What can animals teach us about ourselves? That’s part of what poets Reginald Dwayne Betts and Mai Der Vang are both exploring in their new collections.
“Doggerel” is Bett’s collection about the relationship between dogs and their humans. “Primordial” by Der Vang tells of a nearly extinct deer-like creature that lives in the jungles of Laos.
They spoke to OPB’s Jenn Chavez at the 2025 Portland Book Festival.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Today we’re bringing you a conversation with two poets whose new collections are about animals and what they can tell us about ourselves. Reginald Dwayne Betts’ book “Doggerel” explores the relationship between dogs and their humans. Mai Der Vang wrote about a nearly extinct deer-like creature called the saola, which lives in the jungles of Laos. They spoke with OPB’s Jenn Chávez in front of an audience at the Portland Book Festival.
Jenn Chávez: Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of a memoir and three collections of poetry. In 2019, he won the National Magazine Award for his New York Times Magazine essay that chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a licensed attorney. A 2021 MacArthur Fellow, he is the executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit organization that is transforming the access to literature in prisons through the installation of freedom libraries in prisons across this country.
For more than 20 years, he has used his poetry and essays to explore the world of prison and the effects of violence and incarceration on American society. Betts’ latest poetry collection, which is the one we’ll be talking about today, is fantastic, and it is called “Doggerel.” Give it up for Dwayne.
[Audience applause]
I’m also joined by Mai Der Vang. She is the author of “Yellow Rain,” winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, and a Northern California Book Award. Her first book, “Afterland,” received the first Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Fresno State. Her latest poetry collection, which we will be getting into today as well, is also fantastic, and called “Primordial.”
Dwayne and Mai Der, thank you so much for being here. [Speaking to the audience] And thank you all, again, so much for being here.
[Audience applause]
So I’d love to start off with a reading from each of you. And Dwayne, if it would be OK with you, I would love for you to go first. Could you please read us “What We Know?”
Reginald Dwayne Betts: [Reading his poem “What We Know”]
Just after the sun comes out,
Those with sleep still clinging
Stumble into the street, before
Them two ears tilted toward
What the moon has last said.
Nose moving them from wonder
To the mission born of mystery:
This animal licks my face
With the same curiosity she uses
To pry what my youngest calls
A pigeon’s treasure from the ground.
She shepherds me, just as around
Us, there are half a dozen others
Doing the guiding, animals
Who hear others call us & our
Jangle of inconsistencies, owners.
Before the sun has fully risen,
It’s easy to see the truth of it all,
Those who would call me friend,
But have never known soft paws
On their thighs would believe
That I am some lord, master or
Minor god to this barking.
But I know I barely control
My wonder these days, & wish
To kneel & search with these
Dogs whose stance toward
Morning is so familiar, from sniffing
The air, to believing that even I,
a stranger, will turn and join, if
They bark in just the right way,
& then discover, once close
Enough to the looking, what has,
For whatever reason, become lost.
[Reading ends]
Chávez: [Applause] Thank you. So Dwayne, on the title page of this book, you explain that it’s just you writing poems about your dog and the dogs you encounter on the street, and how that changed your world. I wanted to start by asking you, do you remember some of your earliest memories of dogs? And then can you tell us how this dog that you write about in your book came into your life, how you came to live with this dog?
Betts: We had this neighborhood and around my way called Doggy Lane. You would go there if you need to exercise, because the dogs would chase you. [Laughter] And sometimes they needed encouragement, you had to climb a fence, you had to throw something. It’s crazy though because the marker between that neighborhood and my neighborhood was that I lived in an apartment complex and these were all houses. So my understanding of dogs was also one that was this line between who had the money to afford the dog and who couldn’t. And then it was just the regular violence of living in a neighborhood where people would let their dog go and say, “Bite.” Bad things, right?
I grew up agnostic or deeply afraid of dogs, depending on where your dog was in proximity to me. And then during the pandemic everybody was trying to find a reason to go outside, and we had gotten a dog. And it changed me in a way, and this is what changed me for real. It wasn’t necessarily just the idea of having a dog, it was radically the way in which the dog made me reconceive of how people in my community saw me, and also how I saw them. Oftentimes, the way we see each other is just this unstated assumption. But I got this dog, and I was just like, “I saw you yesterday, hey, how’s it going? No, I got your trash for you, don’t worry about it.” I don’t even like touching my trash, I’m taking people’s trash out for ‘em, you know what I mean?
And then this was the kicker, I’ll end with this. I’m walking, it’s like 6 in the morning, a mile, two miles, three miles. And I got healthier. But also, man, there was this three-legged dog on my street. And I hated this dog. When you walk past it, it would start barking and it would run up and down. And a friend told me that the dog was mean and its owner was meaner, and I believed the friend because why would you lie about your neighbor, especially if you’re saying that they’re mean. This person was an English teacher, why would an English teacher lie? [Laughter]
One morning, I’m walking past the house, and my dog is pulling me towards the house. And I usually would yank my dog because I didn’t want the dog to die. But this morning the dog keeps trying to go to this three-legged, giant monstrosity, and I am so bothered that I say, “[Beep] it, you be breakfast!” Now, I don’t let the full leash go, because I’m still thinking that at the last minute I will snatch him from the jaws of disaster. But I’m letting him walk over there to this monster, and the dog is now barking louder and running faster in the same way you would expect to happen when somebody thinks breakfast is coming. And my dog gets this close. And that dog lays down and licks my dog’s face.
And it was just this realization man, that we all had an assumption of who this three-legged dog was because he was [beep] lonely and excited that somebody might come visit. And it was a [beep] English teacher that told me that the dog was evil, and the owner.
Chávez: [Laughter] Thank you. I have another question about this poem, but first Mai Der, I would love for us to start off with a poem from you as well. Your book also explores a particular animal, and I think a good way into that could be your poem “Deduction Remains.” So I was wondering if you could start us off with an introduction and read that poem.
Mai Der Vang: [Reading her poem “Deduction Remains”]
Let’s assume you’ve never heard of the saola.
Let’s assume that if you’ve never heard of the saola, you
likely have never seen one either.
In your mind, it could be a gem or a tree or a kind of art.
The saola is an animal.
The saola lives in the Annamite Mountains between Laos
and Vietnam.
Though locals had long known of the saola, the animal was
first announced to the world in May 1992.
The saola was the first large mammal to be found in more
than fifty years by the Western world.
The saola belongs to the Bovidae family. Bovids are animals
with hooves and horns that include bison, buffalo, sheep,
antelope, cattle, to list a few.
The saola was determined to be a new species of Bovidae.
Nothing of its kind had been known. The saola was placed
in a genus of its own: Pseudoryx.
The last known sighting of the saola was in 2013.
The saola is critically endangered.
Let’s assume you know about endangered animals.
You may have heard of the multiple species of rhinos,
whales, leopards, and pandas that are vulnerable or nearly
extinct in the wild.
Maybe you even know about the vaquita. Like the vaquita,
the saola is on the verge of extinction.
Estimates place the saola population at fewer than
one hundred.
Let’s assume you care.
Let’s assume you understand what’s at stake.
You understand the fate of the saola is bound to the fate of
the forest.
You understand the fate of the forest is bound to the fate of
this planet.
You understand the fate of this planet is bound to the fate of
your body.
It is bound to the fate of the bodies of everyone you love and
the fate of the bodies of everyone you will come to love.
You understand the importance of the word saola.
You understand it is not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
[Reading ends]
Chávez: [Applause] For many of your readers of this book, me included, this might be their introduction to saolas – right now, perhaps for this audience, this poem that you just read. How did you learn about saolas, first, and what drew you towards writing a collection of poems about them?
Vang: I’m a daughter of Hmong refugees, so my parents are refugees from Laos, and they resettled here in the States in the early ‘80s after the U.S. withdrew from its proxy wars in Vietnam and Laos. I was just a kid, I didn’t know any better about what my parents endured and experienced because of the war or how they became refugees. And then, I think it was middle school, high school, my mom mentioned something about an animal with horns that had been sort of shared with the Western world. The locals who lived in the jungles and the forest, they all had seen and knew about saola already, but it wasn’t known to science and the Western world until 1992. So it was really an astonishing zoological discovery to think that this large mammal was roaming in this landscape, unbeknownst to the rest of the world. And that was pretty remarkable.
I first learned about saola then. And then it wasn’t until years later, when I was a part of a Hmong writing collective, and one of my Hmong writing friends had mentioned saola, it just reactivated something in my mind about this idea of this animal with horns. So saola has been with me ever since. I’ve just been thinking about saola, feeling a weird sort of unexplainable kinship with this animal that I have never met and may never meet in my life. I actually wrote about saola a little bit in my first book and then it reappeared again in my second book. And then this third book was like, I’ve got to commit. I’ve got to do some research and really go further in my creative work and thinking about the connections between saola, survival, extinction, climate and the refugee experience.
Chávez: Well, thank you for sharing that poem. I learned so much about saolas from this book, so thank you for that.
Dwayne, I wanna return to that poem that you read a minute ago. You talk about “humans and their jangles of inconsistencies” – which I love, I’m certainly a jangle of inconsistencies – being called “owners.” And you talk about people who’ve never cared for a dog before, thinking of humans as some “lord, master or minor god” in relation to them. And this immediately stood out to me because I’ve always thought about that a lot, the way humans describe their relationship with animals. Why was making that kind of distinction, questioning that, important for you as you wrote about this relationship you were forming with your dog and other dogs?
Betts: Well, it was probably because I was forming a relationship with a dog in the context of being a poet, of being a writer, of having a friend who’s been an animal rights activist and a vegan for like a hundred years. And Lori, some of the poems were for her. But it was also thinking about the ways in which my relationship with her and watching her relationship with animals, made me rethink about what a relationship with animals might be. So part of the poetic investigation is interesting and part of the relationship with a dog’s interesting. You’re constantly figuring out that you don’t control things. I’m literally telling this animal “Stop!” And then it’s like, “No.” What do you mean no?
I’m telling you the wildest thing ever – this is not even a part of answering your question, but I’m gonna pretend like it is – you get in a situation where you get to recognize what fear is. It’s 1:30 in the morning and the dog has to go to the bathroom, and the dog is like huddled in the back of the crate. And you’re trying to coo the dog out, and you got snacks and you got treats, but you got sleep in your eye as well. And then the dog comes out, and y’all are walking and you realize the dog is afraid of the dark. But this is the scary thing, you’re like, “Yo, I ain’t been out at 2:00 in the morning either.” What was I thinking, as a 15-year-old, hanging out in the streets like that?
Those are the kind of moments that make you feel like it’s not a “I’m leading the dog into the darkness” as much as “we are collaborating together to figure out how to make this thing work.” And that’s whether it’s going to the bathroom or it’s me trying to get her to walk. So in the poems, I was just trying to detach myself from the sense of ownership that I had began the relationship with.
Chávez: Is there a word that you would use to describe your relationship to your dog, besides owner?
Betts: Inconsistent. [Laughter] In the best sense, we kind of people, you know? I appreciate DMX way more than I did when I was a kid.
Chávez: This is something that both of you have kind of already touched on a little bit, but I’m gonna ask y’all anyway: what did these animals and these explorations into them make you notice about yourselves and the way you both moved through the world?
Betts: Well honestly, I learned that people like dogs way more than they like poetry, amazingly so. [Laughter] In fact, one of the radical things I discovered is that I was living in a world of poetry – the world of poetry that I was writing – was disconnected from the experiences of the people that I cared about, that I wanted them to touch. And this is even if I wanted them to touch and think about prison, I had been seduced by the idea that the only song I had to sing was a tragic one and one filled with trauma. I would come into the rooms like this, and people would experience the work, and then I would disappear and be lonely, because they would experience the work for these three seconds. The work wouldn’t be something that they wanted to linger in their head, because who wants an ice pick lingering in their head?
That was a joke, yo. It was a good one too! [Laughter]
But I’m gonna tell you something though. I wrote “Doggerel,” and maybe my commitment to writing about dogs changed what I saw ... It changed the sort of relationship to the world. It was lower to the ground than it usually had been. Even if it was a poem that started with sorrow, it would turn somewhere else. Even if it was a poem that started with grief, it would turn somewhere else. And I would start doing things with poetry that I would never do before.
I literally was in a green room once and, and I’m listening to this dude talk to his friend, and he’s like “Oh, your dog’s died.” And now I’m eavesdropping, right? I don’t even eavesdrop on people, I don’t care what you’re saying. But now I’m listening. And they said the kind of dog, and one of my friends had the same dog. And I’m like, “Yo, put her on speaker.” Now I’ve gotten into the conversation. And this dude is like, “Put her on what?” I said, “Put her on speaker, I wanna read a poem to her.” If a man ever asks you to read a poem to anybody you’re talking to at the time, it seems like an invasion of privacy. But I was so persistent and he put her on speaker. He said, “I don’t know why this dude wants to read to us.” [Laughter] I read “Grief” and they both gasped at the end. It was just like, “Yo, thank you.”
I’ve been a poet my whole life and I literally had never in my life, until I wrote an elegy for a dog, thought that a poem I wrote mattered enough to interrupt a life of a stranger and give it to ‘em. And doing that made me discover that a lot of the stuff that I write matter to people. And the only reason that it sometimes feels like it doesn’t to me is because the book costs $26.95 and everybody can’t afford it. But you could afford the 90 seconds that it takes me to read one of the poems. I’ve made a habit of doing that. And walking the dog is – see, I pulled it back to the question – what made me discover that power of poetry.
[Audience applause]
Chávez: Mai Der, what about you? Did you learn things about yourself, notice things about yourself through this exploration?
Vang: One of the things that did happen as I was writing a lot of these poems was that I obviously had to do some research about saola, and spend some time learning, of course. And then I got the courage to reach out to the folks who are doing actual saola conservation work in the field. And that was really scary because I’m a poet and I had no idea how these people were going to react to me writing poetry about an animal that they’d spent years already doing the important work on. But when I reached out to Bill Robichaux, who is considered the leading biologist on saola conservation, he was so receptive to me. He’s like, “What? A poet?! You’re a poet and you’re writing about saola? That’s incredible! We have to get together!”
It was just a chance to see the power of these interdisciplinary connections that can happen when you take the courage to step outside of your field. When you step away from poetry, your world … For me, as a poet, when I step outside of the world of poetry, my world just gets so much bigger, and my poems get so much better. And I get better. I feel like I’m not just writing poems for this book, but there is a larger cause and landscape that I can contribute to as well. I might not save saola, but I, at the very least, can begin to examine my own connection and how my existence complicates this animal’s existence too. So I’ve thought about that and I’ve also appreciated the interdisciplinary connections that have come out of this. And also, I’ve connected with the Saola Foundation as well. So it’s been really exciting to see the work grow in ways that I could not have expected.
And then the other thing too, that I was thinking about as I was writing a lot of these poems is, should I have written this? Should I have written this book? Should I have written these poems? Only because I’m also aware that me writing and exposing the world to this animal also puts the animal at risk too. What kind of risk am I taking to write about this animal, to then put that animal at risk as well? But then what if I write and people start to care? There’s that hope too. I think I was really sort of torn between these kinds of emotions and I had to sort of negotiate that as I was writing the poem, in the same way that people have asked me, “Well, are you ever going to go search for this animal?” No, I’m not! People have said, do you want to go? I would rather stay away, if I could and if I have to. I think those are the things that sort of complicated my experience of writing about an animal like this, and the ethics involved too.
Betts: I will tell you, you have complicated my relationship to the stage right now. I have been waiting to ask you the whole time if you found one and now, I feel like … [Laughter]
Vang: No, it’s a fair question. I think that’s the thing, that when you write a book about an animal like this, your readers try to get to the very end to see, “Oh, does she ever find one? Does she ever go back to Laos? Does she trudge through the jungles?” And no, this book is a book that can never end in that way, I guess.
Chávez: That’s so interesting. You’re right, that would be, in the standard type of documentary genre, that would be the end goal.
I would love to have you read another poem. And as you’ve kind of talked about, when talking about finding your way into writing about saola, you also explore the experiences of Hmong people, Hmong refugees and your own Hmong identity as you write about this critically endangered animal. One poem I loved that touched on all this was “Evolution Absence.” Could you read that for us, please?
Vang: Yeah, I’d be happy to. This is the first time I’ve ever read this poem in public, so we’ll see.
[Reading her poem “Evolution Absence”]
I question existence
I question my existence
I’ve been questioned about my existence
I’ve been told “I didn’t know Hmong people existed”
I’ve been told “You actually exist”
I sometimes feel nonexistent
I question the meaning of existence
I hide my existence
I secret my existence
I secret to survive
Hmong people are a secret
Hmong people fought in a secret war
Hmong people were made to be secret
Hmong people were America’s secret
America forced Hmong into secrecy
Hmong people secret to survive
Hmong people hide
Hmong people exist
Hmong people hide
Hmong people are unknown
Hmong people are rare
Hmong people exist
I am a Hmong person who exists
I am Hmong in secret
I exist
I am a secret
I am a secret who exists
I know the saola exists
The saola is an elusive animal
The saola is extremely secretive
The saola is a secret
The saola exists
The saola exists for some since 1992
The saola existed before 1992
The saola hide
The saola are shy
No biologist has seen a saola in the wild
The saola are seldom seen.
The saola don’t want to be seen.
The saola are invisible.
The saola become invisible
I don’t like to be seen
I am invisible
I am a private person
The saola prefer privacy
The saola prefer seclusion
The saola prefer secrecy
The saola is a secret that has survived
The saola has not been detected since 2013
It has been a long time since the world has seen saola
Only a small number of saola remain
The saola is a secret that might not survive
The saola could become extinct in the wild
The saola could become extinct everywhere
The saola secrets to survive
The saola hides
The saola exists
The saola hides
The saola is unknown
The saola is rare
The saola exists
[Reading ends]
Chávez: [Applause] I’m so honored to give you the opportunity to read that for the first time. In this, there’s tension between existing and questioning existence, between secrecy as a good thing and a bad thing, between visibility as a good thing and a bad thing. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about those contradictions, those tensions, how you see that in the saola story, in the Hmong story, in your story?
Vang: When I think about the sort of theme of secrecy in some of the poems, and in that poem in particular, I sort of have to think about the difference between an animal like saola, who chooses to retreat from humans and who chooses to sort of have that secrecy, to be shielded from the rest of the world … versus, in the case of my experience and being a descendant of this war, in the case of an imposed secrecy, when a secrecy is forced upon you, as in the case of when the United States exploited and used Hmong men and boys to fight its proxy war, essentially to spare American lives. They had my uncles and my grandfathers fight this war on their behalf. And this was all happening in Laos, next door to Vietnam. So because it was the CIA who conducted this, it was like an imposed secrecy. It was a forced secrecy that was placed upon Hmong people. And then when the war ended in 1975, they just abandoned Hmong people and left them to their fate.
So that, to me, is the complication and the nuance that secrecy plays in my work. It’s this constant push and pull between a chosen secrecy and an imposed secrecy that I don’t think I’ll ever find the balance with. But this poem, I was trying to sort of come to terms with it in some way that I can. I think it’s a secrecy that I’m always gonna continue to wrestle with in my work. And on top of the fact that I belong to a population of people that few know about. In the United States, I think there are only about 200,000 to 300,000 Hmong, mostly concentrated in the Twin Cities and some in California. So that’s another level of invisibility that I do feel, to be part of a community where every time I go somewhere, I have to explain to them who I am and how I got here. Because no one will have ever heard the word Hmong, or very few will have heard that word. And the implication of how my parents became refugees.
So that’s another layer, I think, that complicates my experience of being both invisible and exposed at the same time.
Chávez: Dwayne, I would love to hear another reading from you as well. You write so tenderly about your sons in this collection. And one of the first times you talk about them I think is one of the earlier poems in this book – it’s called “Losing Weight.” Could you share that with us, please?
Betts: Just the backdrop to the poem is, in July 2023, I used to drink whiskey, I used to drink bourbon, and it didn’t work with me. But I had this dream. I was drinking, and I went to sleep, and I had a dream that I had left a bottle of Four Roses open, and a half a cup of whiskey. And so I woke up and I ran down the stairs. I didn’t see no whiskey out and my cup was high up where I usually put it. So I washed the cup out. It was empty, I washed it out and I poured the whiskey out. And I haven’t had a drink in my house since then. [Clapping] I’ve had a lot of drinks outside of my house! [Laughter] But I wanted to change the relationship that I had to alcohol and the relationship that my son saw me have to alcohol. So that was sparked this poem. And I also mention a dog.
[Reading his poem “Losing Weight”]
When I wanted to lose weight,
When I started, it began with hunger;
With needing to feel my body
Asking for more, of it all, butter & salt
& forgiveness for Hennessy cursing
Through these veins, another tide
Ushering me back to all my prisons.
It started with fear. Or not fear, but
Walking, literally, with what I’d feared:
A dog with teeth that fled when
Threatened, even if them vampire fangs
Wouldn’t break my skin if I were another
Treat. We’d walk to the driveway’s end,
Then more steps until the space
Past the yard felt safe; until this Jack
Russell Terrier that fit inside my palm
As a pistol once did, let me slip all
Those memories. & yes, I began
Wanting the world as she did, full gulps
Of its scent until my nose twitched
Like a conduit for what might be
Possible. & somehow more & more
& more of me disappeared, during
Those moments with my loves,
The puppy leading & the two lights
Illuminating my world, & maybe it’s folly
For a man to admit he is in love with
A son young enough to still believe
His father’s burdens will not touch him,
& an older son who knows it doesn’t
Matter, because the only burden too
Worrying is never seeing your father
Weep. & now entire pieces of who I was
Have begun to fall from my body,
Worries & so much more, as I become,
Wildly, as light as wind, as when my only
Burden was the cells I left behind.
[Reading ends]
Chávez: [Applause] So I can think of like five questions to ask you about this poem, but here is one: this line, “the only burden too worrying is never seeing your father weep.” In a later poem, “Bike Ride for Micah,” you talk about being on a bike ride with your son Micah, and him turning to ask if you’re OK, and you return to this idea, “I don’t know what it means for a child to see his father weep. But I know what it means to be saved by a son.” And I love that this idea comes up multiple times in your collection.
What was on your mind when you were writing this collection, in terms of your sons and particularly these lines?
Betts: I’ve been really blessed in real ways. My son Micah – I named him Micah because I saw the name in my head and I pronounced it the way I saw it, which was “Mik-ai.” And then every time he meets somebody they call him “Mike-uh.”
Chávez: Including me just now. I apologize.
Betts: But I had to stay on brand because he learns that he has to correct himself in the world. He has to pay attention to how he wants to be seen, even when it just comes to saying his name.
But what’s interesting is that … And I’ve been telling him and his brothers, Micah’s birthday is November 19, the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. His brother Miles Thelonious’ birthday is October 10. When Miles turned like 2, I found out that him and Thelonious Monk got the same birthday. I didn’t even know when I named him. So there’s a certain amount of mystery I think, in what my sons have allowed me to discover about myself and even about the choices that I made for them, even my own ignorance and how you turn a mistake into a prophecy or something.
But the main thing though is that in this book, what those lines mean is … I went to prison as a kid, and in some ways my childhood got abridged by incarceration. I only cried twice when I was in prison, and I learned to be stoic, and I learned to be a stone. I think the first time I cried when I came home was when I met Lucille Clifton. But I didn’t cry again. I didn’t cry at my wedding. I didn’t cry when my kids were born.
And then suddenly something broke inside of my head. And not only was I crying … I mean, that was one thing to be seen to weep and to see the public response to weeping, which I gotta tell you, the public response to my weeping was worse than the public’s response to my incarceration. Seriously, I felt like because I was sad that I was bringing other people down. They were hurt less by me carjacking somebody than crying all the time, it was profound what happened.
But my sons, for them, weeping wasn’t a performance. For them, weeping was a discovery of a part of me that I had been hiding from myself and a part of me that I’ve been hiding from them. And it changed my relationship to them, but also it changed my relationship to what it means to be strong in the world. Because the world imagines that they know what you got on your shoulders. But when I had everything on mine, I recognized that it was my sons who singularly knew what I was carrying. And they were the ones who could deal with my weeping, and my laughter, and my madness. I think that the book, in a very real way, is a joyous reflection of some beautiful things coming together in my life, and a newer relationship with my sons was one of them.
Chávez: Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Mai Der, you write about your son in this collection too, both during pregnancy and infancy. He’s a through line in this one long poem that you have, “Origin,” which sadly I probably don’t have time to ask you to read in full. In the beginning you write, “We have been made into each other,” and you say how the baby will “carry a beating heart to the globe.” Later, he’s now a baby, and you write about waking up when he stirs and those moments you share with him as he falls back asleep.
You note that there are stars projected on the ceilings of his room – stars is an image that comes up again and again in this collection. And in the end, you return to these lines: “The baby I touch into is language, movement, as the light beating now.” And, “When eyes shush to open, I and stars croon to the hand asleep.”
How were you thinking about your connection to your son when you were writing this collection?
Vang: It was kind of unexpected. Totally not planned at all, in the sense that I had been working on these saola poems. The pregnancy was planned, but the connection to the work was unplanned, just because I hadn’t thought about it. I hadn’t thought about the relationship that what I was doing was trying to bring something into this world, while this animal was going away from the world. And that was something that I was contending with.
It’s interesting to me because, gosh, I did write a lot of these poems during my postpartum – I would not recommend doing any of that, for sure. But I slowed down. I had a sort of a different pace in my life. I was so challenged by this idea of how I create and how things are surviving and things are leaving the world. And part of me felt, “Well, what am I doing now bringing something into the world?” So for me, it’s been thinking about that in connection to saola.
And then as if that didn’t make it more complicated for me, there were several instances of researching and studying saola too, where I came across multiple saolas that were pregnant. And the one on my cover is a pregnant saola. It’s based on a camera trap photo that the designer then sort of transformed into the cover of my book. That was a camera trap photo that was taken by Bill Robichaux, the conservationist. And then there’s another poem in my collection that has to do with the saola that was taken into captivity and then eventually died. It’s the only saola that really has been studied in captivity. It died because it didn’t get the proper nutrient that it needed. But it was also pregnant. It was in its second trimester. So when this saola died, they cut the baby saola out of the womb. I read that it’s being kept in some laboratory in some formaldehyde, so it’s the only fully intact specimen of saola that we have in our existence.
All of that sort of made me kind of swim through the fluidity, the wateriness of what it means and the complications of bringing something into the world, while something is also being taken away from the world.
Chávez: I want to have y’all read one more poem each for us. You also both wrote about your mothers in various ways, including in one very specific context, which kind of surprised and delighted me in their similarity as I was reading each of your books. So I’m just going to have you read these poems without further explanation than that.
Dwayne, you first, can you please read us “Lavaggio?”
Betts: [Reading his poem “Lavaggio”]
These things we no longer do:
Ironing bills with our hands’ ridge,
Hoping that when we slip the bill
Into the machine it releases coins
The way a pay phone I’d shake
With both hands would do for me
At the Popeye’s on the corner of Silver Hill
& Swan Rds. This Italian laundromat
Is so far from those streets. I remember
Around the way now, Saturday mornings
Washing clothes with my mother as a kind
Of wonder. We have not washed clothes
Together in more years than I remember,
& even remembering those years reminds
Me of how I loathed the detergent powder;
The tumbling of washers & dryers marking
Hours off like check marks on a jail calendar;
The large trash bags we carried nearly
Amile from our two-bedroom apartment.
I hated that we had no car, that my friends
Watched me troop with Moms as if our lives
Were in the things we carried. & Moms
Loves Italy & though she is not here with me
Today, on this trip where each day I return
To an Umbertide I pretend is home,
Despite not knowing enough Italian to order
A proper cappuccino before noon.
The German Shepherd & Poodle mix
I coo over on a friend’s phone is another way
Distance teaches us love: how we remember
The barking things that transform us
Into something worthy of being protected.
The dog that has passed me is the same
Jack Russell Terrier I see each day,
With a patch of brown over his left eye
The little dog looks like the kindest pirate
On this planet. Of all the things I plundered
To lose time. If only I could walk once more,
With a black trash bag larger than me
To clean what playing outside left dirty.
[Reading ends]
Chávez: [Applause] Now, I wanna go straight to you, Mai Der. Could you read us an excerpt from a longer poem, “Saola Goes to the Laundromat”?
Vang: [Reading her poem “Saola Goes to the Laundromat”]
Sundays: your mother drives you and your sisters to
Mountain Wash: a laundromat by 7-Eleven with its
old yellow washers and wall-mounted dryers.
Baskets in procession: clothes, blankets, towels.
Sometimes you use up a row of washers.
People glare and wonder why refugees have so much
laundry: two parents, a grandmother, eight kids.
Once, in a tourist video of Laos: a Hmong girl
washes clothes at a pump.
In her hand: a soapberry pod.
The cameraman declares, her family has no money
for soap to do laundry today. Brown spots on her
unkempt white blouse.
What are the berries in that bowl? She picked them
earlier that day from trees.
She wraps a few berries in a dirty shirt, scrubs the
shirt against a cement tile under the spout. The
berries soften into suds: foam swirls in the bucket.
She is without choice even as soap berries are sold
online: a sustainable all-natural organic alternative.
Those Sundays your mother tries to explain: the
difference between a washing machine and a river.
You sit on the curb outside the laundromat: wait for
the wash to rinse and spin, then tumble dry high for
two cycles until twenty dollars in quarters fade from
your mother’s hands.
[Reading ends]
Chávez: [Applause] So I guess my question is just, what is it about laundromats? How did y’all find yourself reflecting on them, these formative memories in laundromats, when you were writing these poems?
Betts: I was in Italy, and I was in an Italian laundromat, and I was trying to discover how to wash clothes. It’s like this really vital thing to do is wash your clothes, right? And it made me think about my Ma. I’m just sitting there and I’m figuring out how to wash my clothes, and it made me think about my Ma.
Vang: The laundromat was something that we as kids did every weekend. We didn’t have a washer and dryer. And I think the laundromat was very formative in my younger years. It was a place that really shaped my formative understanding of the world.
Betts: We were going to say that when we were kids. [Laughs] We’re like 15, what’s the most important thing we’re experiencing right now? The laundromat?
Vang: [Laughter] It’s where you ate Doritos and had Slurpees on the curb, or whatever.
Betts: It’s where you learn how to fold clothes, you learn it like crazy patience.
Vang: Yes, you do. You learn what happens if you put too much detergent and make a mess.
Betts: Oh, don’t accidentally choose the fancy cycle by mistake. What’s it called? Delicate! That doesn’t sound like a fancy word. [Laughter]
Vang: But everyone went to the laundromat when I was a young kid, so we would see people there too that we knew. It’s not like what it is now, in some ways. It just became a place where people were able to see each other. I know we saw my aunts, my uncles there, we were all doing laundry together.
Chávez: We have a very short amount of time left, so I’m going to ask you all just like a very, very simple question. What is giving you hope these days?
Betts: Honestly, joy. I spend a lot of time in prisons, and people are laughing, they’re smiling and they are living in circumstances where they know that they have to be hopeful or joyous to maintain a semblance of sanity. So joy is what’s giving me hope, because I see it a lot and I see it in places where one wouldn’t expect to see it. [Applause]
Vang: I concur, exactly. Joy.
Chávez: What a beautiful note to end on: joy.
I’ve had the pleasure of speaking today with Reginald Dwayne Betts, the author of “Doggerel,” and Mai Der Vang, the author of “Primordial.” Please give these folks a massive round of applause.
[Audience applause and cheers]
Miller: That was Jenn Chávez, in conversation with poets Mai Der Vang and Reginald Dwayne Betts. They spoke in front of an audience at the 2025 Portland Book Festival.
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