Poetry Centered

Samyak Shertok: Conjure What Was Never There Before

• University of Arizona Poetry Center • Episode 55

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Samyak Shertok curates poems that shift between image and narrative, between sound, silence, and simile as they create something wholly new. He introduces Joy Harjo testing the line between being an eyewitness and witnessing to (“Deer Dancer”), Li-Young Lee looking for the beloved everywhere (“Echo and Shadow”), and John Murillo braiding a complex tapestry from memory and remembering (“Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,”). To close, Shertok invites us to walk through the portals of his poem “One Hundred and Eight Doors.”

You can find the full recordings of Harjo, Lee, and Murillo on Voca:
Joy Harjo (September 16, 1987)
Li-Young Lee (September 10, 2003)
John Murillo (March 14, 2024)

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, where we linger in the space between a poem being spoken and a poem being heard. Poetry Centered comes to you from the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and the poets voices you'll hear come from Voca, our collection of poetry readings given at the center between 1963 and today. I'm Julie Swarstad Johnson here to welcome you. Our host for today's episode is poet Samyak Shertok. His first collection, titled No Rhododendron, just came out yesterday, so check it out. You'll hear a poem from No Rhododendron at the end of this episode. Samyak teaches creative writing at Mississippi State University. In today's episode, we'll hear Samyak introduce poems by Joy Harjo, Li-Young Lee, and John Murillo. Samyak draws our attention to braided images, sounds, silences, narratives and similes, all of which remind us of the creative, creating work of a poem. Samyak, thanks so much for being here, and welcome to the show.

SAMYAK SHERTOK:

Hello and phyaphulla. My name is Samyak Shertok. I was born and raised in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, where I feasted on rhododendrons and danced with fireflies. I am recording this in Starkville, Mississippi. The first poem I would like to share is "Deer Dancer" by Joy Harjo, recorded on September 16, 1987. Every once in a while, we come across a being who at once feels larger than life, yet is deeply rooted to the Earth. Someone who has experienced the world and deeply, whose life seems connected to many other lives, many generations whose words contain lived truths that are also timeless and universal, a poet prophet. For me, Joy Harjo is one such soul. I also feel the rare grace, beauty and compassion when I read her works. A few years back, I had the honor of meeting her and reading with her at Auburn University, an experience I'll always cherish. In her introduction to "She Had Some Horses", Harjo writes,"like most poets, I don't really know what my poems mean exactly. That's not the point. It never was the point. I'm aware of stepping into a force field or dream field of language, of sound. I'm engaged by the music, by the dream. And I go until the poem and I find each other", unquote. Keats's negative capability comes to mind. I often think of the phrase until the poem, and I find each other as though the poem is also searching for the poet, as much as the poet is looking for the poem. I wonder what happens when they finally meet, magic, a quiet miracle that only a handful of people can witness. And what happens if they never meet, the poem and the poet."Deer Dancer" to me is driven less by the force field of music and more by the juxtaposed dream fields of the myth and the great, enticing and competing anecdotes, shifting voices between the individual and the collective, Intergenerational trauma and resilience, the real and imagined, entangled desires and loss and grief. The braid of the ancestor and the child, the animal and the human. It weaves so many threads that each rereading reveals a new connection in the tapestry. The imagery reminds me of nesting dolls. Quote, "the woman inside the woman was to dance naked in the bar of misfits' blue deer magic", unquote. The woman inside could be the deer ancestor, or the tribal spirit that dwells inside the woman at the bar and inside the ancestral figure, the animal spirit. This layering is also echoed later in the middle of the poem. Quote, "I had to tell you this for the baby inside the girl sealed up with a lick of hope and swimming into the praise of nations", unquote. Here, the ambiguous you and the necessity of storytelling for the speaker are intriguing. And at the end of the poem, quote,"the deer who entered our dream in white dawn, her fawn a blessing of meat, The ancestors who never left", unquote. Similar nesting happens in the song a stranger dances to, "Lucille," which also takes place at a bar and recounts the story of another woman. The shifts from the collective to the individual voices, different individuals, including the poets at the end of the poem, creates another layered motif, as though all the voices are contained in one tribal mouth. Now, the turn, toward the end of the poem, the speaker simply announces, quote, "the music ended and so does this story. I wasn't there, but I imagined her like this", unquote. To seamlessly move between the collective and the individual throughout the poem is already challenging. But then for this speaker to say she was actually never there is one hell of a volta. It raises several questions. What does it mean not to be somewhere? In your introduction, Joy shares that these anecdotes were told to her at the bar. So what's the line between witnessing and eyewitness accounts, between others memories and our imagination. And isn't one of the works of poetry to conjure something that was never there before? If Keats's "Ode to A Nightingale" embodies ambiguity, the Harjo's "Deer Dancer" manifests mystery, and the fact that we're reading the poem now means the music, as a matter of fact, did not end. The story of ruins and beauty and empty lover and misfits in feast has been blessed into us, and now it's up to us to keep it alive. Here's Joy Harjo reading "Deer Dancer."[MUSIC PLAYING][BEGIN PLAYBACK]

JOY HARJO:

This next poem is called "Deer Dancer." And I wanted to do something with this story for a long time, and I still don't think the story-- I think there's still more to go in the story, but the poem, I think, is pretty much done. And it was a story that I was told in an Indian bar up in Milwaukee, that what had happened, I guess, one Monday-- it was probably a Monday night, and it was even cold for the people there. And it's just a few guys there, a few holdovers, the guys that will still be there when the bar is long gone. And they said, this beautiful woman came in one night, just her beauty was like nothing that they had ever seen before. And they could figure out-- they thought they knew what tribe she was, and they were trying to figure out what family. And all the eyes were on her. And she walked over and bought a drink. And then she went over and put a quarter in the jukebox and went and played of all songs, that song, "Lucille", you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille, and then got up on one of the tables and took her clothes off to the song. Well, I guess then what happened, the guys all ran over and put a ton of quarters in the jukebox and punch--[LAUGHTER]--punched in "Lucille". But I don't know what happened after that. But I've always wondered about that woman, and what had happened and why she had come in and put that particular song on. And I don't think that no one ever saw her after that."Deer Dancer. Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the hardcore. It was the coldest night of the year. Every place shut down, but not us. Of course, we noticed when she came in. We were Indian ruins. She was the end of beauty. No one knew her. The stranger whose tribe we recognized. Her family related to deer, if that's who she was, a people accustomed to hearing songs and pine trees and making them hearts. The woman inside the woman who was to dance naked in the bar of misfits' blue deer magic. Henry Jack could not survive a sober day thought-- who could not survive a sober day thought she was Buffalo Calf Woman come back, passed out, his head by the toilet. All night, he dreamed a dream he couldn't say. The next day he borrowed money, went home, and sent back the money I lent. Now that's a miracle. Some people see vision in a burned tortilla, some in the face of a woman. This is the bar of broken survivors, the club of shotgun, knife wound, of poisoned by culture. We who were taught not to stare, drank our beer. The players gossip down their cues. Someone put a quarter in the jukebox to relive despair. Richard's wife dove to kill her. We had to hold her back, empty her pocket of knives and diaper pins, buy her two drinks to keep her still while Richard secretly bought the beauty a drink. How do I say it? In this language, there are no words for how the real world collapses. I could say it in my own. And the sacred mounds would come into focus, but I couldn't take it in this dingy envelope. So I look at the stars in this strange city, frozen to the back of the sky. The only promises that ever make sense. My brother-in-law hung out with white people, went to law school with a perfect record, quit. He says you can keep your laws, your words, and practice law in the street with his hands. He jimmied to the proverbial dream girl, the face of the moon, while the players racked in you game. Bragged, he told her magic lines. And that's when she broke became human. But we all heard his bar voice crack. What's a girl like you doing in a place like this? That's what I'd like to know. What are we all doing in a place like this. You would know she could hear only what she wanted to. Don't we all? Left the drink of betrayal Richard bought her at the bar. What was she on? We all wanted some. Put a quarter in the juke. We all take risks stepping into thin air. Our ceremonies didn't predict this, or we expected more. I had to tell you this for the baby inside the girl sealed up with a lick of hope and swimming into praise of nations. This is not a rooming house, but a dream of winter falls. And the deer who portrayed the relatives of strangers. The way back is deer breath on icy windows. The next dance none of us predicted. She borrowed a chair for the stairway to heaven. And stood on a table of names and danced in the room of children".[END PLAYBACK][MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMYAK SHERTOK:

The second poem I would like to share is "Echo and Shadow" by Li-Young Lee, recorded on September 10, 2003. I think of Li-Young Lee as a child of faith, but married to mystery. He writes with the tenderness of a sword and the blade of water. To read his poem is to enter a meditation field, where energy and silence can be experienced from the first line, and long after the poem has ended. Even his non-spiritual poems feel sacred. The lucidity and intensity of his poetry feels singular. He is also one of the very few poets who is courageous enough to write love poems to his wife, his father, and himself, and is probably one of the hardest things to write, a good love poem."Echo and Shadow" is one of his lesser known poems, at least as far as I'm aware of. I've never heard anyone, including Lee, talk about it before, which is to say, I do not know what sorts of readings of the poem are available out there, so my interpretation could be a very familiar one, or might feel far fetched to some. But the reading I want to offer is as the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. I see this poem occurring at the moment Orpheus looks back at Eurydice who is still in Hades, realizing he has lost her for the second time and forever, an image that will haunt him to death. Quote, "a room and a room, and between them she leans in the doorway to say something", unquote. We're never told if she ever speaks or what she says, either she can no longer speak, or she speaks but he can no longer hear her, or she speaks and he hears her but won't share it with the reader. I like to believe it's the respect for their privacy and intimacy in the third possibility. But knowing the myth, it's most likely one of the first two. I admire how the poem devotes almost all of its lines to Eurydice, but sometimes I wonder what Eurydice would have said if she actually had a voice. Did she even want to return with Orpheus? And isn't it really Eurydice that makes Orpheus the archetypal poet we sing of. Lee calls poetry a double medium, medium of speech or language, meaning and medium of silence. Quote, "as time goes on, that other medium silence begins to assert itself more and more so that language becomes a way to inflect the silence so that we can make it palpable", unquote. Perhaps, an example of this is in the poem. An example of this in the poem is in, quote,"the shadow of the sound bells make in the air morning, evenings", unquote, where the sonic is turned into visual, a very loose type of synesthesia. The line that follows, this is what suddenly turns this poem into a damn good love poem. Quote, "everywhere, I wait for her", unquote. The everywhere is sonic, spatial, and temporal. This line by itself could be considered sentimental, but where it's placed in the poem is so effective it makes me fall in love as well. The devotion, the longing, isn't that what those of us madly in love do? Look for the beloved everywhere, especially after she has left us. Another way Lee inflicts silence is formally and syntactically. The poem begins with three couplets. Then the stanzas get progressively longer, as though echo and shadow are both growing. Quote, "a shadow of birds, a myriad body of wings and cries, turning and diving in complex unison. Mornings, evenings, everywhere, a lasting echo", unquote. And the poem ends on a couplet, as though at last returning to Orpheus and Eurydice. Syntactically, the poem ends with a very long sentence that cascades down the stanzas as though descending into Hades, katabasis. At the end, no verse can bring Eurydice back to life, but what we are left with is a love poem, a retelling of the myth, "a story an ocean beyond our human beginning." Here is Li-Young Lee reading "Echo and Shadow."[MUSIC PLAYING][BEGIN PLAYBACK]

LI-YOUNG LEE:

This is called"Echo and Shadow.""Echo and Shadow. A room and a room. And between them, she leans in the doorway to say something, lintel bright above her face, threshold dark beneath her feet, her hands behind her head gathering her hair to tie and tuck at the nape. A world and a world. Her face. Her voice. Dying and not dying. And between them the curtains blowing and the shadows they make on her body, a shadow of birds, a single flock, a myriad body of wings and cries turning and diving in complex unison. Shadow of bells or the shadow of the sound bells make in the air, mornings, evenings, everywhere I wait for her, as even now her voice seems a lasting echo of my heart's calling me home, its story an ocean beyond my human beginning each wave tolling the whole note of my outcome and belonging."[END PLAYBACK][MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMYAK SHERTOK:

The final poem I would like to share today is "Upon Reading that Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds" by John Murillo, recorded on March 14, 2024. I first came across this poem on a friend's Facebook post and immediately I was blown away. The vulnerability, the emotional complexity, the racial undercurrent, the craft and the audacity. I mean, how dare you even imagine that you could weave so many strands into this one heartbreaking and heart mending tapestry, let alone compose it. But I took some comfort in learning that it took Murillo two decades to write it. The poem begins with the speaker recounting a specific event involving a sparrow flailing her wings in his face to get him to free another sparrow whose legs are caught in a car door. But slowly, he digresses into the speaker's heartbreaks, longing, his many lovers, his parents, their neighbors, and ultimately turns into a gut wrenching social and political commentary on the city itself. Quote, "the dead man's wife running for help, crying to any who would listen, a lamentation and a city busy saving itself", unquote. By the end of the poem, the city itself has become a helpless bird. Quote, "as when someday I'll leave this city, its every flailing, its every animal song", unquote. Craft-wise, I'm amazed at how the poem is able to jump from strand to strand, and always find a way to return to any specific thread as needed. Most of the turns and returns happen through similes. Quote, "fragile as a sparrow", unquote. Apostrophe, quote, "I know you thought this was about birds", unquote. Self-conscious remarks immediately followed by a pivot phrase, quote, "I'm digressing, sure, but did you know that to digress means to stray from the flock", unquote, and negative conjuring, quote, "not sparrows, but swans", unquote. But I want to focus on the many different couplings happening in the poem. First, there's the bird called transcriber Eric Dolphy and the human called transcriber the poet. Then there's two sparrows, two sweat slicked and shirtless men wrestling in the street, the speaker's parents, Sonny and his wife, the copulating swans. Then there's also the poems couplet form. But the coupling that intrigues me most happens between the speaker and the you, mostly appears to be the reader, but at times could also be the speaker's beloved, or someone close to him, or even a passerby, not unlike the one in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The conversational speaker says, quote, "as much for you, I'm saying, as for me", unquote. At first glance, it appears to be a sincere statement. But then I worry that the speaker is yet again playing, quote, "a good God", unquote, and learning to save himself, perhaps at the expense of the you. The phrase that makes this speaker you coupling complex and dynamic is when the speaker says, but stay with me now. At once a first responder trying to save a stranger's life, and a heartbroken lover pleading to his beloved or a passerby to not leave him. Who is saving whom? Who is leaving behind whom? The line that hits me the hardest is, quote,"and like any good God, I disappeared", unquote. It's one of those lines that I cannot quite articulate what it means, but only feel in my blood. It makes me think of the times I shouldn't have walked away, but walked away anyway, of all the people I left behind when they deserved better. Perhaps, I could try to rationalize it, like this speaker. Quote, "it's how I've learned to save myself", unquote. But at what cost? At whose cost? Here is John Murillo reading"Upon Reading that Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds".[MUSIC PLAYING][BEGIN PLAYBACK]

JOHN MURILLO:

So we had a class last night about radical revision, yeah, and in that I mentioned John Keats's idea of negative capability which is really a mandate for poetry, but also for living and being comfortable with the unknown and taking risks. And it's something that I try to do in the writing, not so much when I'm reading the poems. But tonight I'm doing in this sense, it's a long poem, and I'm saving it to the end of a long reading at the end of a long day. So I'm hoping you'll stay with me, yeah, OK. So a little bit about the poem. My wife always says that I say too much to introduce the poem, but she ain't here, so--[LAUGHS] So I'm going to introduce the poem I was living in DC for about 11 years, and while I was there one night in the early'90s, it was dusk. I'm walking down the street and something flies towards me and I thought it was attacking me. I thought it was a bat. It flies away, comes back, attacks me some more, flies away. And what I noticed it was a bird, small bird, and it was coming and just really frantic. And then when it would fly away from me, it was flying to where there was another bird that had his foot caught in a closed car door. So that bird was kind of beating its body against the door, trying to get free. So the first bird was trying to get help. And it was DC, '90s, rough neighborhood. The only way that I could have freed the bird would have been to open the car door. Car alarm would sound. Somebody comes out of the house, the bird's gone. So I made a call and I kept walking. And the bird flew after me for a while, and then it just gave up on me. And when I first started writing poems, I knew I wanted to write about that incident. And I wasn't able to for, at least, a couple of decades until I read this article about the Jazz musician Eric Dolphy. And in the article, it said that one of his practices was to go into wooded areas, into parks, forests, and he would listen to birds and he would try to transcribe their calls because he said there was something earnest and honest in their music that he wanted to get into his own. And when I read that, it reminded me of the birds in DC, and then the poem started to happen. But it's long, so stay with me. And it has a bleeding title, which means the title bleeds into the text. Hydrate now. And thank you for listening."Upon Reading that Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds. I think first of two sparrows I met when walking home late night years ago in another city not unlike this. The one bird frantic, attacking, I thought the way she swooped down, circled my head and flailed her wings in my face, how she seemed to scream each time I swung, how she dashed back and forth between me and the blood red Corolla parked near the opposite curb, how, finally, I understood. I spied another bird also calling, his foot inexplicably caught in the car's closed door, beating his whole bird body against it. Trying, it appeared, to bang himself free, and who knows how long he'd been there flailing. Who knows? He and the other I mistook at first for a bat. They called to me something between squawk and chirp, something between song and prayer to do something, anything. And like any good God, I disappeared. Not indifferent exactly, but with things to do and most likely on my way home from another heartbreak. Call it 1997, and say I'm several thousand miles from home. By which I mean those were the days I made of everyone, a love song. By which I mean I was lonely and unrequited. But that's not quite it either. Truth is, I did manage to find a few to love me, but couldn't always love them back. The Rasta law professor, the firefighter's wife, the burlesque dancer whose daughter blackened drawings with M's to mean the sky was full of birds the day her daddy died. I think his widow said he drowned one morning on a fishing trip. Anyway, I'm digressing, but if you ask that night-- did I mention it was night, why I didn't even try to jimmy the lock to spring the sparrow, I couldn't say truthfully that it had anything to do with envy, with wanting a woman to plead as deeply for me as these sparrows did one for the other. No, I'd have said something instead about the neighborhood itself, the car thief shot a block and a half East the week before, or about the men I came across nights prior sweat slicked and shirtless, grappling in the middle of the street, the larger one's chest pressed to the back of the smaller, bruised and bleeding both. I know you thought this was about birds, but stay with me. I left them both in the street. The same street where I'd leave the sparrows, the men embracing. And for all one knows, they could have been lovers. The one whispering an old, old tune into the ear of the other. Baby, baby, don't leave me this way. I left the men where I'd leave the sparrows and their song. And as I walked away, I heard one of the men called to me, please, or help, or brother, or some such. And I didn't break stride, not one bit. It's how I've learned to save myself. Let me try this another way. Call it 1977, and say, I'm back West, South Central Los Angeles. My mother and father at it again, but this time in the street, broad daylight and all the neighbors watching. One, I think his name was Sonny, runs out from his duplex to pull my father off. You see where I'm going with this. My mother crying out, fragile as a sparrow. Sonny fighting my father, fragile as a sparrow. And me years later trying to get it all down. As much for you, I'm saying, as for me. Sonny catches a left, lies flat on his back, blood starting to pool and his own wife wailing. My mother wailing and traffic backed, now half a block. Horns, whistles, and soon sirens. 1977 summer and all the trees full of birds, hundreds, I swear. And since I'm the one writing it, I'll tell you, they were crying. Which brings me back to Dolphy and his transcribing. The jazzman, I think, wanted only to get it down pure, to get it down exact. The animal wracking itself against the car's steel door. The animals in the trees reporting. The animals we make of ourselves and one another, flailing, failing. Stay with me now. Days after the dustup, my parents took me to the park. And in this park was a pond. And in this pond were birds, not sparrows, but swans. And my father spread a blanket and brought from a basket some apples and a paring knife. Summertime, my mother wore sunglasses and long sleeves. My father, now sober, cursed himself for leaving the radio. But my mother forgave him and said, as she caressed the back of his hand, that we could just listen to the swans. And we listened. And I watched two birds coupling, one beating its wings as it mounted the other. Summer, 1977, I listened and watched. When my parents made love late into that night, I covered my ears in the next room, scanning the encyclopedia for swans. It meant nothing to me then, at least. But did you know the collective noun for swans is a lamentation? And is lamentation not its own species of song. What a woman wails punch drunk in the streets? Or what a widow might sing learning her man was drowned by swans? A lamentation of them? Imagine the capsized boat. The panicked man struck about the eyes, nose, and mouth each time he comes up for air. Imagine the birds coasting away in the waters, suddenly calm, either trumpet swans or mutes. The dead man's wife running for help, crying to any who'd listen, a lamentation and a city busy saving itself. I'm digressing, sure. But did you know that to digress means to stray from the flock? When I left my parents' house, I never looked back. By which I mean I made like a God and disappeared. As when I left the sparrows and the copulating swans. As when someday I'll leave this city. Its every flailing, its every animal song." Thank you.[APPLAUSE][END PLAYBACK][MUSIC PLAYING]

SAMYAK SHERTOK:

Now I would like to leave you, no pun intended, with a door. I mean with a poem that meditates on doors. I hope you can hear some echoes of Harjo, Lee, and Murillo's works in it the myths and anecdotes, the personal and the political, the interweaving, the turns and returns, the unflinching contemplation, the love poem. While this poem may not be read as conventional romantic poetry, I like to believe deep down it is indeed a love poem. It appears in my debut collection, No Rhododendron, which is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh press on October 7. In fact, I just received my author copies, so I'll be reading it from the book itself. This will be the first poem, and the first time I'll be reading from the physical book. I wish I could tell you how special that feels to me. Thank you for indulging me and thank you for being here. Here's my small parting gift for you."One Hundred and Eight Doors. For Stephanie Choi. Open the door is what it is not. Orpheus looked back from a door too soon and tore himself into, O. Once a woman pierced an apple to eat god-flesh. Once a woman pierced me. She sewed the hole with the lock of her hair and unspooling mouth. This way I can always return to you. If we're all searching for a door, if every door is a wound mistaken for a meadow. The monk knocked. Who wakes the House of Lotus? I, your lover. The flower drowned in the lake of tears. The eye is the door to sin, said the book of God. The eye shall be killed, said the man of God and emptied two oil lamps into his eyes. The devotees asked him on his deathbed for a final teaching. I wish to look at my eyes one last time. For the door is what it keeps out. For the door bisects every desire. Beneath every threshold, bones of a nation buried alive. The lintel carved with names writ in swallowed passports. The martyr is a witness for whom? The door cannot remember its mother tongue, so it swallows bodies. Every day it grows hungrier. A mouth rooted, hinged dark, we walk in and become its language. The door becomes a wake of life. vultures. The door believes the rings are still growing. Around me, stone walls. On each rock, a pink palmprint of the disappeared. To escape I must recite every name. The chant wakes you. You asleep talking again. I close my eyes and count shunya, shunya, shunya! The door opens. The door opens like an arrowhead. I swallow a bodhi seed every time Apa's fist could not open. The first door was the one-winged Himalayan danphe that drank rain only. When it appeared in the sky, The dead could talk to the dead. A walking door of ash, we go from house to house, hoping to find what? An heirloom peaked comb, bones of an extinct bird, the beloved humming in the other room, the fireflies that danced around us in the pine dark, which we crossed in our fists to see if our fingers glowed. Inside or outside, where we are facing. Enter or exit, we always leave the door behind. In this way, the door is more human than we. The wound is the door, says Rumi, to the light. At the gate, my documents are always of the wrong color. Give me back my brother, I say. The door says, which one? I feel much political when I'm entering a door. In search of home, I move from form to form. I bury the comb teeth in the buckwheat field for my unborn moon bug to return from the Earth when I am gone. The door is a mother. It follows. What I am trying to say is I am one of her six children. You, my only mother. Finally, we arrive at not home or the other shore, but another door. No return the obol, we turn and turn. Haunted by the first 0, our throat failing to split into a keel. If we're all a door, at night, faceless lovers knock from the inside. Nine lives later, the monk returned. Who wakes the House of Lotus? You, beloved, Only you. The calyx opened. The monk drank the sacred tear from his own lips. The door is always inside. The door is whether we are or not. Every door takes us back to the alfalfa field, where coyotes cut howls and blue sirens. What I am trying to say is you walked in and a door was no more."[MUSIC PLAYING]

JULIE SWARSTAD JOHNSON:

You've been listening to Samyak Shertok, and this is Poetry Centered. Samyak, thanks for those wonderful choices and your attention to craft. It's also great to hear recordings from across the decades. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed it as well. Thank you so much for spending your time with us here. This is the final episode in our current season, so we do have a bit of a break ahead before new episodes come your way. It won't be too long though, because we started our summer set a bit late. Keep an eye out for new episodes in late November and December. But in the meantime, we do have a bonus episode from our friends at Radical Reversal cued up for two weeks from now. I hope you'll join us to hear these youth sharing their poetry and songwriting. We also invite you, as always, to check out Voca at voca.arizona.edu. Until the next episode, take care. Check out the archive, keep exploring poetry, and 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 audiovisual archive online at voca.arizona.edu.