"Ocean Vangu is on the show and he's a poet. He's a novelist. He's a professor at NYU. What he's really good at is just writing in this fresh and enchanted and imaginative way. He has this way of seein..."

"All right, back to the episode. Talking about awe, mystery, wonder. I feel like that's so infused not just in the way that you write, but in the way that you see. >> Yeah. >> And it has to be like som..."

"All right, back to the episode. Yeah, the big word that comes to me is novelty, surprise, pursuing it. Like in what ways do you feel like you are pursuing novelty, freshness? And in what ways do you f..."

"Oh, 100%. I'm trying to make something in Hollywood right now and it's a documentary style thing. >> Hollywood's even worse. >> Hollywood's even worse. I mean, like when you think of how have movies c..."

"Yeah. There's um at the Met there's this room. So there's George Washington crossing the Delaware, sort of the famous painting in this room. But to the left there's this Albert Beerstat painting of th..."

">> O, that's a punch in the face. >> Sorry, Ben. I mean this in all with all love. Um, >> but that was such an incredible moment of education, right? I I don't think that's um you know to me he raised..."

"And the editor also would know that oh it's easier to edit if I get everybody to sound like each other. Even news magazines have house styles, you know, the New Yorker has one, the New York Times all ..."

"I mean, the New Yorker gave me, you know, like one thing about I'll say, it's important to say is that they published me out of the slush and I never cuz I sent into the slush and I thought there's no..."

">> 100%. And I think it's not a coincidence that particularly in in the 19th century, there was no onlogical vocational distinction between poet and novelist. You know, look at Melville wrote both, Wi..."

"So in nature writing, mimisis would collapse everything because we already know we already see it. So if you're just describing a meadow, you just say, "Oh, there's a there's a there's a sunny meadow,..."

"One comes to love it, to be like a waiting bird, happy only at the edges of the world, where land and water meet, where there is no shade and nowhere for fear to hide. We're not talking about mud anym..."

"Childlike. And it just opens you up to the majesty, the wonder, the subtlety, the grander of this world. >> Yeah. >> And fun. It's like you have it inside of you, but once you get away from the fun, y..."

"look at you know it's funny you said crayons because look at what Schlowski says later on in one description for instance Tulsoy does not say birch but quote a big curlyheaded tree with a luminously w..."

"Yeah, you hear passion. Ah, so passion. It's energy, fire, intensity. It's kind of this like radiant with sort of excite excitement. >> But the word passion comes from suffering like the passion of th..."

"And I was really lucky because I I start as a poet and I was really fortunate, you know, my editor just passed this week and got off. >> Yeah. >> And I was fortunate because I I was trying to sell the..."

"And I was lucky enough to go with someone who just saw what I was coming after. But of course, she's edited Pinchin. She's edited Mary Oliver, you know, and God off. So I was really lucky too, right? ..."

"like what the we want what are you doing this is obnoxious right and because when a reader picks up Shakespeare there's a diiacronic kind of suspension right that happens like oh I'm reading tr I'm re..."

"A book is published in a spring season, a fall season, and then it's collected within the year. That's a synchronic existence. At the end of the year, you have a a similar amount of books. Say all the..."

"The critic was like, "All right, it's in the box. It's recognizable. It's fine. Obligatory clap. Now it's out." The moment of truth is when it lands in the reader. And the reader's like, "I read this ..."

"What do you tell me? >> You have to be there's a I mean what we often talk about in writing school is writing techniques, metaphors. That's all fine. But one thing that I found is >> like words on the..."

"And sometimes all you do is throw your yourself off an eight stair and all you have is bruises and a broken ankle and that's it. There's not even a payoff. And yet there is a delight in doing it with ..."

"There's not correspondence between applause, a crowd applauding and moss. But he's not after that correspondence. He's after the nature of applause, which is nebulous, growing, quick to moss. So by us..."

"And you don't need to know that this is in a poem called acquired immune deficiency syndrome that the exuberance of life >> right >> the after such mass death and loss the the the thrillingness of the..."

"because it's still the tool of tyranny. You know, authoritarian regimes, the first thing they do is capture newspapers and radio stations, >> change the stories. >> Right. Right. So, it's always a a g..."

">> Wow. So for me I think it's I there's a skepticism ceiling that I am working within this material but I don't have this romantic notion that um what I do would do anything beyond what happens the m..."