedes, it follows, "Arthur Russell brings his hand around my cock". And what's next is the "cello wet with tears". I mean, he's made that cello cry. And it is, of course, you know, the song that gets produced out of their connection. And then "how he's gone" is an elegiac line, a traditional one, but it works really well there with the cello. OK. So we've kind of just did our final thought. So what I'm going to do is ask you to do final thoughts, but to make them kind of a brief, final observation, rather than some grand summary. Gabe, I just threw you a curveball. Do you have a final thought or observation about the poem? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: I do. I wanted to just mention something that we didn't get a chance to talk about, or didn't really talk about at length, which is the beat that... so there's the beat of, like, stroking the dick that's mentioned here that becomes the disco beat. And it also becomes one other thing. I'd, like, need to look at the poem again, but there's, it's the "doggerel verse," which becomes the dick stroking, which becomes the disco song. And I just love that moment. I just think that's a great... that this is, like, after the bizarre cover-up for the emotional thing. And I just think that's good writing. But also it's an effective way of thinking about why these objects are, like, appealing to Kevin. Because that, to be honest, that poem, it sounds bad. It's like a weird bad poem. But I like that Kevin becomes kind of obsessed with that poem because of its insistent rhythm, and he just starts comparing that and comparing that to all these different things that he associates with Arthur Russell. And I just thought, that's a great moment in the poem, so I just wanted to highlight it. 

AL FILREIS: Thank you, Gabe. Trisha, final thought? 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah, I guess. You know, in reading Kevin's work this weekend, I came across this line that I thought about a lot. And the line is, but why do you lie? It's not lying if it's an attempt to do something about my life. And lying is a very strong word, but I think that in so many ways what I value and appreciate, and I see myself in this element of Kevin's work, which is that, like, writing can be this kind of weird projective cinematic surface that's moving all the time. And that's not a lie. It's a way of, like, manipulating and understanding your life. And I feel like that that's what this poem is. There's so many elements that shift all the time. It's kind of this, like, weird refractory surface for so many things, queerness and legacy and language and music. So, yeah. That's my last thought. 

AL FILREIS: That's great. Thank you. Eric, final thought? 

ERIC SNEATHEN: I just wanted to build on something that Gabe said about "the numb, dumb beat". And just, it's interesting to think about Kevin's work and be really sad about it when it really contains so much levity and joy. 

TRISHA LOW: Yes. 

ERIC SNEATHEN: It has brought me so much pleasure in my own life. This poem begins with Kevin kind of taking down Ginsberg for his numb, dumb beat, right? But the final gesture of the poem is an homage, it's an imitation, right? And I feel like it's that gesture that he wants us to be left with, not the gesture of sadness and loss, but the one that, like, what continues is how we kind of mirror each other and kind of gesture towards one another and pick up each other's gestures and feelings. 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah. 

AL FILREIS: That's great. My final thought has to do with the ending as well, Eric. I just love that 'Xanadu' set up the poets beyond kind of an exotic Never Never Land. And so it is a traditional way to end an elegy again. But there they all are , Kylie gets thrown in there as well, but there they all are, the poets beyond. And it, is it, we didn't answer my question about it, but that's OK. But there it is, "is it all over the world" really broadens this thing out. This thing that you thought was just the face of this scarred-face person or my face after some hurt with, you know, the bandages or cum. No, it's all over the world, and that's that's how we're going to end it, with Xanadu. Yeah, (LAUGHS) it's just really, really a wonderful way to end. The other stupid thought I had was, we're talking about duping, and then I realized what was in my head when I kept thinking about the title of the poem, is it torquing of an idiom? The idiom is egg all over my face, which is a way of saying I've been duped. And I think that Kevin is fully in charge of that kind of duping, getting you to think, especially for non-queer readers, thinking about, is it all over my face? What does he mean? I have egg all over my face because I missed it. Anyway, just thought I'd... another one of his tricks. OK. Well, we like to end Poem Talk with a minute or two of Gathering Paradise, which is a chance for several of us, or all of us, if you're quick, to gather a little something really poetically good to hail or commend someone or something going on in the poetry world or the art world, or the dance world or the music world, whatever you-- or the museum world, whatever you like. So who wants to start? Gabe, are you ready with one? 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: I want to shout-out the work of Sebastian Castillo, a poet that I really care about, who has a new book which is called 'Not I'. And it's a great book. 'Not I,' as in the letter I and the me. It's great book from Word West, conceptual and sort of funny and sad and in a great way. And he also has another book before that one that I like a lot called '49 Venezuelan Novels'. He's a poet and fiction writer that I just think is really great. Very smart. 

AL FILREIS: Fantastic suggestion. Trisha, have you gathered some paradise? 

TRISHA LOW: Yeah, I want to shout out Marie Buck's new book, 'Unsolved Mysteries,' which collects some of the work that she's been making over the past couple years that I feel like really is kind of, like, appropriate to our time. Like, a very interesting set of thoughts about politics, our responses to it, and sex, and the way these things kind of, like, mingle together and the banality of our kind of, like, ongoing apocalypse or, like, enduring apocalypse, maybe I should say that. Yeah. So that's my that's my little bit of paradise. 

AL FILREIS: Excellent. Thank you. Eric? 

ERIC SNEATHEN: I'm going to keep it very simple and on theme. Today I'm going to gather in the forthcoming release of Kylie Minogue's next album, 'Disco'. 

TRISHA LOW: Yes! (LAUGHTER) 

AL FILREIS: It's called 'Disco'? Really?

ERIC SNEATHEN: It's called 'Disco,' and it's out next month. 

AL FILREIS: That is exciting. Well, I don't know if I'm keeping to a theme, but I wanted to shout out this book, 'Losing Miami'. 

TRISHA LOW: Yes! 

AL FILREIS: By Gabe. By Gabe. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: (INAUDIBLE) 

AL FILREIS: Do you have the book right near you? Because if not, I'll read the poem that I wanted to pick out. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: I totally don't have it right here. 

AL FILREIS: That's fine. You're going to have to listen to me, read it. But I'm excited to read it because I read it to myself earlier and I was very moved by my own reading of it. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: (LAUGHS) OK. 

AL FILREIS: It's such a Miami situation. It's about fire ants. It's called 'Fire Ants.' It's not really about fire ants, but it's about fire ants. Here it is. 'Fire Ants.' "what a weak theory I have built for myself, the daily hurricane in the refrigerator, not yet condensed, the ziploc of fire ants, my tendency to trill, warmth against the door, I built such a life out of life, it's doctored complications, I made this, these shapes of thin cheeks, I made the tropics into a thin circular theorem, but with a hand in their pincers, I'm starting to connect allergens, to form a pyramid." That's a lovely poem, Gabe. 

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUÉ: Thank you, Al. 

AL FILREIS: Congratulations again. Well, that's all the obviosity of Ginsberg we have time for on Poem Talk today. Poem Talk at the Writer’s House is a collaboration of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, The Kelley Writer’s House at the University of Pennsylvania and the Poetry Foundation, poetryfoundation.org. Thanks so, so, so much to my guests, Eric Sneathen, Trisha Low, and Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, and to Poem Talk's director and engineer today, Zach Carduner and to Poem Talk's editor, the same amazing Zach Carduner, and a shout-out to Nathan and Elizabeth Leight for their very generous support of Poem Talk. In our next episode, I will be joined by Bonny Finberg, Jake Marmer, and Julien Poirier to talk about a poem by the late Steve Dalachinsky called 'With Shelter Gone'. It's a great poem. This is Al Filreis, and I hope you'll join us for that or another episode of Poem Talk.