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The Beat: Amish Trivedi

Amish Trivedi is the author of three books. His most recent is FuturePanic (Co•Im•Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Trivedi earned an MFA from Brown University and a PhD in English and Critical Theory from Illinois State University. He's an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware.

Links:

Read this episode's poems (along with several others):

"Green Boots" at The Brooklyn Rail

"Watch the Corners" at Black Sun Lit

"Number Nine" and "Dying" at The Kenyon Review

Amish Trivedi's website

Amish Trivedi above/ground press AWP offsite reading 2023

Transcript
Alan May:

Welcome to The Beat. Today we’ll hear the poet Amish Trivedi read his poems "Green Boots," "Watch the Corners," "Number Nine," and "Dying."

Amish Trivedi:

"GREEN BOOTS"

for Matt Henriksen

Along our arms we mark time, mark

the hours and seconds as flesh trusses

slow the body, withholds, keeps us

together from flooding out into

aether. Let’s pray there was a bolt

of lightning and no moment of sadness or

grief or awareness. Along the trail,

we know now to tip a cap or ring a bell

or holler.    Or maybe making

everyone laugh disrupts the unrestrained

division of cells, our bodies fighting

to hold on longer before bursting,

pressure equalizing between us

and the universe we sieve into.

"Watch the Corners"

Maybe it’s a blessing that we get to die.

The world I cannot recommend to you.

My miracle year was any before this one.

Rubbing the ashes of two good days into a wounded knee.

The trajectory seems off: the mortar doesn’t hit just the things in its path.

The creek is always rising but you don’t always get to see the houses that flood.

Dead spot in a mirror, or the way the bottom of the ocean runs with rivers of sand.

The warmth of a void welcoming beyond ecology.

The tick of time is counter rhythm, or the value of getting away from who you are.

Poetry asks you to betray yourself by letting out the parts of yourself you would have preferred to keep in.

I learned to shut up about myself.

The things that are just for me, I keep in, keep silent.

Sometimes a whole career is playing against type.

The smaller crisis is reimagined within the larger one.

I grieve a death that no one else seems able to determine.

"Number Nine"

Your relationship to language has melted down around your ankles

and your toes are soaking in words you’ve built up. Too much time

wasted in front of news that seems to echo only the worst things of

our time. We were made for revolution, true, but we have to step

back at times. When the riot comes, they’ll find you anywhere you

are or are not, so don’t be anywhere at all.

"Dying"

This is the last building I’ll see and the last words I’ll read, but I’m never

as far from them as I imagine. We used to sit away from it all and pretend

that silence was what held us, but now the empty space seems more

meaningful than your words ever did. Let me step beyond and see a new

design of my choosing. As if made up sounds had some bearing, I squeak

to say my name now because it has no meaning that I can defend. My

words

are yours now and I have no tones to borrow from and call my own. All I

have left is a glance that no one sees and a sigh which fits in my chest

tightly.

Alan May:

You just heard Amish Trivedi read his poems "Green Boots," "Watch the Corners," "Number Nine," and "Dying." He recorded these poems for us at his home in Elkton, Maryland. Amish Trivedi is the author of three books. His most recent is FuturePanic, which was published by Co•Im•Press in twenty twenty-one. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. Trivedi earned an MFA from Brown University and a Ph.D. in English and Critical Theory from Illinois State University. He's an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Delaware. You can find books by Amish Trivedi in our online catalog. Also look for links in the show notes. Please join us next time for The Beat.

About the Podcast

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Podcasts of Knox County Public Library

About your hosts

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Melissa Brenneman

Melissa listens to hours of podcasts on most days. She started the habit with the intention of taking long walks, but podcasts proved to be more addicting than exercise. She records, edits and mixes podcasts for the library.
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Alan May

Alan May works as a librarian at Lawson McGhee Library. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama. In his spare time, he reads and writes poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, The Idaho Review, DIAGRAM, and others. He has published three books of poetry.