WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.980 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.980 --> 00:00:08.300 align:middle line:84% Well, thank you so much, Francisco Aragón. 00:00:08.300 --> 00:00:12.060 align:middle line:84% It's great to have these poets here and have you here 00:00:12.060 --> 00:00:15.477 align:middle line:90% also to usher them in. 00:00:15.477 --> 00:00:17.310 align:middle line:84% I'm Joshua Marie Wilkinson, and I teach here 00:00:17.310 --> 00:00:18.393 align:middle line:90% in the English department. 00:00:18.393 --> 00:00:21.000 align:middle line:84% I teach creative writing as assistant professor. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.040 align:middle line:90% 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:29.780 align:middle line:84% I want to say a quick thank you to Gail Browne and her years 00:00:29.780 --> 00:00:30.613 align:middle line:90% of service here. 00:00:30.613 --> 00:00:32.780 align:middle line:84% I don't know if I'll have another public opportunity 00:00:32.780 --> 00:00:36.502 align:middle line:84% to say thank you, and to applaud all of Gail's [INAUDIBLE].. 00:00:36.502 --> 00:00:40.700 align:middle line:90% 00:00:40.700 --> 00:00:43.930 align:middle line:90% It's not the end yet. 00:00:43.930 --> 00:00:46.780 align:middle line:84% We're bereft that you're going, and we love you, 00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:48.850 align:middle line:84% and we know we're going to see a lot of you. 00:00:48.850 --> 00:00:52.870 align:middle line:84% But I just want to say thank you so much for-- 00:00:52.870 --> 00:00:56.710 align:middle line:84% I mean, you've left the place in shambles, obviously. 00:00:56.710 --> 00:00:57.790 align:middle line:90% But thank you so much. 00:00:57.790 --> 00:01:01.500 align:middle line:90% 00:01:01.500 --> 00:01:04.160 align:middle line:84% J. Michael Martinez' Heredities was 00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:07.190 align:middle line:84% selected by Juan Felipe Herrera for the Academy of American 00:01:07.190 --> 00:01:10.280 align:middle line:84% Pulitzer Prize, for the Walt Whitman prize. 00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:12.620 align:middle line:84% And he's an editor of both NOEMI Press 00:01:12.620 --> 00:01:16.100 align:middle line:84% and a contributing editor of a magazine called The Volta. 00:01:16.100 --> 00:01:18.380 align:middle line:84% He teaches at University of Colorado at Boulder 00:01:18.380 --> 00:01:21.110 align:middle line:90% where he's completing a PhD. 00:01:21.110 --> 00:01:23.060 align:middle line:84% Carmen Gimenez Smith is the author 00:01:23.060 --> 00:01:25.880 align:middle line:84% of "Bring Down the Little Birds," 00:01:25.880 --> 00:01:29.420 align:middle line:84% "Goodbye Flicker," "The City She Was," and "Odorless In Pieces." 00:01:29.420 --> 00:01:32.840 align:middle line:84% With our own Kate Bernheimer, she co-edited My Mother She 00:01:32.840 --> 00:01:35.450 align:middle line:90% Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. 00:01:35.450 --> 00:01:37.850 align:middle line:84% Carmen is a professor at New Mexico State University 00:01:37.850 --> 00:01:39.680 align:middle line:90% in Las Cruces, not far. 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:43.160 align:middle line:84% Where she's also the editor of Puerto Del Sol, and with J. 00:01:43.160 --> 00:01:46.070 align:middle line:90% Michael, of Noemi Press. 00:01:46.070 --> 00:01:50.480 align:middle line:84% Roberto Tejada is the author of National Camera Photography 00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:52.580 align:middle line:90% in Mexico's Image Environment. 00:01:52.580 --> 00:01:57.140 align:middle line:84% Cecilia Alvarez Munoz' Mirrors for Gold, Full Foreground, 00:01:57.140 --> 00:02:01.160 align:middle line:84% and my favorite, Exposition Park from Leslie in 2010. 00:02:01.160 --> 00:02:05.630 align:middle line:84% Roberto is an editor for Mendula, New Writing 00:02:05.630 --> 00:02:07.610 align:middle line:84% From The Americas, and is distinguished 00:02:07.610 --> 00:02:10.970 align:middle line:84% endowed chair as a professor of art history 00:02:10.970 --> 00:02:16.050 align:middle line:84% at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. 00:02:16.050 --> 00:02:21.790 align:middle line:84% Now, the task of introducing actually these three poets 00:02:21.790 --> 00:02:25.390 align:middle line:84% beyond any further details you can look up later online 00:02:25.390 --> 00:02:30.430 align:middle line:84% after they've had their way with you, is a daunting privilege. 00:02:30.430 --> 00:02:34.270 align:middle line:84% By way of showing you something of them, rather than merely 00:02:34.270 --> 00:02:37.840 align:middle line:90% go on about them. 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:40.390 align:middle line:90% What follows, then, is a poem. 00:02:40.390 --> 00:02:44.020 align:middle line:84% A cento comprised solely of alternating lines 00:02:44.020 --> 00:02:46.720 align:middle line:84% from their works that I copied out 00:02:46.720 --> 00:02:49.297 align:middle line:84% yesterday sitting with their books across the breezeway 00:02:49.297 --> 00:02:50.380 align:middle line:90% here at the Poetry Center. 00:02:50.380 --> 00:02:53.920 align:middle line:90% 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:54.670 align:middle line:90% And there's water. 00:02:54.670 --> 00:02:55.868 align:middle line:90% That's apparent now. 00:02:55.868 --> 00:02:59.360 align:middle line:90% 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:03.230 align:middle line:84% I'm ashamed of my ordinary desires. 00:03:03.230 --> 00:03:07.630 align:middle line:84% We discovered turtle doves in the open chest. 00:03:07.630 --> 00:03:11.630 align:middle line:84% Hernando de Soto saw the great river. 00:03:11.630 --> 00:03:16.940 align:middle line:84% How does anyone turn mothering into writing. 00:03:16.940 --> 00:03:22.690 align:middle line:84% The inevitability of their deaths, the gift shields. 00:03:22.690 --> 00:03:27.860 align:middle line:84% 100,000 of us in epileptic intent. 00:03:27.860 --> 00:03:33.890 align:middle line:90% Her name, Socorro, means help. 00:03:33.890 --> 00:03:36.290 align:middle line:90% We lament the name we give. 00:03:36.290 --> 00:03:41.960 align:middle line:84% We give word to find respite from the shallows between. 00:03:41.960 --> 00:03:47.900 align:middle line:84% Keep the eel alive until ready to skin. 00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:50.910 align:middle line:90% This could get serial. 00:03:50.910 --> 00:03:54.570 align:middle line:84% I said, my culture swallows itself. 00:03:54.570 --> 00:03:58.230 align:middle line:90% An infinity without origin. 00:03:58.230 --> 00:04:04.500 align:middle line:84% Who carried the ashes of the dead in water jars. 00:04:04.500 --> 00:04:11.290 align:middle line:84% Mama, manna, motor, mother fucker. 00:04:11.290 --> 00:04:16.500 align:middle line:84% She with the hole at the end of identity. 00:04:16.500 --> 00:04:20.190 align:middle line:90% Today, I sharpen my knife. 00:04:20.190 --> 00:04:23.700 align:middle line:90% Picked nine pairs. 00:04:23.700 --> 00:04:28.950 align:middle line:90% I was disappear then come back. 00:04:28.950 --> 00:04:34.440 align:middle line:84% We gathered language rendered in honey and beeswax. 00:04:34.440 --> 00:04:37.950 align:middle line:90% Labors erased in the telling. 00:04:37.950 --> 00:04:42.180 align:middle line:90% Lives unruffled by war. 00:04:42.180 --> 00:04:46.050 align:middle line:84% We did it until the buildings came down. 00:04:46.050 --> 00:04:51.370 align:middle line:84% Margin is the whiteness in our silence. 00:04:51.370 --> 00:04:55.700 align:middle line:84% Piano wire of the last word said. 00:04:55.700 --> 00:05:03.750 align:middle line:84% Wanted, a big fat organism to eat me alive. 00:05:03.750 --> 00:05:07.100 align:middle line:84% Can I bring my pistol and slingshot? 00:05:07.100 --> 00:05:10.400 align:middle line:90% Most nights I feel I am asleep. 00:05:10.400 --> 00:05:14.090 align:middle line:84% Most nights I fall asleep to the clattering 00:05:14.090 --> 00:05:19.820 align:middle line:84% chains of the padlock coiling and uncoiling from a game. 00:05:19.820 --> 00:05:25.300 align:middle line:84% Please help me to introduce, to welcome J. Michael Martinez. 00:05:25.300 --> 00:05:28.000 align:middle line:90%