Stefan Hyner: April 28, 2016

Steve Dickison introduces Stefan Hyner, who opens with his poem "All night that wind rattled the windows," and "Dreams," the latter preceded by Charles Baudelaire's "Race of Cain" as epigraph. He then reads "Another day just like that," "You probably look good without a body," "Sand," "Another Course in History," "From chaos and darkness we are born," "Means to Survive No. 56, Jonathan Swift Revised," "Prehistory," "The Sixth Patriarch Revised," "Another Grimm Fairytale," "And bedded down again," and "The Cho Conquered the Binh," all from manuscript. He then remarks on 19th century German novelist Karl May and reads "Self Portrait at 57," "Monkey Business: Poetics," "College Course: Philosophy Turned Politics," "The Sorrows of an Old Man," "Too Many Well-Meaning White Men, to Janet Montgomery McGovern," "Man Eats Man," "Noise and Profit: The Charm of our Days," "The Kimchi Princess," "A Letter Written to Quan Shi Yin," "Don't Let Reality Stand in the Way of a Good Story," "Abstract Dream, Daytime Worship," "Oh Sister of Mercy and Matsu," "No Language, No Insanity," "Enough Homocentric Fairytales Already," "Tuesday, Working at the Local Protestant Church," "Request, to James Koller," "Military Planes Fly Past My Window," "America: a Picture Postcard," "A Lesson in Philosophy," "Reading The Chicago Review in Austin, Texas," "Top 10 American Roadside Billboards," "College Course: Economy, Lesson One: Money," "The moon is full of green elephants," "Moral Dilemma," and "What is Democracy?"

Hyner, in response to questions from the audience, remarks on the sequence of his poems, and his use of epigraphs. Steve Dickison asks how he made his way as a character into Paco Ignacio Taibo's novel. Hyner responds about his time with May. Hyner remarks on the languages he writes in, his thoughts on translating his own poems and the deciding what language to write in. He tells of the nature of early Chinese books, based on rubbings of poems carved in stone, that included space for written commentaries by the books' readers. Dickison requests and Hyner reads his translations from Chinese in his pamphlet, This Other World Not Civilized. Hyner reads "Tao Te Ching, Chapter 80" by Lau Tzu, "Peach Blossom Spring" by T'ao Yuan Ming, and "Inquiry Amidst Mountains" by Li T'ai-Po.