Thank you so much.
And thank you for writing a poem about Springfield.
I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, so.
Yeah, I was wondering if you would
talk a little bit about your relationship
with Springfield and to the story.
Uh-huh.
So there was an explosion in about four years
ago in Springfield, Massachusetts
that occurred at a strip club.
It was around midday.
And, can you hear me OK?
It's a little off.
It's a little off now.
Can you [INAUDIBLE]?
That's a good question.
Seems like the audio is off.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
OK.
And during this incident, there was a gas leak
in the establishment.
And the owner of the club had the presence of mind
to roust everybody from the establishment,
which is good fortune because no sooner than the last person
left, including workers, [INAUDIBLE],,
and dancers went across to a coffee shop, the pipes went up.
Completely, absolutely exploded.
Leveled five city blocks.
There's a daycare next to the place that on that day
was on a field trip.
Which would have devastated it, it would've been [INAUDIBLE]..
So I work health, safety, and environment
in my work as a day job, one of my projects that I do for work.
And when I got the report this event happened in Springfield,
I was expecting a tremendous amount of carnage.
And when I got the report in New York City,
before I took the train up to Massachusetts,
I saw that there was a zero fatality.
And I thought, wow, this brought me
to a fundamental level of inquiry about [INAUDIBLE]..
What strip--?
What is daycare?
What is care?
So, it brought me down to a fundamental level
and I captured that sort of fundamental life inquiry
moment.
And I just held on to it and worked my way
through this piece of writing.
You know, extended it and kind of incorporated some
of my ruminations about life and politics, whatever.
But I think honing to the subtitle of the article--
actually I think the title of the newspaper article
was Explosion Rocks Springfield, you know.
It would be like Tucson, you know, Explosion Rocks Tucson,
it would be the same thing or whatever.
You see, the gas explosions are all the same.
And so the sort of sub-heading was
The Explosions in Springfield.
Something very mundane like that, right?
And I thought, you know what?
I'm going to just bust every term.
I'm going to go every little piece [INAUDIBLE]
and I'm going to crush [INAUDIBLE] in honor
of this celebration and initial wondering.
It's almost, I'm going to say it's
like a mystic [? moment. ?]
Where to get my shoes?
Where'd you get your shoes?
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
Yeah?
OK.
So like a deeper question and slightly less deep question.
Let's do it.
Have you spent a lot of time strip clubs?
No, I haven't.
OK.
I wouldn't place no judgment either way.
No, I know where you're going with this.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
But you know, I'll tell you one thing.
I want in-- well, finish question, I'm sorry.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
There's actually three, OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
Perdepistatiplosive.
Found out means to implode and explode simultaneously.
Yeah.
What does that word signify in your work for you?
And then what would you also describe as your ars poetica.
When you said like I incorporate some of my other stuff into it,
I'm assuming that's like some of that ars poetica.
What would that be?
Well, there's one thing about--
[? everything ?] is explosive, right?
Implosive.
But with the root of that is plod.
And plod is a very mundane concept,
which means to break a barrier, a pressure barrier between one
state of energy into the next.
To be negative to positive.
Perdepistatiplosive was sort of a joke
that sort of referred to a perambulation around ploding.
Which is to stay with the phenomenon
of ploding in terms of a meditation, psyche
like [INAUDIBLE].
Before something-- not before, but as something,
or not even as, it is something you
know would break into another state of energy.
You kind of resist it and you go with, resist and go.
Or go and resist is perdepistatiplosive.
It's a psychological phenomenon that I
try to describe in my thinking at the time in sort
of positing these new words.
Words that don't, or phenomena that don't have
yet, that don't have words yet.
And I think that's fair game for poets.
How many times did Shakespeare come up with?
Was it 633 authentic new words that we use every day?
Torquing grammar and language to fit our contemporary reality.
So, I always feel at liberty to exercise
this thing [INAUDIBLE].
When I'm doing it and I'm aware that it's punchy
and that it's kind of jokey.
And yet, I think through the course
of my life and, of course of the manuscript,
these nonnce words pick up the charge
that by the end of the manuscript before you
read it is, oh, I know it I know what frabba jabba means.
It's kind of a culture, it's kind of about conforming,
it's kind of about--.
Like but you.
You don't.
But it's kind of like-- but it's frabba jabba.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
Incidentally, frabba jabba comes from West Side Story.
You remember West Side Story in the film, whenever
they had a they cuss word they were just substitute
with frabba jabba instead of saying this is bullshit,
they used just go frabba jabba.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
You know.
And I just thought it was excellent.
So I just called it you know, why not, frabba jabba.
So, but I think you were you're picking it something.
Go on with your second question.
Ars poetica.
My ars poetica?
Yes.
Boy, that's a [INAUDIBLE] term.
I don't have a stable ars poetica.
I mean I-- this is a Horace, right?
The Latin satirist came up with the famous set of satire
called Ars Poetica.
The first poetica is the most famous.
And in that essay, or verse essay,
the horse tries to lay down what is
proper to engage as a poet in Roman times or whatever.
And I pick up flecks of what's proper, right.
And I test them as against other flecks of what's proper.
And in that combustion chamber that's
my art, the Toscano Frabba Jabba if you will.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yes.
So, what I'm getting is you have like classical ideas
of ars poetica, and part of your poetry and part
of what you do with it is to rebel against that.
Kind of.
OK.
Yeah.
Well, I think fair.
I think that's well put.
I think one arrives at a classicism
of one's own making, which is to say one becomes parallelistic.
That's part of classicism.
One's become sort of--
what's another aspect of classicism.
Would be the figure as against the structure.
And somehow there's a sinking of that.
That's classicism period in your art or life.
The Romantic is a more of a brocaded rhapsodic agency
that kind of finds solution.
And guess what?
You know, rhapsodic, you know, embedded
like a Russian nesting doll.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
One arrives at embarrassing moments and in one's aesthetic.
And my philosophy is to display them before you so that we
can have a conversation.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
That seems like a pretty good answer to things on,
I'm sure we'll have more questions
and we can ask you in person.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
That was amazing.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]