WEBVTT

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What's up, Arizona?

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Logan's introduction
is actually my set.

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Thank you very much.

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I'm really glad to be here.

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I'm going to read poems
from Gully, of course.

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I'm going to read a number
of new poems as well.

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And depending on what
the room feels like,

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I might even read a short story.

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Gully is-- I grew up
in Trinidad and Tobago.

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And Gully is about--

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the first half of
Gully, at least,

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is about being a fan of cricket.

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I swear to God.

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More than simply being a fan of
the game, I grew up at a time

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when the West Indies cricket
team dominated the sport

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like it had never
been dominated before.

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So the first half
is about what it

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was like to be young
and black at a time

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when Black men dominated this
white, colonial, gentlemen's

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game, right?

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Gully is a fielding
position in the sport.

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And the second half is now
that 20 odd years later, I

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am also Black and American.

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Kind of what the immigrant
translation makes of gully.

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So it's also what gully means
within the hip hop context

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within the Black urban context.

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So that's kind of where
that's coming from.

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And that's that.

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So I'll start off with
this poem, which is

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in the second half of the book.

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For about six years or so in
my 20s, I worked in a synagogue

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in New York.

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And so this poem is
about that experience.

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It's called "The Allegory
of the Black Man at Work

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in a Synagogue."

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"My name is Roger
Anthony Bonair-Agard.

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My name is a myth
of its own creation.

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My name has given me
by an anxious history.

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The meat of it is always
about loss and return.

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I was born between
two rivers in a valley

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of a shadow of blackness.

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My name means famous spear.

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It is old German.

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It is the purview of warriors.

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My name means priceless.

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It is old Latin.

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It is the purview of kings.

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My name means beautiful one.

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It is old French.

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I wear it like a sixth finger.

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When I was 23, I
manage the records

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of membership and death.

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Membership and death
bear their own names.

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They keep mine locked in the
safe of their own mythology.

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So when the old
man says, fuck you.

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I say my name means free to
go about my own business.

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They came to me with solemn
voices to purchase plots,

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to give them seats
in the temple.

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They did not recognize my name.

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Are you French?

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Are you a Jew?

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Are you Black?

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May I speak to someone white?

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They came to me
with celebration.

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This is my son David.

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This is my daughter Rebecca,
Rosenbaum, Miller, Tisch,

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Mandel.

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They brought me their tidings
of laughter, history, wine,

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hubris, hate.

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I gathered them onto me
to make myself new armor.

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My name is the first-born
son of a single mother.

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She's always a
basket on a river.

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She's named after
a beautiful boy.

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Her name is the purview of gods.

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She holds onto me
like a promise.

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She gave me literature and
the love of all things holy.

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And rum is holy.

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And dominoes are holy.

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And the smell of
night-blooming jasmine is holy.

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She adorns her walls with
a crawl of bougainvillea.

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And these, too, are holy.

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During the high holy
days, they come to me

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for seats in the temple.

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They come to me without
knowing my name.

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They come to me without
knowing the meanings

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of likeness and image.

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But they offer me bottles
of wine and courtside seats.

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They do not speak to me if
I do not have a name tag.

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They do not look long
enough to see the name tag.

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My name means invisible.

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It does not belong to me.

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My name means holder of seats
which are closest to God.

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My name means holder of land
which is closest to death.

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I'm 23 years old.

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I'm a litany of violence.

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I am moon on a dance floor.

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They advised me
like their own son.

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They urge me back to school.

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They urge me back into
the campus of my own mind.

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My name means guardian.

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It is old Norman French.

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My name means elaborate caskets
and endowments for the temple.

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I'm 26 years old.

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I do not know my name.

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I am untethered as a cloud.

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They come to me with new
ways to talk about race.

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They come to me with the
words and new literatures.

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My mother's name means music,
means builder of things.

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She gave me fists and
a fencer's tongue.

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My name means builder of things.

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They come to me with poetry.

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It is the purview of the lost.

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Thank god, they have come.

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My name means hunger.

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My body means hunger.

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I'm a litany of hunger.

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All these poems-- hunger."

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