[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
[BELL CLANGING]
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
It was a staring game.
I know these people, so.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
The reading's [INAUDIBLE] Wow.
Well, it's great to be here.
And I'm sure most people say that stand here.
But it's great to be here, huh?
It's the Poetry Center.
And if nothing else, the poet wants
to be embraced and a part of inside, and outside, and all
around the Poetry Center.
Poetry is elusive.
It is not a thing that can be.
And this is just Thomas's opinion.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
It is not a thing that can be held, or owned, or contained
for a very long time.
So even those successful poems, those
that we consider in this moment, are only grasping.
So it's an honor, a privilege to share with you my graspings,
my attempts to reach something outside of me,
something moving, something whole.
And I'm going to begin by reading--
so thank you for listening.
I'm going to begin by reading some poems from The Maverick
Room, just a few.
Then I'm going to move into the newer work.
And interrupt me any time in the reading.
I might interrupt me.
And we should have a good time.
This first thing is called "Marcus Garvey Vitamins."
And when I was a kid, we had a saying that went,
a hero ain't nothing but a sandwich.
And that was a baffling thing to me.
I know what it meant, but I interpreted it, at a young age,
to mean, well, if we could eat the things that inspired us,
what would those nutrients be like?
Langston Hughes has a great line for one
of his poems called "Of Laws and Crowns."
And he says, I love Ralph Bunche,
but I can't eat him for lunch.
So if we could.
This poem has four [? five ?] short sections.
And it has italicized words in it.
And when I get to an italicized word,
I'm going to go like this--
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
--just so you can get a sense of the structural integrity of how
modern it is.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
And when I get to an italicized syllable,
I'm going to go like that.
"Marcus Garvey Vitamins."
All us we folk person community first.
Invent truth, no he didn't, yes he did.
Ain't English.
You lyin' to me.
Africa disagrees with subject-verb agreement.
Aspect ratio, widescreen whiteache.
Don't like it, don't Pulitzer me.
I stress less than landlessness.
I break beat, I rhetorical strategy, I escape route.
I, I, I, psych.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]