The Beat: Chris Barton and Peter Gizzi

Welcome to The Beat. Today, we’ll hear the poet Chris Barton read three of his poems: “our free trial lives,” “last supper,” and “the bafflement.” Barton will follow with a poem by Peter Gizzi called “In Defense of Nothing.”

"our free trial lives"

I can explain. A sad pastry. A hymn of wet shoes in a crowded supermarket. Negative capability like a tree encaged in a median, where love is a cloud passing slowly over the intersection of Death and My Peak. The walk home and the mumbling rain cooly asks, are we reborn too much in this world or not enough? How expensive to think I want this—another leaf, another plastic bottlecap—after all my suspect decisions and the articles I've skimmed. This charming deceit of individual moments cascading into the ripe obscurity of a constant entangled now. I mean, what is a lie when it’s all there is, a lie and then some? You arrive, toenails intact, another poet said. A line I pruned to navigate out from the blue-green gist of the earth. Our inherited, expiring, free trial lives. Here is a word for self that means forget. Here is a word for pain that means steal. Here is a word for end that means seed. I can explain. September and people and the absence of utopia. How we tilt our heads away from the wind like we are all rehearsing our greatest belief that something comes next.

"last supper"

Drive slow under fog dusted traffic lights and eat the Wendy’s hamburger alone in the car in the soft, grey dress rehearsal of afternoon. Have you heard? You cannot go on living unless you cling with all your life to love is what the comedic Japanese author said, before his head filled with broken fish. The roads are wet and, often, they seem to lead us nowhere. The last time I spoke to my father, he was unhoused near the Georgia border, digging croissants out of a Starbucks dumpster. The swingsets at the YWCA I sat on are probably stale now, too, or replaced by condos. I drive until I remember how the bleak in me scattered, the night you rolled over in the dark just to sing Shania Twain before we faded into sleep. No point in looking at the sagging mattress of the sky, yet I always do it. What a blessing to not only crave what is inherited but a taste of my possible life. Here I am in the free trial of mine, wadding another wrapper into a tiny, tinfoil planet in my hands, predestined for landfill. Throwing the more enduring parts of me, my poems, out the window.

"the bafflement "

How long will the nights be low-budget and plotless? We stay awake dancing Strictly Ballrooms steps poorly across your hardwood rental. And you tell me about the future cliffside cottage where you want to grow food. Somewhere still above seawater—Canada, maybe. And you teach me the history of Brecht and Mack the Knife: “Oh the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear / And he shows them pearly white..." After, I talk on the cold porch about Kafka. The story of a father who stays awake all night hungry, his two kids by his side, because he can't cut a loaf of bread with a good knife. With the window coated in the juice of the sun, he says, “Why act surprised, children? It is more human to fail than to succeed at anything.” I see the bafflement as two strong dreams colliding in the same sleep: 1. When the moment of choice arrives, fall as quickly as possible onto the sharpest objects in life. 2. We must learn when to put down the tools we have been given to work with.

"In Defense of Nothing" by Peter Gizzi

I guess these trailers lined up in the lot off the highway will do. I guess that crooked eucalyptus tree also. I guess this highway will have to do and the cars and the people in them on their way. The present is always coming up to us, surrounding us. It's hard to imagine atoms, hard to imagine hydrogen & oxygen binding, it'll have to do. This sky with its macular clouds also and that electric tower to the left, one line broken free.

You just heard Chris Barton read his poems “our free trial lives,” “last supper,” and “the bafflement.” He followed with a poem by Peter Gizzi called “In Defense of Nothing,” which is from the book In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, nineteen eighty-seven to twenty eleven. Chris Barton was kind enough to record these poems for us here in Lawson McGhee Library. Special thanks to Wesleyan University Press for allowing us to record Peter Gizzi’s work. Chris Barton is the author of the poetry chapbook A Finely Calibrated Apocalypse, published by Bottlecap Press in twenty twenty-four. His writing has appeared in Epiphany, Peach Magazine, The Plenitudes, Hotel, and elsewhere. From twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen, he co-hosted the Electric Pheasant Poetry Open Mic here in Knoxville, TN. Peter Gizzi grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His many books of poetry include Artificial Heart, Threshold Songs, In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, Nineteen Eighty-Seven to Twenty Eleven, and Archeophonics, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. His book Fierce Elegy, published in twenty twenty-three, won the T. S. Eliot Prize. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. You can find books by Chris Barton and Peter Gizzi in our online catalog. Also look for links in the show notes. Please join us next time for The Beat.