Danez Smith: She’s the bee’s knee replacement, Franny Choi.

Franny Choi: And they’re the author of a new book, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Sugar Daddy, Danez Smith!

Danez Smith: And you’re listening to VS, the podcast where poets confront the ideas that move them.

Franny Choi: Brought to you by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness.

Danez Smith: Wow, both my past and future sugar daddies?

Franny Choi: Yeah, right!

Danez Smith: Oh my god, I have so many past sugar daddies, but the idea of them in the future is comforting.

Franny Choi: Oh man, write some sonnets about it.

Danez Smith: Yeah!

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: How’s it going, Nezzy?

Danez Smith: I’m good, I’m feeling all fresh and new. It’s Season 4.

Franny Choi: Season 4, we’re back!

Danez Smith: You know, new season, same us.

Franny Choi: Same us.

Danez Smith: Season 4, at your door! Yes. How you feeling about Season 4 Franny? We’ve been doing this for a while now.

Franny Choi: I know! We’re seniors now.

Danez Smith: We’re seniors.

Franny Choi: We’re about to graduate.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: The memories.

Danez Smith: The memories. As we go on, we’ll remember all the times we had together.

Franny Choi: Had together. Yes. (LAUGHS) True words.

Danez Smith: Now that we’ve spent a lot of time together, Franny, I feel like we need to like, you know, we’re like four years into this relationship with this podcast. And maybe it’s time that we like, you know—

Franny Choi: Have a lesbian check-in?

Danez Smith: Have a lesbian check-in.
Franny Choi: Yes! I’ve been waiting for this moment.

Danez Smith: Don’t you love a lesbian check-in?

Franny Choi: I-1-1 do.

Danez Smith: Okay. As we stand on the precipice of these 22 episodes, what’s an intention that you would like to invite into your hosting?

Franny Choi: I keep learning this lesson over and over again, which is that the best questions as an interviewer come out not from me planning what the next amazing question is going to be, but from like, just literally listening to our guest. And literally listening to you, you know? And so, I think like, generally, in my life, I’m trying to be out of my own head, and listen to my body and my surroundings.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: And I think I wanna be more dialed in.

Danez Smith: Yeah. Present.

Franny Choi: Yeah! Be more present, you know. What about you, what’s your 2020 intentions for VS shenanigans?

Danez Smith: Well, one, I think I would like to decrease my “Mm”s by 20 percent.

Franny Choi: Okay.

Danez Smith: Just 20 percent less “Mm”s. Not all the way out.

Franny Choi: Now with reduced salt.

Danez Smith: Yeah, yeah. I’m a compulsive “Mm”er. You know? Like, sometimes they haven’t even said the deep thing yet. They’ll be like, “Okay, you know the thing about—”, and I’ll be like “Mm.”

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.

Danez Smith: Yeah, things about things. Yes, speak on that.

Franny Choi: Yeah (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Speak on that, nigga, yes, yes. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: The problem is now, as you’re listening to this episode, you’re going to hear all of the “Mm”s-

Danez Smith: Well you this is –

Franny Choi: -And clock every single one of them.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: So … have fun

Danez Smith: I didn’t pro- this is why it’s an intention and not a resolution. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Right, right, right.

Danez Smith: I would fail very quickly.

Franny Choi: Intention is just like, girl, I’ll try. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Yeah. By episode six, I promise you at least two less “Mm”s per episode.

Franny Choi: Ooo! Great.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Franny Choi: I mean, I don’t know, I think that so much of our intention setting, or the practice of intention setting, is just about looking at the past, and being like, okay like, what’s this past year been like.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Intention setting for 2020 is really about like, what was 2019 all about, you know? And our guest today, the illustrious Parneshia Jones, talks a lot about looking both forward to the new year and the new world ahead of us by looking backwards into our past. And so, we are so excited for her to be the one to open up Season 4.

Danez Smith: Yes. Parneshia Jones is the author of Vessel from Milkweed Editions, winner of the Midwest Book Award and featured as one of “12 Books to Savor” by O Magazine. That’s right, the Oprah magazine. Parneshia has been honored with the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, a Margaret Walker Short Story Award, and the Aquarius Press Legacy Award.

Franny Choi: Mmmm!

Danez Smith: Named one of the 25 Writers to Watch by Guild Complex and one of Lit 50’s Who Really Books in Chicago by Newcity magazine, her work has appeared in all the anthologies, including She Walks In Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. Jones has been featured on PBS News Hour, the American Academy of Poets, and on ESPNW. Sports, y’all, sports! She serves as an editorial director of trade and engagement at Northwestern University Press. Her acquisitions have garnered some of the highest literary honors, including the National Book Award, a couple of Kingsley Tufts Awards, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, NAACP Image Award,-

Franny Choi: Ah!

Danez Smith:- LA Times Book Award,-

Franny Choi: prrrrp.

Danez Smith: -and fucking others.

Franny Choi: Whoa.

Danez Smith: Yo. Others. Imagine. Others.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Are there others?

Danez Smith: No, Parneshia’s got ’em all. If there is another, Parneshia done books about who got it.

Franny Choi: Yep.

Danez Smith: Let’s not waste any more time, let’s let Parneshia start us off with a fucking fantastic poem.

Franny Choi: Yes, a new poem for the new year.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: Alright, I’m gonna start off with a poem I just recently wrote.

Danez Smith: Oh!

Franny Choi: Ooo!

Parneshia Jones: I wrote this three days ago. And it’s “2020: The Day After.”

(READS POEM)

NOTE: POEM TO BE UPLOADED AT A LATER DATE

* * *

Danez Smith: Hm.

Franny Choi: Hmm. Thank you so much for reading that poem for us.

Parneshia Jones: Thank you.

Franny Choi: And especially thank you for reading a new poem. Does it still scare you to read new poems to people?

Parneshia Jones: It does, but at the same time, I feel like I have nothing to lose. I’ve kind of operated in this situation where it’s just like, if we are gonna do what we do as artists, we have to be in real time with our work. We have, so long as artists—writers, artists, dancers, musicians, poets, whatever—we only get called upon when the world is in its highest time or lowest time. And now we have to be responsive. Like, instant.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: And I feel like you can’t be scared to just say, you know, I wrote this. You have to be ready to respond, because, I feel like, as artists, this is what we’ve been waiting for.

Danez Smith: Hmm

Franny Choi: What do you mean?

Parneshia Jones: This is our time to show who we really are, and the fact that we are actually the most reliable human beings on the planet. Besides grandmothers, but.

Danez Smith and Franny Choi: (LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: But, artists are truly the ones who will come through for you. We’re used to responding.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: The rest of the world has to wait to respond.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: But we are ready to say, you know what, this is how we see it, we already knew it.

Danez Smith: Mhm.

Parneshia Jones: We know what to do. We know how to dance, we know how to write. We know how to sing. And guess what? I wrote this poem three days ago, and I was just like, you know, I want to read it.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: Because I don’t want people—writers—to be scared to share their new work.

Danez Smith: Yeah. You’re saying that it’s time for us to really live in the urgency of the times in our art.

Parneshia Jones: Yeah. Exactly.

Danez Smith: I’m wondering, too, there’s another thing about time that I was really fixated on in the poem. It was early on. This line about not being haunted by our ancestors and our dreams anymore. But also, with the past repeating itself. And I’m wondering, in this poem, or in your life, where it seems like maybe you’re so fixated in the now-ness of everything, is there anything about that that’s changing your relationship to the past, or to the future?

Parneshia Jones: So, I’ll say this. I mean, I live in a situation where my parents and my grandparents are all within five minutes of me. This has been my whole life. And it’s so funny, because my grandfather is still alive. He’s 88 years old. And he and I have had so many different discussions about what’s going on in this time now. And he’s so like, amused, actually. He’s not upset, or whatever, he’s just like, “Good for y’all. Y’all got Twitter. Good for y’all.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: You know, so there’s that kind of thing. And I’m just trying to understand, because I’ve had this conversation with so many different writers, so many different people. And we’ve never had this many generations of writers in the same time. People are living longer.

Franny Choi: mmm.

Parneshia Jones: So just by default, we have all these different generations. I mean, I’ll say, as an editor, I spent a day talking to somebody who was 101-

Danez Smith: Mmm

Parneshia Jones: - and somebody who was 22.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: And I was like, oh my god. I realized I’ve spoken across at least five different generations in one day.

Danez Smith: Mmmm.

Parneshia Jones: And they all have different ways about how they view the world.

Franny Choi: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: But in talking with my grandparents, and that generation—my grandfather came up from the South. He opened blues clubs here in Chicago. So he’s part of a generation of like, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters. He’s just like, oh you can get mad, it’s fine, but we’ve seen this. We’ve seen it in so many horrible situations. But we also have to make our own identity now. And so what I’ve been trying to do is talk to all these different generations, get everybody on the same page, talk to each other. We need to get back to the porch. That’s what I say.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: It’s not about the book, it’s not about the page, it’s not about celebrity. It’s about getting back to the old fashioned, you sit on the porch and say what you mean, and pass these stories on.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mmm

Parneshia Jones: If that doesn’t happen, nobody of any generation stands a chance. So, in talking with my grandfather—I talk to him, I’m so upset about stuff that’s going on right now, and then he says to me, “We’ve done this before. –

Franny Choi: Hm

Danez Smith: Mmmm

Parneshia Jones: - It’s the people who hate that don’t get it.” And we had this whole discussion about like, gay marriage. My grandfather is 88 years old. Truly old school, old fashioned. And I said, “Let me ask you something. What do you feel about gay marriage?” “Cool. I think it’s alright, it’s alright.” And I said, “Really? You think gay people should be able to like marry?” And he said, “Well who the hell are they supposed to marry?”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Franny Choi: That’s a fair point! That is a very fair point.

Danez Smith: That’s a very fair point.

Parneshia Jones: It was the most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard in my life.

(ALL LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: In the whole idea of—

Danez Smith: That’s my favorite response to that question ever.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: I was like, “Are you okay with this? You’re alright with gay people marrying?” He was like, “Who the hell they supposed to marry?” And I was just like, that’s the most honest and true and most brilliant response.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: And after that he said, “You have to make sure to marry the right one.”

Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: And I said, well shit.

Franny Choi: That is like, the most emblematic, the-past-looking-forward anecdote to answer that question. (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: And I’m gonna say his name.

Parneshia Jones: Oliver West Starling.

Franny Choi: Yes.

Danez Smith: Ooo! That’s a strong Black name.

Franny Choi: That is a really strong name.

Parneshia Jones: Yeah! (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Well, we like to start our interviews by asking the question, what is moving you these days. So, Parneshia Jones, what is moving you?

Parneshia Jones: I feel like, artists right now, more than ever—not more than ever, but not since the Harlem Renaissance—are willing to go into different genres and talk to each other. I want to see us talk to each other, so we survive.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: The artists are going to save the world. I just absolutely know this. I’m not sure if we’re gonna get paid for it, if we’re gonna get health insurance for it.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: I don’t know what that means. But this is our time to say, we want to be present, we want to be heard. I think the most brilliant writers in the history of literature in this country are right now.

Danez Smith: That’s a strong statement.

Parneshia Jones: I know it is.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS) I might pay for it, but I don’t care. I’m ready.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: I got evidence.

Danez Smith: Yeah, well show your work then. Who? (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: So, I’m gonna start with avery r. young.

Danez Smith: Mm. Season—

Franny Choi: 2 guest.

Parneshia Jones: Season 2. And you know, avery’s been doing the work.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: For like 25 years. He’s been doing the work.

Franny Choi: Oh yeah.

Parneshia Jones: And we did his first book, 2019. Juneteenth, we had a launch. Juneteenth, of course.

Franny Choi: Of course.

Danez Smith: Mhm.

Parneshia Jones: It was this situation where I had to like, talk to my people at the press, who are incredible and wonderful, but it was just like, this is a first book by a poet. But I said, you know what, it’s a first book by one of our state’s people.

Danez Smith: Mhm.

Parneshia Jones: So we created this book. It’s his first poetry book, but it was a visual poetry book. And the first thing I did when he sent me the manuscript was, I sent it to Terrance Hayes.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: And I said, “Listen, man. Just look at this, and tell me what you see, and then I’ll go from there.” And he was just like, “Jesus. You shoulda published this yesterday.”

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: And so we did something to reflect the art house of who he is. He is an art house. So, we have that. Obviously we’ve done, you all know, Patricia Smith. And that book, as I was showing you, Incendiary Art, has won more awards than we can fit on the cover. 

Franny Choi: Right, Parneshia was showing us earlier that there’s no room left for any more stickers on the cover. (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: No. So there’s that. And then, I’m a Black woman editor. I’m few and far between. And one of the people I’ve been working with, Nikky Finney, we did this whole game back in 2009, 10. Head Off & Split, published in 2011. She stuck with us. And I’m grateful for that. So, she’s bringing poems, she’s bringing diary, she’s bringing memoir, she’s bringing artifacts. Her very first poem, when she was 10 years old, is in this book.

Franny Choi: Wow, that’s amazing!

Parneshia Jones: So people get to see the spectrum. And I feel like that’s important. You get to see who she has evolved to be. And then we have Furious Flower. The idea of Black poetics.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Can you tell us a little more about Furious Flower? What is…

Parneshia Jones: So, Furious Flower comes out of the Furious Flower Center, out east, and that’s Joanne Gabbin and Lauren Alleyne. And so they came to me. First of all, the manuscript was over 1,000 pages.

Franny Choi: Oh!

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: It was my job as an editor to cut it down.

Franny Choi: Yeah, that’s too long.

Parneshia Jones: Right. So I said, okay, I gotta cut it down to almost 400 pages. I know there will be some feelings in that, but we’re gonna do it, and I’m grateful. I will say, I’m grateful to Northwestern. The staff there, the people there, have always been game for everything that I do. They might have not been sure at the time.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: Everything that I’ve gone and done has delivered for them. So we trust each other.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: And they make it right. I am so grateful as an editor that people of color get treated right in publishing. Period.

Franny Choi: Mm. Oh yeah.

Danez Smith: Dive into that a little bit.

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: But before that, I just wanna know more about how you see your mission as an editor is. Because with all these books, these phenomenal collections—and then especially with stuff like the new Nikky Finney book, which, thank you for giving me—

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS) You’re welcome.

Danez Smith: And avery’s book, they’re so massive in terms of scope, and even just breaking outside of what a book is. Like, it’s not even a single project or collection that you’re getting from a writer. You’re really getting the artist, the process. There’s something else that you’re getting in that, a larger offering than a book, I think, can imagine itself being.

Parneshia Jones: Sure.

Danez Smith: And I feel like that not only takes, you know, a leap of faith for the writer, but really a type of mission and drive from the editor. What is the editor’s role to you? What are you trying to do with Northwestern Press?

Parneshia Jones: Sure. That’s a great question. And it’s so funny, because of course over the summer, I went and saw the Toni Morrison documentary.

Danez Smith: Oh, so good.

Parneshia Jones: Twice.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: When she was doing what she did as an editor—we’re the same age, so it was like, I was in my feelings. And I realized, I’ve been working in this business—next month will be my 17th year at Northwestern.

Danez Smith: Holy shit.

Franny Choi: Oh, wow.

Parneshia Jones: I’m 39, by the way.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: So, draw your own conclusion with that.

Franny Choi: Oh my goodness.

Parneshia Jones: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Wait, wait, so how old—

Parneshia Jones: 22 is when I started.

Franny Choi: You were 22 when you started?!

Danez Smith: Really moving up them ranks, okay.

Franny Choi: Wow!

Parneshia Jones: Yeah. Before that-

Franny Choi: That’s an adulthood. (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: Yeah, it was like, almost half of my life, I’ve been in publishing.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: Before I got to Northwestern, I was in Third World Press with Haki Madhubuti and Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Gil Scott Heron, all these different people. And so, it was absolutely key, because I started in a place that was not afraid to publish people of color-

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Parneshia Jones: - specifically Black people.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: So I didn’t know anything else. So by the time I got to Northwestern, I was like, wait, where are the Black people? What are we doing? What’s going on? So there was that whole conversation. And finally, you know, bless their hearts, they said to me, “If you know ’em, find ’em.”

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: Head Off & Split was the first book I acquired for Northwestern.

Danez Smith: That’s a hell of a book to first acquire!

Franny Choi: That’s a great first acquisition.

Parneshia Jones: And it just went crazy, and did all that stuff. But it allowed for me to have a place, because I already knew it wasn’t my place.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: But at the same time, as I moved along in the years in my position—now I’m editorial director of all trade—what I made clear is that I want to publish the most evocative, brilliant stories, writing, in the world. But what I also made clear to people is that I am creating a space for the Black woman writer.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Parneshia Jones: I want to carve out a space for the Black woman’s voice, because I feel that is the most key and definitive voice in the world. If you look at the infrastructure of American publishing, it was built to not include Black people or people of color.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: So now I have to work within this infrastructure that is still figuring itself out, and that’s fine. But I’m very clear with people about this. I am creating a space for the Black woman’s voice. Not just one book, one poem. Their body of work.

Danez Smith: Hmmm

Parneshia Jones: So they never, ever, ever have to worry about their legacy as a writer.

Franny Choi: That’s amazing to think about—as an editor, to think about a writer’s legacy. Not just their one collection that maybe you acquired, or are working on.

Parneshia Jones: Right. I mean when I acquire, I say to all of my writers, I’m like, “You’re okay now.”

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Oh my gosh, that’s so beautiful.

Parneshia Jones: “You have nothing to worry about. Just do the work.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Parneshia Jones: - You don’t have to worry about where your next book is going to be published and all this rigamarole.”

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: “Your body of work can be here.” And that means something.

Danez Smith: It does. To have somebody trusting your vision, not just your product.

Parneshia Jones: Exactly. Exactly.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: So, if they don’t have to worry about that, you would not believe the demons, all the different things that just like fade away, where they can just focus on being writers. And not, how do I have to bob and weave between different things. No. I say to them, “I signed you because your body of work is going to be here. It’s going to be protected.”

Franny Choi: When you say carving out a space for the Black woman writer, it also sounds like, you’re taking a Black feminist ethos in how you even create that space, you know? Like, that space is shaped by this commitment.

Parneshia Jones: Absolutely. I mean, I think I don’t have a model for this, necessarily.

Franny Choi: Right.

Parneshia Jones: If you go back to somebody like Toni Morrison,

Danez Smith: Mhm.

Parneshia Jones: -who has always been doing the work, and had to like, justify so many different things with Knopf and Random House, and do her own work at the same time, I think that was a big thing on her. And I think it was a burden on her. But then I look at somebody like Dawn Davis who’s at Amistad, and she was the person who got Edward P. Jones’s The Known World published.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: And most people didn’t see the merit in that, and she did. So, there’s so many Black women editors doing stuff. But I feel like we need to be in a space where we don’t have to fight for it.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: But also, we need to reinvent publishing.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: So, there’s that. And I’m not sure publishing is ready for that, because publishing is already going through so many different things with e-book versus print, if they should stay alive, the imprints, all these different things. And I’m just like, you know what, we’re here. And anything that I publish, I make sure that it’s gonna last forever. Period.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Danez Smith: I’m just recalling the Black women editors I know. And the vision is usually at the forefront. You talk about what jessica Care moore has done as an editor, or like—

Parneshia Jones: She’s been amazing.

Danez Smith: Or you know, Mahogany Brown, with Penmanship launched a thousand careers—

Franny Choi: Yeah, yeah.

Danez Smith: —on that small press.

Franny Choi: Right, right, right.

Danez Smith: It’s wonderful to see what you’re doing, Parneshia, because it’s like the spirit of a Third World, but with the funding and regal of a large university press.

Franny Choi: Right, right, right.

Danez Smith: It means something that somebody who is trained under a Third World press is now at Northwestern. Of course, and we see the evidence in the list. What are some of the lessons or some of the conversations that you’re hoping come to the forefront in publishing? Because you were talking a little bit earlier about the difference between publishing Black writers and POC writers, and writers from the mainstream. So, what are those pulses that you’re kind of speaking to right now? Can you just speak a little bit more on those and where you see publishing needing to bend and change and eradicate itself some?

Parneshia Jones: I mean, I think that, you know, a lot of these worlds that we’re in is bending to the movements. They’re not necessarily responding. They’re just saying, we have to respond, we have to do our human resource situation, and do a protocol where people check off boxes and say, yes, I know a Black person, I know an Asian person, I know a person of color. But that’s not it. It’s people in power that we have to watch. It’s the people that have all the power and all the privilege. Because they know something is up, and they’re very scared, and they’re willing to retaliate, not in a way that people of color and Black people are used to. They are willing to retaliate, where they’re willing to destroy their own before they give up any power or privilege.

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Parneshia Jones: We don’t do that.

Danez Smith: No.

Parneshia Jones: It’s up to the people in power. Who are you? You owe us an answer, actually. It’s not us. It’s you. And I just feel like, you know, I’m in a position where I can say something to somebody. You know, I had this conversation with a group of people, and they were like, “We want to be more diverse,” and I said, “How about not use ‘diversity’. What does that mean? What does ‘global’ mean? What does ‘diversity’ mean? Do you actually know what you want out of this?” You have to understand what side of history you’re on and what you want. And the people in power don’t want to give up that power.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: Why wouldn’t you? It’s better for you, it’s better for everybody. So I just feel like, I’m also willing to have a conversation with anybody about this. Because you need it. I know you need it. So, that’s where I stand.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: So I know that you were one of the facilitators for this year’s Poetry Incubator at the Poetry Foundation.

Parneshia Jones: I was, it was amazing.

Franny Choi: You know, that is a space that is built for poets who are looking to do community building, and to kind of marry those worlds of writing poetry and building community. And it struck me that the work that you’re doing at Northwestern is really not just like, editorial, but about building a larger community around art. So I guess I wanted to ask you how you saw community building fit into the larger kind of  landscape of the things that you’re doing.

Parneshia Jones: I was so grateful to do the Incubator, because it showed me what’s coming. I think what happens with a lot of these organizations is that they don’t actually listen to the people coming in. And understand what they need to have conversations with the wider world. And so, I needed them more than they needed me. They were teaching me about what I need to get prepared for, going forward. I told Eve and Nate, I was just like, “I’m so grateful for this.” I don’t get a lot of opportunities to just sit with the people who haven’t had things published. When people haven’t had things published but have been doing the work, are more honest.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: Because you know, you gotta get over to that other side. You gotta make people happy. You gotta do stuff, you gotta sell books, you gotta be whatever. And there’s no shame in that, in any way. But I love seeing the unfiltered. That makes me humble in what I do as an editor. I just feel like, in the space that I’m in, I’m not willing to draw the curtain. I’m willing to pull it back, and say, the only way we’re gonna make it is if we’re talking to each other. This should not be a secret about what goes on.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: And granted, there’s a lot of gnarly, unfortunate things that happen in publishing. But at the same time, I want to make sure anybody going through an MFA program understands, you know, what, it’s less than five percent. I take less than five percent of what is submitted to me. I have 2,000 manuscripts in my inbox right now.

Danez Smith: Oof!

Parneshia Jones: You know, when I moved into this new position, it was like, there’s 2,000 manuscripts in my inbox! And I think they all need to be read. But then I had to like, immediately fly to New York and talk to some editors and say, “How the fuck do you deal with this? What’s is going on? Tell me what to do.” Because you wanna do right by people.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: You do wanna do right by people. But I think for the Incubator, it was one of those things where it taught me that we should be paying attention not to the people who are published, but the people who are going to come next.

Franny Choi: Mm. What did you see in that crystal ball of retreat space?

Parneshia Jones: I mean, what I mostly saw was poetry and memoir.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: People having to go back in their lives, in their family history, and dig through that. Stuff that just for so long was not important. And probably not important to the family. And now they have to decipher through all that. And, in doing that, there’s a lot of things that they weren’t prepared to see. Or hear. About their lives, their family history.

Franny Choi: The writers themselves, looking back?

Parneshia Jones: Yes, absolutely. You know, we’re in this age of like, 23andMe, or whatever the hell that genealogy thing is.

Danez Smith: Oh yeah.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: And you know, people finding these things out, and they’re like—you know, I just love it when I see white people say, “I thought I was half Native American.” No, you not.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: That ain’t what that said.

Parneshia Jones: No. You are Swedish all the way. But that’s okay.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: But it’s so interesting that people are so interested in going so way back to figure out how they deal with now.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: And it’s not pretty. And it’s not nice. If anything, it’s the same thing that my ancestors were dealing with, like in this poem, I gotta deal with. But I think this is really our most powerful time. It’s like, what do you wanna do with that?

Franny Choi: Right.

Parneshia Jones: Because often what happened with all these generations before is that they swept it under the rug, they didn’t talk about it, they hid the problem. People in their family.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: And I have plenty of those. But that’s okay. And now we talk about it. We look at our—where we come from. 2020 is the age of reckoning, in so many different ways.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: Who you stand for, who you are as an individual, but also who your family is, where you come from, what’s your name, everything. But also, how you wanna move forward.

Danez Smith: It’s like what you were talking about earlier with the poem, right? Like, maybe it is actually the time that we return to our pasts and actually come up with some different answers.

Parneshia Jones: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: You know, because we’re living it again, right?

Parneshia Jones: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: We’re living somebody else’s time already.

Franny Choi: Yeah, it makes me think of the refrain in the poem.

Parneshia Jones: “We thought we would have forgiveness memorized by now.”

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: That line

Parneshia Jones: “We have grown tired of hating ourselves.”

Franny Choi: Right, right. But this continuous evoking of like, we thought we would be over it, we thought we would have moved past it, by now we’re supposed to have learned this. And that continuous reckoning of like, no, we’re not past it. I don’t know, I feel like that makes sense to me why that would then force a generation of writers to be like, well, okay, let’s go back and figure out what we’ve missed.

Parneshia Jones: Right. I think that this will be the last generation that has to deal with history repeating itself.

Danez Smith: Because there might not be no more repeating.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: Well there’s that! There’s that, of course. But you know, I’ve taken some time to think about this. And all of our generations before then had the privilege to sweep everything under the rug and not talk about it, or just put it in some space where, it was there. And now, with everything—especially social media, whatever comes of social media.

Danez Smith: Right. It has made our collective memory a lot stronger.

Parneshia Jones: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: And everything is archived now.

Danez Smith: That’s true.

Parneshia Jones: Everything! Even your slightest thought. If you put it out there, it’s archived. So we don’t have, actually, the privilege to be not dealing with our problems.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Parneshia Jones: This is the first generation where that’s happened.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Franny Choi: You’re just living with the knowledge that a record is being created, and can’t be—

Parneshia Jones: And it’s a record created where the whole world can see it. That’s never happened before.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Franny Choi: I don’t know, I also feel like I’ve been seeing people advocating for like, going back further in history, you know? And saying like, listen up, current generation of young people, it’s not just the last 10 years, it’s not just the last 20 years, there’s a long history of this struggle.

Parneshia Jones: Right.

Franny Choi: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I actually buy it. I don’t know if I actually buy the quote kids these days aren’t thinking about the people who’ve come before.

Danez Smith: I mean, I think every generation has to like, catch up to their own history, to allow—

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: I mean, I remember when we were all sort of like the anti-war kids back when Bush was in power and stuff like that. And it was like, okay, cool, let us, hold on we’ll get to the books eventually. You know, I think you have to let kids grow into that history a little bit.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: I think what I hear is not necessarily that this group of kids won’t have to go back into that history in some way, or some sort, but rather they will make fullest use of that ancient knowledge that’s coming from history, right? To actually take the lessons that like, you know, we keep on missing or repeating as generations.

Parneshia Jones: Right, right.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Danez Smith: And actually bring us toward our fullest potential, like, bring us toward something new on the other side of that. (LAUGHS) Hopefully, right?

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: You know, I have faith in Gen Z. Those are some little bad asses.

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: And I’m just like, maybe y’all will be the ones that are like, okay, we are the last generation to fight racism because this is where the shit stops.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Maybe. Hopefully. I mean, little by little.

Franny Choi: I mean, recently, I just saw a TikTok that was a history of colonization in the Pacific Islands. I was like, oh my gosh—

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (IN UNISION) —the kids are alright. (LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: Well, it’s also a thing of like, I’m not really sure how reliable our history is.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Sure. Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: So, it’s so funny because, you know, we’ve been doing this whole family history thing. And understandably, some of the older generations don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. And, you know, if it was too painful, whatever is going on. And so, my cousin, bless his heart, Coris Fox, is doing this whole thing with my mother—

Danez Smith: Your family got some good names.

Franny Choi: Right!

Parneshia Jones: Don’t they, though?

Danez Smith: Yeah, they do.

Parneshia Jones: They do! Coris Fox. My mother, Diana Starling.

Franny Choi: Oh my goodness.

Parneshia Jones: And then there’s me. So, you have that. But they’re working on our family history. And he said to the older generations—when they wouldn’t talk, he said, “Listen, you either tell me what happened, or I’ll make it up. And if I make it up, you ain’t gonna come out looking right.”

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: Amen.

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: That is quite an ultimatum.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: And it was a great thing. Because we have to know, no matter how painful. And I know it was painful. I can’t even imagine how painful it was. People had to make it. And go through. And so, you may have to stretch the truth or do some different things. But now, we don’t live in that time. If you put something out there, the whole world sees it. People who don’t know anything about you, don’t give a shit about who you are, see it, and it’s catalogued, it’s documented, it’s part of a collective world archive.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Hmm.

Parneshia Jones: What does that mean, in terms of your history and your legacy? It’s such a change in terms of our older generations hiding a little bit or stretching the truth, or just telling it according to what needed to move forward. Versus, here it is! You can’t take it back.

Franny Choi: Wow, yeah.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: And so I’ve been trying to figure out who I need to be, because I feel like all of us, all of us living right now are caught in this net. Do we honor this before, a completely different game plan, versus what we live in now. And what we live in now is gonna change tomorrow. I mean, at least, I can say, at least for the old folks before, you at least had a generation to get your bearings and think about what the fuck you wanted to do. But now, everything changes. It’s so instant. What does it mean to put your history in an instant?

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: Even if you haven’t figured it out yet.

Franny Choi: Right.

Parneshia Jones: That’s what I’m trying to grapple with. At least for me.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Wow, yeah. Well, we’ve been talking a lot about your role as an editor, looking out at the larger landscape of publishing and art making, but can we talk a little bit about Parneshia the writer?

Parneshia Jones: Oh god.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: How’s she doing?

Franny Choi: Yeah, how’s she doing?

Parneshia Jones: She a’ight.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) She a’ight?

Parneshia Jones: She a’ight, she a’ight. Yeah. She’s good. She’s actually really good. You know, I’ve been writing more in these last few weeks than I’ve been writing, probably, in the last five years. So that’s a good thing. I’m working on a new poetry manuscript, and I’m also working on a novel.

Danez Smith: Oh shit.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: So, it’s a dual job, which, I’m sure you all know. I don’t know if it’s like we like punishment. We like to be whipped and chained in our situations.

Franny Choi: Well…

Danez Smith: A little bit.

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Yeah, you know.

Danez Smith: I don’t mind if my poems ball gag me a little bit, yeah.

Franny Choi: Depends on who’s asking (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: Right. That too. It really does. And, I don’t know, I’ve just been kind of going back and forth a little bit. You know, part of what I feel like my job as a writer is—I decided a long time ago that part of being a writer was publishing and supporting other people’s work. And that’s the model of Gwendolyn Brooks. Obviously we’re in Chicago.

Franny Choi: Who you met, right?

Parneshia Jones: Yes, I did.

Franny Choi: Oh my goodness.

Parneshia Jones: That was one of the first writers I met.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: So, it was Gwendolyn Brooks, after having Donda West, Kanye West’s mother—

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: —as my teacher for African American literature.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: And then I met Gwendolyn Brooks, six months before she passed away.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: And it was one of the most important moments of my life. And it was so funny because I only had written three poems. And she looked at them, and they’re all red-marked. They’re framed in my house.

Franny Choi: Wow, yeah.

Parneshia Jones: She wrote her address and her phone number and said we should write sometime.

Danez Smith: Aw.

Franny Choi: Oh my goodness.

Parneshia Jones: And it was one of those times where I was just like, you know—I was 20. What the fuck did I know? Like I was just 20. And I knew who she was, but I didn’t grasp it until we lost her. And I saw her casket being carried out in a snowstorm here in Chicago.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: And it was one of those things where I just said, you know, this is my life. I can’t turn back now. And everything that she put on the page—there was one poem, it’s a bad poem. It’s a really, really bad poem.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: And it’s called “Thank You God, For Making Me Black.” And it is a bad poem.

Danez Smith: I like the title.

Parneshia Jones: I like the title too. That’s the only thing that works in the poem.

(ALL LAUGH)

Parneshia Jones: But she wrote in the margins of that poem. And, you know, I went through my whole 19- or 20-year spell of nothing. And she wrote in the margins of the poem, she said, “This is a very brave poem for you to write, because you may receive enemies on both sides.”

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: And at that time, I was just like, what does that mean? And now I sit here—homegirl knew everything. She knew everything. She was a grandmother. When I went to meet her, I wore my grandmother’s pearls. I wore my mother’s silk sweater. Like, I dressed up. I did right. And, I don’t know, I just think that she still remains one of the most incredible writers in the world. And I think, when you look at a lot of Chicago writers, I mean, Gwendolyn Brooks and Carolyn Rodgers and Angela Jackson are the three wise women of everything I know about how to treat writing and literature. You know, I’ve been working on this book of poems called “1973: A Requiem.” 1973 is the birth year of my older brother, who was killed in a hit-and-run here in Chicago a week after returning from Iraq.

Danez Smith: Oh, wow.

Parneshia Jones: It’s taken me—he was killed in 2008. And so, I had to go through this whole, whatever, process. It wasn’t even a grieving process for the first couple years. But I had to grieve on the last end of it. And my mother gave me his canteen. And I had it on my mantle over my fireplace. I just kept it there. And it wasn’t until about a year ago that I just was cleaning, doing stuff, and I took the canteen, and I shook it. There was still water in it.

Danez Smith: (GASPS)

Parneshia Jones: 10 years later, there was still water. And then everything started to go from there. So I’ve been writing this book of poems. Every poem in this collection will lead back to him.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: I don’t know when it’ll be done. I don’t know what it’s gonna be, but, “1973: A Requiem.” And the novel is fiction, because I will not be able to get away with this in any other way.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: But the life of a Black woman editor.

Danez Smith and Franny Choi: Mmm.

Parneshia Jones: And everything that I have seen and experienced. But I promise, I’ll change the names. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: It’ll be fiction. I promise. So, those are the two things that are kind of—

Danez Smith: A memoir with sunglasses on.

Parneshia Jones: Yes, exactly.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) A memoir with sunglasses on.

Parneshia Jones: Sunglasses and hot pants.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Wow. I’m so struck by that story of the water in the canteen. It makes me think back to everything that we’ve been talking about, in terms of the history being with us.

Parneshia Jones: Right.

Franny Choi: If we just give it a little bit of movement.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: I know. I didn’t even know. It was sitting there all that time. And something said, you know, just shake it. And there was water in there. And I was like, Jesus, what do I do—do I drink it? Like, as holy water.

Franny Choi: Right.

Danez Smith: And the book wasn’t happening before that water shake?

Parneshia Jones: No, no.

Franny Choi: That’s the moment that propelled you.

Parneshia Jones: That’s the moment where I was just like, I gotta stop. Everything has to stop.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: I know I’m doing all these different things, and they’re important. But that moment, where it’s just like, somebody still lives in this, and this was something to keep him alive.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Right.

Parneshia Jones: And it was also a situation where he was in what we consider the most dangerous place in the world. But he came home. And that’s where he died. That’s where he lost his life.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: And so, it’s still sitting on my—I didn’t do anything with it. I just put it back and said, I’m gonna write. So, that’s where I am.

Franny Choi: And you said that all of the poems will lead back to him?

Parneshia Jones: Yeah. 

Franny Choi: So they don’t necessarily start there.

Parneshia Jones: No.

Franny Choi: Okay.

Parneshia Jones: Everything will lead back to him, because everything in our family changed when he died. So everything about this collection is gonna lead back to him in some way. Because it’s something about losing one of the key people in your inner circle. And what I realized after he passed away is that he was actually the link holding us all together.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: And now that’s gone. So now we have to figure something out. The whole family has changed. The whole dynamic has changed. How I see people, how I trust people, how I love  people has changed.

Danez Smith: Oof. Yeah, that reminds me of like, my grandfather’s death was the first huge intra-family death my family experienced. And still to this day I think we can lead everything back to him, from the weather … it snows, and it’s like, “Oh, remember when Grandpa used to—”

Parneshia Jones: Right. Exactly.

Danez Smith: It’s all those things. You know, people just hold that kind of … hold.

Parneshia Jones: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Yeah. They have that tether on the family, and it really changes the memory, and everything.

Parneshia Jones: Yeah.

Danez Smith: I love that the book is 1973—that it starts with his birth as the requiem. And that the death date—speaking of my grandfather, actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about the tattoo I have of my grandfather.

Parneshia Jones: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: And wanting to change it in my old age, because like—or, I’m not old—

Franny Choi: Your old age. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: I’m a young sprite. But you know, I have his death date on my arm, and I was just like, oh, that’s not right.

Parneshia Jones: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Danez Smith: You know, it felt like the most important date at the time, when I got it, because it was so fresh. But really, you know, it was that birth. It’s like everything that has sprung forth. And I think especially as Black folks think about death, can’t say really, “gone,” ever.

Parneshia Jones: Exactly.

Danez Smith: You know, they’re different. They’re on another side, but, you know, it’s just like you talking about your brother, right? In that moment, you shake a canteen, and all of sudden, nobody’s gone.

Parneshia Jones: Right. And it’s also a situation where it was just like, I had to make peace with who I am. And I had to make peace with some things about my family.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Parneshia Jones: And I had to make peace with a lot of the relationships. I mean, that’s what it actually orchestrated. Like, this whole situation. It was like, okay, it is what it is. But the other thing is, the grievance that I have in this whole situation is, he was the only person I knew that knew how to forgive.

Danez Smith: Oh.

Parneshia Jones: And I have never met any person in my life like that going forward.

Franny Choi: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: So, it’s like, I didn’t know that while he was there. But going back, and now writing these different things, he’s the only person I know who was of complete and utter forgiveness. Of human beings.

Danez Smith: Hm.

Franny Choi: Is that spirit of forgiveness shaping the way that you are approaching the poems in this book?

Parneshia Jones: Yes. Because the idea of forgiveness is, do you want to love them, after that. There’s forgiveness, and then you walk away. You do your own things. But, with my brother, it was one of those things where like, he loved you just as much as before the forgiving.

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: I am not like that, so.

All: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS) I’ll put that out there, I am not like that. But, going through this whole thing, this whole model. It was like, Jesus, he really loved life so much.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: Mm.

Parneshia Jones: He had nothing to lose. And he loved people—our worst and best selves. He loved us. And I just haven’t met anybody like that since. I’ll probably not meet anybody like that ever again.

Danez Smith: Hm. Just maybe one last thing. Do you have any advice—you know, whether functionally or spiritually—for people who want to both honor themselves as their desires to be a writer and editor? I feel like so many people like, make a choice, at some point. How do you sustain a life as both? On both sides of the page.

Parneshia Jones: You know, that’s a really good question. I think you understand that you will go into where it will be a constant question. It’s not something that’s gonna be answered. But Jesus, do the right thing. And publish the people that you care about the most. The people you want to read. And you know, you know somebody out there in the world needs.

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: But at the same time, don’t sleep on your own work. Your own talent. It’s gonna be a constant battle. It’s not like I have it figured out, by any means. There’s gonna be a constant battle of who gets more time: them or you. And that’s okay. It’s not something actually meant to be answered. Go into both worlds knowing you want to change the world.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Franny Choi: So we are now going to play a game that we play at the end of every episode of VS, called This vs. That, where we put two things—objects, metaphysical concepts, foods, etcetera—into two different corners, and then you have to tell us which one would win in a fight. So, for this edition of This vs. That, we have, in this corner, Twitter.

Danez Smith: Dot com.

Franny Choi: Dot com.

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: In that corner, we have the porch.

Danez Smith: Dot net. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Dot info.

Parneshia Jones: Dot net. (LAUGHS) Totally.

Danez Smith: Dot front.

Parneshia Jones: Dot edu. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: It is a dot edu!

Parneshia Jones: It is!

(ALL LAUGH)

Franny Choi: Wow, the front porch dot edu. Okay, so we’ve got Twitter vs. the porch. Who wins in a fight?

(BELL RINGS)

Parneshia Jones: Twitter vs. the porch?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Parneshia Jones: The porch!

Danez Smith: Why?

Franny Choi: Why?

Parneshia Jones: Because usually everybody’s buried under it.

Franny Choi: Whoa. Whoa, whoa. Wait, what?

Parneshia Jones: Twitter is like, 30 seconds and you don’t matter.

Danez Smith: Damn.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: The porch is a gravesite.

Danez Smith: Wow.

Parneshia Jones: It’s not just the porch. The porch is where people come—

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Parneshia Jones: Everything about your family is buried under the porch.

Danez Smith: Wow.

Franny Choi: Wow, wow, wow.

Danez Smith: Wow. The original cancel culture. (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Def the original cancel culture. (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: I’m gonna go with the porch on that, because the porch is still standing. I know it’s a little rickety right now, but you know what. And it’s so funny because I was just in Vermont, and I’ve been looking at all these people building these porches. Like wraparound porches that I haven’t seen since I’ve been in Mississippi and New Orleans. And I’m just like, if people knew what happened under the porch …

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Wow.

Danez Smith: Wow.

Franny Choi: The porch powered by an army of ancestral ghosts.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Takes the day. (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: Good luck, good luck.

Danez Smith: I mean, what the fuck is a tweet to the ancestors?

Franny Choi: Truly. (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Great question.

Parneshia Jones: Well Twitter ain’t got no porch.

Danez Smith: Yeah, you have seven million followers, but you don’t have one ghost (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Parneshia Jones: No. Bad sign, bad sign.

Franny Choi: Amazing. Parneshia, could you close us out with one last poem?

Danez Smith: Yes, please, Parneshia, please.

Parneshia Jones: Okay. I’ll do this. It’s an older poem.

Franny Choi: Yay.

Parneshia Jones: But I wanted to do it a little bit, because—

Danez Smith: From what book?

Franny Choi: From Vessel.

Parneshia Jones: Vessel.

Franny Choi: Yes.

Parneshia Jones: I wrote this poem because of Dolores Kendrick, who was the US poet laureate of Washington, DC. Her book The Women of Plums—I think she’s one of the most brilliant poets I’ve ever read. So it starts with a quote from her.

(READS POEM)

Resurrection Under the Moon

Be it a gift, a gift

Out of they misery

I become blacker than the skin

of a tree in the rain,

and I be rooted

in the rich black earth.

Out of me flies the swallow.

–Dolores Kendrick, The Women of Plums

I wait in the sugarcane fields

We meet under the moon’s watch.

He look tired and worn

like a walking corpse.

He hurtin’ bad.

Master made sure he made his point

with slashed welts traveling like serpents

across his back.

He walk up to me cautious-like,

stare me right in the eyes

and somethin’ in him come back to life.

He touch my hips,

like he can’t believe they real.

My dress, I sews myself, he take a part,

real careful with each string and stitch,

like it be some fine tapestry.

He whisper my name a thousand times,

fearin’ he might never speak it again.

You can tell how much a man love you

by the way he say your name.

He holds my name tight with his voice,

tracin’ every syllable with his tongue,

lettin’ it linger on his lips

like watermelon wine.

All the while he be memorizing my eyes,

afraid he gon’ forget the color.

My smell, my potion of rose water

and lily, mixed with sweat and steam

from the hot water cornbread,

bring him back to the living world.

I tells him to lean on me,

his back crippled,

legs wilting like old oak branches.

His scent, coiled tight to his head,

and ’round the plains of his shoulders,

reach for me.

I smell the young in him,

hidin’ from master and that whip,

kept quiet in the pockets of his neck.

We link together, so close

 our skin begins to melt.

His kisses move about my face

like magnolia petals.

There ain’t no room for fear

when we lovin’ each other,

this ain’t for the takin’, rapin’

or slavin’.

Master can’t have this part of us.

I let him love me all night.

I know my lovin’ keep him

from the slave grave.

black woman’s love

ain’t nothin’ casual.

Our love brings our men

back from the dead.

* * *

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Danez Smith: Ugh! What a great way to start the season.

Franny Choi: Yes! Parneshia Jones herself. Ugh so, so wonderful to get to spend this amount of time with Parneshia.

Danez Smith: You know what like, really jabbed me in the heart, though?

Franny Choi: Hm?

Danez Smith: When she was talking about her brother’s canteen.

Franny Choi: Oh my god, I know.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Sheesh. It’s such a like gift as a poet when an object like that walks into your life.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: I mean, a hard gift sometimes, but, you know. Have you had like, a canteen, so to speak, show up in your life?

Danez Smith: Hmm.

Franny Choi: Like an object that-that launched 1,000 poems, or whatever?

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Well I guess, yeah. If we’re talking about 1,000 poems. I mean, I think the idea of the porch comes up a lot in my poems.

Franny Choi: Oh yeah, like we were talking about.

Danez Smith: Yeah, we were talking about it with Parneshia. And I think, for me, it is a very specific porch. It is the porch that’s attached to my grandma’s house that is like, slowly sinking into the ground.

Franny Choi: Mmmm.

Danez Smith: And it’s like that porch that holds so many of my memories. And I was gathering things for some nameless new manuscript that I’m working on, and I noticed that three of my favorite poems from that thing, the porch was there. And it’s that particular porch. And I wonder if I’m denying myself a richness in not leaning into it further.

Franny Choi: Hmm.

Danez Smith: Because I think the porch is such a big idea in Black or in Southern poetics—

Franny Choi: For sure.

Danez Smith: —that I’m like, oh, I actually need to talk about this porch that if you put a ball on it’ll roll to the front, and everything that’s on it. The particular musk of it. The particular wicker of the chair. So I wanna lean into it more. And it also comes to mind—I had a handkerchief from a lover for a long time, that she gave me before I went to Cave Canem for the first time.

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: And I held onto it for a lot of years, just because it was a precious object. And I still hold onto it sometimes.

Franny Choi: Wow, that is so old fashioned. A handkerchief from your lover.

Danez Smith: Girl, it was—

Franny Choi: That you both hold onto.

Danez Smith: I was—we were both gay, but I was so straight for her. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Wow.

Danez Smith: But it often reminds me of softness. It is this cute, a little bit tattered now because it was in my pocket for like, four years—

Franny Choi: Oh my god!

Danez Smith: Yeah. So it’s okay, it’s a reminder to invite the idea of the delicate into it. You know?

Franny Choi: Mm-hmm.

Danez Smith: How ’bout you? You got objects that get you goin’? That grind those gears in a good way?

Franny Choi: Yeah. It’s an object that hasn’t necessarily shown up in poems. Like, if you have read a bunch of my work, you might not necessarily recognize it, but it’s one that keeps coming up in like, you know, sort of free-writes and things. It’s just on my mind a lot. I just have a memory of my parents hauling in a kitchen table from the curb, you know? That they found on the curb. And you know, that was our kitchen table for years, where like, all of our meals were at, and all my homework was did.

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: And it’s not even about the table, it’s about like the look that I remember on my parents’ faces as they were bringing it in. Because I think also it’s one of my early memories of them as people in their mid 30s, you know what I mean?

Danez Smith: Mm-hmm.

Franny Choi: Especially as I’ve been getting closer to that age, like also finding furniture on the curb and being excited about trying to build a new home without that many resources or anything, it makes me think about where I am in relation to where my parents have been. And also, like, a small joy that I saw as a child but didn’t exactly understand.

Danez Smith: Mm.

Franny Choi: Yeah, I don’t know, I think about that table, I think about like, the particular couch cover that we had on our ratty couch. It was a really ugly sofa cover thing. You know, if there’s an altar in my mind for where the next poems are coming from, those two things are on that altar. You know what I mean?

Danez Smith: Oh that’s beautiful. I love that, yeah. Objects that don’t appear in the work, but propel it.

Franny Choi: Yeah. Totally. Totally.

Danez Smith: Amen.

Franny Choi: Speaking of propelling …

Danez Smith: Let’s propel out this bitch.

Franny Choi and Danez Smith: (LAUGH)

Danez Smith: You got a thank-you that you wanna give a shout-out to?

Franny Choi: Yeah, sure! I want to thank my new home of Northampton, Massachusetts.

Danez Smith: Wow!

Franny Choi: Yeah. It’s not the place that I necessarily imagined myself living. But it’s been a good home to me so far. So, shout-out to you, Western Mass.

Danez Smith: Hm. Word.

Franny Choi: Yeah!

Danez Smith: I’m gonna set an intention with my thank-you.

Franny Choi: Okay.

Danez Smith: And I’m gonna, in the future, thank Joe Biden for dropping out of the race.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: (LAUGHS) Joe, thank you—

Franny Choi: Thank you so much for your service.

Danez Smith: Thank you for being the cool neoliberal white uncle for many years. And now it’s time for you to sit yo’ ass down. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: Have a nice rest.

Danez Smith: Yeah.

Franny Choi: Yeah.

Danez Smith: Yeah, let a young man like Bernie do it this time around.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: So thank you, Joe Biden, for sitting the hell down. (LAUGHS)

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS)

Danez Smith: We should give some other thank-yous and get on outta here.

Franny Choi: (LAUGHS) Yes. Thank you so much to the Poetry Foundation, especially, always Ydalmi Noriega. And to Itzel Blancas. Thank you to Postloudness. Thank you to our producer, Daniel Kisslinger, always, of course. And thank you to you for continuing to listen to us.

Danez Smith: Yeah. Please make sure that you like and rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or whatever it is that you get your podcasts going on. Follow us on social media. That is only the Twitter @Vsthepodcast. I believe we still have a Facebook.

Franny Choi: Don’t look at that.

Danez Smith: Well, I’m not on Facebook. So you don’t need to be on Facebook either. And you don’t need our Instagram. And with that, we’re gonna get on outta here, folks. Thank you for listening to the first episode of this season. As you know, we will be back every two weeks with one of your favorite poets, or your new favorite poet. We look forward to a good 2020 with y’all.

Franny Choi: Can’t wait. Bye!

Danez Smith: Peace, y’all.