Previous Episode: Episode 16: Jericho Brown

Rachel Zucker talks with poets Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves right before all three of them are about to read at a poetry event called “Love, especially love,” organized by Natalie Diaz and held at NYC’s Housingworks Cafe. The three talk about racism, family, the family that poetry makes, long poems v. shorter, self-contained poems, getting in the way, taking up space, risk, pleasure, joy, public/private, spectacle, spectator and poetry of witness. They also talk about the artists and writers who inspire them, including the painter Kerry James Marshall, and about Standing Rock, native poets, how to fight and the essential importance of love.

Rachel Zucker talks with poets Natalie Diaz and Roger Reeves right before all three of them are about to read at a poetry event called “Love, especially love,” organized by Natalie Diaz and held at NYC’s Housingworks Cafe. The three talk about racism, family, the family that poetry makes, long poems v. shorter, self-contained poems, getting in the way, taking up space, risk, pleasure, joy, public/private, spectacle, spectator and poetry of witness. They also talk about the artists and writers who inspire them, including the painter Kerry James Marshall, and about Standing Rock, native poets, how to fight and the essential importance of love.

EXTRA MATERIALS FOR EPISODE 17Books by Natalie Diaz

When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012)

Books by Roger Reeves

King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)

Other Authors/Artists/Books Mentioned in the Episode

Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America by Saidiya Hartman (Oxford University Press, 1997)

This is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark and Paul Engler (Nation Books, 2016)

Deborah A. Miranda

Joy Harjo

Jennifer Elise Foerster

Rickey Laurentiis

Louise Erdrich

Heid Erdrich

Layli Long Soldier

Solmaz Sharif

Mahmoud Darwish

Fady Joudah

Aimé Césaire

Kerry James Marshall

Krista Franklin

Wifredo Lam

Other Relevant Links

Stand with Standing Rock

Housing Works (you can also shop via Housing Works’ Amazon Bookstore; a portion of the sale will go to them!)

"The Work of Art in the Age of Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston,” a craft talk by Roger Reeves

Close Reading: An Interview with Derek Walcott