WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.180 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.180 --> 00:00:06.500 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Today on Chalk Radio, living poetry. 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:09.470 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, poetry is for everybody, by design. 00:00:09.470 --> 00:00:11.810 align:middle line:90% Poetry is also so old. 00:00:11.810 --> 00:00:13.110 align:middle line:90% Poetry is first. 00:00:13.110 --> 00:00:16.280 align:middle line:84% And so, yeah, I want to tap into that, that ancient thing, 00:00:16.280 --> 00:00:19.430 align:middle line:90% that ancient music. 00:00:19.430 --> 00:00:21.230 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: I'm Sarah Hansen. 00:00:21.230 --> 00:00:24.080 align:middle line:84% My guest today is Dr. Joshua Bennett, 00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:27.050 align:middle line:84% MIT professor of literature and the distinguished chair 00:00:27.050 --> 00:00:29.030 align:middle line:90% of the humanities at MIT. 00:00:29.030 --> 00:00:33.260 align:middle line:84% He teaches courses on writing, poetry, and society, including 00:00:33.260 --> 00:00:37.040 align:middle line:84% the course called Reading Poetry, Social Poetics, which 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:40.250 align:middle line:84% will soon be available on MIT OpenCourseWare. 00:00:40.250 --> 00:00:44.270 align:middle line:84% This was truly one of the most impactful conversations I've had 00:00:44.270 --> 00:00:46.370 align:middle line:90% since we started the podcast. 00:00:46.370 --> 00:00:50.090 align:middle line:84% Joshua has a way of weaving stories and poetry into all 00:00:50.090 --> 00:00:52.760 align:middle line:84% of his responses, painting vivid pictures that 00:00:52.760 --> 00:00:55.820 align:middle line:84% make the ideas that he shares in this episode so potent 00:00:55.820 --> 00:00:57.170 align:middle line:90% and tangible. 00:00:57.170 --> 00:01:00.360 align:middle line:84% In our conversation, he brought in his own poetry 00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:02.310 align:middle line:84% and even talked about the people he admires 00:01:02.310 --> 00:01:05.310 align:middle line:84% that have helped to shape his approach to writing, teaching, 00:01:05.310 --> 00:01:07.860 align:middle line:90% living, and even parenting. 00:01:07.860 --> 00:01:11.250 align:middle line:84% Simply put, I loved this conversation, 00:01:11.250 --> 00:01:13.060 align:middle line:90% and I think you will too. 00:01:13.060 --> 00:01:16.080 align:middle line:84% So without further ado, here's my conversation 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:17.390 align:middle line:90% with Joshua Bennett. 00:01:17.390 --> 00:01:20.020 align:middle line:90% 00:01:20.020 --> 00:01:22.850 align:middle line:84% So let's start with the basic question. 00:01:22.850 --> 00:01:26.200 align:middle line:84% Please introduce yourself, sharing your name and your role 00:01:26.200 --> 00:01:26.950 align:middle line:90% at MIT. 00:01:26.950 --> 00:01:28.360 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure, sure, sure. 00:01:28.360 --> 00:01:29.910 align:middle line:90% My name is Joshua Bennett. 00:01:29.910 --> 00:01:33.370 align:middle line:84% I'm a professor of literature and distinguished chair 00:01:33.370 --> 00:01:35.030 align:middle line:90% of the humanities here at MIT. 00:01:35.030 --> 00:01:38.440 align:middle line:84% I teach poetry, the art of the essay, 00:01:38.440 --> 00:01:41.020 align:middle line:84% and increasingly, AI ethics is something 00:01:41.020 --> 00:01:44.720 align:middle line:84% that I'm starting to teach and talk more about while I'm here. 00:01:44.720 --> 00:01:45.993 align:middle line:90% What else is my role at MIT? 00:01:45.993 --> 00:01:48.160 align:middle line:84% I'm here to teach students and collaborate with them 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:49.367 align:middle line:90% and build beautiful things. 00:01:49.367 --> 00:01:50.450 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: I love that. 00:01:50.450 --> 00:01:51.520 align:middle line:90% Thank you for being here. 00:01:51.520 --> 00:01:52.090 align:middle line:90% I'm really excited. 00:01:52.090 --> 00:01:54.007 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Of course, honor and pleasure. 00:01:54.007 --> 00:01:57.850 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: So you are a celebrated poet, author. 00:01:57.850 --> 00:02:02.075 align:middle line:84% And I'm so curious how you found your way to poetry. 00:02:02.075 --> 00:02:02.950 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure. 00:02:02.950 --> 00:02:06.820 align:middle line:84% I found my way to poetry through people who loved me. 00:02:06.820 --> 00:02:10.120 align:middle line:84% I found it through the annual talent show 00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:12.550 align:middle line:84% during Christmas in my grandmother's living room 00:02:12.550 --> 00:02:14.207 align:middle line:84% where everyone would have to get up. 00:02:14.207 --> 00:02:15.790 align:middle line:84% You could perform whatever you wanted. 00:02:15.790 --> 00:02:19.700 align:middle line:84% You could perform Bible verses, Bobby Brown choreography, 00:02:19.700 --> 00:02:20.760 align:middle line:90% or poetry. 00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:22.880 align:middle line:84% And so sometimes I would bring poetry. 00:02:22.880 --> 00:02:24.480 align:middle line:90% Sometimes I would bring song. 00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:26.450 align:middle line:84% And in those environments, I really 00:02:26.450 --> 00:02:29.660 align:middle line:84% cultivated my sense of myself as a person 00:02:29.660 --> 00:02:31.740 align:middle line:90% with a voice that mattered. 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:34.040 align:middle line:84% I also really loved that even if you forgot the words 00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:37.110 align:middle line:84% or forgot a dance step, people would cover for you. 00:02:37.110 --> 00:02:38.190 align:middle line:90% They would lift you up. 00:02:38.190 --> 00:02:41.270 align:middle line:84% And so I found poetry first as a space of a community 00:02:41.270 --> 00:02:44.130 align:middle line:90% building and a communion. 00:02:44.130 --> 00:02:47.025 align:middle line:84% It was just an incredible spot to be together. 00:02:47.025 --> 00:02:48.400 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: What kind of topics 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:51.520 align:middle line:84% do you generally tackle in your poems? 00:02:51.520 --> 00:02:54.010 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: I write about family quite a bit, 00:02:54.010 --> 00:02:56.530 align:middle line:84% both the family that raised me and now 00:02:56.530 --> 00:02:59.410 align:middle line:84% what it means for me to be the father 00:02:59.410 --> 00:03:03.070 align:middle line:84% character in that great drama because it's strange, 00:03:03.070 --> 00:03:07.390 align:middle line:84% because I know what my father was and is to me. 00:03:07.390 --> 00:03:09.453 align:middle line:84% One, he's on the cover of some of my books. 00:03:09.453 --> 00:03:09.760 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Oh, wow. 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:10.660 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: With my second book of poetry, 00:03:10.660 --> 00:03:12.560 align:middle line:90% it's my dad holding me. 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:14.960 align:middle line:90% But he was truly heroic to me. 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:16.660 align:middle line:90% He was he was mythical in a way. 00:03:16.660 --> 00:03:18.550 align:middle line:84% Growing up, I just thought about the fact 00:03:18.550 --> 00:03:19.990 align:middle line:84% that he integrated his high school 00:03:19.990 --> 00:03:21.550 align:middle line:84% and he fought in the Vietnam War, 00:03:21.550 --> 00:03:24.100 align:middle line:84% and he only enlisted because his little brother enlisted. 00:03:24.100 --> 00:03:26.893 align:middle line:84% And he wanted to go in his place at 17. 00:03:26.893 --> 00:03:29.060 align:middle line:84% He wanted to die in the place of his little brother. 00:03:29.060 --> 00:03:33.070 align:middle line:84% And so my father was my model and moral paragon in some way. 00:03:33.070 --> 00:03:35.260 align:middle line:84% That's what I thought courage was, was listening 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:36.710 align:middle line:90% to these stories from my pop. 00:03:36.710 --> 00:03:40.060 align:middle line:84% And so I write quite a bit about that because that's unique. 00:03:40.060 --> 00:03:41.590 align:middle line:90% In this life, you get-- 00:03:41.590 --> 00:03:45.670 align:middle line:84% if you're alive today, you are a child or you were one. 00:03:45.670 --> 00:03:47.940 align:middle line:84% And I think I've always been astonished by that idea. 00:03:47.940 --> 00:03:49.580 align:middle line:84% You just get dropped with people. 00:03:49.580 --> 00:03:51.290 align:middle line:84% Sometimes that's your biological family. 00:03:51.290 --> 00:03:52.650 align:middle line:90% Sometimes it's a community. 00:03:52.650 --> 00:03:54.200 align:middle line:84% But if you live into adulthood, it's 00:03:54.200 --> 00:03:56.270 align:middle line:90% because people looked after you. 00:03:56.270 --> 00:03:59.780 align:middle line:84% So I've just been trying to sit with that idea, that reality 00:03:59.780 --> 00:04:01.430 align:middle line:90% in my work for quite a bit. 00:04:01.430 --> 00:04:04.350 align:middle line:84% I write a fair amount, of course, about the natural world. 00:04:04.350 --> 00:04:08.270 align:middle line:84% Even beyond flowers, I'm really interested in water and trees, 00:04:08.270 --> 00:04:10.760 align:middle line:84% in no small part because of the work of people like Camille 00:04:10.760 --> 00:04:14.675 align:middle line:84% Dungy, who edited this anthology called Black Nature, Four 00:04:14.675 --> 00:04:17.360 align:middle line:84% Centuries of African-American Nature Poetry, that just 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:20.660 align:middle line:84% transformed my life when I found it in a Firestone library 00:04:20.660 --> 00:04:22.005 align:middle line:90% over a decade ago. 00:04:22.005 --> 00:04:23.130 align:middle line:90% What else do I write about? 00:04:23.130 --> 00:04:25.640 align:middle line:90% Love and loss. 00:04:25.640 --> 00:04:27.920 align:middle line:84% I write about disability quite a bit 00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:30.780 align:middle line:84% because a number of my siblings are people with disabilities. 00:04:30.780 --> 00:04:33.620 align:middle line:84% And it wasn't until I got much older that I realized that that 00:04:33.620 --> 00:04:37.100 align:middle line:84% wasn't the norm, that the social practices we had in our house, 00:04:37.100 --> 00:04:40.150 align:middle line:84% whether it was a sign language or thinking of-- 00:04:40.150 --> 00:04:42.550 align:middle line:84% I didn't have the word neurodivergence at that time, 00:04:42.550 --> 00:04:45.050 align:middle line:84% but thinking about my younger brother, who was on the autism 00:04:45.050 --> 00:04:48.310 align:middle line:84% spectrum, as having a beautiful mind that 00:04:48.310 --> 00:04:50.140 align:middle line:90% was holy and was designed. 00:04:50.140 --> 00:04:53.350 align:middle line:84% This was just the way my mother and father spoke about him 00:04:53.350 --> 00:04:54.100 align:middle line:90% to us. 00:04:54.100 --> 00:04:57.830 align:middle line:84% And so that was the way he arrived to us in language. 00:04:57.830 --> 00:05:00.520 align:middle line:84% | it wasn't until, again, I got out 00:05:00.520 --> 00:05:03.070 align:middle line:84% into the more dominant narratives of the outside world 00:05:03.070 --> 00:05:05.830 align:middle line:84% that I realized there were all these negative meanings mapped 00:05:05.830 --> 00:05:09.130 align:middle line:84% onto disability and even onto to Blackness. 00:05:09.130 --> 00:05:11.050 align:middle line:84% I didn't know the Star Spangled Banner 00:05:11.050 --> 00:05:12.640 align:middle line:84% until I was five or six years old 00:05:12.640 --> 00:05:14.830 align:middle line:84% because I went to this independent school called 00:05:14.830 --> 00:05:15.850 align:middle line:90% The Modern School. 00:05:15.850 --> 00:05:19.000 align:middle line:84% It was founded by a woman named Mildred Johnson, whose father 00:05:19.000 --> 00:05:21.400 align:middle line:84% and uncle wrote the Black national anthem, Lift Every 00:05:21.400 --> 00:05:22.220 align:middle line:90% Voice and Sing. 00:05:22.220 --> 00:05:25.120 align:middle line:84% So to me, that was the national anthem when I was a little kid. 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:29.740 align:middle line:84% I had no idea that that was strange or odd that we're 00:05:29.740 --> 00:05:32.110 align:middle line:84% singing musical theater in French, 00:05:32.110 --> 00:05:34.240 align:middle line:90% and all my teachers are Black. 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:36.040 align:middle line:90% And our parents are-- 00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:37.960 align:middle line:84% they're janitors and neurosurgeons 00:05:37.960 --> 00:05:39.400 align:middle line:90% and pastors and lawyers. 00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:42.050 align:middle line:84% And that was the community that I grew up in. 00:05:42.050 --> 00:05:43.810 align:middle line:84% And so in so many ways, I think I'm 00:05:43.810 --> 00:05:46.180 align:middle line:84% a poet because I just grew up in all 00:05:46.180 --> 00:05:49.010 align:middle line:84% of these distinct social worlds that I didn't see reflected 00:05:49.010 --> 00:05:50.580 align:middle line:90% in the literature I studied. 00:05:50.580 --> 00:05:53.000 align:middle line:84% Once I got scholarships to go to these rich schools, 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:56.990 align:middle line:84% I just thought, well, this isn't the best of the world. 00:05:56.990 --> 00:05:58.440 align:middle line:90% It's just a slice of the world. 00:05:58.440 --> 00:05:59.550 align:middle line:90% It's just a part of it. 00:05:59.550 --> 00:06:01.342 align:middle line:84% There's some cool stuff happening here too. 00:06:01.342 --> 00:06:03.020 align:middle line:84% And I appreciate the chance to be here. 00:06:03.020 --> 00:06:05.150 align:middle line:84% But this is not the totality of what's 00:06:05.150 --> 00:06:06.770 align:middle line:90% happening on planet Earth. 00:06:06.770 --> 00:06:09.920 align:middle line:84% And so that's part of my process now too continuously, 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:13.013 align:middle line:84% is bearing witness to the beauty of all that I've seen. 00:06:13.013 --> 00:06:15.055 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I love the idea of bearing witness. 00:06:15.055 --> 00:06:15.390 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Thank you. 00:06:15.390 --> 00:06:17.553 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: It's really all humans ask. 00:06:17.553 --> 00:06:18.720 align:middle line:90% That's all they really want. 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.280 align:middle line:84% They just want someone to bear witness to their experience. 00:06:21.280 --> 00:06:22.488 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:06:22.488 --> 00:06:23.030 align:middle line:90% That's right. 00:06:23.030 --> 00:06:25.880 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I'm really curious about your process 00:06:25.880 --> 00:06:27.660 align:middle line:90% of crafting a poem. 00:06:27.660 --> 00:06:29.700 align:middle line:84% It looks a little bit different for everybody. 00:06:29.700 --> 00:06:33.170 align:middle line:84% Can you describe what that's like for you? 00:06:33.170 --> 00:06:36.590 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Terrifying and beautiful at the same time, as 00:06:36.590 --> 00:06:38.910 align:middle line:84% so many things are that are worth doing. 00:06:38.910 --> 00:06:41.870 align:middle line:84% I've written poetry forever, since I 00:06:41.870 --> 00:06:43.020 align:middle line:90% was about four years old. 00:06:43.020 --> 00:06:46.970 align:middle line:84% My mom still has a box of my old poems under her bed 00:06:46.970 --> 00:06:48.980 align:middle line:84% that she's kept since we all lived together 00:06:48.980 --> 00:06:50.600 align:middle line:90% in Yonkers, New York. 00:06:50.600 --> 00:06:52.440 align:middle line:90% I wrote poetry on the bus. 00:06:52.440 --> 00:06:54.510 align:middle line:84% I was on the bus a lot as a young person. 00:06:54.510 --> 00:06:57.980 align:middle line:84% My high school was about two hours away from where I lived. 00:06:57.980 --> 00:07:00.410 align:middle line:84% So it was two buses and a train every single day. 00:07:00.410 --> 00:07:04.200 align:middle line:84% And in that interim, I wrote poetry quite often. 00:07:04.200 --> 00:07:07.370 align:middle line:84% And now, as a husband and a father of two 00:07:07.370 --> 00:07:10.850 align:middle line:84% and a professor and a touring poet, as a screenwriter, 00:07:10.850 --> 00:07:14.060 align:middle line:84% I just write poetry whenever I'm moving 00:07:14.060 --> 00:07:16.370 align:middle line:84% through the fog of sleeplessness and can just 00:07:16.370 --> 00:07:17.900 align:middle line:90% capture some beauty. 00:07:17.900 --> 00:07:19.580 align:middle line:84% I really do think about my practice 00:07:19.580 --> 00:07:23.720 align:middle line:84% as trying to keep an amber the astonishment that I experience 00:07:23.720 --> 00:07:27.110 align:middle line:84% every day, the great beauty of spending time with my children 00:07:27.110 --> 00:07:31.130 align:middle line:84% or looking at the Japanese maple outside of our window, 00:07:31.130 --> 00:07:34.580 align:middle line:84% or even just listening to the music that I grew up with, 00:07:34.580 --> 00:07:38.450 align:middle line:84% Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke and really experiencing 00:07:38.450 --> 00:07:41.420 align:middle line:84% Yolanda Adams, listening to the gospel and Motown kind of tunes 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:44.540 align:middle line:84% of my youth and being taken aback now that I'm older 00:07:44.540 --> 00:07:46.930 align:middle line:84% and have, I think, a deeper appreciation for that music, 00:07:46.930 --> 00:07:48.710 align:middle line:90% that artistry, that poetry. 00:07:48.710 --> 00:07:50.440 align:middle line:84% So my practice is all about trying 00:07:50.440 --> 00:07:54.880 align:middle line:84% to create a kind of ensemble out of all of these influences 00:07:54.880 --> 00:07:58.190 align:middle line:84% and moments and get it on the page in order to share it. 00:07:58.190 --> 00:08:01.165 align:middle line:84% I think if you talk honestly to a lot of humanities professors, 00:08:01.165 --> 00:08:03.040 align:middle line:84% they'll tell you that your prose style really 00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:05.200 align:middle line:84% changes in graduate school, by necessity, 00:08:05.200 --> 00:08:06.910 align:middle line:84% kind of the way you're trained out 00:08:06.910 --> 00:08:09.527 align:middle line:84% of a certain version of your natural voice quite often. 00:08:09.527 --> 00:08:11.110 align:middle line:84% And so I think part of what I'm trying 00:08:11.110 --> 00:08:13.780 align:middle line:84% to bring into the practice of both my poetry 00:08:13.780 --> 00:08:17.895 align:middle line:84% and my prose is that sense of a human one-to-one conversation. 00:08:17.895 --> 00:08:19.270 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: That's interesting. 00:08:19.270 --> 00:08:22.170 align:middle line:84% And what does revision look like for you? 00:08:22.170 --> 00:08:23.420 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: It's constant. 00:08:23.420 --> 00:08:26.620 align:middle line:84% I'm always going back to poems, saying that doesn't fit right, 00:08:26.620 --> 00:08:28.510 align:middle line:84% either because of the syllable count, 00:08:28.510 --> 00:08:30.700 align:middle line:84% or it's not quite the frame of reference 00:08:30.700 --> 00:08:33.110 align:middle line:84% that I want to use, especially with endings. 00:08:33.110 --> 00:08:36.309 align:middle line:84% I think I tweak endings quite a bit because you want 00:08:36.309 --> 00:08:38.289 align:middle line:90% to land the thing properly. 00:08:38.289 --> 00:08:40.870 align:middle line:84% And that's part of just coming up in performance. 00:08:40.870 --> 00:08:43.730 align:middle line:84% Quite often, people don't really remember the middle of the poem. 00:08:43.730 --> 00:08:46.520 align:middle line:84% It's usually like, what is their first impression of you, 00:08:46.520 --> 00:08:48.000 align:middle line:90% and how did you land? 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:51.027 align:middle line:84% And so even on the page, I want to keep that sensibility intact. 00:08:51.027 --> 00:08:52.610 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I get the sense that you 00:08:52.610 --> 00:08:54.808 align:middle line:84% don't do this in isolation, just calling back 00:08:54.808 --> 00:08:57.350 align:middle line:84% to what you were saying in the beginning, that poetry for you 00:08:57.350 --> 00:08:59.720 align:middle line:90% is about community. 00:08:59.720 --> 00:09:01.370 align:middle line:84% Do you share your poems when they're 00:09:01.370 --> 00:09:04.020 align:middle line:84% in process with the community around you? 00:09:04.020 --> 00:09:05.595 align:middle line:84% How do they come to be what they are? 00:09:05.595 --> 00:09:08.220 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, so I try to do that in two distinct ways. 00:09:08.220 --> 00:09:11.090 align:middle line:84% One is that every collection of poetry I've written 00:09:11.090 --> 00:09:14.370 align:middle line:84% was finished as part of an exchange with another poet. 00:09:14.370 --> 00:09:16.010 align:middle line:84% So part of how I complete my books 00:09:16.010 --> 00:09:19.220 align:middle line:84% is I'll ask one of my friends if they want to do sort of a 10 00:09:19.220 --> 00:09:21.050 align:middle line:84% for 10, which means for 10 days, we 00:09:21.050 --> 00:09:23.490 align:middle line:84% send each other a poem every single day. 00:09:23.490 --> 00:09:26.180 align:middle line:84% And those poems tend to be what kind of end up 00:09:26.180 --> 00:09:28.860 align:middle line:90% as the capstones of my books. 00:09:28.860 --> 00:09:31.410 align:middle line:84% Another way that I do that is that I edit on the road. 00:09:31.410 --> 00:09:34.890 align:middle line:84% So any collection of poetry you've read from me, 00:09:34.890 --> 00:09:36.420 align:middle line:90% I toured those poems first. 00:09:36.420 --> 00:09:38.900 align:middle line:84% I see where people laugh, where they cry, where they react, 00:09:38.900 --> 00:09:41.310 align:middle line:84% what they want to talk about in Q and A's. 00:09:41.310 --> 00:09:43.500 align:middle line:84% And that for me also feeds the poems. 00:09:43.500 --> 00:09:45.560 align:middle line:84% It's a process of always bringing the stage 00:09:45.560 --> 00:09:48.290 align:middle line:84% and always bringing a pretty wide kind of constellation 00:09:48.290 --> 00:09:50.490 align:middle line:84% of voices into the process of editing. 00:09:50.490 --> 00:09:52.370 align:middle line:90% It's never solitary for me. 00:09:52.370 --> 00:09:53.780 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: That's interesting. 00:09:53.780 --> 00:09:55.250 align:middle line:90% Do you ever get stuck? 00:09:55.250 --> 00:09:56.750 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Stuck in the process 00:09:56.750 --> 00:09:58.530 align:middle line:84% of writing or stuck with editing? 00:09:58.530 --> 00:10:01.760 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Yeah, stuck in the process, Like, I have this idea, 00:10:01.760 --> 00:10:05.595 align:middle line:84% but I just can't bring it through to fruition, 00:10:05.595 --> 00:10:07.220 align:middle line:84% or I'm really-- like, I'm not sure what 00:10:07.220 --> 00:10:09.890 align:middle line:84% to do here, or the ending, it just isn't right. 00:10:09.890 --> 00:10:11.700 align:middle line:84% What do you do when you just feel stuck? 00:10:11.700 --> 00:10:15.050 align:middle line:84% And I'm asking because lots of students, lots of learners, 00:10:15.050 --> 00:10:18.140 align:middle line:84% lots of artists get in that space. 00:10:18.140 --> 00:10:21.870 align:middle line:84% And there are strategies we can use to get unstuck. 00:10:21.870 --> 00:10:24.520 align:middle line:84% And I'm curious what you try to do. 00:10:24.520 --> 00:10:26.270 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's really interesting. 00:10:26.270 --> 00:10:27.603 align:middle line:90% Maybe something's wrong with me. 00:10:27.603 --> 00:10:29.300 align:middle line:84% I never think of myself as stuck. 00:10:29.300 --> 00:10:32.270 align:middle line:84% Even when a poem might take me a little bit longer, 00:10:32.270 --> 00:10:33.545 align:middle line:90% I just come back to it. 00:10:33.545 --> 00:10:34.920 align:middle line:84% Maybe that's my wife's influence. 00:10:34.920 --> 00:10:36.320 align:middle line:90% Maybe it's Pam. 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:37.400 align:middle line:90% I just think it flows-- 00:10:37.400 --> 00:10:38.550 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: So we all need a Pam. 00:10:38.550 --> 00:10:39.210 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, Pam's great. 00:10:39.210 --> 00:10:40.070 align:middle line:90% She's the best. 00:10:40.070 --> 00:10:41.060 align:middle line:90% I'm glad I got her. 00:10:41.060 --> 00:10:44.160 align:middle line:84% But I think it flows into one another. 00:10:44.160 --> 00:10:47.030 align:middle line:84% So some of this, too, maybe is that I'm 00:10:47.030 --> 00:10:50.240 align:middle line:84% used to thinking about fits and starts 00:10:50.240 --> 00:10:54.290 align:middle line:84% as just part of the natural process and praxis of writing. 00:10:54.290 --> 00:10:57.020 align:middle line:90% Growing up, I had five siblings. 00:10:57.020 --> 00:10:57.990 align:middle line:90% I grew up in New York. 00:10:57.990 --> 00:10:59.090 align:middle line:90% It's very noisy. 00:10:59.090 --> 00:11:01.460 align:middle line:84% And so now, with a three-year-old running 00:11:01.460 --> 00:11:05.600 align:middle line:84% around the house, and a dog, and a two-month-old baby girl, 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:09.590 align:middle line:84% June, it's like that's my natural environment. 00:11:09.590 --> 00:11:12.770 align:middle line:84% You don't get two hours uninterrupted to work 00:11:12.770 --> 00:11:15.320 align:middle line:90% on anything, not really. 00:11:15.320 --> 00:11:17.480 align:middle line:84% The only time I ever had that was grad school. 00:11:17.480 --> 00:11:20.540 align:middle line:84% But even then, I always wrote with my friends, 00:11:20.540 --> 00:11:22.790 align:middle line:84% I was hanging out with my friends at Union Theological 00:11:22.790 --> 00:11:25.080 align:middle line:84% Seminary to write the entirety of my dissertation. 00:11:25.080 --> 00:11:28.612 align:middle line:84% I wasn't at Princeton alone in a library, as suggested, 00:11:28.612 --> 00:11:30.320 align:middle line:84% because that was how you became a genius. 00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:31.680 align:middle line:90% You sit alone for 12 hours. 00:11:31.680 --> 00:11:33.900 align:middle line:84% That was the idea that was given to us. 00:11:33.900 --> 00:11:36.210 align:middle line:84% But in actuality, that just never worked for me. 00:11:36.210 --> 00:11:38.600 align:middle line:84% So whether it was the bus, whether it was kicking it 00:11:38.600 --> 00:11:40.640 align:middle line:84% at the seminary, or whether now it's 00:11:40.640 --> 00:11:43.130 align:middle line:84% my life in suburban Massachusetts, 00:11:43.130 --> 00:11:45.590 align:middle line:84% I don't really think about when I'm 00:11:45.590 --> 00:11:48.350 align:middle line:84% stopping as being stuck so much as now we're going 00:11:48.350 --> 00:11:50.193 align:middle line:90% to take a pause for breath. 00:11:50.193 --> 00:11:51.860 align:middle line:84% And we're going to revitalize, and we're 00:11:51.860 --> 00:11:52.830 align:middle line:90% going to come back to this. 00:11:52.830 --> 00:11:53.750 align:middle line:84% And the poems are going to be different 00:11:53.750 --> 00:11:56.300 align:middle line:84% than it would have been if I just kind of sat there 00:11:56.300 --> 00:11:57.583 align:middle line:90% for an hour or so. 00:11:57.583 --> 00:11:59.250 align:middle line:84% But it's just not the nature of my life. 00:11:59.250 --> 00:12:00.833 align:middle line:84% And sometimes when you're not writing, 00:12:00.833 --> 00:12:03.020 align:middle line:84% it's because you need to be living and experiencing 00:12:03.020 --> 00:12:03.950 align:middle line:90% and changing. 00:12:03.950 --> 00:12:06.460 align:middle line:84% And then you come back to it and let the work reflect that. 00:12:06.460 --> 00:12:08.877 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Yeah, I love the idea of reframing stuckness 00:12:08.877 --> 00:12:11.810 align:middle line:84% as taking a breath, but I also like 00:12:11.810 --> 00:12:14.052 align:middle line:84% the idea of sometimes the answer is in others-- 00:12:14.052 --> 00:12:15.260 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:12:15.260 --> 00:12:17.510 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --and looking outside of ourselves. 00:12:17.510 --> 00:12:18.927 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's exactly it. 00:12:18.927 --> 00:12:20.990 align:middle line:84% And sometimes it's just not the moment 00:12:20.990 --> 00:12:23.720 align:middle line:90% for that particular project. 00:12:23.720 --> 00:12:25.660 align:middle line:84% I thought my dissertation in grad school 00:12:25.660 --> 00:12:27.410 align:middle line:84% was going to be a totally different thing. 00:12:27.410 --> 00:12:29.330 align:middle line:84% And now I'm writing this book that's 00:12:29.330 --> 00:12:32.300 align:middle line:84% largely about flowers, that's picking up these questions I 00:12:32.300 --> 00:12:34.685 align:middle line:90% literally asked 13 years ago. 00:12:34.685 --> 00:12:36.060 align:middle line:84% I didn't throw them in the trash. 00:12:36.060 --> 00:12:38.015 align:middle line:90% I just brought them back. 00:12:38.015 --> 00:12:39.390 align:middle line:84% It's just they weren't ready yet. 00:12:39.390 --> 00:12:40.473 align:middle line:90% They weren't fully cooked. 00:12:40.473 --> 00:12:43.280 align:middle line:84% I needed to read and listen to 100 other things to say, 00:12:43.280 --> 00:12:47.160 align:middle line:84% oh yeah, this is where these early 20th century biologists 00:12:47.160 --> 00:12:49.570 align:middle line:84% can come into my larger intellectual project. 00:12:49.570 --> 00:12:51.630 align:middle line:84% I wasn't ready to do that work in my 20s. 00:12:51.630 --> 00:12:53.610 align:middle line:84% And now, especially being at MIT, 00:12:53.610 --> 00:12:55.260 align:middle line:84% I have a much deeper understanding 00:12:55.260 --> 00:12:58.080 align:middle line:84% of what someone like Charles Henry Turner or Ernest Everett 00:12:58.080 --> 00:12:59.160 align:middle line:90% Just was up to. 00:12:59.160 --> 00:13:02.985 align:middle line:84% And I think I can capture it and reflect it in a different way. 00:13:02.985 --> 00:13:05.040 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Would you read an example of a poem 00:13:05.040 --> 00:13:06.970 align:middle line:84% that you really love that you've written? 00:13:06.970 --> 00:13:08.190 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure. 00:13:08.190 --> 00:13:11.250 align:middle line:84% So this is one of my more recent poems, actually. 00:13:11.250 --> 00:13:14.460 align:middle line:84% I wrote it after reading a bit of this poet, Major Jackson, who 00:13:14.460 --> 00:13:16.650 align:middle line:84% wrote a book called Hoops, which is 00:13:16.650 --> 00:13:18.750 align:middle line:84% another one of those books I pulled off 00:13:18.750 --> 00:13:19.800 align:middle line:90% the shelf in Firestone. 00:13:19.800 --> 00:13:21.550 align:middle line:84% I don't have a degree in creative writing. 00:13:21.550 --> 00:13:22.570 align:middle line:90% I'm a self-taught poet. 00:13:22.570 --> 00:13:27.420 align:middle line:84% And so a big part of my process in my teens and my 20s was just 00:13:27.420 --> 00:13:31.270 align:middle line:84% seeking out these other voices that I could pull into my orbit. 00:13:31.270 --> 00:13:34.690 align:middle line:90% So this is We. 00:13:34.690 --> 00:13:36.790 align:middle line:84% We grew up listening to the gossip 00:13:36.790 --> 00:13:41.800 align:middle line:84% of elders in crowded salons, the Holy Spirit, Hot 97, 00:13:41.800 --> 00:13:45.430 align:middle line:84% Our guts drum major signaling whether to run left or right 00:13:45.430 --> 00:13:48.580 align:middle line:84% when a bullets ricochet cracked the nighttime air, 00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:51.670 align:middle line:84% Jokes about our hair, mama's weight, 00:13:51.670 --> 00:13:54.890 align:middle line:84% our place in the great graph of human potential. 00:13:54.890 --> 00:13:58.640 align:middle line:84% We slap boxed until it turned to scrapping unexpectedly, 00:13:58.640 --> 00:14:02.020 align:middle line:84% Scuffles blossoming from schoolyard play we claimed 00:14:02.020 --> 00:14:05.090 align:middle line:84% was meant to enhance precision, little else. 00:14:05.090 --> 00:14:07.330 align:middle line:90% We had no good words for wealth, 00:14:07.330 --> 00:14:10.810 align:middle line:84% No trust in arbitrary rules or sense of power 00:14:10.810 --> 00:14:14.740 align:middle line:84% beyond the kinds that shaped our lives inside discernible bounds, 00:14:14.740 --> 00:14:18.340 align:middle line:84% The belt, the badge, shoeboxes underneath the bed, 00:14:18.340 --> 00:14:20.260 align:middle line:90% which held Abuela's savings, 00:14:20.260 --> 00:14:22.810 align:middle line:84% First poems, the heels our mothers 00:14:22.810 --> 00:14:26.320 align:middle line:84% wore to shuffle the shine off the floor of a disco spot 00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:30.040 align:middle line:84% downtown, where working people went to let the stress of day 00:14:30.040 --> 00:14:33.020 align:middle line:90% last shift's weight evaporate. 00:14:33.020 --> 00:14:36.560 align:middle line:84% We knew the cool ambrosia of hydrant water, how 00:14:36.560 --> 00:14:38.570 align:middle line:84% without it, we might not have survived 00:14:38.570 --> 00:14:40.830 align:middle line:90% the height of July's brutality. 00:14:40.830 --> 00:14:43.580 align:middle line:84% We learned Spanish to talk to girlfriends' mothers 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:46.670 align:middle line:84% via landline, ask permission for a half hour 00:14:46.670 --> 00:14:51.470 align:middle line:84% after school para discutir la tarea or some other benevolent, 00:14:51.470 --> 00:14:53.780 align:middle line:84% though transparently false claim. 00:14:53.780 --> 00:14:56.810 align:middle line:84% We dreamed of flight and heavyweight fights 00:14:56.810 --> 00:14:59.670 align:middle line:84% and playing our latest hits on late night TV, 00:14:59.670 --> 00:15:02.210 align:middle line:84% Crossing up small forwards on the NBA 00:15:02.210 --> 00:15:04.430 align:middle line:90% on NBC with our uncles watching, 00:15:04.430 --> 00:15:06.950 align:middle line:84% Their voices so loud, neighbors assume 00:15:06.950 --> 00:15:09.020 align:middle line:90% someone must have lost a bet. 00:15:09.020 --> 00:15:12.830 align:middle line:84% We imagined a world without debt, or early death, 00:15:12.830 --> 00:15:15.950 align:middle line:84% or stress so heavy the mind must be lifted elsewhere 00:15:15.950 --> 00:15:18.090 align:middle line:90% to bear it and yet persist. 00:15:18.090 --> 00:15:22.250 align:middle line:84% We were latchkey kids, troubadours, substitute parents 00:15:22.250 --> 00:15:26.960 align:middle line:84% at 14, teaching little brothers to read and long divide and ride 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:29.780 align:middle line:84% the bus home alone in time to reach the front door just 00:15:29.780 --> 00:15:30.770 align:middle line:90% before dark. 00:15:30.770 --> 00:15:33.960 align:middle line:84% When the world put on another face, so we did too, 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:36.860 align:middle line:84% And with masks and wigs we got from Grandma, 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:39.980 align:middle line:84% devised productions to fill the day's remainder, 00:15:39.980 --> 00:15:42.860 align:middle line:84% Command the language we inherited to live anew 00:15:42.860 --> 00:15:46.130 align:middle line:84% or else fail magnificently at trying 00:15:46.130 --> 00:15:49.010 align:middle line:84% to say what we held most dear, but could not yet 00:15:49.010 --> 00:15:53.245 align:middle line:84% sketch onto the palimpsest of the world as we knew it. 00:15:53.245 --> 00:15:56.095 align:middle line:90% 00:15:56.095 --> 00:15:58.095 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I just want to give that a minute. 00:15:58.095 --> 00:16:00.555 align:middle line:90% 00:16:00.555 --> 00:16:01.055 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:16:01.055 --> 00:16:03.870 align:middle line:90% 00:16:03.870 --> 00:16:05.820 align:middle line:84% Can you tell me a little bit about what 00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:10.230 align:middle line:84% you love about that poem, what speaks to you so much? 00:16:10.230 --> 00:16:12.300 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: It feels more true than what 00:16:12.300 --> 00:16:15.270 align:middle line:84% I let myself get onto paper sometimes, 00:16:15.270 --> 00:16:19.410 align:middle line:84% like the texture of that first litany in particular. 00:16:19.410 --> 00:16:21.450 align:middle line:84% We grew up listening to gossip in salons, 00:16:21.450 --> 00:16:24.060 align:middle line:90% Hot 97, and the Holy Spirit. 00:16:24.060 --> 00:16:26.400 align:middle line:84% That triangulation just feels so true to me, 00:16:26.400 --> 00:16:28.360 align:middle line:84% listening to the radio with my big sister. 00:16:28.360 --> 00:16:30.570 align:middle line:84% And then my grandmother owned three salons 00:16:30.570 --> 00:16:31.810 align:middle line:90% in Harlem growing up. 00:16:31.810 --> 00:16:34.140 align:middle line:84% And so I would spend time there, and the older women 00:16:34.140 --> 00:16:35.670 align:middle line:84% would give me $1 if I could spell 00:16:35.670 --> 00:16:37.770 align:middle line:90% a word longer than 3 syllables. 00:16:37.770 --> 00:16:40.440 align:middle line:84% So I'd go in there and talk about loquaciousness 00:16:40.440 --> 00:16:44.160 align:middle line:84% and malfeasance and things being indubitable, stuff like that. 00:16:44.160 --> 00:16:48.240 align:middle line:84% And that is what made me a scholar. 00:16:48.240 --> 00:16:50.880 align:middle line:90% That's what made me a writer. 00:16:50.880 --> 00:16:53.070 align:middle line:84% That's what made me feel like I was 00:16:53.070 --> 00:16:55.260 align:middle line:90% a part of the great human story. 00:16:55.260 --> 00:16:57.070 align:middle line:84% And no one could ever take it away. 00:16:57.070 --> 00:16:59.190 align:middle line:84% And so in some ways, I'm just quite thankful 00:16:59.190 --> 00:17:03.552 align:middle line:84% for the invincibility that those places granted me, 00:17:03.552 --> 00:17:04.510 align:middle line:90% even if it wasn't true. 00:17:04.510 --> 00:17:05.680 align:middle line:90% I'm a mortal being. 00:17:05.680 --> 00:17:08.000 align:middle line:84% But I didn't feel that way when I was a little kid. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:10.389 align:middle line:90% Anything was possible. 00:17:10.389 --> 00:17:13.210 align:middle line:84% So that's what I love about that poem, 00:17:13.210 --> 00:17:15.910 align:middle line:84% is I think it reflects a particular moment in time, 00:17:15.910 --> 00:17:17.980 align:middle line:84% but it also reflects a sensibility 00:17:17.980 --> 00:17:20.800 align:middle line:84% that I think has kept me alive on the inside, that 00:17:20.800 --> 00:17:24.130 align:middle line:84% has kept me alive spiritually as I've navigated my life 00:17:24.130 --> 00:17:25.569 align:middle line:90% and career. 00:17:25.569 --> 00:17:26.569 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Thank you. 00:17:26.569 --> 00:17:27.500 align:middle line:90% It's very beautiful. 00:17:27.500 --> 00:17:28.583 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Thank you. 00:17:28.583 --> 00:17:30.460 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: And I love that part 00:17:30.460 --> 00:17:32.110 align:middle line:84% where you talk about long division 00:17:32.110 --> 00:17:34.080 align:middle line:84% and then you bring remainder, like-- 00:17:34.080 --> 00:17:36.730 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, look, on first listen. 00:17:36.730 --> 00:17:37.990 align:middle line:90% That's incredible. 00:17:37.990 --> 00:17:38.990 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: I like it. 00:17:38.990 --> 00:17:40.840 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: You got to guest lecture in my poetry class, 00:17:40.840 --> 00:17:41.590 align:middle line:90% help the students. 00:17:41.590 --> 00:17:43.150 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: I love it. 00:17:43.150 --> 00:17:45.747 align:middle line:84% Let's talk about your poetry class, one in particular 00:17:45.747 --> 00:17:46.580 align:middle line:90% that you teach here. 00:17:46.580 --> 00:17:49.205 align:middle line:84% It's called Reading Poetry, Social Poetics. 00:17:49.205 --> 00:17:50.080 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure. 00:17:50.080 --> 00:17:52.660 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: And you write that the central concern 00:17:52.660 --> 00:17:55.330 align:middle line:84% of this class is the historical relationship 00:17:55.330 --> 00:17:58.390 align:middle line:84% between the social lives of everyday people 00:17:58.390 --> 00:18:02.890 align:middle line:84% and the US American poetics with a special emphasis on what June 00:18:02.890 --> 00:18:06.820 align:middle line:84% Jordan once termed the difficult miracle of Black poetry 00:18:06.820 --> 00:18:08.350 align:middle line:90% in America. 00:18:08.350 --> 00:18:11.330 align:middle line:84% I'm wondering if you could talk us through this. 00:18:11.330 --> 00:18:12.650 align:middle line:90% There's a lot there. 00:18:12.650 --> 00:18:13.560 align:middle line:90% Break it down for us. 00:18:13.560 --> 00:18:14.570 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, it's quite a bit there. 00:18:14.570 --> 00:18:17.240 align:middle line:84% And it's at the top of the syllabus for the class, 00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:19.930 align:middle line:84% so shout out to my students for reading the whole thing with me 00:18:19.930 --> 00:18:20.930 align:middle line:90% on the first day. 00:18:20.930 --> 00:18:24.070 align:middle line:84% So Social Poetics, the class takes its name 00:18:24.070 --> 00:18:26.290 align:middle line:84% from a theory by a brilliant arts 00:18:26.290 --> 00:18:28.750 align:middle line:84% educator named Mark Nowak, who wrote 00:18:28.750 --> 00:18:30.137 align:middle line:90% a book called Social Poetics. 00:18:30.137 --> 00:18:31.970 align:middle line:84% And the theory he's really trying to outline 00:18:31.970 --> 00:18:34.700 align:middle line:84% there is a theory of aesthetic practice 00:18:34.700 --> 00:18:40.100 align:middle line:84% that takes place in spaces where working and poor everyday people 00:18:40.100 --> 00:18:41.120 align:middle line:90% congregate. 00:18:41.120 --> 00:18:43.580 align:middle line:84% So he writes about poetry workshops that take place 00:18:43.580 --> 00:18:46.700 align:middle line:84% not in elite universities, but in alternative schools, 00:18:46.700 --> 00:18:49.620 align:middle line:90% in prisons, in union spaces. 00:18:49.620 --> 00:18:51.890 align:middle line:84% And that's the social poetics he's really interested 00:18:51.890 --> 00:18:53.010 align:middle line:90% in and committed to. 00:18:53.010 --> 00:18:54.560 align:middle line:84% And importantly, he thinks about that 00:18:54.560 --> 00:18:56.370 align:middle line:84% in a kind of international scale. 00:18:56.370 --> 00:18:58.010 align:middle line:84% So he's writing not just about the US, 00:18:58.010 --> 00:19:01.840 align:middle line:84% but about Cuba, Kenya, Nicaragua, South Africa. 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:03.350 align:middle line:84% So for the purposes of the class, 00:19:03.350 --> 00:19:05.780 align:middle line:84% really what I wanted to emphasize was not only 00:19:05.780 --> 00:19:07.190 align:middle line:84% Nowak's really important theory-- 00:19:07.190 --> 00:19:10.280 align:middle line:84% so we read the parts of his book in the class-- 00:19:10.280 --> 00:19:12.260 align:middle line:84% but also how we could extend social 00:19:12.260 --> 00:19:15.380 align:middle line:84% poetics to think about a poetics of sociality, 00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:18.500 align:middle line:84% not just in the human world, but in the nonhuman world, the more 00:19:18.500 --> 00:19:19.410 align:middle line:90% than human world. 00:19:19.410 --> 00:19:23.400 align:middle line:84% So what is the kind of sociality of trees, of fish? 00:19:23.400 --> 00:19:25.470 align:middle line:90% How is that captured in poetry? 00:19:25.470 --> 00:19:27.600 align:middle line:84% How is it captured in song and on film? 00:19:27.600 --> 00:19:29.928 align:middle line:84% So we watch films, for example, like Moonlight, 00:19:29.928 --> 00:19:31.970 align:middle line:84% which I think is not only a really beautiful love 00:19:31.970 --> 00:19:34.670 align:middle line:84% story, but a poem in a way, a kind of extended visual poem 00:19:34.670 --> 00:19:37.230 align:middle line:84% about our relationship to the water and to the Earth. 00:19:37.230 --> 00:19:39.930 align:middle line:84% I think that's absolutely central in that story. 00:19:39.930 --> 00:19:42.440 align:middle line:84% And alongside a film like that, we would read Aracelis 00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:44.390 align:middle line:84% Girmay's poems from The Black Maria, 00:19:44.390 --> 00:19:48.260 align:middle line:84% which were all about these dark spots on the moon that early 00:19:48.260 --> 00:19:50.550 align:middle line:84% astronomers thought were oceans but weren't. 00:19:50.550 --> 00:19:52.390 align:middle line:84% And that book is so beautiful in the way 00:19:52.390 --> 00:19:54.890 align:middle line:84% it thinks about perception, and beauty, and our relationship 00:19:54.890 --> 00:19:55.770 align:middle line:90% to the cosmos. 00:19:55.770 --> 00:19:59.160 align:middle line:84% And so that's really the beating heart of the class. 00:19:59.160 --> 00:20:01.160 align:middle line:84% And it was the first class I taught at MIT. 00:20:01.160 --> 00:20:03.210 align:middle line:90% And I had 16 students for it. 00:20:03.210 --> 00:20:04.400 align:middle line:90% And they were incredible. 00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:06.170 align:middle line:90% They did incredible work. 00:20:06.170 --> 00:20:08.780 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: And tell us a little bit about June Jordan 00:20:08.780 --> 00:20:13.003 align:middle line:84% and what she means by the difficult miracle. 00:20:13.003 --> 00:20:15.170 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, for her, the difficult miracle 00:20:15.170 --> 00:20:17.600 align:middle line:84% of Black poetry in America, I think, 00:20:17.600 --> 00:20:22.940 align:middle line:84% is that we do it at all, that we've ever done it. 00:20:22.940 --> 00:20:25.460 align:middle line:84% She talks about this at the end, published or not published, 00:20:25.460 --> 00:20:27.050 align:middle line:90% we persist. 00:20:27.050 --> 00:20:29.930 align:middle line:84% The essay largely focuses on the life and legacy 00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:33.550 align:middle line:84% of Phillis Wheatley, who is a teenage girl, one 00:20:33.550 --> 00:20:36.320 align:middle line:84% of the first Black poets published in the United States, 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:39.760 align:middle line:84% I believe only the second woman ever to publish a book of poetry 00:20:39.760 --> 00:20:41.057 align:middle line:90% in the United States. 00:20:41.057 --> 00:20:42.640 align:middle line:84% And I'm interested in Phillis Wheatley 00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:43.960 align:middle line:90% for all sorts of reasons. 00:20:43.960 --> 00:20:46.460 align:middle line:84% We'll talk about AI, I think, a little bit later, hopefully. 00:20:46.460 --> 00:20:48.700 align:middle line:84% But this public policy paper that I worked on here 00:20:48.700 --> 00:20:51.370 align:middle line:84% at the institute, Phillis Wheatley is a part of it 00:20:51.370 --> 00:20:54.430 align:middle line:84% because if you read someone like Thomas Jefferson's response 00:20:54.430 --> 00:20:57.550 align:middle line:84% to her, it's almost like he thinks she's a kind of early 00:20:57.550 --> 00:21:00.220 align:middle line:84% large language model or something because within 00:21:00.220 --> 00:21:03.640 align:middle line:84% the philosophical scope of the 18th century for someone like 00:21:03.640 --> 00:21:05.410 align:middle line:84% Jefferson, she's not a human being. 00:21:05.410 --> 00:21:08.960 align:middle line:84% So he says her work is beneath the dignity of criticism. 00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:11.410 align:middle line:84% And even these early responses that you 00:21:11.410 --> 00:21:13.810 align:middle line:84% see from places like the UK where her first book is 00:21:13.810 --> 00:21:15.560 align:middle line:84% published, people are like, well, 00:21:15.560 --> 00:21:18.198 align:middle line:84% if she can write so beautifully, how can she be enslaved? 00:21:18.198 --> 00:21:19.240 align:middle line:90% These things are at odds. 00:21:19.240 --> 00:21:21.323 align:middle line:84% If we're saying that these people can be enchained 00:21:21.323 --> 00:21:23.080 align:middle line:84% because they have no interior life, 00:21:23.080 --> 00:21:25.250 align:middle line:84% then how could she possibly have produced this work? 00:21:25.250 --> 00:21:28.255 align:middle line:84% And right here in Massachusetts, actually, there was a two-day-- 00:21:28.255 --> 00:21:30.880 align:middle line:84% it's been called in print, the trial of Phillis Wheatley, where 00:21:30.880 --> 00:21:34.880 align:middle line:84% basically lawmakers and scholars, a group of them, 00:21:34.880 --> 00:21:38.540 align:middle line:84% were tasked with figuring out whether or not she had actually 00:21:38.540 --> 00:21:39.930 align:middle line:90% produced those poems. 00:21:39.930 --> 00:21:42.560 align:middle line:84% And at the end of the two days, they wrote a public letter 00:21:42.560 --> 00:21:45.920 align:middle line:84% saying she actually had, this young Black woman 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:47.280 align:middle line:90% has produced this work. 00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:49.640 align:middle line:84% And so June Jordan's essay is thinking 00:21:49.640 --> 00:21:53.060 align:middle line:84% about how can a expressive tradition emerge 00:21:53.060 --> 00:21:54.920 align:middle line:90% from those sorts of conditions? 00:21:54.920 --> 00:21:57.020 align:middle line:84% How can poetry come from a space where 00:21:57.020 --> 00:21:59.840 align:middle line:84% you were considered to not be human beings, if you think 00:21:59.840 --> 00:22:02.090 align:middle line:84% of poetry as a kind of apotheosis of written 00:22:02.090 --> 00:22:03.830 align:middle line:90% and spoken human expression? 00:22:03.830 --> 00:22:05.668 align:middle line:84% So yeah, I wanted to trace that line 00:22:05.668 --> 00:22:06.960 align:middle line:90% of thinking through the course. 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:09.680 align:middle line:84% And June was not only a masterful poet, 00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:11.010 align:middle line:90% but an incredible teacher. 00:22:11.010 --> 00:22:13.710 align:middle line:84% So I try to learn from her example on both of those fronts. 00:22:13.710 --> 00:22:15.060 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: And an activist? 00:22:15.060 --> 00:22:17.270 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Oh yeah, for sure, Black feminist, 00:22:17.270 --> 00:22:21.110 align:middle line:84% anti-imperialist activist, someone whose activism 00:22:21.110 --> 00:22:25.370 align:middle line:84% took on so many different and ever more lovely forms. 00:22:25.370 --> 00:22:28.190 align:middle line:84% In the early '70s, she founded a program called The Voice 00:22:28.190 --> 00:22:30.900 align:middle line:84% of the Children, which was a social program that essentially 00:22:30.900 --> 00:22:33.900 align:middle line:84% took the form of a Saturday school at places like the Church 00:22:33.900 --> 00:22:36.000 align:middle line:84% of the Open Door in Brooklyn, where essentially, 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:38.670 align:middle line:84% Black and Puerto Rican kids would come and they would write 00:22:38.670 --> 00:22:39.910 align:middle line:90% for an entire Saturday. 00:22:39.910 --> 00:22:42.120 align:middle line:84% One of the rules of the space was that adults 00:22:42.120 --> 00:22:43.740 align:middle line:90% couldn't bother the kids. 00:22:43.740 --> 00:22:45.120 align:middle line:90% You couldn't interrupt them. 00:22:45.120 --> 00:22:45.570 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: That's amazing. 00:22:45.570 --> 00:22:46.680 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: You couldn't vocally 00:22:46.680 --> 00:22:49.000 align:middle line:84% evaluate the work, which I think is really important. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:51.960 align:middle line:84% So even the opinions of the adults were just not important. 00:22:51.960 --> 00:22:52.710 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Wow. 00:22:52.710 --> 00:22:53.380 align:middle line:90% I love that. 00:22:53.380 --> 00:22:54.588 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: It's amazing. 00:22:54.588 --> 00:22:55.510 align:middle line:90% It's an amazing idea. 00:22:55.510 --> 00:22:57.120 align:middle line:84% And Voice of the Children, eventually, 00:22:57.120 --> 00:22:58.912 align:middle line:84% when she moves to Berkeley-- she eventually 00:22:58.912 --> 00:23:01.740 align:middle line:84% teaches at UC Berkeley-- becomes a poetry for the people, 00:23:01.740 --> 00:23:05.580 align:middle line:84% which is a multigenerational, multiethnic program that 00:23:05.580 --> 00:23:09.030 align:middle line:84% ran for many years and was another incredible pedagogical 00:23:09.030 --> 00:23:11.850 align:middle line:84% space, where she was training future teachers to think 00:23:11.850 --> 00:23:14.850 align:middle line:84% about the poetic tradition of the world, 00:23:14.850 --> 00:23:18.100 align:middle line:84% of planet Earth in as capacious terms as possible. 00:23:18.100 --> 00:23:20.760 align:middle line:90% So June was incredible. 00:23:20.760 --> 00:23:22.427 align:middle line:84% She was a world historical intellectual. 00:23:22.427 --> 00:23:23.343 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Amazing. 00:23:23.343 --> 00:23:24.940 align:middle line:84% And you named your daughter after her. 00:23:24.940 --> 00:23:26.920 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: I named my daughter after her as well, 00:23:26.920 --> 00:23:27.120 align:middle line:90% yeah. 00:23:27.120 --> 00:23:29.615 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Do you want to read us a piece from June? 00:23:29.615 --> 00:23:29.680 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure. 00:23:29.680 --> 00:23:30.763 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: June Jordan? 00:23:30.763 --> 00:23:33.460 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Absolutely. 00:23:33.460 --> 00:23:37.180 align:middle line:84% So this is actually from a graduation speech 00:23:37.180 --> 00:23:41.020 align:middle line:84% that June Jordan delivered in 1970 at IS 55 00:23:41.020 --> 00:23:45.290 align:middle line:84% at Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn. 00:23:45.290 --> 00:23:48.350 align:middle line:84% Last night, I was trying to think how I could share 00:23:48.350 --> 00:23:50.220 align:middle line:90% what I deeply believe with you. 00:23:50.220 --> 00:23:52.580 align:middle line:84% And the single belief I beg you to share with me 00:23:52.580 --> 00:23:56.600 align:middle line:84% is this one, that your life is the most important fact 00:23:56.600 --> 00:23:59.510 align:middle line:84% and also the most important and valuable promise 00:23:59.510 --> 00:24:01.830 align:middle line:90% on Earth, period. 00:24:01.830 --> 00:24:04.610 align:middle line:84% It is a once only life that you have, 00:24:04.610 --> 00:24:06.530 align:middle line:84% and it is a vulnerable life that you 00:24:06.530 --> 00:24:10.490 align:middle line:84% have, subject to increasing dangers that too few of us 00:24:10.490 --> 00:24:13.610 align:middle line:84% struggle against or even understand. 00:24:13.610 --> 00:24:16.790 align:middle line:84% But it is this, your once only life 00:24:16.790 --> 00:24:18.770 align:middle line:84% that we come together this morning 00:24:18.770 --> 00:24:20.690 align:middle line:90% to honor and to celebrate. 00:24:20.690 --> 00:24:23.780 align:middle line:84% Any time we come together, any time we 00:24:23.780 --> 00:24:26.690 align:middle line:84% can come together to celebrate the lives of children, 00:24:26.690 --> 00:24:30.650 align:middle line:84% the precious life of Black children, I think, to myself, 00:24:30.650 --> 00:24:32.790 align:middle line:90% this is how we should start. 00:24:32.790 --> 00:24:35.000 align:middle line:84% This is how we should begin to build 00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:40.100 align:middle line:84% another way, another kind of humankind, a really new nation. 00:24:40.100 --> 00:24:45.698 align:middle line:84% We have to begin by cherishing our children. 00:24:45.698 --> 00:24:46.990 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: That's beautiful. 00:24:46.990 --> 00:24:49.515 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Thank you. 00:24:49.515 --> 00:24:51.140 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: It's just an observation. 00:24:51.140 --> 00:24:56.240 align:middle line:84% But I noticed in June Jordan's writing, in your writing, 00:24:56.240 --> 00:24:58.540 align:middle line:84% it's an invitation to understand. 00:24:58.540 --> 00:25:02.940 align:middle line:84% I don't feel like you're trying to be opaque at all. 00:25:02.940 --> 00:25:06.800 align:middle line:84% I think you're trying to put your thoughts out there in a way 00:25:06.800 --> 00:25:08.870 align:middle line:90% that people can take it up. 00:25:08.870 --> 00:25:10.678 align:middle line:90% And maybe that's intentional. 00:25:10.678 --> 00:25:11.220 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:25:11.220 --> 00:25:12.890 align:middle line:90% But I feel invited in. 00:25:12.890 --> 00:25:15.330 align:middle line:84% I don't feel excluded from the poem. 00:25:15.330 --> 00:25:16.830 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's good to hear. 00:25:16.830 --> 00:25:21.350 align:middle line:84% Yeah, my aim is always to create community around works of art. 00:25:21.350 --> 00:25:23.480 align:middle line:84% And I honor people who don't do that. 00:25:23.480 --> 00:25:26.570 align:middle line:84% I love a good bit of opacity, with the stuff, especially 00:25:26.570 --> 00:25:29.630 align:middle line:84% the theory and the poetry, that takes that up 00:25:29.630 --> 00:25:31.640 align:middle line:90% as its central concern or aim. 00:25:31.640 --> 00:25:34.940 align:middle line:84% But for me, my primary influences 00:25:34.940 --> 00:25:39.650 align:middle line:84% are Black church and the spoken word, poetry slams, 00:25:39.650 --> 00:25:42.860 align:middle line:84% cafes founded by academics and their friends 00:25:42.860 --> 00:25:46.130 align:middle line:84% to invite people from all across the world to come listen. 00:25:46.130 --> 00:25:48.778 align:middle line:84% An open mic list is a certain kind of democratic form. 00:25:48.778 --> 00:25:50.070 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Yeah, absolutely. 00:25:50.070 --> 00:25:50.990 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Anybody who walks through the door 00:25:50.990 --> 00:25:51.560 align:middle line:90% can sign up. 00:25:51.560 --> 00:25:54.380 align:middle line:84% And you get up there, and you can talk, ostensibly 00:25:54.380 --> 00:25:55.380 align:middle line:90% for as long as you want. 00:25:55.380 --> 00:25:57.863 align:middle line:84% If you go on too long, we're going to ask you to leave. 00:25:57.863 --> 00:25:58.140 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Of course. 00:25:58.140 --> 00:26:00.098 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: But there's an interesting kind 00:26:00.098 --> 00:26:01.748 align:middle line:84% of breath and open air there that I 00:26:01.748 --> 00:26:03.540 align:middle line:84% think is really important and models how we 00:26:03.540 --> 00:26:05.230 align:middle line:90% can come to know one another. 00:26:05.230 --> 00:26:07.480 align:middle line:84% So yeah, it's always, for me, an invitation, the work. 00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:08.522 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: I think so. 00:26:08.522 --> 00:26:10.260 align:middle line:84% I think it's worth saying because you're 00:26:10.260 --> 00:26:11.340 align:middle line:90% immersed in this world. 00:26:11.340 --> 00:26:13.290 align:middle line:84% But for people who are not in it, 00:26:13.290 --> 00:26:16.550 align:middle line:84% they may hear poetry and think like, well, that's not for me, 00:26:16.550 --> 00:26:18.300 align:middle line:84% or I don't have a voice I could lend to it 00:26:18.300 --> 00:26:20.190 align:middle line:84% and I don't have an ear that can receive it 00:26:20.190 --> 00:26:23.670 align:middle line:84% because they have a preconceived notion of what poetry is 00:26:23.670 --> 00:26:24.940 align:middle line:90% and who it's for. 00:26:24.940 --> 00:26:28.240 align:middle line:84% But I think through your teaching, through your writing, 00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:31.390 align:middle line:84% you're really saying, poetry is for you. 00:26:31.390 --> 00:26:33.630 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, poetry is for everybody. 00:26:33.630 --> 00:26:36.100 align:middle line:84% Poetry is for everybody by design. 00:26:36.100 --> 00:26:38.830 align:middle line:90% Poetry is also so old. 00:26:38.830 --> 00:26:41.140 align:middle line:90% Poetry is first. 00:26:41.140 --> 00:26:43.120 align:middle line:90% It's before prose. 00:26:43.120 --> 00:26:46.330 align:middle line:84% We have these kind of epic poems that were memorized, 00:26:46.330 --> 00:26:48.430 align:middle line:84% weren't even really written down. 00:26:48.430 --> 00:26:50.830 align:middle line:84% We have poems kind of before a certain kind 00:26:50.830 --> 00:26:54.770 align:middle line:84% of written tradition for these modes of creative expression. 00:26:54.770 --> 00:26:57.940 align:middle line:84% And so, yeah, I want to tap into that, that ancient thing, 00:26:57.940 --> 00:27:00.100 align:middle line:90% that ancient music. 00:27:00.100 --> 00:27:03.440 align:middle line:84% People all over the world, hip hop resonates with them. 00:27:03.440 --> 00:27:05.530 align:middle line:84% They don't necessarily speak English. 00:27:05.530 --> 00:27:08.900 align:middle line:84% It's the energy behind the lyric, it's the lyric heights. 00:27:08.900 --> 00:27:11.700 align:middle line:84% It's that kind of spirit, that soul, 00:27:11.700 --> 00:27:14.200 align:middle line:84% whether you're talking about soul, lowercase s or capital S, 00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:16.750 align:middle line:84% whether it's the genre or kind of metaphysical thing. 00:27:16.750 --> 00:27:20.230 align:middle line:84% I think there's this wonderful moment of transformation that 00:27:20.230 --> 00:27:23.440 align:middle line:84% happens when you give language to the world people 00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:25.310 align:middle line:84% can't see that lives inside of you. 00:27:25.310 --> 00:27:27.950 align:middle line:84% And I teach children as young as four or five, 00:27:27.950 --> 00:27:30.330 align:middle line:84% and I teach people who are twice my age poetry. 00:27:30.330 --> 00:27:33.270 align:middle line:84% And I've been doing that since I was 17 or 18 years old. 00:27:33.270 --> 00:27:38.360 align:middle line:84% And I almost can't imagine another way into what I do now. 00:27:38.360 --> 00:27:40.490 align:middle line:84% I'm not an English professor because I don't 00:27:40.490 --> 00:27:42.600 align:middle line:90% think I can do anything else. 00:27:42.600 --> 00:27:45.830 align:middle line:84% It's just that the practice stopped me in my tracks 00:27:45.830 --> 00:27:47.450 align:middle line:90% when I was a teenager. 00:27:47.450 --> 00:27:49.970 align:middle line:84% And I thought, one, I feel like I'm good at this, 00:27:49.970 --> 00:27:52.130 align:middle line:84% but two, this feels like it matters 00:27:52.130 --> 00:27:55.160 align:middle line:84% more than almost anything else I can do with my life, 00:27:55.160 --> 00:28:00.190 align:middle line:84% with my particular skill set and upbringing and human heart. 00:28:00.190 --> 00:28:02.210 align:middle line:84% So that's what I'm trying to pass on 00:28:02.210 --> 00:28:04.970 align:middle line:84% to my students, almost none of whom at least 00:28:04.970 --> 00:28:07.230 align:middle line:84% share aspirations of being professional writers. 00:28:07.230 --> 00:28:08.723 align:middle line:90% It's totally beside the point. 00:28:08.723 --> 00:28:10.890 align:middle line:84% It's just part of what it means to be a human being. 00:28:10.890 --> 00:28:12.260 align:middle line:90% That's why we read poetry. 00:28:12.260 --> 00:28:15.410 align:middle line:84% When people die, when new people are born, when we get married, 00:28:15.410 --> 00:28:18.980 align:middle line:84% why do we have these words that we bring out 00:28:18.980 --> 00:28:20.940 align:middle line:90% in these ceremonies to worship? 00:28:20.940 --> 00:28:23.930 align:middle line:84% Religions have holy texts, but those holy texts are often 00:28:23.930 --> 00:28:25.710 align:middle line:90% poetry, filled with poetry. 00:28:25.710 --> 00:28:26.730 align:middle line:90% Why? 00:28:26.730 --> 00:28:29.000 align:middle line:84% It's because we don't always have the words readily 00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:32.300 align:middle line:84% at hand for what we need to say in the moments that matter most. 00:28:32.300 --> 00:28:35.040 align:middle line:90% We all desire those words. 00:28:35.040 --> 00:28:40.603 align:middle line:84% And luckily, we have a genre at hand that we can turn to. 00:28:40.603 --> 00:28:41.520 align:middle line:90% It's a great blessing. 00:28:41.520 --> 00:28:43.160 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Yeah, yeah. 00:28:43.160 --> 00:28:47.720 align:middle line:84% In what ways was teaching the course also a form of poetry 00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:50.193 align:middle line:84% for you, if you could think of it that way? 00:28:50.193 --> 00:28:51.860 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's a great question. 00:28:51.860 --> 00:28:54.320 align:middle line:84% It was certainly a kind of choral poem. 00:28:54.320 --> 00:28:56.780 align:middle line:84% I'm always co-creating the classroom space 00:28:56.780 --> 00:28:58.790 align:middle line:84% with my students, which is why I always 00:28:58.790 --> 00:29:02.620 align:middle line:84% try to walk in with a certain air of gratitude. 00:29:02.620 --> 00:29:05.740 align:middle line:90% It's amazing that they show up. 00:29:05.740 --> 00:29:09.250 align:middle line:84% You can drop a class pretty late here at MIT. 00:29:09.250 --> 00:29:12.040 align:middle line:90% And I was taken aback by this. 00:29:12.040 --> 00:29:15.340 align:middle line:84% Almost every single student came to every single class 00:29:15.340 --> 00:29:17.170 align:middle line:90% for Social Poetics. 00:29:17.170 --> 00:29:19.610 align:middle line:84% Maybe one or two days we were missing one or two people. 00:29:19.610 --> 00:29:21.640 align:middle line:84% But for the most part, that entire ensemble 00:29:21.640 --> 00:29:25.750 align:middle line:84% showed up twice a week to talk about poems at MIT. 00:29:25.750 --> 00:29:27.220 align:middle line:90% That's incredible. 00:29:27.220 --> 00:29:29.170 align:middle line:84% And I was a visiting professor at the time. 00:29:29.170 --> 00:29:31.120 align:middle line:84% I really didn't take it for granted 00:29:31.120 --> 00:29:34.580 align:middle line:84% that the students were committed to making this project with me. 00:29:34.580 --> 00:29:35.720 align:middle line:90% And that felt poetic. 00:29:35.720 --> 00:29:38.260 align:middle line:84% It was only possible because of the presence of people 00:29:38.260 --> 00:29:40.482 align:middle line:84% bringing their entire selves to the classroom space 00:29:40.482 --> 00:29:42.190 align:middle line:84% because often what we were talking about, 00:29:42.190 --> 00:29:43.773 align:middle line:84% of course, were the words on the page, 00:29:43.773 --> 00:29:46.270 align:middle line:84% but also the lived experiences that 00:29:46.270 --> 00:29:49.310 align:middle line:84% gave those works energy for those particular students. 00:29:49.310 --> 00:29:51.220 align:middle line:84% People wrote and said very beautiful things 00:29:51.220 --> 00:29:53.650 align:middle line:84% about their mothers, about their communities, 00:29:53.650 --> 00:29:57.550 align:middle line:84% about the experiences in certain kinds of high schools 00:29:57.550 --> 00:30:02.590 align:middle line:84% with metal detectors and guards that brought them to MIT 00:30:02.590 --> 00:30:05.090 align:middle line:84% and that really changed the way they thought about what they 00:30:05.090 --> 00:30:07.490 align:middle line:90% were here to do in college. 00:30:07.490 --> 00:30:08.630 align:middle line:90% So I appreciate that. 00:30:08.630 --> 00:30:10.693 align:middle line:84% That felt very much like the poems 00:30:10.693 --> 00:30:12.110 align:middle line:84% I was writing with the spoken word 00:30:12.110 --> 00:30:14.600 align:middle line:84% groups I was a part of when I was a college 00:30:14.600 --> 00:30:17.090 align:middle line:84% student and a high school student and a graduate student, 00:30:17.090 --> 00:30:18.530 align:middle line:90% eventually. 00:30:18.530 --> 00:30:22.340 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: So the innermost workings of our soul, 00:30:22.340 --> 00:30:25.820 align:middle line:84% our heart, it's not only appreciating the beauty, 00:30:25.820 --> 00:30:27.440 align:middle line:90% it's also there's loss. 00:30:27.440 --> 00:30:28.520 align:middle line:90% There's grief. 00:30:28.520 --> 00:30:30.620 align:middle line:90% There's darkness. 00:30:30.620 --> 00:30:34.280 align:middle line:84% There's the metabolizing of unjust things 00:30:34.280 --> 00:30:35.690 align:middle line:90% that have happened to you. 00:30:35.690 --> 00:30:39.890 align:middle line:84% So how do you handle that as a professor in the classroom 00:30:39.890 --> 00:30:44.882 align:middle line:84% when those things emerge through spoken word or poetry? 00:30:44.882 --> 00:30:46.340 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: I make room for it, 00:30:46.340 --> 00:30:48.290 align:middle line:90% as I would with anything else. 00:30:48.290 --> 00:30:51.050 align:middle line:84% Reading a poet and scholar like Fred Moten, 00:30:51.050 --> 00:30:53.865 align:middle line:84% people like Hortense Spillers, Sylvia Wynter, 00:30:53.865 --> 00:30:54.990 align:middle line:90% really helped me with this. 00:30:54.990 --> 00:30:58.940 align:middle line:84% You can't properly analyze the beauty without the terror. 00:30:58.940 --> 00:31:03.170 align:middle line:84% And you can't properly analyze the terror without the beauty. 00:31:03.170 --> 00:31:05.570 align:middle line:84% And so I have to make room for both of those 00:31:05.570 --> 00:31:07.910 align:middle line:84% to enter my classroom and for us to think together 00:31:07.910 --> 00:31:11.550 align:middle line:84% about tragedy in the world, about great personal tragedy. 00:31:11.550 --> 00:31:13.580 align:middle line:84% Students have openly spoken in the classroom 00:31:13.580 --> 00:31:17.130 align:middle line:84% about when they're grieving family members and friends. 00:31:17.130 --> 00:31:19.250 align:middle line:84% And I think that's, at least for me, 00:31:19.250 --> 00:31:21.650 align:middle line:84% that's a core element of what I'm actually 00:31:21.650 --> 00:31:25.400 align:middle line:84% here to teach and here to learn about as part 00:31:25.400 --> 00:31:28.610 align:middle line:84% of this big choral poem I'm building with my students 00:31:28.610 --> 00:31:29.460 align:middle line:90% across time. 00:31:29.460 --> 00:31:32.080 align:middle line:84% We're learning how to be human together, 00:31:32.080 --> 00:31:34.080 align:middle line:84% which is why we write poetry in the first place. 00:31:34.080 --> 00:31:36.110 align:middle line:84% I also think it's how we write poetry, 00:31:36.110 --> 00:31:39.110 align:middle line:84% which is where I think the pedagogical element really 00:31:39.110 --> 00:31:39.840 align:middle line:90% comes in. 00:31:39.840 --> 00:31:41.590 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Can you say more about that? 00:31:41.590 --> 00:31:43.310 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah. 00:31:43.310 --> 00:31:46.400 align:middle line:84% I think the best poems come through us. 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:48.530 align:middle line:84% So a lot of times what I'm trying to do 00:31:48.530 --> 00:31:50.900 align:middle line:84% is just catch that moment of electricity 00:31:50.900 --> 00:31:52.530 align:middle line:90% and be fully present for it. 00:31:52.530 --> 00:31:54.980 align:middle line:84% But that's something you have to practice. 00:31:54.980 --> 00:31:57.380 align:middle line:84% It's much easier, or at least I'll 00:31:57.380 --> 00:32:00.140 align:middle line:84% say it comes to me individually more readily, 00:32:00.140 --> 00:32:03.740 align:middle line:84% to just say this is what an audience would like because I've 00:32:03.740 --> 00:32:05.450 align:middle line:84% performed in front of thousands of people 00:32:05.450 --> 00:32:06.575 align:middle line:90% over the course of my life. 00:32:06.575 --> 00:32:08.630 align:middle line:84% So I can engineer the poem that way. 00:32:08.630 --> 00:32:11.480 align:middle line:84% Or I can say, let me be quiet and listen 00:32:11.480 --> 00:32:14.060 align:middle line:84% to what I hear coming to me from the air. 00:32:14.060 --> 00:32:16.880 align:middle line:84% Let me meditate on both beautiful and terrible moments 00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:18.698 align:middle line:90% and see what I can bring forth. 00:32:18.698 --> 00:32:20.240 align:middle line:84% And that can happen within structure. 00:32:20.240 --> 00:32:21.900 align:middle line:84% That can happen within a schedule. 00:32:21.900 --> 00:32:25.100 align:middle line:84% But that practice of just being quiet and listening to yourself 00:32:25.100 --> 00:32:27.350 align:middle line:84% and listening to the past, I would even 00:32:27.350 --> 00:32:30.330 align:middle line:84% dare say, maybe even listening to the future, that's 00:32:30.330 --> 00:32:31.580 align:middle line:90% something you have to work on. 00:32:31.580 --> 00:32:33.497 align:middle line:84% And working on it as part of a group, I think, 00:32:33.497 --> 00:32:35.990 align:middle line:84% is something we're incredibly fortunate to get the chance 00:32:35.990 --> 00:32:36.630 align:middle line:90% to do. 00:32:36.630 --> 00:32:37.550 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Yeah. 00:32:37.550 --> 00:32:41.510 align:middle line:84% And it also points to the fact that writing is not 00:32:41.510 --> 00:32:43.512 align:middle line:84% only that moment when pencil hits the paper. 00:32:43.512 --> 00:32:44.720 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:32:44.720 --> 00:32:46.512 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: It's actually like a practice 00:32:46.512 --> 00:32:49.970 align:middle line:84% of walking through the world and waiting, opening yourself 00:32:49.970 --> 00:32:55.390 align:middle line:84% to the moment and being the vessel through which the words 00:32:55.390 --> 00:32:56.300 align:middle line:90% can come-- 00:32:56.300 --> 00:32:56.700 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:32:56.700 --> 00:32:58.450 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --or the message can come. 00:32:58.450 --> 00:32:59.720 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: No, that's exactly it. 00:32:59.720 --> 00:33:01.130 align:middle line:84% And we talked about this a little bit earlier. 00:33:01.130 --> 00:33:03.845 align:middle line:84% But if you feel stuck, if you feel like the writing is not 00:33:03.845 --> 00:33:05.470 align:middle line:84% coming, you might need to go for a run, 00:33:05.470 --> 00:33:09.160 align:middle line:84% or go dance, or listen to something beautiful, or laugh 00:33:09.160 --> 00:33:11.530 align:middle line:84% with someone you love, reconnect with someone who 00:33:11.530 --> 00:33:15.187 align:middle line:84% you loved once and don't talk to anymore, not exes, necessarily-- 00:33:15.187 --> 00:33:16.520 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Different podcast. 00:33:16.520 --> 00:33:18.603 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, that's a different podcast-- 00:33:18.603 --> 00:33:20.260 align:middle line:90% but even family. 00:33:20.260 --> 00:33:23.020 align:middle line:84% I think, again, I talked about family 00:33:23.020 --> 00:33:25.070 align:middle line:84% as a kind of anchoring element of the poetry. 00:33:25.070 --> 00:33:28.418 align:middle line:84% But yeah, thinking about my parents in old age 00:33:28.418 --> 00:33:30.460 align:middle line:84% and trying to figure out how to take care of them 00:33:30.460 --> 00:33:31.930 align:middle line:90% has been deeply humbling. 00:33:31.930 --> 00:33:36.060 align:middle line:84% And it's forced me to forgive them, 00:33:36.060 --> 00:33:39.140 align:middle line:84% but also I've had to find ways to forgive myself 00:33:39.140 --> 00:33:43.670 align:middle line:84% for being young and 15 and slamming doors and saying 00:33:43.670 --> 00:33:46.130 align:middle line:90% I hated them, for example. 00:33:46.130 --> 00:33:46.930 align:middle line:90% It was normal. 00:33:46.930 --> 00:33:49.670 align:middle line:84% It's a normal teenage thing to say and to feel. 00:33:49.670 --> 00:33:53.270 align:middle line:84% But now that I'm doing it, I'm like, oh my goodness, I 00:33:53.270 --> 00:33:54.770 align:middle line:90% love these little kids so much. 00:33:54.770 --> 00:33:56.010 align:middle line:90% My whole life is about them. 00:33:56.010 --> 00:33:57.760 align:middle line:84% Anytime I get money, I get paid, I'm like, 00:33:57.760 --> 00:33:59.000 align:middle line:90% this money is for the kids. 00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:00.667 align:middle line:84% It's to feed the kids and house the kids 00:34:00.667 --> 00:34:03.680 align:middle line:84% and send the kids to the best schools I can find. 00:34:03.680 --> 00:34:07.380 align:middle line:84% I love them so far beyond myself, 00:34:07.380 --> 00:34:09.945 align:middle line:84% it almost feels heartbreaking sometimes, even right now. 00:34:09.945 --> 00:34:11.070 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Yeah, I know. 00:34:11.070 --> 00:34:12.969 align:middle line:90% I know. 00:34:12.969 --> 00:34:14.219 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: It's so tough. 00:34:14.219 --> 00:34:16.130 align:middle line:84% And to think about the resources I have 00:34:16.130 --> 00:34:19.820 align:middle line:84% that my parents certainly did not, not even just 00:34:19.820 --> 00:34:21.770 align:middle line:84% the formal education, in some ways, 00:34:21.770 --> 00:34:25.760 align:middle line:84% but just cash on hand, living in Massachusetts, 00:34:25.760 --> 00:34:29.630 align:middle line:84% as opposed to living in the Bronx or in South Yonkers, 00:34:29.630 --> 00:34:31.850 align:middle line:84% living in a neighborhood where people get murdered 00:34:31.850 --> 00:34:35.159 align:middle line:84% and are dealing drugs, versus where I live 00:34:35.159 --> 00:34:37.830 align:middle line:84% and beautiful neighbors that shake my hand 00:34:37.830 --> 00:34:43.230 align:middle line:84% and talk to me about strategies for taking care of the trees. 00:34:43.230 --> 00:34:45.239 align:middle line:90% It's so radically different. 00:34:45.239 --> 00:34:48.100 align:middle line:84% And even there, I still feel the pressures, 00:34:48.100 --> 00:34:50.730 align:middle line:84% I think people tasked with raising children, 00:34:50.730 --> 00:34:52.980 align:middle line:84% whether they're their biological children or not feel, 00:34:52.980 --> 00:34:57.120 align:middle line:84% which is that you have to keep this life alive. 00:34:57.120 --> 00:35:00.125 align:middle line:84% You're trying to keep this person here desperately, 00:35:00.125 --> 00:35:01.500 align:middle line:84% while trying to maintain yourself 00:35:01.500 --> 00:35:03.840 align:middle line:84% in ways that will allow that to be possible. 00:35:03.840 --> 00:35:07.860 align:middle line:84% So yeah, writing poetry and growing older, 00:35:07.860 --> 00:35:10.500 align:middle line:84% both of those things have always forced me back 00:35:10.500 --> 00:35:13.620 align:middle line:84% to the material facts of my life and how I got here 00:35:13.620 --> 00:35:17.490 align:middle line:84% and not looking away, bearing witness again, really looking 00:35:17.490 --> 00:35:20.080 align:middle line:84% at my mother, looking at my father, my grandmother, 00:35:20.080 --> 00:35:22.590 align:middle line:84% may she rest, looking to her example and saying, 00:35:22.590 --> 00:35:25.950 align:middle line:84% this is part of what I'm going to preserve and praise. 00:35:25.950 --> 00:35:30.210 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Sometimes I feel like my child is a poem. 00:35:30.210 --> 00:35:31.560 align:middle line:90% Have you ever felt like that? 00:35:31.560 --> 00:35:34.740 align:middle line:84% Even though I'm not writing her on a page, 00:35:34.740 --> 00:35:37.470 align:middle line:84% her existence is a form of poetry 00:35:37.470 --> 00:35:39.870 align:middle line:84% and just being able to participate in that 00:35:39.870 --> 00:35:41.130 align:middle line:90% and shape that. 00:35:41.130 --> 00:35:44.910 align:middle line:84% I feel sometimes like I'm trying to do the work of a poet, 00:35:44.910 --> 00:35:49.320 align:middle line:84% to try to keep this light alive and make it beautiful 00:35:49.320 --> 00:35:50.980 align:middle line:90% and let the world hear it. 00:35:50.980 --> 00:35:52.723 align:middle line:84% And so sometimes I think, like I said, 00:35:52.723 --> 00:35:54.390 align:middle line:84% writing is not only writing on the page, 00:35:54.390 --> 00:35:55.870 align:middle line:90% but sometimes it's like living. 00:35:55.870 --> 00:35:56.270 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:35:56.270 --> 00:35:56.970 align:middle line:90% That's right. 00:35:56.970 --> 00:35:57.880 align:middle line:90% I love that. 00:35:57.880 --> 00:36:00.480 align:middle line:84% Yeah, etymologically, I think that's exactly it. 00:36:00.480 --> 00:36:02.760 align:middle line:90% Poesis is making. 00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:04.950 align:middle line:84% And your child is making themselves every day. 00:36:04.950 --> 00:36:06.820 align:middle line:84% And you're helping them make themselves. 00:36:06.820 --> 00:36:08.550 align:middle line:90% Are we giving them values? 00:36:08.550 --> 00:36:10.350 align:middle line:84% I wish somebody really would have warned me 00:36:10.350 --> 00:36:13.890 align:middle line:84% about that because it's a deep thinking 00:36:13.890 --> 00:36:15.250 align:middle line:90% process that goes behind that. 00:36:15.250 --> 00:36:17.850 align:middle line:84% What values am I conferring, not just verbally, 00:36:17.850 --> 00:36:20.670 align:middle line:84% with what I say to you, but how I model myself? 00:36:20.670 --> 00:36:21.928 align:middle line:90% You're watching me every day. 00:36:21.928 --> 00:36:23.470 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: It's a lot of pressure. 00:36:23.470 --> 00:36:23.940 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: It is. 00:36:23.940 --> 00:36:26.380 align:middle line:84% But it's really starting to hit me the past couple of weeks 00:36:26.380 --> 00:36:28.880 align:middle line:84% because my daughter is now just starting to hold her head up 00:36:28.880 --> 00:36:29.730 align:middle line:90% and smile. 00:36:29.730 --> 00:36:32.220 align:middle line:84% But she follows me around the room with their eyes. 00:36:32.220 --> 00:36:35.340 align:middle line:84% And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm the dad in your story. 00:36:35.340 --> 00:36:36.187 align:middle line:90% I'm not just Joshua. 00:36:36.187 --> 00:36:38.520 align:middle line:84% And I've never shared this, I think, with anyone really, 00:36:38.520 --> 00:36:40.830 align:middle line:84% besides my wife and my close group chat. 00:36:40.830 --> 00:36:45.480 align:middle line:84% But for the first time in my internal voice, I'm Dad. 00:36:45.480 --> 00:36:47.620 align:middle line:84% In my mind, I don't call myself Joshua. 00:36:47.620 --> 00:36:48.370 align:middle line:90% I call myself Dad. 00:36:48.370 --> 00:36:49.892 align:middle line:84% It's like, Dad, pull it together. 00:36:49.892 --> 00:36:51.850 align:middle line:84% And the first time I did that, I was cleaning-- 00:36:51.850 --> 00:36:53.430 align:middle line:84% I was cleaning up after the dog or something. 00:36:53.430 --> 00:36:54.910 align:middle line:84% I was like, all right, Dad, let's get this done. 00:36:54.910 --> 00:36:55.570 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Let's do this. 00:36:55.570 --> 00:36:56.340 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: And I said-- 00:36:56.340 --> 00:36:57.090 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Dad? 00:36:57.090 --> 00:36:58.290 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: I'm not Dad. 00:36:58.290 --> 00:36:59.230 align:middle line:90% My dad is Dad. 00:36:59.230 --> 00:37:01.020 align:middle line:90% How can I be Dad now? 00:37:01.020 --> 00:37:04.750 align:middle line:84% And it's because it had just become my primary identity. 00:37:04.750 --> 00:37:06.510 align:middle line:84% And this is where life is a poem. 00:37:06.510 --> 00:37:09.130 align:middle line:84% I'm rewriting the central characters. 00:37:09.130 --> 00:37:12.390 align:middle line:84% I'm rewriting the meaning of this story in real time 00:37:12.390 --> 00:37:13.985 align:middle line:90% and without always meaning to. 00:37:13.985 --> 00:37:14.860 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: I know. 00:37:14.860 --> 00:37:16.333 align:middle line:90% Yeah, it's powerful. 00:37:16.333 --> 00:37:17.250 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: It is. 00:37:17.250 --> 00:37:19.290 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: It's also very human, 00:37:19.290 --> 00:37:20.790 align:middle line:84% which brings me to the next thing 00:37:20.790 --> 00:37:22.020 align:middle line:90% I wanted to ask you about-- 00:37:22.020 --> 00:37:22.290 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, please, please, please. 00:37:22.290 --> 00:37:23.865 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --which is the opposite of human-- 00:37:23.865 --> 00:37:24.390 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Oh, goodness. 00:37:24.390 --> 00:37:26.640 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --which is artificial intelligence, 00:37:26.640 --> 00:37:31.470 align:middle line:84% which is really at the forefront of everybody's minds today. 00:37:31.470 --> 00:37:35.370 align:middle line:84% And you participated at MIT's Day of AI symposium, 00:37:35.370 --> 00:37:36.660 align:middle line:90% and you read a poem. 00:37:36.660 --> 00:37:39.450 align:middle line:84% And I'm wondering if you could read it and then 00:37:39.450 --> 00:37:42.877 align:middle line:84% talk to us about why this poem at that symposium. 00:37:42.877 --> 00:37:44.710 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Oh, that's a great question. 00:37:44.710 --> 00:37:48.990 align:middle line:84% So I'll think about that as I'm as I'm reading the poem. 00:37:48.990 --> 00:37:51.160 align:middle line:84% So this is a little bit of background. 00:37:51.160 --> 00:37:54.660 align:middle line:84% My father and I, we would watch Star Trek every week, 00:37:54.660 --> 00:37:57.422 align:middle line:84% alongside the NBA on NBC, which has already appeared. 00:37:57.422 --> 00:37:59.880 align:middle line:84% So we would watch those, those great Knicks teams with John 00:37:59.880 --> 00:38:01.210 align:middle line:90% Starks and Patrick Ewing. 00:38:01.210 --> 00:38:03.930 align:middle line:84% And we watched Jordan and those great Supersonics teams 00:38:03.930 --> 00:38:05.680 align:middle line:84% with Detlef Schrempf and Shawn Kemp. 00:38:05.680 --> 00:38:07.740 align:middle line:90% So I love '90s NBA. 00:38:07.740 --> 00:38:10.180 align:middle line:84% But we also would watch Star Trek. 00:38:10.180 --> 00:38:11.490 align:middle line:90% My father loved Star Trek. 00:38:11.490 --> 00:38:15.240 align:middle line:84% And it just gave me such a deep sense 00:38:15.240 --> 00:38:17.010 align:middle line:84% of what was what was possible, which 00:38:17.010 --> 00:38:20.170 align:middle line:84% was anything, that we were meditating on these stories. 00:38:20.170 --> 00:38:22.123 align:middle line:84% So this is Ode to Mae Jemison, who 00:38:22.123 --> 00:38:24.540 align:middle line:84% in addition to being the first Black woman in outer space, 00:38:24.540 --> 00:38:28.540 align:middle line:84% also had a guest spot on Star Trek. 00:38:28.540 --> 00:38:32.350 align:middle line:84% It was perhaps our oldest ritual, my father 00:38:32.350 --> 00:38:35.340 align:middle line:84% and I watching Star Trek on the living room floor, 00:38:35.340 --> 00:38:39.580 align:middle line:84% Quiet as calculation, my small frame beside his own 00:38:39.580 --> 00:38:42.020 align:middle line:90% like an image and its draft. 00:38:42.020 --> 00:38:44.440 align:middle line:84% We studied any and all variations 00:38:44.440 --> 00:38:46.820 align:middle line:84% of this show we loved like no other, 00:38:46.820 --> 00:38:50.890 align:middle line:84% Voyager, Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation, 00:38:50.890 --> 00:38:53.630 align:middle line:84% Comparing each version to its ancestor 00:38:53.630 --> 00:38:55.780 align:middle line:90% only once it had run its course. 00:38:55.780 --> 00:39:00.430 align:middle line:84% I saw myself everywhere, Data, Worf, Geordi La 00:39:00.430 --> 00:39:04.720 align:middle line:84% Forge, scientists and warriors, interstellar adventurers 00:39:04.720 --> 00:39:06.620 align:middle line:90% in every form you could imagine, 00:39:06.620 --> 00:39:09.220 align:middle line:84% All comportements welcome central 00:39:09.220 --> 00:39:11.780 align:middle line:84% to the mission of the Starship Enterprise, 00:39:11.780 --> 00:39:14.260 align:middle line:84% My boyhood eyes aglow, as I dreamed 00:39:14.260 --> 00:39:17.510 align:middle line:84% of darting through the infinite blackness of the great beyond, 00:39:17.510 --> 00:39:20.860 align:middle line:84% Smooth as a blade, even in hyperdrive, me 00:39:20.860 --> 00:39:24.880 align:middle line:84% and my intrepid crew cruising at lightspeed toward the promise 00:39:24.880 --> 00:39:26.290 align:middle line:90% of another life. 00:39:26.290 --> 00:39:29.000 align:middle line:84% Pop never explained the tradition, 00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:31.700 align:middle line:84% but the call to see that story unfolding was 00:39:31.700 --> 00:39:33.170 align:middle line:90% its own inheritance, 00:39:33.170 --> 00:39:35.360 align:middle line:84% A journey through outer galaxies as it 00:39:35.360 --> 00:39:38.660 align:middle line:84% was through his own mind, the stillness in that room no 00:39:38.660 --> 00:39:39.720 align:middle line:90% issue for me, 00:39:39.720 --> 00:39:43.100 align:middle line:84% Who knew even then that quiet had its own texture 00:39:43.100 --> 00:39:47.510 align:middle line:84% and richness, that my father was born in Alabama in the 1940s, 00:39:47.510 --> 00:39:49.230 align:middle line:90% had always been this way, 00:39:49.230 --> 00:39:52.130 align:middle line:84% A man who spoke with deeds, a look in his eyes 00:39:52.130 --> 00:39:55.790 align:middle line:84% that could level a room or else lift it into orbit. 00:39:55.790 --> 00:39:59.960 align:middle line:84% Over the years, he would teach me many names, Benjamin 00:39:59.960 --> 00:40:05.000 align:middle line:84% Banneker, Lewis H Latimer, Mary McLeod Bethune, narrators 00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:06.990 align:middle line:90% of our heroic human drama, 00:40:06.990 --> 00:40:11.390 align:middle line:84% George Washington Carver, Arthur Schomburg, Mae Jemison, 00:40:11.390 --> 00:40:15.080 align:middle line:84% who I would later learn was born in Alabama, just like Pop, 00:40:15.080 --> 00:40:18.470 align:middle line:84% and loved Star Trek too, and was the first Black woman 00:40:18.470 --> 00:40:21.410 align:middle line:84% to reach outer space and the first real astronaut 00:40:21.410 --> 00:40:24.950 align:middle line:84% to ever go on the show, The Next generation, to be exact, 00:40:24.950 --> 00:40:28.040 align:middle line:84% At the invitation of LeVar Burton, who was already 00:40:28.040 --> 00:40:31.370 align:middle line:84% a hero in our household based on the transcendent power 00:40:31.370 --> 00:40:32.970 align:middle line:90% of Reading Rainbow alone. 00:40:32.970 --> 00:40:35.360 align:middle line:84% But this was another level, this woman 00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:37.620 align:middle line:84% who had held an audience with the moon, 00:40:37.620 --> 00:40:41.000 align:middle line:84% seeing the other side of the atmosphere that held us here, 00:40:41.000 --> 00:40:44.290 align:middle line:84% this dreamer of a human civilization on Mars, 00:40:44.290 --> 00:40:47.930 align:middle line:84% this teacher, this healer, this author of children's books 00:40:47.930 --> 00:40:51.380 align:middle line:84% and once distant goals made real for generations of us 00:40:51.380 --> 00:40:55.350 align:middle line:84% told we would inherit nothing and learn to love that absence. 00:40:55.350 --> 00:41:00.270 align:middle line:84% Instead, Dr. Jemison said, the very cosmos could belong to us. 00:41:00.270 --> 00:41:03.800 align:middle line:84% The darkness of our skin, our hair, our eyes 00:41:03.800 --> 00:41:07.790 align:middle line:84% were shared with that shimmering infinitude, that endless breath, 00:41:07.790 --> 00:41:11.330 align:middle line:84% the possibility that we too might one day take flight, 00:41:11.330 --> 00:41:14.660 align:middle line:84% Achieve the weightlessness we had felt only in dreams, 00:41:14.660 --> 00:41:17.630 align:middle line:84% or heard when we heard Stevie Wonder sing, 00:41:17.630 --> 00:41:22.940 align:middle line:84% or saw on TV in briefest flashes of stars millions of miles 00:41:22.940 --> 00:41:24.110 align:middle line:90% beyond our own, 00:41:24.110 --> 00:41:28.340 align:middle line:84% But more palpable now, so close you could almost grasp them, 00:41:28.340 --> 00:41:31.975 align:middle line:84% almost hold them there in your palm, like a promise. 00:41:31.975 --> 00:41:36.470 align:middle line:90% 00:41:36.470 --> 00:41:37.470 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Thank you. 00:41:37.470 --> 00:41:38.553 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Thank you. 00:41:38.553 --> 00:41:42.050 align:middle line:90% 00:41:42.050 --> 00:41:43.730 align:middle line:90% Yeah, so that's about my dad. 00:41:43.730 --> 00:41:46.490 align:middle line:90% Why did I pick that poem? 00:41:46.490 --> 00:41:48.450 align:middle line:84% They asked me for a poem about being human. 00:41:48.450 --> 00:41:51.200 align:middle line:90% That was the prompt that I got. 00:41:51.200 --> 00:41:53.510 align:middle line:84% And when I thought about that, I thought, well, 00:41:53.510 --> 00:41:55.370 align:middle line:90% what do human beings do? 00:41:55.370 --> 00:41:56.732 align:middle line:90% We tell stories. 00:41:56.732 --> 00:41:59.190 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I thought you were going to say, we watch TV. 00:41:59.190 --> 00:42:00.107 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: We do. 00:42:00.107 --> 00:42:01.945 align:middle line:90% We also watch TV. 00:42:01.945 --> 00:42:03.570 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: But yes, we tell stories. 00:42:03.570 --> 00:42:05.390 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, and we take care 00:42:05.390 --> 00:42:07.250 align:middle line:90% of the vulnerable among us. 00:42:07.250 --> 00:42:08.940 align:middle line:84% Sometimes those are our children. 00:42:08.940 --> 00:42:11.000 align:middle line:84% Sometimes those are people who've been injured. 00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:14.270 align:middle line:84% Sometimes those are our colleagues and collaborators 00:42:14.270 --> 00:42:15.690 align:middle line:90% from the more than human world. 00:42:15.690 --> 00:42:17.390 align:middle line:84% We take care of animals and plants 00:42:17.390 --> 00:42:18.892 align:middle line:90% and the soil beneath our feet. 00:42:18.892 --> 00:42:21.350 align:middle line:84% We're supposed to do that, at least supposed to be stewards 00:42:21.350 --> 00:42:22.560 align:middle line:90% of the planet, I believe. 00:42:22.560 --> 00:42:25.370 align:middle line:84% And so that's what I thought I would bring. 00:42:25.370 --> 00:42:27.620 align:middle line:84% This is one of the first stories my father ever 00:42:27.620 --> 00:42:30.860 align:middle line:84% shared with me, that the cosmos could belong to us too, 00:42:30.860 --> 00:42:34.160 align:middle line:84% that we weren't limited in any way and that sense 00:42:34.160 --> 00:42:35.730 align:middle line:90% of unlimited potential. 00:42:35.730 --> 00:42:40.040 align:middle line:84% I just thought, yeah, this is the core of being human. 00:42:40.040 --> 00:42:43.140 align:middle line:84% And this is what I want to share on this stage, a story 00:42:43.140 --> 00:42:45.270 align:middle line:84% about my dad who is, again, heroic to me, 00:42:45.270 --> 00:42:48.600 align:middle line:84% but also helped run a Bible study for deaf and hearing 00:42:48.600 --> 00:42:51.390 align:middle line:84% people at the post office for decades, 00:42:51.390 --> 00:42:53.605 align:middle line:84% like that theory of social poetics from Mark Nowak. 00:42:53.605 --> 00:42:55.230 align:middle line:84% It's not the first time I'd encountered 00:42:55.230 --> 00:42:56.820 align:middle line:90% that idea necessarily. 00:42:56.820 --> 00:42:59.370 align:middle line:84% That idea lived with me in the forms 00:42:59.370 --> 00:43:01.920 align:middle line:84% that my mother and father and big sister 00:43:01.920 --> 00:43:04.950 align:middle line:90% brought home every day. 00:43:04.950 --> 00:43:08.460 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: To me, it's like the essence of being human 00:43:08.460 --> 00:43:13.630 align:middle line:84% is making these moments together in shared spaces. 00:43:13.630 --> 00:43:17.220 align:middle line:84% And I'm not sure that's anything artificial intelligence 00:43:17.220 --> 00:43:19.050 align:middle line:90% will ever be able to do. 00:43:19.050 --> 00:43:20.718 align:middle line:84% Now that I say that, I'm sure there's-- 00:43:20.718 --> 00:43:21.510 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: No. 00:43:21.510 --> 00:43:23.200 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --an MIT researcher working on that. 00:43:23.200 --> 00:43:24.075 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure. 00:43:24.075 --> 00:43:26.860 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: But it seems like that is the core of being human. 00:43:26.860 --> 00:43:28.770 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah. 00:43:28.770 --> 00:43:31.560 align:middle line:84% And we can also think about why we would want 00:43:31.560 --> 00:43:35.250 align:middle line:90% to outsource that to machines. 00:43:35.250 --> 00:43:36.840 align:middle line:84% It's a curious thing, though, and I 00:43:36.840 --> 00:43:38.548 align:middle line:84% think we really need to sit with the kind 00:43:38.548 --> 00:43:40.770 align:middle line:84% of psychological and emotional impulse that 00:43:40.770 --> 00:43:44.790 align:middle line:84% has led to even the social excitement around the-- 00:43:44.790 --> 00:43:47.640 align:middle line:90% innovation is great, sometimes. 00:43:47.640 --> 00:43:51.760 align:middle line:84% Innovation can also lead to great world-ending destruction, 00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:54.220 align:middle line:84% as we know, as our species knows. 00:43:54.220 --> 00:43:57.180 align:middle line:84% And so I think in the case of AI in particular, 00:43:57.180 --> 00:43:58.830 align:middle line:84% a lot of what I write about is the fact 00:43:58.830 --> 00:44:01.560 align:middle line:84% that large language models are largely 00:44:01.560 --> 00:44:04.170 align:middle line:90% built on stolen material. 00:44:04.170 --> 00:44:07.470 align:middle line:84% They're built on works of visual art and works of literary art 00:44:07.470 --> 00:44:10.050 align:middle line:84% that people have not been compensated for. 00:44:10.050 --> 00:44:11.910 align:middle line:84% And it's very strange to me, the idea 00:44:11.910 --> 00:44:14.020 align:middle line:84% that we can just dance around that problem. 00:44:14.020 --> 00:44:15.520 align:middle line:84% Yes, I have a personal stake in it 00:44:15.520 --> 00:44:17.640 align:middle line:84% because I talked about this at the conference, 00:44:17.640 --> 00:44:20.100 align:middle line:84% that my first book of poetry was used 00:44:20.100 --> 00:44:22.470 align:middle line:84% by Meta to train their large language model, 00:44:22.470 --> 00:44:23.970 align:middle line:90% to change and to train it. 00:44:23.970 --> 00:44:26.380 align:middle line:84% And yeah, I've never seen a cent from that. 00:44:26.380 --> 00:44:27.880 align:middle line:84% There was no acknowledgment of that. 00:44:27.880 --> 00:44:30.180 align:middle line:84% If you didn't use the kind of search tool 00:44:30.180 --> 00:44:32.820 align:middle line:84% in this very important, I think, article that 00:44:32.820 --> 00:44:35.710 align:middle line:84% came out in The Atlantic about this, you wouldn't know that. 00:44:35.710 --> 00:44:38.590 align:middle line:84% But beyond that, James Baldwin's stuff is in there. 00:44:38.590 --> 00:44:40.350 align:middle line:84% Toni Morrison's stuff is in there. 00:44:40.350 --> 00:44:42.630 align:middle line:84% You can look up a number of my friends and colleagues, 00:44:42.630 --> 00:44:44.040 align:middle line:90% and their books are in there. 00:44:44.040 --> 00:44:45.900 align:middle line:84% And that's a certain kind of problem, 00:44:45.900 --> 00:44:48.570 align:middle line:84% in no small part because there are other collaborative 00:44:48.570 --> 00:44:51.000 align:middle line:84% models, where if we're going to train the large language 00:44:51.000 --> 00:44:53.730 align:middle line:84% models, if we're going to help them be, 00:44:53.730 --> 00:44:56.970 align:middle line:84% not sexist, not racist, not cruel, 00:44:56.970 --> 00:44:58.630 align:middle line:84% that's something we can collaborate on. 00:44:58.630 --> 00:44:59.942 align:middle line:90% We can work on that together. 00:44:59.942 --> 00:45:01.150 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: With intention. 00:45:01.150 --> 00:45:03.780 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Sure, with intention, and compensation, 00:45:03.780 --> 00:45:07.440 align:middle line:84% and a desire to revitalize communities, rather than just 00:45:07.440 --> 00:45:09.540 align:middle line:90% replace people's labor power. 00:45:09.540 --> 00:45:14.330 align:middle line:84% It's I guess in part just because of not just the way 00:45:14.330 --> 00:45:17.600 align:middle line:84% I was trained, not just my formal and social education, 00:45:17.600 --> 00:45:20.690 align:middle line:84% but I guess because of my best dreams of the kind of world 00:45:20.690 --> 00:45:21.450 align:middle line:90% I want. 00:45:21.450 --> 00:45:27.500 align:middle line:84% It's not one where we create these powerful machines 00:45:27.500 --> 00:45:29.817 align:middle line:90% based on theft. 00:45:29.817 --> 00:45:31.400 align:middle line:84% It would be one where the machines are 00:45:31.400 --> 00:45:33.080 align:middle line:84% like any other beautiful instrument, 00:45:33.080 --> 00:45:36.380 align:middle line:84% where it's something we've built together to express what we love 00:45:36.380 --> 00:45:38.120 align:middle line:84% and to change what needs to be changed 00:45:38.120 --> 00:45:40.880 align:middle line:84% and to make the world more equitable and wonderful 00:45:40.880 --> 00:45:41.990 align:middle line:90% and just. 00:45:41.990 --> 00:45:43.430 align:middle line:84% And I also think, yeah, of course, 00:45:43.430 --> 00:45:45.350 align:middle line:84% machine learning can be used towards that end. 00:45:45.350 --> 00:45:47.190 align:middle line:84% But we have to be very thoughtful about it. 00:45:47.190 --> 00:45:48.590 align:middle line:90% We have to be dynamic. 00:45:48.590 --> 00:45:51.110 align:middle line:84% And we have to listen and be motivated 00:45:51.110 --> 00:45:53.450 align:middle line:90% by something other than profit. 00:45:53.450 --> 00:45:55.430 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I was just in a class 00:45:55.430 --> 00:45:58.350 align:middle line:84% with a visiting student from Harvard. 00:45:58.350 --> 00:46:01.460 align:middle line:84% She's in art education, and we were studying AI together. 00:46:01.460 --> 00:46:07.970 align:middle line:84% And she was like, it feels like having to constrain or filter 00:46:07.970 --> 00:46:11.940 align:middle line:84% artistic feelings through language to put it into AI 00:46:11.940 --> 00:46:12.607 align:middle line:90% really limits-- 00:46:12.607 --> 00:46:13.440 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yes. 00:46:13.440 --> 00:46:15.190 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --our thinking because she's 00:46:15.190 --> 00:46:16.650 align:middle line:90% like, it's not about the words. 00:46:16.650 --> 00:46:19.230 align:middle line:90% It's about something else. 00:46:19.230 --> 00:46:21.700 align:middle line:84% And I was like, that's so interesting-- 00:46:21.700 --> 00:46:21.930 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, that's exactly it. 00:46:21.930 --> 00:46:23.730 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: --the limitations of the tool, yeah. 00:46:23.730 --> 00:46:24.605 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah. 00:46:24.605 --> 00:46:27.670 align:middle line:90% It's just not what it's for. 00:46:27.670 --> 00:46:31.530 align:middle line:84% There are things that are beyond words, that-- 00:46:31.530 --> 00:46:33.430 align:middle line:90% and again, I love poetry. 00:46:33.430 --> 00:46:35.040 align:middle line:84% I've loved poetry my entire life. 00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:37.930 align:middle line:84% But my sister is a singer, my big sister. 00:46:37.930 --> 00:46:40.920 align:middle line:84% And I've told this story before, not on this podcast, 00:46:40.920 --> 00:46:42.152 align:middle line:90% but elsewhere. 00:46:42.152 --> 00:46:43.860 align:middle line:84% But she would go in the back of our house 00:46:43.860 --> 00:46:46.020 align:middle line:84% and she would practice Whitney Houston songs 00:46:46.020 --> 00:46:49.890 align:middle line:84% because she was trying to find the upper limits of her voice. 00:46:49.890 --> 00:46:51.420 align:middle line:90% She was trying to discover it. 00:46:51.420 --> 00:46:53.130 align:middle line:84% And there's something that I think 00:46:53.130 --> 00:46:56.760 align:middle line:84% is made available by hearing Whitney Houston sing 00:46:56.760 --> 00:47:00.060 align:middle line:84% or hearing my sister sing Whitney Houston that I could not 00:47:00.060 --> 00:47:02.248 align:middle line:84% put down into words easily and would not 00:47:02.248 --> 00:47:04.540 align:middle line:84% even necessarily attempt to because it's not the point. 00:47:04.540 --> 00:47:06.480 align:middle line:84% The point is to be present and feel the thing 00:47:06.480 --> 00:47:08.945 align:middle line:84% and feel gratitude that you were present for the thing. 00:47:08.945 --> 00:47:10.487 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: That's what I'm saying. 00:47:10.487 --> 00:47:11.930 align:middle line:90% Life itself can be the poem. 00:47:11.930 --> 00:47:12.150 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:47:12.150 --> 00:47:13.450 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: You're reading the poem-- 00:47:13.450 --> 00:47:13.990 align:middle line:90% JOSHUA BENNETT: That's right. 00:47:13.990 --> 00:47:14.500 align:middle line:90% That's right. 00:47:14.500 --> 00:47:15.100 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: --in the moment. 00:47:15.100 --> 00:47:16.558 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Yeah, and sometimes 00:47:16.558 --> 00:47:19.560 align:middle line:84% Monk and Coltrane and Mingus are the poem too. 00:47:19.560 --> 00:47:21.720 align:middle line:84% Listening even to music without words 00:47:21.720 --> 00:47:23.410 align:middle line:84% has been so transformative for me, 00:47:23.410 --> 00:47:27.420 align:middle line:84% putting on Tchaikovsky for August when he was just a baby. 00:47:27.420 --> 00:47:31.500 align:middle line:84% And also gibberish and sound come before speech, 00:47:31.500 --> 00:47:32.650 align:middle line:90% even developmentally. 00:47:32.650 --> 00:47:34.920 align:middle line:84% So I think that's something I've learned a lot from, 00:47:34.920 --> 00:47:37.950 align:middle line:84% seeing hip hop artists I like a lot who just stand in front 00:47:37.950 --> 00:47:40.500 align:middle line:84% of the microphone and go da-da-da-uh-an-uh. 00:47:40.500 --> 00:47:42.960 align:middle line:84% And what they're trying to find in the beat 00:47:42.960 --> 00:47:44.710 align:middle line:84% is actually just the pace of the words. 00:47:44.710 --> 00:47:46.230 align:middle line:84% But they don't have the words yet. 00:47:46.230 --> 00:47:48.150 align:middle line:84% But they're creating a kind of architecture 00:47:48.150 --> 00:47:49.830 align:middle line:90% in which the words can live. 00:47:49.830 --> 00:47:53.010 align:middle line:84% And so, yeah, I want us to just think about that a lot more, 00:47:53.010 --> 00:47:56.400 align:middle line:84% about chatter, and nonsense and moments 00:47:56.400 --> 00:47:58.960 align:middle line:84% where there are no legible words. 00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:01.050 align:middle line:90% What do we feel in those spaces? 00:48:01.050 --> 00:48:05.040 align:middle line:84% And what do those tools make possible for us? 00:48:05.040 --> 00:48:06.540 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: Is there anything else 00:48:06.540 --> 00:48:11.430 align:middle line:84% you wanted to add about poetry, or teaching, or activism 00:48:11.430 --> 00:48:13.807 align:middle line:84% in the community that we didn't touch on? 00:48:13.807 --> 00:48:16.140 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: I've had great teachers my whole life, I 00:48:16.140 --> 00:48:18.180 align:middle line:84% guess is something I want to say, 00:48:18.180 --> 00:48:22.290 align:middle line:84% whether it's Ms. Quinn in the second grade who used to carry 00:48:22.290 --> 00:48:25.890 align:middle line:90% my report cards in her purse. 00:48:25.890 --> 00:48:27.870 align:middle line:84% On paper, it couldn't be more different. 00:48:27.870 --> 00:48:30.450 align:middle line:84% You would not necessarily look at a picture of a-- 00:48:30.450 --> 00:48:32.070 align:middle line:84% I believe her name was Olivia Quinn. 00:48:32.070 --> 00:48:34.560 align:middle line:84% You look at a picture of Ms. Quinn and look at me 00:48:34.560 --> 00:48:38.100 align:middle line:84% and say, yeah, she's going to really 00:48:38.100 --> 00:48:40.020 align:middle line:84% have a connection with that seven-year-old boy 00:48:40.020 --> 00:48:43.425 align:middle line:84% and inspire him to be deeply invested in his education. 00:48:43.425 --> 00:48:45.300 align:middle line:84% I think part of why this is really resonating 00:48:45.300 --> 00:48:48.910 align:middle line:90% for me is my son's teachers. 00:48:48.910 --> 00:48:51.580 align:middle line:84% I really appreciate them because I 00:48:51.580 --> 00:48:54.700 align:middle line:84% think they know August is a human being. 00:48:54.700 --> 00:48:58.010 align:middle line:84% And he has the freedom to be that way in the classroom. 00:48:58.010 --> 00:49:01.000 align:middle line:84% And I think for many of us, for so many 00:49:01.000 --> 00:49:03.160 align:middle line:84% of us, in ways I did not appreciate 00:49:03.160 --> 00:49:07.630 align:middle line:84% until I became an educator, the classroom is a battleground. 00:49:07.630 --> 00:49:10.790 align:middle line:84% The classroom is a traumatic space for many people. 00:49:10.790 --> 00:49:14.740 align:middle line:84% School is not fun, in not only in the ways 00:49:14.740 --> 00:49:16.750 align:middle line:84% that school is not fun for almost all of us. 00:49:16.750 --> 00:49:20.560 align:middle line:84% School is a place that does real violence to a lot of people. 00:49:20.560 --> 00:49:22.540 align:middle line:90% And that was not my experience. 00:49:22.540 --> 00:49:24.400 align:middle line:84% And it was not my experience in part 00:49:24.400 --> 00:49:27.040 align:middle line:84% because I had teachers that really looked after me 00:49:27.040 --> 00:49:28.720 align:middle line:90% and took care of me. 00:49:28.720 --> 00:49:29.530 align:middle line:90% So it was her. 00:49:29.530 --> 00:49:33.610 align:middle line:84% It was Ms. Iandoli when I was in fourth grade, Ms. McCormick, Ms. 00:49:33.610 --> 00:49:35.720 align:middle line:84% Sims, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ms. Sims, 00:49:35.720 --> 00:49:38.710 align:middle line:84% my 10th grade English teacher, who had a room full of Black 00:49:38.710 --> 00:49:41.680 align:middle line:84% students at an elite private school and helped all of us get 00:49:41.680 --> 00:49:45.910 align:middle line:84% into Honors and AP eventually, programs that in my high school 00:49:45.910 --> 00:49:49.650 align:middle line:84% at the time, there were no Black kids at that moment on AP track. 00:49:49.650 --> 00:49:54.050 align:middle line:84% And when we graduated, I think we went to Yale, Yale, Harvard, 00:49:54.050 --> 00:49:55.820 align:middle line:90% Harvard, and Penn. 00:49:55.820 --> 00:49:58.700 align:middle line:84% And Ms. Sims helped set us in that direction. 00:49:58.700 --> 00:50:01.820 align:middle line:84% Two of us were the graduation speakers, at those schools, 00:50:01.820 --> 00:50:03.630 align:middle line:90% and so shout out to Chiamaka. 00:50:03.630 --> 00:50:05.870 align:middle line:84% She was the graduation speaker at Harvard the year 00:50:05.870 --> 00:50:07.400 align:middle line:84% I gave the graduation speech at Penn 00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:10.140 align:middle line:84% and I believe was the first Black student to ever do that. 00:50:10.140 --> 00:50:12.020 align:middle line:84% And that was possible in large part 00:50:12.020 --> 00:50:14.420 align:middle line:84% because I had great teachers who looked after me 00:50:14.420 --> 00:50:17.300 align:middle line:84% and believed that what they were doing wasn't art because it is. 00:50:17.300 --> 00:50:18.050 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Yes. 00:50:18.050 --> 00:50:19.560 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Teaching is an art-- 00:50:19.560 --> 00:50:19.820 align:middle line:90% SARAH HANSEN: Yes. 00:50:19.820 --> 00:50:22.445 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: --that has the capacity to transform the world. 00:50:22.445 --> 00:50:24.410 align:middle line:84% So I hope in this country, in this moment, 00:50:24.410 --> 00:50:27.110 align:middle line:84% we can invest in teachers, materially, 00:50:27.110 --> 00:50:29.540 align:middle line:84% can materially invest in teacher training programs, 00:50:29.540 --> 00:50:33.320 align:middle line:84% that we can socially invest in making sure people know 00:50:33.320 --> 00:50:37.580 align:middle line:84% that it's a profession that's worthy of respect and honor 00:50:37.580 --> 00:50:41.060 align:middle line:84% so that we can continue to build it up and strengthen it. 00:50:41.060 --> 00:50:42.560 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: I couldn't agree more. 00:50:42.560 --> 00:50:43.885 align:middle line:90% Thank you so much, Joshua. 00:50:43.885 --> 00:50:44.160 align:middle line:90% It's been a pleasure. 00:50:44.160 --> 00:50:46.118 align:middle line:84% JOSHUA BENNETT: Thank you for having me, Sarah. 00:50:46.118 --> 00:50:48.890 align:middle line:90% I appreciate it a lot. 00:50:48.890 --> 00:50:51.590 align:middle line:84% SARAH HANSEN: That was Dr. Joshua Bennett, Professor 00:50:51.590 --> 00:50:54.200 align:middle line:84% of Literature and distinguished Chair of the Humanities 00:50:54.200 --> 00:50:55.400 align:middle line:90% here at MIT. 00:50:55.400 --> 00:50:57.950 align:middle line:84% You'll soon be able to find course materials 00:50:57.950 --> 00:51:01.460 align:middle line:84% for Reading Poetry, Social Poetics on our MIT 00:51:01.460 --> 00:51:03.320 align:middle line:90% OpenCourseWare website. 00:51:03.320 --> 00:51:05.810 align:middle line:84% As always, they are openly licensed, 00:51:05.810 --> 00:51:09.800 align:middle line:84% so you can reuse and remix them in your own teaching. 00:51:09.800 --> 00:51:12.200 align:middle line:84% You can help others find the materials too 00:51:12.200 --> 00:51:14.750 align:middle line:84% by subscribing to the podcast and leaving us 00:51:14.750 --> 00:51:16.670 align:middle line:90% a rating and review. 00:51:16.670 --> 00:51:18.950 align:middle line:90% Thank you so much for listening. 00:51:18.950 --> 00:51:22.710 align:middle line:84% Until next time, signing off from Cambridge, Massachusetts, 00:51:22.710 --> 00:51:28.660 align:middle line:84% I'm your host, Sarah Hansen from MIT OpenCourseWare. 00:51:28.660 --> 00:51:32.060 align:middle line:84% MIT Chalk Radio's producers include myself, Brett Paci, 00:51:32.060 --> 00:51:33.770 align:middle line:90% and Dave Lishansky. 00:51:33.770 --> 00:51:37.170 align:middle line:84% The show notes for this episode were written by Peter Chipman. 00:51:37.170 --> 00:51:40.370 align:middle line:84% Cathleen Nalezyty built the course on our website. 00:51:40.370 --> 00:51:42.980 align:middle line:84% Jason Player created our cassette tape animation 00:51:42.980 --> 00:51:43.850 align:middle line:90% on YouTube. 00:51:43.850 --> 00:51:46.820 align:middle line:84% We're funded by MIT Open Learning and supporters 00:51:46.820 --> 00:51:47.450 align:middle line:90% like you. 00:51:47.450 --> 00:51:50.500 align:middle line:90% [MUSIC PLAYING] 00:51:50.500 --> 00:51:57.000 align:middle line:90%