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>> Those were the early days.

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I think when the poem just came out of
us, well, they still come out of us.

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When that was a workshop,
poetry coming out of us

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and no matter how the poetry
comes out, it's great.

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And when I used to stand on corners with stacks
of poems in my hip pocket, waiting for reading.

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I'm ready to read.

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Hey, hey, hey.

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I got poems.

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I got poems.

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Hey! Ok. Can I come over?

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I got poems.

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I got to go all the way to San
Francisco but I don't have any money.

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But I got poems.

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I'll get there.

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I'll get there.

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I'll be there.

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So we drove to Austin, you know, eating
crackers and tuna out of a can, dancing,

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got invited to Northern New
Mexico with drums and dancers.

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And the drums, you know, were hanging halfway
on the side of the car, falling almost.

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We didn't have any food and we
finally made it to Northern New Mexico

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and we were two hours late to ABQ, but
everybody was still there and we had guitars.

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So as soon as we got out of the car, we put
on our guitarist, we strapped our guitars

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and the the band begins drumming, and
began sing and the dancers went to the back

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and put on their outfits and feathers and danza
azteca and we began singing farm worker songs

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and songs we have learned
and made up on the way.

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And the people were happy.

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And it was a great.

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So those are the early poems and these are here.

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It was beautiful to go to Nuevo
México and to Arizona in those years.

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This is called Arizón Maricopa
tempe tu tierra roja.

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Arizón maricopa tempe your red earth.

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Arizón Maricopa tempe tu tierra roja
sangre tu vereda, blood your trail.

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Arid sunset sweet arizón, cactos, espigas
de espinas, vines of thorns, brazos verdes,

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green arms, llantos altos, long cries,
almas ramas pulmones, [inaudible] and souls

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and branches, pizcando el
cielo, harvesting the sky.

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Arizón, campesinos levantando algodón, lifting
cotton, estrellas de oro, stars of gold, blanco,

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white, pa'l ranchero, for the rancher.

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Nubes de sal, clouds of salt, sellos de
sueldo, seals of pay, pa'l que hace labor,

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for the one that works, cuerpos roJos,
red bodies, climbing cotton flowers

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to the dawn weaving, una risa sin dolor.

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Weaving a song without pain.

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Arizón, a las tres de la
mañana, three at dawn.

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Hay que rajar la raíz del tiempo,
we have to cut the root of time,

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es que campesinos si nos hay
muchos, there's many of us,

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levantando el cielo por el campo,
lifting sky from the earth.

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Arizón, pima, xicano, pápago,
apache, tiné, arizón.

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No zon nombres, zon rimas y un
ritmo, energía de un principio.

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Rhythms of a rhythm.

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Energy of a principle.

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Si nos levantamos, if we rise, campesinos,
levantamos cielos, we rise, we raise skies,

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por los pueblos, por los pueblos.

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Cotton. Flower.

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Suns. Thank you so much.

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[ Applause ]

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What originally went through my mind
when I was writing that poem Arizón,

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that I just finished reading with and
particularly cutting the roots of time,

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what was I -- What was I thinking?

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Well, you know, thinking and poetry
is a different kind of thinking.

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It's kind of a different wavelength.

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It's almost not thinking and
cutting the roots of time.

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So I was kind of going through time,
going beyond time, to timelessness.

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So when we are together here today, for
example, listening to Sherwin's poetry and song

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at the same time, and time seemed to disappear.

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And so, so, so Sherwin's song and poem did
that for me and if we can do that in our lives,

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as a community, perhaps we
can touch something deeper,

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like I think we did, and
I did with Sherwin's work.

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And if we can do that, then
we are really in touch

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with ourselves and definitely with each other.

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And I was thinking of Arizona and its peoples.

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And I was very interested in doing that,
creating unity, not just being so concerned

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about being chicano or being a particular
ethnic group or locked in by history,

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but cutting through it and embracing each other.

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>> Sherwin and most recur, both
in your first book and also

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in what you read today from Flood Song.

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Antelopes, elks, hawks.

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Do these different animals have specific
meanings that you attached to them?

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>> Did you guys all hear the question?

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Right. Okay.

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So he's asking about the animals in
my work and if they have meaning.

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I think some of them do.

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Definitely a coyote is in shapeshift
quite a bit and he's also in Flood Song,

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where he leaves some [?

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trail poems ?] onto a ladder
slick with coyote sweat, you know?

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So it's kind of -- He's leading
the way or he is crossing the road

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and all of that has meaning in
Navajo cosmogony and thought.

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I think it's easily -- Points in the poem where
there might be some sort of tension or omen.

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I feel like that is occurring at the moment.

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Definitely owls, I see that.

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Two owls coming from the East, you know?

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So those, those kind of things are
kind of emblematic of probably tension

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or something foreseeable that is kind of,
you know, something to be cautious about.

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But the way of thinking about Flood Song
is there's all these birds and I realized,

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I was telling a friend of mine today
that throughout the song, eventually,

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all the birds start -- They're also trapped.

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They all become trapped in
things or they're falling.

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So, and then, like if I read
the whole poem to you,

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you would definitely see this cascading
of animal life towards the end.

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I mean, I felt really sad, you know?

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I felt I read the whole thing after I
heard that and I was like wow, you know?

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I just, you know, see this sort of
mass array of this exploded piece.

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So they didn't mean whatever they mean.

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It might just be about the
times we live in now, you know?

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I constantly hear terrible
news with animal life, I think,

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and we are definitely animals too.

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So, I think some of them
do and some of them don't.

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Like I have a mole, I think, or something
spiraling inside a river, you know?

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And it becomes something else, you know?

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In my next book.

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So some of them have meaning and
some of them are just observations.

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Thank you.

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Oh, so many.

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It's, gosh.

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Yeah. I don't know.

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I mean, it's just everybody, you know?

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I definitely have my -- All these
people who I've read and that --

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I come back to them at different
times in my life.

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I feel like, you know, there's
a different poet right now.

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I'm kind of interested in Wallace Stevens.

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I'm kind of looking at his work.

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Other times it's my grandfather, you know?

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Listening to the traditional songs.

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And so, it's everybody.

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I don't know if there's one person
that I have been influenced by.

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They're just many.

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I'm sorry.

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[ Inaudible ]

00:09:07.206 --> 00:09:10.086 align:middle
Yeah. The other one big poet.

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>> Yeah.

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>> So, yeah.

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[ Laughter ]

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>> I mean that's right.

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You know, that's right.

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That's it.

00:09:21.876 --> 00:09:21.943 align:middle
Yeah.

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[ Inaudible ]

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You know, it's a -- That's a tough question.

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At what age did we discover that words can flow
out of us as writers, or speakers-writers, both?

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I had a big struggle, you know?

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Like I said, I grew up listening to my
mother's stories and my father's stories.

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We didn't have books and magazines.

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We did, but you know, they came and they went.

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Life, you know, Life magazine
was about life, I think.

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And but I had a hard time because, you know,
I wasn't allowed to speak Spanish in school.

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And I had such a tough experience
in the first year,

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I was in first grade, that I shut myself down.

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So I didn't speak and I was afraid to speak

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and I definitely didn't want
to volunteer or anything.

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So I went through that.

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So to think of myself as a speaker or writer or
a person of words was kind of out of this world

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and almost impossible, until I forced --

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Until third grade, my teacher
Lucille Samson wanted me to sing.

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Imagine that.

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Being invited to sing and you never really have
seen yourself as a speaker, worthy of words,

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in a classroom setting, or anywhere really.

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It once it happens there, it
kind of shut down everywhere.

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I think at home I was I was a little different.

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So -- So in third grade I was invited
to sing and that highly encouraged me.

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And then, in seventh grade, I was invited
to be in a band, which I wanted to be in.

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I wanted to be the saxophone, but I
figured I would hide behind the saxophone

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because I was hiding already.

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So I said I want to play the sax but I'm not
going to because I don't want to hide behind it

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because that was my natural -- I
had grown to become a hiding person.

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So I forced myself to join the choir
which is the last thing I wanted

00:11:43.646 --> 00:11:46.116 align:middle
to do because imagine what that means.

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You got to get called on to sing
by yourself in front of everybody,

00:11:50.576 --> 00:11:55.596 align:middle
but I figured that's the
medicine I needed, so I did that.

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So it took me a long time.

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Probably in University days, at
UCLA, during the free free speech era

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and civil rights times a lot
of people were speaking up.

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So I really admired them and I felt the
dynamite inside of me wanting to finally blow

00:12:17.046 --> 00:12:18.796 align:middle
up because I just couldn't swallow it any more.

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So I got on podiums but I squat
and screeched quite a bit.

00:12:29.456 --> 00:12:33.446 align:middle
>> The annals of hiding people
or the hiding person.

00:12:33.566 --> 00:12:34.096 align:middle
>> That's right.

00:12:34.586 --> 00:12:39.996 align:middle
>> I think, for me, I was really, really
terribly shy and coming from two languages,

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I kind of spoke probably with English when I was
growing up, because I heard it all around me.

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And I know that language made
people laugh, I know if I could --

00:12:52.586 --> 00:12:55.106 align:middle
If I said something and I would
somehow get attention for it.

00:12:55.546 --> 00:13:00.006 align:middle
And so I think from a very early age I knew
somehow that language made people do something.

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So one of our earliest memories,
probably I was in probably preschool age

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and I saw these black cows, you know, on the
side of the road and I was like looking at them

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and I'm like you know -- I said
[SPEAKING NAVAJO], you know?

00:13:15.966 --> 00:13:21.596 align:middle
Which [SPEAKING NAVAJO], you would
associate with like a burnt piece of wood,

00:13:21.736 --> 00:13:26.276 align:middle
like charcoal wood, and then
[SPEAKING NAVAJO], you know?

00:13:26.436 --> 00:13:27.926 align:middle
The black cows, right?

00:13:27.926 --> 00:13:30.256 align:middle
Or whatever they are.

00:13:30.426 --> 00:13:31.736 align:middle
And I said [SPEAKING NAVAJO], right?

00:13:31.736 --> 00:13:32.366 align:middle
They're burnt.

00:13:32.366 --> 00:13:35.846 align:middle
Those cows are burnt and they're
just right there as ashes, right?

00:13:36.316 --> 00:13:38.866 align:middle
So -- And so everybody started laughing
like you don't say that, you know?

00:13:38.866 --> 00:13:41.236 align:middle
They kept saying you don't
say that, you say it this way.

00:13:41.236 --> 00:13:44.336 align:middle
And I would look at the moon
and it was a big tortilla.

00:13:44.336 --> 00:13:46.556 align:middle
I don't know if all kids do this.

00:13:46.596 --> 00:13:49.506 align:middle
But it was a big tortilla in the sky, you know?

00:13:49.506 --> 00:13:51.036 align:middle
And I would be like look, [SPEAKING NAVAJO].

00:13:51.086 --> 00:13:54.486 align:middle
And that's how-- they'd point and Everybody
would be like -- You know, it still seems funny.

00:13:55.826 --> 00:14:00.676 align:middle
So I knew somehow the language at
that point did something, you know?

00:14:01.006 --> 00:14:07.926 align:middle
So throughout the years, I think in a way
poetry sort of brought me back to language

00:14:07.926 --> 00:14:10.706 align:middle
because I knew that there's something I could --

00:14:10.706 --> 00:14:14.126 align:middle
I could put two words together and it
would -- There would be a charge there.

00:14:14.906 --> 00:14:20.606 align:middle
So I feel like that's kind of how I came into
it, just that that language itself has energy

00:14:21.136 --> 00:14:25.426 align:middle
that is combustive and they can
create and it can suspend time.

00:14:25.896 --> 00:14:30.266 align:middle
I don't know if I'm being hopeful but
I think that's where I come to it from.

00:14:30.386 --> 00:14:31.316 align:middle
>> It's great.

00:14:31.396 --> 00:14:32.906 align:middle
That makes sense, yeah.

00:14:33.036 --> 00:14:34.856 align:middle
>> I think that we're running over our time.

00:14:34.966 --> 00:14:35.206 align:middle
>> Ok.

00:14:35.206 --> 00:14:42.516 align:middle
>> I want to thank the poets and all of you
for coming today and enjoy the festival.

00:14:42.516 --> 00:14:42.590 align:middle
[ Applause ]