So the main thing going on tonight is that Heriberto Yépez
going to read for us and show a little bit of video.
We usually have two presenters and we
came up empty this time, as Pablo Toledo's
in Spain screening his film and wasn't to be able to be here.
So three of us are going to read just
for about five minutes each.
You know, just to kind of make friendly.
And then we'll take a small break
and Heriberto's going to read about half an hour
and show about 10 minutes of video, so that's the deal.
I'm going to read first, I guess and I'll
try to keep it really short with two or three things
from the book-length poem I just finished a while ago,
called Home on the Range.
And my good news is that Leslie Scalapino
is going to publish it with O Books at the end of next year.
So that's good.
All right.
So this is second time--
[LAUGHTER]
I want to go about five or six minutes.
So this is section 60, I'll just read a couple sections
in a row, and we'll see where we are.
So grammatical and continuous thread,
the genius of translation is necessary,
the original connected with worries, disappointment,
disobedience, clingings of the divine,
no hankerings speak of these passing characters,
replace the present with utmost rapidity.
Turtle in a wind tunnel, deer's ribbon streaming,
don't count on it, your head turned into cement
and dissolved, it was very nice.
Always seek something inward or outward from a distant place
return to emptiness.
I have come from Indians, will you kindly--
inability to express rain, a pocket gopher that
scurried across the road, grack or whatever
of the big fast road runner.
Your smile or excoriating word or body.
Thought- instants woven around the original
with no thought for the morrow, apart from their breathing
cars.
It's OK, thump and whir of wheels and of the sun's breath
in tandem, tiny cortical capillaries, through which
the turtle broods.
Clean your mouth filth you thereby
breathe, which is fearsome.
Adultery, theft that goes on in the name of naturalism,
brushwork abounding, all along the edge and inside it.
Outside, I have not lost my friend, no, sir.
All arguing is taking in the fire,
systematic boiling cauldron, no to all our questions
ordinarily understood.
Nature is becoming not like this, there
is nothing in a definite locale before seeing,
there is no seeing at all the path of birth
yet there is nothing, it is evident.
But we cling, hoping to separate out attachment.
Thinking means does this seeing take place?
61.
The door opened it began to happen, really bad.
I insisted too: the lovers, sporting event, do better.
I'm not going to let the stiff thread happen.
Wasp-- wasp walks on the palo verde's smallest twig,
broom tries choking the cholla.
Same blue sky over the house's wall of pale cream brick.
A hawk soars over, it's a turkey vulture.
Something had died, leaving one small lie.
She handed him the information.
He pulled the sun and released the sky.
Everything was that signpost, her careful notes
a kind of marker.
What's the mystery?
Ron on the bus catching odd details about lots of people.
What's that tree, leaves turning a wrong yellow, bee's gone.
He was sure that Alf had lied.
No to Beth's nothing, not likely under theirs from time to time.
Pale blue, paler green, bleached purple, pale pink.
Who am I?
Warning call filling the mind.
He wished he had anything, pushed it away:
machine, odds filling the room, a man packed up.
I can put his mind in a bag, inside the bag everything
gets recreated, a whole world of sound and color and form,
all five skandas are-- butter the muffin!
Miami?
Then take the trick: his lips swaying in the ground,
the arm clearly nothing.
There's little I don't know, but that's the experiments of boys.
still squeezing me beside the opener,
giving him, came up again, was too measured.
All three, but first of the three,
got what he for a few years.
Peter thought Jimmy would like that, drawer to his left
flaunted that thing.
Bars.
He'd given his son his nephew in return.
And this one more, 62.
Day adapted this jonquil blossom.
This makes no difference.
Trailing along to your graves, trimmed grass and here
are the bees again, Hello.
Kuan Yin's clock, tick-tock, buzz and ratcheted
hum counting highly variable time signatures
till everything swarms that's time.
Balanchine moved the phrase around the stage,
the time that is, until it happened differently,
in any place in a moment.
Now here now over there, a syncopated, chordal now.
That's how it is with the stillness seeping up
through it.
It's OK, you're dead then.
We go away and absolutely open and why are we not--
our hands.
because it is hot.
and little screens, curtains, let us take brightly.
motion is so fast!
call her inside the bag, where trees shimmer,
a white cat walks with boa tail swished erect.
E puts her hand on the door, but where are you?
The bag is breathing now.
March the 13th explore some makes March as an object,
patently, she saw.
by the seashore.
where?
winrows again, lion who perhaps had
batted at a stop, a kite out of the sky
to play with, this is an odd dream of habitation, your face
dissolving now pore by pore.
When you talk you talk to yourself.
I believe the bag is dissolving.
How do you do.
mistaken.
a danger, a recalled pleasure.
she let fall a matter, a hinge, a sentence
which is red at night, currants, women, name, a noun.
Mother is it strange that you've become Guan Yin?
Is it strange father?
The weather.
she shuts the sky, but she sees woods, grasses, caress morning
a year of alas, dark in color.
remember more sky.
Can a cow keep Louisiana?
Can you prefer?
That is not Italian.
I bless the cow, your words, I thank you enough,
make this arrangement stare and stare.
Suns are often happy, and palms of electricity house,
how tenderly, the season, covered and aroused.
It's out.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]