Thank you, that was a beautiful introduction.
And I will never explain the mystery of the swim cap.
Thank you, Poetry Center.
I'm really honored to be here.
It's really exciting, I've never been to Tucson before,
so it's quite a treat to be here.
Especially since, in New York, where I'm coming from,
it's 0 degrees, and there is supposed
to be a wintry mess tomorrow.
So even though it's a little rainy,
I'm really excited to be here.
So I guess I'll--
I'm going to actually time myself,
I never do this, but let's see.
So I'm going to--
I'm going to start reading from Engine Empire.
And I'm going to start reading from--
I'm going to read from Engine Empire,
and I think it's an appropriate book for Arizona,
because it's a book that's obsessed with the West,
both geographically and metaphorically and politically,
geopolitically.
So hopefully it'll resonate with you people from Arizona,
or even more recent transplants.
And you know, and there's a lot of interbreeding, lawless
interbreeding in my poetry.
And I think it would also be interesting to read it here,
where we're sort of in the trenches of immigrant rights.
There's a lot of miscegenation happening in my poetry.
So this book is divided up into three sections,
and each section is its own world,
with its own sort of fabricated boomtown,
and its own sort of invented--
you know, I mean with its own sort of diction and form,
and so forth.
And I'm going to start with the Old West,
and it's called "The Ballad of Our Jim."
We'll start with sound poems, because they're always
easier to start off with.
These are called lipograms-- the form--
and it's a form that uses only one vowel.
And I'll read a few of those.
"Ballad in O."
O Boomtown's got lots of sordor--
odd horrors of throw downs, bold cowboys lock horns,
forlorn hobos plot to rob pots of gold,
loco mobs drool for blood, howl or hoot for cottonwood blooms,
throng to hood crooks to strong wood posts.
So don't confront hotbloods, don't show off,
go to blows or rows, don't sob for gold lost to trollops,
don't drown sorrows on shots of grog.
Work morn to moon.
Know how to comb bottom pools, spot dots of gold
to spoon pots of gold.
Vow to do good.