WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.780 align:middle line:84% So please help me welcome the first introducer, Sylvia Chan. 00:00:03.780 --> 00:00:07.231 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:07.231 --> 00:00:11.607 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.607 --> 00:00:12.190 align:middle line:90% Hey, everyone. 00:00:12.190 --> 00:00:13.190 align:middle line:90% Can you hear me? 00:00:13.190 --> 00:00:13.690 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:00:13.690 --> 00:00:15.990 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:15.990 --> 00:00:18.690 align:middle line:84% I first encountered Zachary Schomburg in a thrift store 00:00:18.690 --> 00:00:20.670 align:middle line:90% in Vilnius, Lithuania. 00:00:20.670 --> 00:00:23.280 align:middle line:84% Someone had left a copy of Fjords Vol 1 00:00:23.280 --> 00:00:27.420 align:middle line:84% inside a purse that was marked to sell for 10 litas, or $3. 00:00:27.420 --> 00:00:30.180 align:middle line:84% I bought the purse book, and read it in one sitting. 00:00:30.180 --> 00:00:32.850 align:middle line:84% Reread it in more sittings-- undoubtedly this 00:00:32.850 --> 00:00:35.070 align:middle line:84% was the best thrift store purchase anyone could ever 00:00:35.070 --> 00:00:36.610 align:middle line:90% make. 00:00:36.610 --> 00:00:39.280 align:middle line:84% Zachary Schomburg's poetry gives the song or lyric 00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:41.430 align:middle line:84% to the reader and the professed speaker. 00:00:41.430 --> 00:00:45.690 align:middle line:84% In "Scary, No Scary," fears and memories are premeditations. 00:00:45.690 --> 00:00:47.670 align:middle line:90% "You are so high in the tree. 00:00:47.670 --> 00:00:49.410 align:middle line:84% You will get married to a hummingbird 00:00:49.410 --> 00:00:51.690 align:middle line:84% and raise beautiful part hummingbirds. 00:00:51.690 --> 00:00:54.240 align:middle line:84% You will die of cancer in mid-air." 00:00:54.240 --> 00:00:57.600 align:middle line:84% We become familiar with short and concise prose poems, 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:00.930 align:middle line:84% imagining actual worlds, persistent images of death, 00:01:00.930 --> 00:01:02.760 align:middle line:90% scary or no scary. 00:01:02.760 --> 00:01:04.560 align:middle line:90% We get cartography of the body-- 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:07.230 align:middle line:84% your badly curved spine, your complex eye, 00:01:07.230 --> 00:01:09.150 align:middle line:90% your badly curve spin-- 00:01:09.150 --> 00:01:11.280 align:middle line:84% until the literal sentence of your body parts 00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:13.440 align:middle line:84% becomes a separate sound or meter 00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:16.260 align:middle line:84% that is a realign on brief poetic lines 00:01:16.260 --> 00:01:17.970 align:middle line:90% and their enjambments. 00:01:17.970 --> 00:01:19.770 align:middle line:84% You and your complex spine unravel 00:01:19.770 --> 00:01:22.860 align:middle line:84% into a complex mess, one whose understanding of loss 00:01:22.860 --> 00:01:24.510 align:middle line:90% is very deep. 00:01:24.510 --> 00:01:27.030 align:middle line:84% That's where Fjords, Zachary's most recent collection, 00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:28.200 align:middle line:90% takes us. 00:01:28.200 --> 00:01:29.950 align:middle line:84% In the poems we're asked to make up 00:01:29.950 --> 00:01:33.300 align:middle line:84% beautiful songs that only one of us will ever get to sing. 00:01:33.300 --> 00:01:36.120 align:middle line:84% We're inclined to want death because it's surreal, 00:01:36.120 --> 00:01:39.960 align:middle line:84% infinite, and impossibilities of life-- 00:01:39.960 --> 00:01:42.990 align:middle line:84% movie theater ticket booths, refrigerators and lack 00:01:42.990 --> 00:01:45.840 align:middle line:84% of refrigerators, being young and beautiful, 00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:47.880 align:middle line:90% and any kind of travesty. 00:01:47.880 --> 00:01:49.600 align:middle line:84% Any number of death games that we're 00:01:49.600 --> 00:01:53.010 align:middle line:84% invited to experience and come to terms with. 00:01:53.010 --> 00:01:54.090 align:middle line:90% And we die a lot. 00:01:54.090 --> 00:01:56.310 align:middle line:84% We die in sincerity and memories, 00:01:56.310 --> 00:01:59.640 align:middle line:84% and imagined memories, and love and in killings. 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:01.680 align:middle line:84% We're truthful when it comes to donuts, 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:06.570 align:middle line:84% Starbucks baristas, crooked unrecognizable teeth. 00:02:06.570 --> 00:02:08.490 align:middle line:90% Our apprehensions are indexed. 00:02:08.490 --> 00:02:10.650 align:middle line:84% Truth is an entry in the back of the book, 00:02:10.650 --> 00:02:13.260 align:middle line:84% as is a number of themes and obsessions-- 00:02:13.260 --> 00:02:15.090 align:middle line:84% the closest semblance to organizing 00:02:15.090 --> 00:02:18.780 align:middle line:84% whatever's in our heads Pick one kind of order. 00:02:18.780 --> 00:02:21.390 align:middle line:84% I'm being strangled by the asphyxiated of a person who 00:02:21.390 --> 00:02:23.520 align:middle line:84% I'm resuscitating, and you are being 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:25.740 align:middle line:84% strangled by the asphyxiated person who 00:02:25.740 --> 00:02:27.300 align:middle line:90% you are resuscitating. 00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:28.680 align:middle line:90% I hope this is it. 00:02:28.680 --> 00:02:31.680 align:middle line:84% I hope we all die just like this, in someone else's arms 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:34.230 align:middle line:90% young, and beautiful, and true. 00:02:34.230 --> 00:02:37.060 align:middle line:84% Zachary Schomburg is the author of three poetry collections-- 00:02:37.060 --> 00:02:40.320 align:middle line:84% Fjords Vol 1, Scary, No Scary and The Man Suit, 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:42.180 align:middle line:90% all from Black Ocean Press. 00:02:42.180 --> 00:02:44.400 align:middle line:84% He is one editor of Octopus Books, 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:46.320 align:middle line:84% and co-curates Bad Blood, a poetry reading 00:02:46.320 --> 00:02:49.000 align:middle line:90% series in Portland, Oregon. 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:51.540 align:middle line:84% I think Zachary wants to predict some life happenings. 00:02:51.540 --> 00:02:53.820 align:middle line:84% In my favorite Fjords line, "we could 00:02:53.820 --> 00:02:55.650 align:middle line:84% have predicted how she would run around 00:02:55.650 --> 00:02:58.020 align:middle line:84% like a piano was about to fall on her, 00:02:58.020 --> 00:02:59.940 align:middle line:84% how her eyelashes would become wires 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:02.160 align:middle line:90% to hold all our blackness up." 00:03:02.160 --> 00:03:04.230 align:middle line:84% In his Tumblr, at the Lovely Arc, 00:03:04.230 --> 00:03:07.050 align:middle line:84% he writes that he'll read after 7:00 then 00:03:07.050 --> 00:03:09.450 align:middle line:90% ride with a harem of javelinas. 00:03:09.450 --> 00:03:12.360 align:middle line:84% He's out for two coyotes who may get his bare ankles, 00:03:12.360 --> 00:03:15.125 align:middle line:84% but he's back, presumably ready to run." 00:03:15.125 --> 00:03:16.500 align:middle line:84% Please welcome Zachary Schomburg. 00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:19.923 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:19.923 --> 00:03:23.835 align:middle line:90% 00:03:23.835 --> 00:03:26.370 align:middle line:90% Thank you.