Dear Bernadette,
How many poets does it take to change a lightbulb?
Answer: One poet—to invent a memory of the lightbulb. A pattern of communication. I remember the first time I visited in the summer of 2009 and you said “Ask me anything. What do you want to know?” I remember you laughed whenever we saw the road sign for Brainard, NY on the way to your house. I remember you were trying to show me a purple flower next to the creek and fell under the cold water. I remember then you popped up and said “That was enlightening!” I remember watching Hot Tub Time Machine together and you wanted the writing to be stronger. I remember waking up in my Chicago apartment and you were feeding Walt Whitman, my beagle, vanilla ice cream for breakfast and a few spoonfuls for yourself. I remember waking up in your East Nassau house to typing and you said the typewriter was your lullaby when the kids were babies.
Answer: Two poets—it’s a collaboration. Someone to write the grant and someone to hand out the lightbulbs to any people who want them. Working poets experiment every day to manage our lives. Paying the electricity bill, feeding our families, and navigating the healthcare system can take a lot of innovation. Collaboration creates a gift economy, deepening our solidarity with others. It’s like a guaranteed annual income for everybody so we can all get the lightbulbs we need.
Answer: Zero poets—we don’t use light bulbs anymore. We’ve harnessed the non-polluting power of the sun, wind and our poetry through the research generated at The Octavia Butler, Buckminster Fuller, María Sabina, Hannah Weiner Center for Free Energy. We’re utopographers. We like art with no boundaries. We’re co-creating a living language. The praxis of liberation. We walk through Poetry State Forest and sit at the spot where the Tsatsawassa Creek meets the Kinderhook Creek, chanting in chorus “property is robbery property is robbery.” We dream up the word gubofi, an acronym for “guy who bought the field.” We’re hoping gubofi will enter the English language, as in “everybody has their gubofi to deal with.” We write poems about neutrinos and the etymology of the clitoris. We’re searching for the island of Utopia. Are we there yet?
Answer: However many poets turn up and want to participate. It’s like being at a big backyard picnic. We combine our brains for this moment of time. A commitment to a project. It’s a kind of creative freedom where there’s no success or failure. To do something new. To move out of our comfort zone. We made this up. You say try waking up every August morning at 3:15am to write with your friends. A yearly collaborative-consciousness writing experiment. Observe hypnagogic and hypnopompic sleep states collectively. You say try a writing marathon with your friends in one room for 8 hours, arrange the results chronologically and then publish the group poem as Unnatural Acts. You say try counting lightning in the dark and listening to the thunder on the front porch with me. We will try writing more poems tomorrow.
Writing poetry with friends is an act of love. A maximalist adventure in words. A mutual investigation of time and place. You and Anne Waldman attending New York Nets games to co-write The Basketball Article. You and Clark Coolidge exploring Eldon’s Cave in Massachusetts to co-write The Cave. You and Bill Berkson interviewing each other through poems in New York and California to co-write What’s Your Idea of a Good Time? Making up a Utopia with contributions from your pals Charles Bernstein, Joe Brainard, Peggy DeCoursey, John Fisk, Bob Holman, Rochelle Kraut, Greg Masters, Rosemary Mayer, Huang O, Anne Rower, Lorna Smedman, Lewis Warsh, Hannah Weiner, and more. Printing your book with a utopian copyright for readers so “All rights remain unreserved and free including the right of reproduction in whole or part or in any form or way that seems pleasing or useful to you.”
Well Bernadette, how many poets does it take to change a lightbulb? I don’t actually have the answer. But when we wrote poems together, we sure did have many questions. Where are the missing socks? When is the best time for a revolution? Is there another thistle plant, like the one by the front porch yet? How will capitalism disappear? Are the thistle plants taking over? Are they edible? Who decided to make a human into a slave? Why is the sky white? What amount of money is enough? What’s the best way to get rid of deer ticks? Why are the rich still in control? If a bird walks in a field, does that mean there’s a flying theater? When is the best time for an orgasm? If we buy cheese in our dreams, can we eat it later? Who screamed the loudest? Is $84 enough to buy a house with a swimming pool? Where are the best drugs? What is the best French food? Where is the greenest place on earth? If some words are just delightful to say aloud or see on the page, why don’t we tell everybody it’s fun?
We agree: metaphor really is a symbolic representation of a literal moment. I found the sealed white envelope you sent me with your typed words “wing of a luna moth.” Positive phototaxis is why moths are attracted to light. They fly higher on moonlit nights because they can use the moon and stars to orientate themselves. Moths have an escape-route mechanism related to light. To a moth in danger, flying toward light is a better response than flying toward darkness.
Big love,
Jennifer
xx
P.S. - I also found the letter with your recommendations for Introduction to Anarchism 101 and I promise to finish reading all of the books.