Amber Tamblyn Reads Didi Jackson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker: Poetry – Amber Tamblyn Reads Didi Jackson

Episode Information:

• Title: The New Yorker: Poetry
• Host: Kevin Young, Poetry Editor of The New Yorker Magazine
• Guest: Amber Tamblyn, author of six books, creator of the newsletter Listening in the Dark, and acclaimed actor/director
• Episode Title: Amber Tamblyn Reads Didi Jackson
• Release Date: September 27, 2024

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of The New Yorker: Poetry, host Kevin Young welcomes Amber Tamblyn, a multifaceted artist known for her literary and acting accomplishments. The episode features Tamblyn reading and discussing a poem from the New Yorker Archive, as well as sharing one of her own published works.

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Reading and Discussion of "Dahlias" by Dee Dee Jackson

Selection of the Poem: At [00:58], Kevin Young introduces the session by explaining the format: the guest chooses a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss, followed by reading one of their own poems. Amber Tamblyn selects "Dahlias" by Dee Dee Jackson, drawn by its "energy" and compelling opening lines.

Reading of "Dahlias": Amber Tamblyn reads "Dahlias" with pronounced emphasis on internal rhymes and rhythmic patterns, bringing the poem's vivid imagery to life. She captures lines such as:

"The dahlias by now the fields are overgrown." ([02:15])

Discussion Highlights:

• Rhyming and Rhythm: Tamblyn praises the poem's internal rhymes and chiming meanings, noting how they create a musical quality that enhances the poem's impact. She remarks, “[04:38] I loved that it really emphasized some of the internal rhymes… seeing it on the page, you kind of hear them.”

• Imagery and Themes: The discussion delves into the poem's haunting qualities and profound imagery, such as "bodiced planets" and "skeletons clattering like chimes." Tamblyn observes, “[02:23] …they must contain all the colors of our universe,” highlighting the depth and expansiveness conveyed through simple floral imagery.

• Emotional Resonance: Kevin Young comments on the poem's ability to blend personal mourning with broader existential themes. Tamblyn adds that the unexpected shifts in the poem mirror life's unpredictability, comparing them to a song's bridge that alters the musical journey.

• Musicality: The conversation underscores the poem's song-like structure, with back-and-forth rhythmic patterns that evoke a sense of rocking or doubting, enhancing the poem's emotional ebb and flow.

Notable Quote:

"There's something about the way that it stretches from this close observation to this large declaration…" – Kevin Young ([08:05])

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Reading and Discussion of "This Living" by Amber Tamblyn

Introduction to Tamblyn's Poem: Transitioning at [13:01], Kevin Young introduces Amber Tamblyn's own poem, "This Living," published in the June 10, 2024 issue of The New Yorker. He invites Tamblyn to share insights without revealing too much, setting the stage for an intimate exploration of her creative process.

Reading of "This Living": Tamblyn delivers "This Living" with a dynamic range, capturing the poem's oscillation between humor and profound emotion. The poem explores a series of vignettes that blend everyday occurrences with surreal or intense experiences.

Discussion Highlights:

• Structure and Repetition: Tamblyn discusses the poem's repetitive "it's going to" refrain, emphasizing its role in building a rhythmic and almost chant-like quality. She explains, “[13:14] …thinking about all of the crazy things that we can do or imagine or create or destroy or harm or love.”

• Themes of Love and Grief: The poem navigates through various emotional states, juxtaposing moments of love, grief, and absurdity. Tamblyn notes the duality of life’s beauty and cruelty, illustrating how painful moments can be interspersed with humor.

• Stream of Consciousness: The conversation highlights Tamblyn's use of a stream-of-consciousness technique, allowing each "it's going to" statement to inform the next, thereby creating a seamless flow of thoughts and emotions.

• Imagery and Metaphor: Kevin Young praises the vivid and sometimes unexpected metaphors, such as "parallel his lover, never perpendicular her," which Tamblyn explains as interruptions that mirror life's unpredictability.

• Personal Influences and Artistic Integrity: Tamblyn shares her background as a poet first, influenced by literary figures like Wanda Coleman and Amiri Baraka. She emphasizes that her approach to poetry informs all her creative endeavors, including acting and directing, striving to evoke emotion without explicit exposition.

Notable Quotes:

"It's going to be so good if it doesn't kill us first. The way things are going, it's probably going to kill us first." ([27:53])

"There's nothing that I do that does not come from the center of being a poet first." – Amber Tamblyn ([29:43])

Final Insights: Tamblyn reflects on the cumulative meaning of the repeated "it," discussing how repetition transforms simple words into profound statements, bordering on becoming mere sounds yet retaining emotional weight. She appreciates the poem's ability to encapsulate complex moments and emotions, making each stanza a potential short story.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Kevin Young summarizing the featured works and directing listeners to explore "Dahlias" and "This Living" on newyorker.com. Tamblyn's latest works, including her poem collection and the newsletter Listening in the Dark, are highlighted as must-reads for poetry enthusiasts.

Closing Remarks:

"This Living" by Amber Tamblyn and "Dahlias" by Dee Dee Jackson offer listeners a profound dive into contemporary poetry, blending vivid imagery with deep emotional currents. Amber Tamblyn's insightful discussions provide a richer understanding of poetic techniques and thematic explorations, making this episode a valuable experience for both seasoned poets and new readers alike.

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Additional Resources:

• Dee Dee Jackson's Collection: My Infinity
• Amber Tamblyn's Latest Book: Listening in the Dark
• Access Poems: Available on newyorker.com and The New Yorker app.

Transcript

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[Kevin Young]

Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker Magazine. On this program, we invite a poet to choose a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss. Then they read one of their own poems that's been published in the magazine. My guest today is Amber Tamblyn, who is the author of six books and the creator of the newsletter Listening in the Dark. She's also an acclaimed actor and director. Amber, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Thanks for having me, Kevin.

[Kevin Young]

So the first poem you decided to read is the Dahlias by Dee Dee Jackson. What was it about this poem that caught your attention while you were looking over the archive?

[Amber Tamblyn]

I don't know.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

There was something about the.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Energy. It just sort of captivated me. I actually read all of the poems from the archives. I just thought as an experiment, I was like, I'll just see which of.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

The first lines grabbed me the most.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Which is to me, I think, also what makes a great poem is sort of the entryway in. So this one really grabbed me.

[Kevin Young]

Well, let's listen to the poem. This is Amber Tamblyn reading the Dahlias by Dee Dee Jackson.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

The dahlias by now the fields are overgrown.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Most ironweed and parsnip have turned black.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

Even the closed cabinet doors of milkweed pods have burst open, Spilling their shucked silk into the day. I wear a coat and remember August.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Those nights filled with moths that like.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

Fireworks, put on a show at our window, Circled the lights like monks and meditation at every new cycle I miss the one now gone. I am never happy and have no excuse not to love the dying season. The Growing season, the season of sleep, that is to say, to love it while it is happening. But what of the fall dahlias that, like bodiced planets, float above their roots and leaves? Surely they contain all the colors of our universe. They must love the cooler days, the beginning of a time for rest, less forced display. Take it easy, I will say, but the wind has something else in mind. They might perform a roundelay or the dance macabre. In time we all will be bones, our eye holes hollowed and our skeletons clattering like chimes.

[Kevin Young]

That was the Dahlias by Dee Dee Jackson, which was published in the September 9, 2024 issue of the New Yorker. I love how you read that because you really emphasized some of the internal rhymes, which frankly can speed right by you. But seeing it on the page, you kind of hear them. But there's these other kinds of rhymes, these chiming between meanings, I think. But for me, the poem really changes, takes off when it says, at every new cycle, I miss the one break now gone. And there's this kind of haunting quality that the one is also maybe a person or a past self. There's something about that that the speaker's mourning is really interesting to me. And they describe it really well.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah, it's so good. And also, what's so great about a poem like this or a piece like this is that when the line, when you are expecting it to go in another direction, and then it surprises you, and that's what's really beautiful there is when I first read it, at every news cycle, I miss the one. And then my eye assumes the next line's gonna say that blah, blah, blah, you know, like fills in a different kind of meaning. And then I miss the one now gone. It sort of immediately, almost like a season, redirects you to another feeling or quality that you were not expecting. So I love that. And I really love the ending of the poem, too.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, I want to get to the ending. I just want to point out a few of the rhymes. Bodiced planets float above their roots and leaves. What? You know, I love that image. It's so gorgeous. And then you have above, and then two lines later. They must love the cooler days, the beginning of a time for rest less. It almost feels in this poem like a kind of rocking, or not quite a lullaby, a bit more abrasive than that. And I almost feel like there's something about it, that the poem is like the speaker moving back and forth. And sometimes it's a rocking, and sometimes it's kind Of a doubting what went before.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah. Which is also sort of like the perfect to go along with the transitional period when talking about August and sort of, you know, the death of something, the change of something. Whether that's love, whether that's a season. I love that it does go in and out of moments that sort of rhyme or feel like they're about to. And then it sort of pulls back and changes again. It's sort of unexpected in that way.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and a classic one is rest, less force, display. Take it easy. I will say. And now we're like, okay, I figured it out. It's gonna rhyme a lot. And then it goes. But the wind has something else in mind. Which visually looks like a rhyme, but in our English isn't. And so there's that interesting tension, let's call it that I think gets expressed in the end. How did you see the end you said you admired.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah. And just to speak on that too. That almost like reminds me of a bridge in a song. Right. Where you think you're listening to the chorus that rhymes and you think you know what the music is. Cause you've heard the music. Cause it's the chorus. And then the minor key comes in or something shifts and changes. So you think, oh, it's gonna rhyme. It's rhyming, it's doing this. And then it shifts.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

But the wind.

[Amber Tamblyn]

And that feels like it kind of transfers almost in the way that to me changes like a bridge does in a song to bring an equality.

[Kevin Young]

So well said.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Again, it's kind of in where a bridge would be in the body of a poem too. Sort of towards the end. It's sort of bringing you into the next part of what it's about to be. And I just think that these closing lines are so beautiful. Talking about the sort of performance of the macabre and skeletons clattering like chimes. It's just such a great visual. It's such a. Such a beautiful way to describe the sound of a skeleton. I love it.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. And these are all facts we might know. But there's something about, as you said, the sort of song like structure of it. The way that it stretches from this close observation to this large declaration. And if it was inverted, if you started with by the way, we're all gonna end up not alive. I'm not sure it would be effective. Instead it's this. I. I feel like we come to know and trust by the end and it allows them to say we and not feel like it's presuming yeah, absolutely.

[Amber Tamblyn]

And again, you know, to go back to the sort of musicality of the piece, that even in death there is music and that even in the post body living, that there is chimes. You know, to end on that specific word is really, I think, beautiful. Of like, we leave something when we go.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. Wow. Well said.

[Amber Tamblyn]

This is just so, you know, Kevin and I are just staring at the page for everyone.

[Kevin Young]

Just like, yeah.

[Amber Tamblyn]

We're like, wow, we're in it.

[Kevin Young]

We're like, really good. It also, you know, has run recently and I'm experiencing that too. Of like. Oh, right. You know, this is. It feels like now. It feels like this particular moment. I'm also interested in these small moments of simile. There's metaphor throughout. But when it says filled with moths that like fireworks put on a show at our window. And there's this. We sort of forecast there, circled the lights like monks in meditation. These are very big ideas in some way. Like both kind of this extraordinary explosion, a little like the milk pods. And then this solitary quality. And that kind of balances, much like what the poem says. Because the next lines are at every new cycle. I miss the one now gone.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

Right.

[Amber Tamblyn]

And there's that change.

[Kevin Young]

Departure. And fireworks are so ephemeral, you know.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah. And I remember when I first read this too, and sort of the thing that sort of captured me was part of that same idea again, of not just like the visual of seeing moths, you know, around light bulbs and the sort of the visualness of that, but then also the sound of like a buzzing light bulb. And then also the monks in meditation made me think about monks humming or sort of making some kind of vibrational tone with their. You know, with their. Their voices and sort of how that sort of mirrors. Even though we think of meditation as being silent, it isn't always so that was actually quite a. Quite a. Like, that was filled with sound, that whole section for me. Fireworks. The idea of even moths that are very silent, but like just the feeling of them being close to fire or being close to the light bulb that's making noise. And all of it sort of like where the language starts to begin to become a song is in that moment for me.

[Kevin Young]

Well said. I think also this idea of Dahlia's. I love how. And I don't think just in this poem, but this poem, especially one flower can contain this universe.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

And that's why they're bodiced planets, I think. Surely they contain all great break there. Surely they contain all that in and of itself is terrific. The colors of our universe. And it's so evocative. And I think a lesser poet would say the flowers or something.

[Amber Tamblyn]

I don't know.

[Kevin Young]

The specificity is part of the charm and the brilliance.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah. And you sort of are zooming into that little piece, like you said, and then deep inside, there's a whole universe that the poet sort of. He's giving you a sort of window into that. Yeah. It's a beautiful piece. And specifically, you know, as we're recording this, the weather has changed. You know, you feel the clattering of the bones a little bit getting out those fall coats.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. It's a strange thing to put away one's swimsuit or the, you know.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah. We're all walking around. We all like chimes.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. My knee is acting up like, you.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Know, our loud chimes that interrupt everything.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. My knee is just like, welcome to the change.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Precisely.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I'd love to talk about your poem.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

Because in our June 10, 2024 issue, the new Yorker publisher poem this Living, which you'll read for us in a moment. I don't want you to spoil it for us, but is there anything you want to tell us about it?

[Amber Tamblyn]

Well, you know, it's got a repetition to it, and I think in my head when I was writing it, I was trying to think about outcomes that I could control in the real world, not necessarily in the poetic world. And I just liked the idea of thinking about all of the crazy things that we can do or imagine or create or destroy or harm or love. It sort of goes through several stages as well, of falling in love and of grief. And I'm just sort of coming to.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

Terms with this living.

[Kevin Young]

Well, here is Amber Tamblyn reading her poem, this Living.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

This Living. It's going to be a lunar eclipse. It's going to be critically acclaimed and win none of the awards. It's going to start as an argument over what's buried inside the tomb, but end in silence over what's discovered beneath it. It's going to happen on your birthday in front of the mailman while you're receiving the letter for your sister sent by her murderer. It's going to appear once a week in your backyard for decades without ever speaking. It's going to ruin the cake when you throw an urn full of cat ashes in your ex best friend's face at her baby shower. Do it. It's going to make you get under the table and drink there. It's going to explode right there in the dairy aisle. It's going to make you laugh. It's going to remind you why you can't go in mosh pits anymore. It's going to freeze to death right there in your arms. It's going to make all the kids stare out the school bus window and sing to you. It's going to rain where he is. It's going to be impossible for you not to flood. It's going to hurt for a while. It's going to have to. It's going to make you buy all the scarves in his girlfriend's favorite patterns. It's going to happen in the wind during the middle of fire season while he's telling you it's going to have to end soon. It's going to be hard to end soon. It's going to wipe out your entire wildlife. It's going to be remembered fondly, your heart unable to keep its hands to itself. It's going to be a strong love, but only parallel his lover, never perpendicular her. It's going to make you unable to quell the bad thoughts of his dainty gull and her inkless quill. It's going to bring out the best of the worst in you. It's going to outlast television. It's going to take the shape of poems left under the doormats of retired generals. It's going to happen any day now. It's going to be so good. If it doesn't kill us first. The way things are going, it's probably going to kill us first.

[Amber Tamblyn]

It's going to be a nightmare when.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

The Pope gets here. It's going to change everything. It's going to make your metaphors make you even if you don't want to. It's going to sound like coyotes killing behind your back. Spook like a stallion's ghost. It's going to cost you. It's going to sound familiar. A truck driver humming Schubert. It's going to have to be removed by a doctor. It's going to go into too much detail. It's going to use your daughter against you. It's going to make you eat everything on all the plates at all the hours. It's going to fill you with sorrow. It's going to fill you with relief. It's going to show you how you got here. It's going to say something cliche like, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to hit any minute now. It's going to leave you speechless. It's something you're going to have to carry for the rest of your life. It's going to get dark soon. It's going to feel like it just happened yesterday. It's going to sit well with no one. It's going to be worth it. It's going to build you back up. It's going to get better every day. It's never going to give up. It's going to belong to you.

[Kevin Young]

That was this living By Amber Tamblyn.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters matters. In print or here on the podcast, the New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Amber Tamblyn]

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[Kevin Young]

That really builds. Like you said. I mean, it's such a powerful poem and I think it's, you know, where we were talking about rhyme before. We're talking about that repetition as a kind of musicality. But I also think there's this thing you do, like it's going to wipe out your entire wildlife, you know, like. Or the part about your hands and your heart, you know, like, I love that kind of almost a mix of the metaphors in the best possible way. Were you conscious of that? Was that just coming out as you were working on it?

[Dee Dee Jackson]

What's so strange is that I think.

[Amber Tamblyn]

These were like little couplets, like there were little stanzas that went together.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

And I really tried to let it.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Be a stream of consciousness of letting the next one inform the next one inform the next one. But then sometimes something felt so painful and so deep that that it had to be followed up with like a funny antidote that we can all relate to. Like when the pope's in town, traffic's really bad. You just gotta throw that in there because I think that that's the duality of life, you know, that's the beauty and the cruelty and the awfulness of it is that you, you fall in love and then you also can't have that person. You have a best Friend. And then you don't talk to them anymore. And so you do something ridiculous. You drink too much. And so I think it, to me, sort of mirrors reality. And the things that are sometimes so painful, they're funny.

[Kevin Young]

Right. Well, and I think that there's that quality that is true, but I think there's also the technique that makes it feel more true, which is to say someone else might just say, yeah, this thing happened. Any one of these two, three, five line little stanzas could be a whole poem. But instead you've stitched it together into a kind of rock opera. Almost like this kind of quality of highs and lows. But also it's going to start here and it's going to take a trip, but it's not a straight line. I guess that's what I would say that some of the pleasure is going from the pain to the humor or seeing the humor and the pain. It's going to make you get under the table and drink there. You know, it's going to explode right there in the dairy aisle. And that really, you know, that quality of going from mash pits to freezing to death, I think is really terrific.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I think with a lot of what I was trying to do here was find, like a collective choir of these really complex moments. And I think you could pull any one of them out and write a little short story about it. You know, even just the idea of, you know, kids staring out the window and singing to you, or, you know, having something be out your back window staring at you for decades. And I mean, it almost makes you ask a lot of questions about what each one of them are. And I think that's part of it, sort of the spell that it's casting.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and of course, there's this it, which we might start by thinking it means this living. But by the end, it's kind of itself. I love how words over time accumulate meaning, but they also can become, if you repeat them, so much like not even a word, like just kind of a sound. Were you conscious of that as you were going along?

[Amber Tamblyn]

I definitely was. And I remember when I was writing it as well, there was many times where I wanted to say, it's gonna, you know, you wanted to change it. And then I just thought, like, if I can stay on this, then it's gonna be really powerful. It's gonna have something to say, you know, if I don't take the shortcut. That's so funny because then it also just made me think about the intention of the Line and what the next line was going to be, what it meant for what the next line after that would be. You know, even just the idea of like, it's gonna be a strong love, but only parallel. His lover never perpendicular her. You know, there's a lot of perpendicular stuff that happens in here where you're going in one direction and then it just sort of is interrupted, much like life is as well.

[Kevin Young]

Well, buying the. What is it that's bought for the girlfriend?

[Amber Tamblyn]

Oh, this is it. The scarves and all her favorite.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, buy the scarves and his girlfriend's favorite patterns.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Whoa.

[Kevin Young]

I want that short story.

[Amber Tamblyn]

So I think also this, you know, I was. I put out like a little chapbook, hand bound chapbook that I made called the Punishment Gift. And there was a couple poems in there. This was sort of one of them in its early draft. And so I think some of it started as the idea of a like, revenge poem. You know, there were some themes in there of sort of unrequited love, revenge poems, femme fatale stuff, little bit of that in there. And so some of it was pulled from that. But then it just felt like I wanted one piece that could encapsulate specifically all of the pains, like all of the different kinds of experiences and pains and reactions to them.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, yeah. I want to ask you about vengeance. I'm glad you mentioned it because it does seem like a theme in there. How did that, you know, sit with the humor, say?

[Amber Tamblyn]

Well, again, I think, you know, as our responsibility, I would almost even say, just as poets, is to find ways to really make people feel something about grief or love or loss or whatever the theme is, and find quick, sharp ways to get someone to feel it without having to explain too much. I could have easily filled in like a whole stanza of multiple lines that would be about heartache, about having. Being in love with someone who you can't have. But I liked the idea of getting these little bursts of the rawest, hardest parts of the moments of lost love as opposed to writing the whole story of it.

[Kevin Young]

Do you think it progresses? Does the it change?

[Amber Tamblyn]

I do. I think the it changes a couple times. But I think one of the big moments, the big turns, is when it says, let me find it.

[Dee Dee Jackson]

The damn thing's so long.

[Amber Tamblyn]

I have all these pages I got.

[Kevin Young]

Well, can I propose?

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yes, please, please.

[Kevin Young]

I think it's gonna happen any day now. Yeah, it's going to be so good if it doesn't kill us first. And then it has the humor of the way things are going. It's probably going to kill us first. And then again, it's going to hit any minute now. It's going to be okay. It's going to. You know, this kind of waiting quality comes in a sense of time, maybe. Yeah. But I think there's something that happens earlier even, and maybe it's this moment. I don't know. The urn full of cat ashes and then also the freezing to death both feel specific, but also like it's both iconic and iconoclastic. It's both strange and familiar. I wonder what you think.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I agree. I think for me, there's also sort of this moment where it says it's going to show you how you got here, which I think then becomes. That's suddenly where it is about literally everyone. Because everyone, at some point in their life, looks at their life and goes, how did I get here? Like, how did I not do the things I wanted to do? Or how did I get here? In a great way? Wow. How did I get here? This is amazing. And so that is the moment for me where it's, you know, where it's speaking to the everyone, whereas everything before it is almost like a. A choir of many different experiences and many different moments from different lives. That, to me, feels more directional in that it's speaking to everyone in that question, and then saying something cliche like, it's gonna be okay, which we say, and then going ahead and saying it anyway.

[Kevin Young]

Right, right, exactly. But I love that it isn't afraid to risk sentimentality, which the poet Richard Hugo says, if you're not risking sentimentality, you're not risking anything. You know, And I'm not sure I totally agree with Rick Hugo these days, but I sometimes have to remind oneself that it's okay to risk that.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yes, I agree with that.

[Kevin Young]

And so I think there's a way that it really plays. And the playfulness is so terrific in the whole piece. So I love hearing it again.

[Podcast Producer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

I want to ask you about how you approach poems. Do you approach them differently than acting or directing or how do you see those processes? I presume somewhat related, but also, how do you see them as different?

[Amber Tamblyn]

Yeah, I mean, I have always described myself as a poet above all else, even though I think that there are many people who've seen a lot of my acting. And, you know, I'm 41 and I've been acting since I was 11 years old. I don't do it a whole lot anymore. And that's by design. Sure. You know, it's been a great many years doing that. But my heart is, you know, deep in the trenches and love of poetry. It's what I was raised on. It's what I was raised around by the extraordinary writers. Wanda Coleman, who you and I both love very much.

[Kevin Young]

Absolutely.

[Amber Tamblyn]

And Jack Hirschman, the late Jack Hirschman was my writing mentor. He was the poet laureate of San Francisco, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Amiri Baraka. And those were the people in my orbit growing up. So I had these really prolific, profound voices that were all around me. And so to speak to your question, I think that there's nothing that I do that it does not come from the center of being a poet first. That is where it starts. Everything from. You know, directing a film is when you're in an editing room. I'm looking with a poet's eye. I'm not looking with a director's eye or an editorial eye. It is, it is from the poet's perspective and finding a way to convey an emotion without expository dialogue. Like, how can you show absolute devastation without having someone have to say it? Those things are acts of poetry, period. And to me, I think that's why some of the finest filmmakers and even probably songwriters, you know, in their heart of hearts, are poets. So that's my long winded way of saying that there's no part of me that is, you know, including even just writing for a newsletter, you know, our newsletter that you mentioned. Everything that goes into that is thinking in terms of getting people to feel something in a way or be able to communicate something in a way that is different than the way they would normally be brought into it or experience it.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I love that. Well, thank you, Amber, so much for talking with us today.

[Amber Tamblyn]

Thanks for having me. Kevin.

[Kevin Young]

This Living by Amber Tamblyn as well as Dede Jackson's the Dahlias can be found on newyorker.com Dee Dee Jackson's most recent collection of poems is My Infinity. Amber Tamblyn's latest book is Listening in the Dark.

[Podcast Producer]

You may subscribe to this podcast, the Fiction podcast, the Writer's Voice podcast, and the Politics and More podcast by Searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. You can hear more poetry read by the authors on newyorker.com and the New Yorker app, available from the App Store Store or from Google Play. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Otunde Adjua, courtesy of Stretch Music and Rope a Dope. The New Yorker Poetry Podcast is produced by Chloe Prosinos with help from Hannah Eisenman. Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.

[David Remnick]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look.

[Kevin Young]

Of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it, no matter what happened after.

[Podcast Producer]

Or Joy Williams, her father, was silent. Slowly, he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling.

[Amber Tamblyn]

To a place immune to her presence.

[Podcast Producer]

A place that indeed contradicted her presence.

[Amber Tamblyn]

She might as well go to lunch.

[Podcast Producer]

Listen to news stories, or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the Writer's Voice wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Remnick]

From PRX.