Dear Listener,

Today, Commonplace is releasing the first of five lectures Rachel wrote and presented over the course of several years, as a part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. This particular episode is the same title as her new book, which features essay versions of the lectures, The Poetics Of Wrongness.

I was still in New York when Rachel started working on these lectures, and while I knew they were difficult for her to research and write (they were terrifying, she admitted, in a conversation we had), they opened up new doors of thinking, communicating, and being. Ultimately, the experience of researching and delivering the lectures is what led us here, to our beloved Commonplace.

As humans, we are social creatures, drawn to the experience of interacting with other people, to learning what makes others tick and also trying to figure out if they know or even care to know what makes us tick. Amidst all this ticking is, if we’re lucky, some existential dives into art, art-making, beauty, truth, fear, death, and all those other things that, when cobbled together, one might call life.

As Rachel went from city to city and delivered her lectures, she told me she felt enlivened by the conversations that followed the lectures. Commonplace was born out of a desire to keep those conversations going, especially for those who find it more difficult, for whatever reason, to attend a poetry reading or lecture or writing class. The goal of Commonplace has always been to make you feel as though you are in the room with us, communicating with us, learning what makes us and our guests tick. And along the way, many of you have shared your own feelings about the conversations and the show that have only strengthened the work we are doing here and hope to continue to do for a long time.

Episode 110, the first of Rachel Zucker’s Bagley Wright lectures, will challenge your idea of what is allowed or acceptable in a poem. It may give you the freedom to rewrite the rules of your own art-making, whether that is poetry or some other craft. It is an invitation to not only break rules, but imagine a world without them. You can listen to it here.

LISTEN TO EPISODE 110 HERE 

Rachel Zucker is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose including The Poetics of Wrongness, SoundMachine and MOTHERs. In addition to working as a labor doula and childbirth educator, Rachel has taught writing for over 25 years. She's taught people of all ages at the 92nd Street Y, Friends Seminary (K-4), Basic Trust Day Care, Antioch Low Residence Program, Yale, Columbia and, for the past 13 years, graduate and undergraduates at New York University.

Many thanks to Wave Books for offering a discount code to Commonplace listeners, patrons, and newsletter subscribers! Simply order The Poetics of Wrongness from Wave Books and enter promo code BWLS when you checkout.

Please consider supporting Commonplace at any level by becoming a patron here or making a one-time donation! Rachel will send a signed copy of either The Poetics of Wrongness or SoundMachine to anyone who becomes a patron at the level of $15 or more during the months of April or May!

As a reminder for those of you in San Francisco, Rachel will be reading on Friday, April 21st, 7:30pm with James Cagney, Henri Cole, Jewelle Gomez, and Jacques Rancourt at Grace Cathedral! You can get tickets here! And don’t forget to say hi to Rachel after the reading.

Lastly, as newsletter subscribers you’re the first to know about the next class that Rachel is offering as part of the Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics! Read the course description and register here! Space is limited.

Thanks for listening and keeping the conversations going with us. We’ll have a lot more episodes out soon, and are so grateful to have you here.

— Christine & the Commonplace Team