I'm going to read mostly from the book Desires Of Letters,
which will be out very shortly in the next couple of weeks.
And it's a collection of letters that
is dedicated to the poet Bernadette Mayer
and also inspired by her book, The Desires of Mothers
to Please Others In Letters.
And so it's kind of a meditation on all
the different possibilities that a letter could be,
trying to see how inclusive that form could be,
and it includes a vast variety of forms.
And just, in really brief introduction,
I started writing it in 2001 at the beginning of the Iraq war
when my kids were one and three years old.
And I had just moved back to the Bay Area where I used to live.
So there's a lot about motherhood of young kids
and literary scene and the Iraq war all folded in.
And correspondence-- just the notion of correspondence
with the living and the dead and poetic community.
"For no reason should this chain be broken.
This letter has been sent to you for good luck.
All letters are sexual, and all desire is romantic.
All sadness or remembrance can be traced to New England
or the Netherlands.
All desire can be desire for something,
or all desire can be desire not for a form.
The formal form seeks desire as it is desired unlike an object.
The letter desires that you trust in the Lord
with all your heart.
Kiss someone.
Pass this letter on within four days
or you may lose your wife, life, strife, or bike.
It must leave your hands within 96, 48, or 99 hours.
The identity of the letter is hidden by its root or effect.
This is nonsense but no joke.
You will receive the ring dove in the mail.
An RAF officer received $470.
The Air Force received $4,755.
An ARF received $0.75.
A ram received $777 and lost it because it broke the chain,
as did the General George and one department of gender
studies.
While in the Philippines, Welsh, Walsh, Wales, Walsh, or Welsh
lost his life before failing to circulate this letter.
Please send 20 copies and see what happens in 20 days.
The chain comes from Venezuela and was written by a missionary
from South Africa named Babbit, Brant, Brent, Craudit
Dabit or Davitt.
This is true even if you aren't superstitious.
For no reason should this chain be broken.
Do not retype or alter the letter in any manner
in any man in any mammal in mammalian time.
Good luck."
Thanks.