WEBVTT

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Thanks Cybele. Best pronunciation
of Swamp Isthmus ever yet.

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Thank you all for being here.

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This is a special evening.

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[LAUGHTER]

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George Calvin
Waldrep the Third is

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the author of Southern Workers
and the Search for Community,

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the poem collections
Goldbeater's Skin,

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The Batteries, One Way, No
Exit, Disclaimer, Archicembalo,

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and my favorite,
St. Laszlo Hotel

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from Projective Industries.

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With John Gallagher, he wrote
another book called Your Father

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On the Train of Ghosts.

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And with Ilya Kaminski
and Josh Khoury,

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he edited Homage to Paul
Celan and The Arcadia Project,

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respectively.

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Aside from these
so-called facts,

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I want to tell you how I came
to know the poet, G.C. Waldrep.

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G.C. And I had many
friends, poets, in common,

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before we'd actually
met to travel together

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for readings in the Midwest.

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The writers between us
should tell you something.

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The 11th century haibun
artist, Mathias Svalina,

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the other, lesser known,
third brother to John Keats,

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Dan Beachie Keats, the
19th century Jesuit priest,

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Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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And we'd both fallen
under the gruesome spell

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of the 7th century Viking
blood -letter, Ander Monson.

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You see, G.C. Was
born in another era

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altogether, in a state we
now call Virginia in 768 AD.

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His only friend as a child was a
weasel with whom he reluctantly

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learned to share a bed.

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His only other
friend was a fleet

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of mice who enjoyed the
bread crumbs, the bed crumbs.

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G.C. learned-- this is serious--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--this is going to be
a very serious reading.

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He learned not to
leave in his linens

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when at home or traveling.

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A few years ago,
when G.C. Showed

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up in my apartment in Chicago,
he'd just come from Wales,

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where he'd nudged a candle
with his enormous beard

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to give it an accidental trim.

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It was suggested by
the community elders

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that he not cut additionally
around the flame's divot,

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that he let his beard's shape
return as it would, unhelped,

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unimpeded.

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So here he was, a
walking, breathing poem.

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And then, like this, with
only the rest of our 11,000

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minor poets to suss
out in my Subaru wagon,

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to Carthage, Wisconsin, we went.

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This was the year 1046.

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And G.C. was trying
to teach me something

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about parabolic mystery
that I was and still am

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unable to learn.

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When I used to ride the
bus around Chicago--

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relax, this is going to
be a long introduction--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--when I used to ride
the bus around Chicago,

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people often stopped
me to ask what

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it was like to know
this man, G.C. Waldrep.

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And I learned to reply
with Waldrep's own words.

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Is G.C. an unstoppable force
of poetry, they would ask.

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I would say, well, is
he not like the sunlight

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on this empty beach?

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We are not near an empty
beach, they would say.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Right.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I would say, I walked here.

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There were no guns, no gates.

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And now everything is permitted.

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No one had sold the
sand in my shoes.

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No one has yet tasted
his death on my tongue.

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This was before, as there
must always be before.

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But did G.C. Waldrep
the third really write

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a suite of poems about
graffiti in California?

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Yes.

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And further, I'm not afraid of
the story you ask me to tell.

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In any case, it is
no longer my story.

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Now, is G.C. really full
of so much beautiful verse?

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As a matter of fact, yes.

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I learned this in Ohio.

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What did you learn in Ohio?

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G.C. and I were
invited into a class

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of precocious undergraduate
students led by the 4th century

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Yogi and mystic Kazem Ali.

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G.C. and I were asked,
together, to improvise

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a collaborative poem
aloud on the spot.

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It was decided that I
should begin this poem.

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What horrible luck.

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And so I stuttered out something
unfortunate about a machine gun

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or a box of raisins or a goat.

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Things I know absolutely
nothing about.

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And what did G.C. then say?

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Yes, let's find out.

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Please, welcome G.C. Waldrep.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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