[APPLAUSE]
By the way, there's someone here I want to say hi to.
Hi, Patty.
If it hadn't been for Patty Hartman,
my book probably would never have been published.
She found it in a stack of manuscripts
that had lain hidden for about four years,
and called-- found me, traced me from San Diego to Connecticut,
and asked if the book had been accepted for publication yet.
And I said, no, not yet.
So what a thrill.
It's great to see you.
This next poem is the title poem of the book
called, "When Living was a Labor Camp Called Montgomery."
This is one of those poems that has a lot of histories,
a lot of different histories.
On the one hand, it acknowledges the work and the sacrifice
that the women of my mother's generation,
her sisters and her cousins, endured in order
to give their children the kinds of opportunities we've had.
It acknowledges how difficult it was
for them to grow up in the '40s, '30s and '40s, when glamour was
everything, because everyone was poor,
and to know that if you walked out of the fields
wearing your older brother's hand-me-downs,
dirt-speckled and soaked in sweat,
there was no way you were ever going
to look like any of the women that you saw in the movies.
At the same time, it's also one of those poems
where I first began to understand
my own voice as a poet.
I had been accepted to the Squaw Valley Writing Workshop--
Poets Workshop.
And I remembered trying to figure out--
I remembered not feeling like I belonged there,
actually traveling towards the workshop thinking,
I'm not good enough.
There are these 44 other poets from around the country,
and they're fantastic.
And as I got closer, I was thinking,
then I'm just going to play with form.
Screw it.
I'm not going to think about how I'm
trying to integrate politics, and lyricism, and poetics,
and message.
And I'm just going to play with form and see what comes out.
I was lucky.
I was blessed that on the way up to Squaw Valley,
I stopped at my parents' house.
And several of those women cousins from her girlhood
were there with their husbands.
And for the first time, I got to hear
some of those adolescent courting stories
that I had always been out of the loop on.
And this is the poem that developed.
It came almost fully formed out of a one-night experience
at Squaw Valley.
You have to write a new poem a day.
And by 7:00 in the morning, you better have it ready
or you're not going to have a poem for the workshop.
Talk about putting you under a pressure cooker.
It's a wonderful experience.
I discovered I really respond to that.
"When living was a labor camp called Montgomery,
you joined the family each summer to sort dried figs.
From Santa Maria to Gilroy, Brawley to Stockton,
you settled in rows of red cabins hidden
behind the orchards.
You recall how the red cabin stain came off on your fingers,
a stain you press to your cheeks so you looked like Dolores del
Río, the famous Mexican actress.
Her high-sculpted glow stunned the boys
who dogged you to the theater, the coolest building
in town, where you forgot the San Joaquin
heat and fruit flies.
You wiggled on velvet-backed chairs, split popcorn
with your cousins.
When the film's hero, the rancher's son,
rode horseback to the river and spied Dolores washing her hair,
you'd swoon.
Just for a moment, a small eternity, the hero's hacienda,
its dark wood beams and low-slung chandelier,
were yours.
You were tall and thin and everything looked good on you.
To tell the truth though, you preferred
Lauren Bacall's whistle.
So at the packing shed you eyed your brother's friends, not
the pickers, the carpenters, those
who wanted out of the fields.
You picked one with a full-mouthed smile, not
your mother's choice but a tall man
with papers who wanted to join the army and live in LA.
And perhaps, in the end, everything
didn't look good on you.
Maybe your hair didn't look good dyed auburn.
Maybe pillow-breasted women weren't meant to wear sheaths.
You visit the camp each summer reunion.
Your sisters snatch peeks at your husband.
His teeth still look good.
A cousin glides you through a cumbia.
You dreamt he kissed you once.
You catch the stench of rotting figs of two full outhouses,
the nose closes off.
You feel how hot it was to sleep two to a mattress, the only
other room a kitchen.
You thought your arms thickened long ago,
lugging trays of figs.
You thought you had peasant ankles.
You thought you could die in the camp,
and no one would know your smell."