Poetry Centered

Samuel Ace: Rage, Complicity, and the True Nature of Amends

• University of Arizona Poetry Center • Episode 52

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Samuel Ace introduces poems that speak to today with raw honesty, truthfulness, and bravery. He shares Angel Dominguez wrestling with atrocity and empathy (“Dear Diego, Tell me what you know of stars”), Ilya Kaminsky braiding complicity with grief for the future (“In a Time of Peace”), and Layli Long Soldier drawing us into the meaning of apology (“WHEREAS I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze”). Ace closes with a sound rendering of his poem “These Nights,” which considers acts of beauty amidst institutional violence.

Watch the full recordings by Dominguez, Kaminsky, and Long Soldier on Voca:

Angel Dominguez (August 23, 2023)
Ilya Kaminsky (January 23, 2025)
Layli Long Soldier (November 2, 2017)

You can also enjoy a recording of Ace reading for the Poetry Center in 2013.

Full transcripts of every episode are available on Buzzsprout. Look for the transcript tab under each episode.

Voca is now fully captioned, with interactive transcripts and captions available for all readings! Read more about the project here, or try out this new feature by visiting Voca.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON:

This is Poetry Centered, the podcast that brings you three poems from the archive, hand-picked by a poet. The archive in question is Voca, a collection of over 1,000 recordings from the University of Arizona Poetry Center. In each episode, we invite a guest host to dive into the archive and introduce you to three recordings that they love. That host then closes with a poem of their own. I'm Julie Swarstad Johnson here to welcome you on behalf of the Poetry Center. Today we welcome poet, writer, and sound artist Samuel Ace to the show. Samuel is the author of numerous books and chapbooks, 12 if I counted correctly. His two most recent are I Want to Start by Saying, which came out last year, and Portals, a collaboration with the late Maureen Seaton, which just came out recently. Samuel lived in Tucson for many years and was very familiar with Voca before working on this episode. But today, you'll hear him approach the archive from the present, looking at it as a trans poet confronted by the current political and social realities of life in the United States. He chooses recordings by Angel Dominguez, Ilya Kaminsky, and Layli Long Soldier following a thread of raw honesty, truthfulness, and bravery through the archive. At the episode's end, were treated to a sound piece based on Samuel's poem,"These Nights." Samuel, welcome back to Voca. Thank you so much for being our guide today.[MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMUEL ACE:

This is Samuel Ace. Today I'm recording from Atlanta, Georgia, ancestral lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee, and where I am a relative newcomer here in the midst of what has been a somewhat nomadic life. I write as a poet, a trans poet, living in these times of connection and attack. Browsing through the Voca archive, I found it extremely difficult to choose three poems. So many readings and poems that I may have chosen a few years ago left me in need of something else today. For today, as I record this podcast, we are in the fourth month of a growing autocracy that sprouts new branches of erasure, capital greed, and terror on top of the deep roots of those elements of play since the first European colonies arrived on these shores. When browsing the archive, I first thought about sound. What today do I need from the physical sound of a poem in the air? The bravery and the resonance of what the voice, the performance of hearing the spoken poem at a reading or in the archive. Then I thought about the archive itself, and the relationship of archive and memory to the poem in the present. I was drawn to the epistolary, the direct address, loving or vengeful, addressed to a listener or to oneself. Then I thought about genre, the plasticity the poem brings in the air or on the page, like gender, a kind of bulge, then a crossing at the site of any border or form. All of this and more, but my heart seemed to need in these times of rawness, a confrontation, rage even. And it needed a recognition of the human, the honesty in any true amends and an acknowledgment of our human complicity, bravery, and grief. So I kept listening, remembering what my body experienced at so many of the readings I was fortunate to attend over my many years in Tucson at the Poetry Center. Voca is a glorious accumulation of voices, a deep treasure resonating in a space so familiar to me, my Tucson, the gentleness of the air on an early spring night at the Poetry Center, glass doors open to the courtyard. I've reluctantly, in that I would have liked to include so many more, chosen three poems that contain many of the overlapping energies I've laid out above. Most of all, they are what I need to hear and think about today toward the end of April 2025. The first poem I've chosen is "Dear Diego, tell me what you know of stars" from Angel Dominguez reading at the Poetry Center on August 3, 2023. I was fortunate to hear many of the poems in Desgraciado, the Collected Letters, by Angel Dominguez years ago when they were first being written. I often think of writing and the speaking of certain poems as a digging, an actual physical excavation in which meaning reveals itself to the writer as they write. In such poems, I envision the speaker pounding the earth to reveal a deeper, more nuanced truth wherein the maker of the poem physically tries to understand a reality that is so confounding or complex that it needs a mattock or an ax to get at it. For me, this is Angel writing the letters in Desgraciado. Angel tells us in their introduction that these are love letters, begun with a prompt first given to him by Farid Matuk. That prompt to write a letter to one's worst enemy became Desgraciado, where Angel writes a letter after letter to Diego de Landa, the 16th century Spanish friar most responsible for the violent destruction of the Yucatec Maya language and culture. I hear the epistolary poem,"Tell me what you know of stars," as a plea for answers, an entreaty for understanding how another human being can act with such depraved cruelty and evil against everything that the interlocutor knows about being human. Is de Landa human or not? Does he have a conscience? What is this kind of faith? What is it to actually be human? Tell me what you know, repeats over and over a call for an explanation out of disbelief. Do you know, as a question, also repeats, both phrases anaphora as demand an interrogation. Repetition is holy, Nikky Finney has famously told us. The refrains become a keening, a funeral song, lament, elegy, the poet crying out for confirmation that in the end, there remains something human after all. They reveal the deepest wounds of the poet's being, their ancestry, the internalized savageries that have become tethered to them, the violent erasures and absences that most likely will never be answered beyond the walls of biased histories and mass indifference. Angel's inquiries echo my own bewilderment at understanding how empathy and human connection can exist at the same time as depraved cruelty enacted on children, other humans, all beings in the earth, through starvation, torture, environmental poisoning, bombings, ruin. It baffles me and breaks every part of my heart. The last line of the poem, tell me that you love me, seems to lean toward redemption, perhaps some kind of restored faith. But the ultimate demands and questions remain unanswered. To witness cruelty beyond cruelty is unbearable."Tell me," Angel says, "tell me. Reveal yourself and don't walk away. Tell me that you are human. Tell me that you see me. Tell me that you love me." Here is Angel Dominguez reading "Dear Diego, tell me what you know of stars."[MUSIC PLAYING][BEGIN PLAYBACK]

ANGEL DOMINGUEZ:

I might read another letter or two, if that's OK with y'all. Just kidding. You have no choice. Dear Diego, tell me what you know of stars. Tell me what you know of living. Tell me what you believe in your heart to be the truth. Do you think about us when you're lonely? Do you know what it means to be lonely in every language you speak? Do you know what it means to be lonely in tongues that have vanished or been burned away before you could speak? Do you know how many conquistadors it takes to ruin my day? Do you know how many bibles I have owned and lost and kept and thrown out? Do you know how many churches and citadels I've wept and pissed in? Do you know how many I've seen baptized? Do you know how many prayers I speak? Do you know what it is you've done to me? Tell me what you know of departure? Tell me what you know of ruin? Tell me what you really mean? Do you know how many times have passed since your time? Do you know how many colonizers it takes to ruin my day? Do you know how many have died? Do you know how to get to heaven? Do you know the road to El Dorado? Do you have any change? Do you have a chance? Do you speak American? Do you hide your heart like a reef? Do you dream of many dreams? Do you recognize the pain in my childhood screams? Do you want to be the parent? Do you want to hold these shuddering shoulders until the earthquake hits? Do you know how to save a life? Do you know how to write? Do you know what time it is? Do you know how to come back home? Do you know what this is anymore? Tell me the truth. Tell me everything about you. Tell me why you did it. Tell me why you didn't. Tell me everything. Do you remember? Do you think about the downfall? Do you think about the darkness? Do you think about the blood? Do you think about the sun? Do you think about the ripples across reality? Do you think about the way out? Do you think about my eyes? Do you think about the sky? Do you think about the violence? Do you think about the heat? Do you think about the boat? Do you think about the screams? Do you think about the lies? Do you think about the water? Do you dream about me? Do you even care? Do you want to make it better? Do you want to make it out alive? Do you want to be alive? Do you care if I die? Do you care if we all die? Do you? Tell me what you know about the end. Tell me what you know about oblivion. Tell me what you know about the truth beyond you. Tell me what you know of the moon. Tell me you love me, please.[END PLAYBACK][MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMUEL ACE:

The next poem I've chosen is "In a Time of Peace," from Ilya Kaminsky's reading at the Poetry Center on January 23, 2025. Two weeks ago, I had the privilege to attend a conference sponsored by a public university at which I spoke on a panel comprised of two other trans poet friends whose work and presence in the world I love. The panel and the entire conference was inspiring, bringing together a diverse group of writers and artists to share about recovery from substance abuse and how that recovery, among other transformations, has affected their lives and their work. I felt so much gratitude for them, my fellow conference attendees, and the resources the college had provided to bring us all together in support of the arts, reform movements, incarcerated individuals, and the freedom gained in recovery from substance abuse. We talked, laughed, shared challenges, work, pain and joys, enjoyed the mild weather and blossoms of an early spring. In many ways, we were living, quote, "happily during the war," as Ilya Kaminsky states in the opening poem of his 2019 collection Deaf Republic. But also during those two days, I often looked up at the new contemporary Fine Arts building that housed us. And like an invisible rip current, I found myself wondering exactly when, given the current actions of the government, those resources might dry up. Will this conference even be a possibility in the coming years? Would we be free to gather from far flung parts of the world to have the conversations we were having, the shared joy of connection? The great question at the heart of Deaf Republic is the misalignment of life, seemingly lived and loved well, or just simply lived, when, at the same time, the deadly forces of fascism and control are at play."In a Time of Peace" ends Deaf Republic. In this poem, the collection goes from parable to the personal. In performance, Ilya chants his poems. Declarations are bracketed by pauses, whispers, and silences. The music of the performance never separates from meaning. Here the poet speaks of what we all do, listing our daily actions as we live in a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement for hours. For me, the quiet repetition of "it is a peaceful country" carries the same yearning force as Angel's direct and piercing pleas to de Landa, an acknowledgment of the coexisting realities that so often defy our human understanding. Let's now hear Ilya Kaminsky reading "In a Time of Peace."[MUSIC PLAYING][BEGIN PLAYBACK]

ILYA KAMINSKY:

All right. I'll just read one more poem before I get out of your hair. And Katie Farris, who is a far more superior poet-- in my family, for sure-- will make your life much more interesting. This one will bring things a lot closer home. It's called "In a Time of Peace," "In a Time of Peace." And thank you all for being here. Inhabitant of Earth for 40 something years I once found myself in a peaceful country. I watched neighbors open their phones to watch a cop demanding a man's driver's license and when the man reaches for his wallet, the cop shoots. Into the car window. shoots. It's a peaceful country. We pocket our phones and go. To the dentist, to pick up the kids from school, to buy shampoo and basil. Ours is a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement for hours. We see in his open mouth the nakedness of the whole nation. We watch. Watch others watch. The body of a boy lies on the pavement exactly like the body of a boy. It is a peaceful country. And it clips our citizens' bodies effortlessly, the way the President's wife trims her toenails. All of us still have to do the hard work of dentist appointments, of remembering to make a summer salad, basil, tomatoes, it is a joy, tomatoes, and a little salt. This is a time of peace. I don't hear gunshots, but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is the sky as the avenue spins on its axis. How bright is the sky, forgive me, how bright. Thank you.[APPLAUSE] [END PLAYBACK][MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMUEL ACE:

Last I've chosen the poem,"Whereas I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze," from Layli Long Soldier's reading at the Poetry Center on November 2, 2017. It may seem strange, in the context of the previous two poems, to speak about apology. How can there be apology in the face of destruction, murder, erasure, and complicity? In her book, Whereas, Layli Long Soldier speaks to what a true amends might look like in the face of irreparable harm, amends not by those who are harmed, but by those who did the harm and by those who were complicit and allowed it to happen. For many years, I've been thinking and teaching Layli's poem, "Whereas I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze." I best encounter this piece ending in a semicolon as the fifth stanza, near the beginning of what I think of as a 40-page poem in three sections, the first being the whereas statements followed next by resolutions, then, finally, the one-page disclaimer. Each section loosely follows the form of the 2009 congressional resolution of apology to Native Americans. The vocal recording of Layli's reading is somewhat muffled, but the corrective "whereas" at the beginning of each page stanza serves as an anaphoric bell, a portal waking the reader to a complex, truth-seeking examination of what it means to actually make amends to a people, a civilization, or to an individual family member. The poem describes a breakfast with the poet's now sober father, and the father's attempt to find words to apologize for the pain he enacted on his family. This poem is as much about the poet as it is about the father. In it, the poet describes the terror of a childhood afflicted by absence and fear. Quote, "and because language is the immaterial, I never could speak about the missing so perhaps I cried for the invisible, what I could not see, doubly. What is it to wish for the absence of nothing?" The poem goes on to witness her father's apology, given through his tears, perhaps in recognition of the loss of something that could never be retrieved. But the felt apology was the, quote, "curative voicing," an open bundle or medicine that prevails over the poet's, quote,"lifelong stare down" because of centuries in sorry. Like much of the book, that ending brings the personal into conversation with the extreme violence and erasure perpetrated by the United States against Indigenous peoples, in contrast to the empty general and bureaucratic language of the so-called official apology. This piece is one of the most personal stories in the sequence. It witnesses a simple, heartbroken apology, given freely and without erasure, an apology that results in an outcome in which both the father and the poet are changed. The father acknowledges and, perhaps more importantly, feels the pain that has been caused. The poet, listening to him, no longer flees or shuts him out. In some ways, they both do the work that Angel Dominguez cries for. That is, a clear acknowledgment by the perpetrator of the lifelong, centuries-long effects of hurt, violence, even murder, caused by horrific acts of erasure. Layli's poem is a recognition not only of those harmful acts, but shows the father actually feeling them, and thus somehow he becomes as human as the people he harmed, no longer seeing them as nothing or objects to be acted upon and disposed of. The poet's reaction is, of course, not always the outcome of an amends, no matter how deeply felt. But here, the expressed heartbreak behind this specific apology opens the possibility of recognition and renewed human connection, the answer to the "tell me that you love me" that Angel and Ilya demand. Here is Layli Long Soldier reading "Whereas I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze."[MUSIC PLAYING][BEGIN PLAYBACK]

LAYLI LONG SOLDIER:

Whereas I heard a noise I thought was a sneeze. At the breakfast table pushing eggs around my plate I wondered if he liked my cooking, thought about what to talk about. He pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes. He wiped. I often say he was a terrible drinker when I was a child. I'm not afraid to say it because he's different now, sober, attentive, showered, eating. But in my childhood, when things were different, I rolled onto my side, my hands together as if to pray, locked between my knees. When things were different I lay there for long hours, my face to the wall, blank. My eyes left me, my soldiers, my two scouts to the unseen. And because language is the immaterial I never could speak about the missing so perhaps I cried for the invisible, what I could not see, doubly. What is it to wish for the absence of nothing? There at the breakfast table as an adult, wondering what to talk about, if he liked my cooking, pushing the invisible to the plate's edge I looked up to see he hadn't sneezed, he was crying. I'd never heard him cry, didn't recognize the symptoms. I turned to him when I heard him say, I'm sorry I wasn't there sorry for many things, like that curative voicing an opened bundle or medicine or birthday wishing my hand to his shoulder. It's OK, I said it's over now. I meant it because of our faces blankly, because of a lifelong stare down, because of centuries in sorry.[END PLAYBACK][MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMUEL ACE:

The poem I've chosen to read is "These Nights" from my 2019 collection Our Weather Our Sea. I wrote the poem during the aftermath of the 2016 election. In the poem, I contrast my nightly love for my partner with one possible outcome of my worst fears. As with the poems I've chosen to highlight in this episode,"These Nights" contrasts the concurrent existence of beauty and connection with acts of institutional brutality. Looking back at the poem today, I ask myself if these thoughts are imagined, prescient, or simply real. Is there a difference? The imagined outcomes in the poem are and have been real for so many throughout history, and they are currently more than real for many, many more. My poem does not end in redemption, just in the reality that love and gratitude can exist at the same time as pain and ruthless indifference. I follow the reading of the poem with a sound piece that treats the text of the poem as a kind of instrument, composed in tandem with other instrumentals. My sound work comes out of a desire to create a more physical iteration of the text, beyond its spoken presence or its existence on the printed page. I also want to add that, as we heard in Layli's poem, with an honest scrutiny of the past, combined with repair, resistance, reparation, and true amends, a more loving and humane world might actually be possible. These nights, I've left the door open to the vision coming through the dark, his arms filter through the flowered ceiling, unsealed from the jeweled tree in the window. His organ hurtles through the air into the pond, where I search for a mirror and some softer chalk, a surface so pliable so dug and raw that the baby's breathy touch, the wind, some creosote so faint begs the otter to swim on this, my first and last day. But it's early morning in someone else's house. Out the window a New England dawn mist on the green and turquoise bed, the sound of feet upstairs, then a rush of cold air, a walk down the stairs, a winter relationship, or a pact of privacy before the lights come on. What's left is the result of criminals, the orange of rendering some thready hope that the white man lost, but he did not lose. Could it not be night again? A boy, his beard, his hat, the only orange intact inside our bed. Our hold heading down as if it were a normal day, when our viewing habits were not caught public on the street, How did they know? Did I somehow tip them off? First, they took my sweater, then the card with his name. When stumbling, they marched us down the long hall building to a cell, the blood fountain, where soon I even lost the ocean smell of wind in the after-rot rushing from the open doors of trains. Now we will hear the sound version of "These Nights." I've left the door open to the vision coming through the dark His arms filter through the flowered ceiling Unsealed from the jeweled tree in the window His organ hurtles through the air into the pond-- I've left the door open to the vision coming through the dark Where I search for a mirror and some softer chalk A surface so pliable so dug and raw that the baby's breathy touch The wind, some creosote so faint begs the otter to swim on this my first and last day I left the door open to the vision coming through the dark But it's early morning in someone else's house His arms filter through the flowered ceiling Out the window a New England dawn His organ hurtles through the air into the pond Mist on the green and turquoise bed The pound of feet upstairs Where I search for a mirror and some softer chalk Then a rush of cold air A walk down the stairs A surface so pliable So dug and raw that the baby's breathy touch A winter relationship or a pact of privacy before the lights come on Some creosote so faint What's left is the result of criminals The orange a rendering some thready hope[SYNTH CHORDS BEGIN] that the white man lost But he did not lose But it's early morning His organ hurtles through the air into the pond In someone else's house Out the window a New England dawn Mist on the green and turquoise bed, A surface so pliable so dug and raw The pound of feet upstairs then a rush of cold air, A walk down the stairs A winter relationship or a pact of privacy before the lights come on What's left is the result of criminals The orange is a rendering Some thready hope that the white man lost but he did not lose unsealed from the jeweled tree in the window Could it not be night again? I've left the door open to the vision coming through the window A boy his beard his hat the only orange intact inside our bed His arms filter through the flowered ceiling Our hold heading down as if it were a normal day When our viewing habits were not caught public on the street I've left the door open How did they know? To the vision coming through the dark Did I somehow tip them off? First they took my sweater Could it not be night again? Then the card with his name When stumbling they marched us down the long-halled building to a cell A boy his beard his hat the only orange intact inside our bed The blood fountain, where soon I even lost the ocean smell of wind When our viewing habits were not caught public on the street In the afer-rot rushing How did they know? From the open doors of trains Did I somehow tip them off? Where I search for a mirror and some softer chalk First, they took my sweater then the card with his name When stumbling they marched us down the long-halled building to a cell The blood fountain where soon I even lost the ocean smell of wind In the after-rot, rushing from the open doors of trains I've left the door open to the vision coming through the dark. His arms filter through the flowered ceiling Unsealed from the jeweled tree in the window I've left the door open to the vision coming through the dark.[SYNTH MUSIC][SYNTH MUSIC FADES][THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON:

You've been listening to Samuel Ace, and this is Poetry Centered. Samuel, thank you so much for sharing your insights and especially your sound work. I loved hearing "These Nights" in a new way. Listeners, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. We have three more episodes coming up for you, with hosts Dawn Lundy Martin, Samyak Shertok and in just two weeks, Leila Shatti. Thanks again. We'll see you soon.

ARIA PAHARI:

Poetry Centered is a project of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, home to a world-class library collection of more than 80,000 items related to contemporary poetry in English and English translation. Located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, the Poetry Center Library and Buildings are housed on the Indigenous homelands of the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui. Poetry Centered is the work of Aria Pahari-- that's me-- and Julie Swarstad Johnson. Explore Voca, the Poetry Center's audio-visual archive, online at voca.arizona.edu.