Unknown: The Glimpse.
John Murillo: I love that word reckoning. I think it's so
appropriate. I kind of shy away from you know, big words like like justice
and things like that. But I think you know, reckoning there is a lot of that
happening.
Camille Rankine: Welcome to The Glimpse. I'm your host Camille Rankine
John Murillo doesn't shy away from reckoning. John is a poet and a
teacher, and has received fellowships from the NEA, Cave Canem, and the New
York Foundation for the Arts, among many others. His debut collection "Up
Jump the Boogie was a finalist for several awards, and his highly
anticipated follow-up collection was released in 2020. John Murillo is our
guest today on The Glimpse. Reading John Murillo's most recent book,
Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, I found myself suspended, or maybe entangled
in this complex emotional web. The work is threaded through with
considerations of rage, violence and anguish and the forces that create
them. But at the same time, there's a delicacy to the poems and a tight
control. I felt as if the poems took this question, "What are men capable
of?" and held it up to light, examined it under glass through a skillful
musical lyricism. Welcome, John. Thanks for talking with us today.
John Murillo: Thanks for having me.
Camille Rankine: So I wanted to ask you about that title. Kontemporary
Amerikan Poetry. Is this book, that sort of statement on poetics for you?
John Murillo: In a way, in a way it is, you know, there were 10 years
between books, and I had a chance to kind of sit off to the side and
watch, you know, people writing their books and promoting their books and
all this and that. And I think one of the things I was trying to do with
the book is to just bring something honest back that I thought was
lacking, I thought a lot of what I was seeing and reading, seeing the
performative in many ways, and so it is kind of a critique of, and me just
kind of trolling in some ways. But also, if that makes any sense, and
also trying to be as authentic as possible at the same time. Yeah,
Camille Rankine: That's funny. I, I love that use the word trolling. I
did feel reading the book so many times. I was like, what are
you up to? Like, there was a little bit of a wink? I thought in
some of the approaches.
John Murillo: Exactly. Well, I am trolling myself too you know? It's
like that. And I think that's really more than anything in those poems.
What I'm trying to get at it's, it's kind of a self check. Right?
Camille Rankine: Yeah, definitely. That that self check, I think is so
present throughout the book. And one of the things that I feel like, was
just continually complicating the poems I was reading, and I just
really loved that element of it so much. So speaking of, I would love
for you to read one of the poems from the book if you would oblige us.
John Murillo: Absolutely. Great. And I think I'm reading "On
Confessionalism" That's the one yes. Okay. All right. Not sleepwalking.
But waking still, with my hand on a gun, and the gun in a mouth and the
mouth on the face of a man on his knees. Autumn of '89 and I'm standing
in a section eight apartment parking lot pistol cocked, and staring down
at this man, then up into the mug of an old woman staring, watering the
single sad flower to the left of her stoop. The flower also staring. My
engine idling behind me, a slow moaning bassline and the bark of a
dead rapper nudging me on. All to say, someone's brokenhearted. And this man
with the gun in his mouth, this man who like me is really little more
than a boy may or may not have something to do with it. May or may
not have said a thing or two, betrayed a secret, say, that walked my
love away. And why not say it: She adored me. And I, her. More than anyone,
anything in life, up to then, and then still, for two decades after. And,
therefore, went for broke. Blacked out and woke having gutted my piggy and
pawned all my gold to buy what a homeboy said was a Beretta. Blacked
out and woke, my hand on a gun, the gun in a mouth, a man who was really
a boy on his knees. And because I loved the girl, I actually paused
before I pulled the trigger—once, twice, three times—then panicked not
just because the gun jammed, but because what if it hadn't, because
who did I almost become, there, that afternoon, in a Section 8
apartment parking lot, pistol cocked, with the sad flower staring, because
I knew the girl I loved, no matter how this all played out, would never
have me back. Day of damaged ammo, or grime that clogged the
chamber. Day of faulty rods or springs come loose in my fist. Day
nobody died, So why not hallelujah? Say amen or Thank you. My mother
sang for years of God, babes and fools. My father, lymph node masses
fading from his x-rays, said surviving one thing means another comes and
kills you. He's dead, and so I trust him. Dead. And so I'd wonder years
about the work I left undone—boy on his knees a man now risen,and likely
plotting his long way back to me. Fuck it. I tucked my tool like the movie
gangsters do and jumped back in my bucket. Cold enough day to make a
young man weep, afternoon when everything, or nothing, changed
forever. The dead rapper grunted, the baseline faded, my spirits whispered
something from the trees. I left, then lost the pistol in a storm drain
somewhere between that life and this. Left the pistol in a storm drain, but
never got around to wiping away the prints.
Camille Rankine: Thank you so much for that.
John Murillo: Thank you.
Camille Rankine: I love that poem. And it's a long one. It's like
it really sustains your interest and pulls you along.
John Murillo: When I'm giving readings, like that's the thing where
I feel bad for the listeners often because I write really long poems.
And I'm just, you know, hoping that they're paying attention and staying
with me the whole time, because you never know.
Camille Rankine: I want to ask you about the title On Confessionalism.
Like why did you choose that title? And? And are you making an argument
about confessionalism here?
John Murillo: Yeah, I don't know that I'm consciously making an argument.
So one of the things that I was trying to do in the book, at least
for myself, really was to think about this space between our, our lived
lives and the lives that we show others or rather, our true selves and
our performed selves, right. And also the way we perform self to self,
right? And the way memory changes over time. So I'm confessing
something in that poem. But also what I'm doing is just playing with memory
and fiction in a way we fictionalized memory.
Camille Rankine: I mean, I think there's some things that you don't
want to admit to yourself, even when you're confessing, you know, that's
something that it's maybe one of the biggest challenges is there's things
that you don't want to open that door even to yourself. So to do it in a
confession feels impossible. I feel like that's, that's something that
must be occurring as for people as well.
John Murillo: Yeah. All the time, all the time.
Camille Rankine: So this is the first poem in the book, can you talk about,
like why you made the choice to start here?
John Murillo: I didn't want the poems about violence, or let's say police
or state sanctioned violence, to take up too much psychic territory, right?
I wanted it to still be in conversation with or rather, how do I
say about the violences we cause one another, and self. So the first
poem that one that I just read, it has to do with violence, but it's
more of an interpersonal violence. And I think it helps to set up a
voice that I think is really speaking throughout the rest of the poems and
serves as a touchstone. I think that if I would have started with another
poem, it would have framed the book differently. And
Camille Rankine: I thought the ending was really interesting too the way
that we have this ending where the prints are still on the gun and that's
the image that's kind of where we exit the poem. And it feels like sort of
this acknowledgment that there's a chance for this to reverberate still,
like this event doesn't is not closed, it's not kind of over,
there's still this sort of dangling. And
John Murillo: it's the the prints that are left on the gun, but also
the prints in terms of the impression that is left on the speaker. Right.
So the speaker is always looking over their shoulder, you know, throughout
the rest of their life.
Camille Rankine: I think that's the impression, it leaves you with that
sense that this can still come back to you. It's not a closed door. I
think in part because there's a sense of that the reckoning with the event,
and it's continuous in the poem, the way we see that revision and, and
reframing and re-understanding that reckoning continues kind of
throughout.
John Murillo: I love that word reckoning. I think it's so
appropriate. I kind of shy away from, you know, big words like, like
justice and things like that. But I think, you know, reckoning is a lot
of that happening and has been happening for the last several years.
You know. And, and maybe this is why so many of us are inauthentic with
the selves that we create, is that where we're kind of flinching at the
idea of that reckoning
Camille Rankine: one of the things I was thinking about with this poem in
the book as a whole was, there's a lot of exploration of violence and
anger, and kind of their entanglement with masculinity as well, which I
think is really fraught thing for black and brown people and black
brown men. And I wonder, like, is that something that you were
consciously navigating as you as you made these poems?
John Murillo: So one of the things that's, that is important to me, and
I wasn't writing towards this consciously, are the ways that we've
inherited as black and brown men. This this idea that, that masculinity
is dependent upon how effective we can enact violence, on others on
ourselves, right? I think about my generation, growing up in the 70s and
80s. And the effect of the Vietnam War had on us in that a lot of our
fathers were sent out to combat and either did not come back or came back
damaged, and left a whole generation of us boys teaching each other how to
be men. And a boy's idea of a man is this kind of cartoonish. Hyper,
violent, masculine brute, right. And I think a lot of the issues that I
had coming up was what I felt was a shortcoming. My inability to live up
to a lot of that, and trying to do my best too So a lot of the things that
I've done in my own life, that have brought me the most shame, have
really been me, acting out of that sense of wanting to prove myself to
some abstract judge of what is masculine, that I too, am a man,
Camille Rankine: I really liked hearing your thinking through that. I think
growing up in this country, it's impossible for violence not to be
kind of touching you and forming you in some way.
John Murillo: I think you're absolutely right. And it informs so
much by how we interact with one another. And I think one possible
response to that is tenderness and care. You know, what I want to think
about, like my students, just with, you know, so many of them are going
through, and the world that they're inheriting. It just makes me adore
them that much more, you know, and the same with friends and family
members. You know, it was such a rough place, that I think, you know,
it really calls for more of that care more of that tenderness.
Camille Rankine: So thinking about this poem, I want to ask one more
thing about just like the way that you utilize music and repetition. And
I wonder if you could talk about like, how sound plays into the way
you make a poem. Yeah.
John Murillo: I think my, my first encounter with poetry was with my
ears, not my eyes, you know, I came to poetry not as a reader at first I
came as a listener and the the poets I listened to were rappers were MCs
and I came to writing as a rapper. So for me sound music has always been
really important. And I think you know, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He once
said that the press Getting press ruined poetry. And one of the things
I think he meant by that was that when we started writing for the page,
a lot of us lost that sense of the oral and aural pleasures that poetry
can give. And I think that when the poems are really working when they're
firing on all cylinders, it's part song part cinema, right? So your
images are working, but also, you have something that's keeping the
reader or the listener engaged. And so I think that when the poems are
really working well, there's no separation, right?
Camille Rankine: Oh, I think this is a good time for a little break.
The Halsteads: We hope you're enjoying The Glimpse. It's just one small part of
the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. We're the founders Peter
and Cathy Halstead. Our goal is to make poetry more accessible to
everyone. And we do that in a variety of ways. Through partnerships, our
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hope these works will lure you into a parallel universe. The way a Mobius
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you're on. Thanks for listening.
Camille Rankine: OK we're back. So we're gonna talk about a poem that inspires
you. Can you tell us which poem you've chosen? Yeah,
John Murillo: so I've chosen this poem by one of my favorite poets
Etheridge, Knights. Etheridge Knight is one of my favorite poets. This is
not one of my favorite Etheridge Knight poems. But there's something
compelling about this. I'll read it and then I'll talk about it. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. So the poem is called "Cop Out Session." I done shot dope, been
to jail, swilled wine, ripped off sisters, passed bad checks, changed my
name, howled at the moon wrote poems turned back over flips flipped over
backwards. In other words, I've been confused, fucked up scared, phony and
jive to a whole lot of people, haven't you? In one way or another?
Anybody else want to cop out? So this is a short poem, of his but I think
what I find most compelling, he's an uneven poet, right? So some poems are
way better than others. At his best, he's really singing. But one of the
things that I love about him, in addition to his range, is how honest
he is right? So for your listeners who may not know Etheridge Knight is
a poet who served in the Korean War In the war he got a shrapnel wound.
And because of the shrapnel wound, developed an addiction to
opioids, painkillers. Once he was discharged, he committed a robbery or
burglary, I think, trying to feed his addiction, and went to prison. And it
was in prison where he started writing and reading poems. And while
he's in prison, he began corresponding with other poets,
Gwendolyn Brooks, among them, and you know, he got out and was one of the,
I think, most important poets in the tradition. He's known primarily for
his prison poems. But he also has some really beautiful love poems. And
in that poem, particular, I just love the honesty. He's just putting it all
out there, right? I've done this, I've done that I'm a piece of shit,
blah, blah, blah, aren't you? Yeah,
Camille Rankine: yeah, it definitely it has that again, that self critical
gaze. Like we're talking about the idea of reckoning and how how that
has to be inward as well as outward. And how people have had a hard time
with that. I mean, understandably. And I love what you're saying about
that notion of being a good person and how it's like a posture people
want to adopt, but don't want to perform.
John Murillo: And even that idea, right, Camille like the idea of a
good person, like what does that even mean? We're very complex, right? And
the thing that I noticed just in the course of us living our lives, right,
becoming who we are going to be like you will hurt people. But I think
this idea of when we reduce it to such a binary --good and bad, or
good and evil, which is really a juvenile way of looking at things. I
think. We do ourselves a disservice as humans and also as literally as as
writers,
Camille Rankine: as a writer, I think it's really important to never exempt
yourself from seeing critically and analytically. And yeah, I like that
this poem. It's both doing that work. But it also was a confrontation at
the end, like, and you your turn.
John Murillo: Yeah. And so, you know, you read a poem like that, and you
either take up the challenge or you or you don't, right. But if you're
taking it up, honestly, you know, there is some risk involved. Right?
You might reveal a self to yourself that is hard to live with. You may
lose friends, you may lose institutional support. Right. Yeah.
So you know, that's, that's a real thing.
Camille Rankine: I'm thinking about the way this poem moves too. You know,
there's a moment like halfway through, where he kind of distills
and kind of reframes what everything above means. In other words, I've
been confused, fucked up, scared, phony and jive. It's like, another
confession, like another layer of confession that happens there.
John Murillo: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there's something in this
moment it's so vulnerable, so raw, there's nothing there's no dressing
it up. It's just like, look, this is what what it is. Yeah. And each of
those things, right. When you think about, again, this self that we
present, how many of us are willing to say that we've been scared? And
phony? Right.
Camille Rankine: So you said this was not your favorite Etheridge Knight
poem? Do you have a favorite?
John Murillo: Wow. You know? Yeah, I do actually and I don't know why? Like,
that's a hard question. Feeling Fucked up is my favorite Etheridge Knight.
Camille Rankine: Mine too! I'm obsessed With that poem. It's so good
John Murillo: That poem, I mean, it's so good. And I mean, and to me, it's
like when you talk about love poems. That's it right there.
Camille Rankine: Yeah. So before we wrap up, I want to ask you what, what
are you working on right now? Do you have anything in the works?
John Murillo: Oh, man. I've been scribbling badly for the past couple
of years. But I did finish a collection of translations Rafael
Alberti, his book "Concerning the Angels." So I translated that this
past year, and that's coming out in 2025. Nicole and I, we wrapped
up the "Dear Yusef" anthology, editing that that's coming out in 2024. But
as far as the poems I'm kind of trying to vary my influences,
listening to different music, watching different films, reading
different poets, and just seeing what I can glean from them. And just
waiting and seeing how it affects the writing and just giving myself time.
I hope there's not 10 years between books two and three.
Camille Rankine: Yeah, well, I'll give you all the grace. You take your
time you take your time, John, thank you.
Thanks for joining us today. I'm your host Camille Rankine. John's poem "On
Confessionalism" from his book. Kontemporary AmeriKan Poetry was
aired with permission from Four Way Books. The Etheridge Knight poem Cop
Out Session comes from the book The Essential Etheridge Knight copyright
1986 Thanks to the University of Pittsburgh Press for permission to
air it. Coming up next week. Ama Code digs into Bluest Nude, and
talks about why Gwendolyn Brooks shows up in some unlikely places in
her poetry. Make sure to like and subscribe to The Glimpse wherever you
get your podcasts. You can also find episodes on our website Brinkerhoff
poetry.org. If you have any questions or comments, please drop us an email
at The Glimpse poetry podcast@gmail.com. The Glimpse is a
production of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation. I'm
your host Camille Rankine. Our senior producer is Jennifer Wolfe, Kat Yore is
our technical director and mixing engineer, editorial director Amanda
Glassman, is our curator and production coordinator. Amy Holmes is the
foundation's executive director and our co-founders are Cathy and Peter Halstead
thanks for listening