WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.220 align:middle line:90%


00:00:03.220 --> 00:00:08.410 align:middle line:84%
Thank you very much, Sam, and
thank you to the Poetry Center.

00:00:08.410 --> 00:00:10.780 align:middle line:84%
A special thank you to the
instructors of the Honors

00:00:10.780 --> 00:00:13.510 align:middle line:84%
College who hosted us
this week; Aurelie and I

00:00:13.510 --> 00:00:15.760 align:middle line:90%
got to visit them.

00:00:15.760 --> 00:00:17.530 align:middle line:84%
I was very impressed
by the questions

00:00:17.530 --> 00:00:18.805 align:middle line:90%
that their students asked.

00:00:18.805 --> 00:00:25.460 align:middle line:90%


00:00:25.460 --> 00:00:28.070 align:middle line:84%
I understand we will not
be doing a Q and A tonight,

00:00:28.070 --> 00:00:32.540 align:middle line:84%
so I'm going to read very
briefly from a statement

00:00:32.540 --> 00:00:36.920 align:middle line:84%
about this work that I hope will
ground it and contextualize it.

00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:41.040 align:middle line:90%


00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:44.010 align:middle line:84%
"La Chola Martina was
a derogatory alias

00:00:44.010 --> 00:00:47.910 align:middle line:90%
bestowed on Martina Espinoza.

00:00:47.910 --> 00:00:50.220 align:middle line:84%
A woman believed
by white Angelenos

00:00:50.220 --> 00:00:52.620 align:middle line:84%
to be an acquaintance of
the bandit, Juan Flores.

00:00:52.620 --> 00:00:55.240 align:middle line:90%


00:00:55.240 --> 00:00:58.990 align:middle line:84%
In 1857, Flores and his
men killed Sheriff Barton

00:00:58.990 --> 00:01:01.090 align:middle line:84%
and most of his posse
in the countryside

00:01:01.090 --> 00:01:04.120 align:middle line:90%
outside Los Angeles.

00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:06.670 align:middle line:84%
The accusation that
Martina Espinoza tampered

00:01:06.670 --> 00:01:12.540 align:middle line:84%
with the Barton
posse's guns fueled

00:01:12.540 --> 00:01:14.820 align:middle line:84%
a wave of retaliatory
lynching and murder

00:01:14.820 --> 00:01:17.010 align:middle line:90%
targeting Hispanic men.

00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:20.700 align:middle line:84%
Artist and chronicler, Ken
Gonzales-Day reports that

00:01:20.700 --> 00:01:24.690 align:middle line:84%
the shout pouch was, quote,
'A most beautiful necklace

00:01:24.690 --> 00:01:29.550 align:middle line:84%
of human ears strung on
a rawhide string intended

00:01:29.550 --> 00:01:34.020 align:middle line:84%
to prove that the wearer had
successfully killed Hispanic

00:01:34.020 --> 00:01:35.760 align:middle line:90%
men.'

00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:39.210 align:middle line:84%
Hispanic vigilante
posses wore the necklaces

00:01:39.210 --> 00:01:43.640 align:middle line:90%
to reassure the Anglo community.

00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:49.790 align:middle line:84%
I can imagine a little
devaluation, a little hunger,

00:01:49.790 --> 00:01:54.050 align:middle line:84%
rolling blackouts,
the ease with which we

00:01:54.050 --> 00:01:59.130 align:middle line:84%
ourselves right here
could get that ugly.

00:01:59.130 --> 00:02:01.440 align:middle line:84%
But really, I can't
for very long,

00:02:01.440 --> 00:02:06.060 align:middle line:84%
see people as anything other
than people, which is probably

00:02:06.060 --> 00:02:09.030 align:middle line:90%
a systemic virtue.

00:02:09.030 --> 00:02:12.810 align:middle line:84%
These poems, I guess, are
trying to trace that system,

00:02:12.810 --> 00:02:16.240 align:middle line:90%
its buttressing and fissures.

00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:18.460 align:middle line:84%
There are also here
loving quarrels

00:02:18.460 --> 00:02:20.260 align:middle line:90%
with writers and artists--

00:02:20.260 --> 00:02:24.820 align:middle line:84%
Rilke, Yoko Ono, Melville, Goya,
--about how art does, and does

00:02:24.820 --> 00:02:28.770 align:middle line:90%
not make spaces for violence.

00:02:28.770 --> 00:02:31.800 align:middle line:84%
Ken Gonzales-Day writes
that photographic archives

00:02:31.800 --> 00:02:36.270 align:middle line:84%
can hardly tell us the
difference between a Californio

00:02:36.270 --> 00:02:41.550 align:middle line:84%
condemned to death by vigilante
squad or kangaroo court,

00:02:41.550 --> 00:02:45.440 align:middle line:84%
and a Californian member
of the landed gentry.

00:02:45.440 --> 00:02:47.660 align:middle line:84%
Conventions of 19th
century portraiture

00:02:47.660 --> 00:02:53.940 align:middle line:84%
were such that everyone came
to be dignified by the lens.

00:02:53.940 --> 00:02:58.720 align:middle line:84%
And all came to be subsumed
under the label of Mexican

00:02:58.720 --> 00:03:02.860 align:middle line:84%
and its variants by
photographic archivists who

00:03:02.860 --> 00:03:06.250 align:middle line:84%
valued neither the rectitude
of a high collared shirt,

00:03:06.250 --> 00:03:09.880 align:middle line:90%
nor the specificity of a death.

00:03:09.880 --> 00:03:13.230 align:middle line:84%
So that seemed a
metaphor enough.

00:03:13.230 --> 00:03:17.070 align:middle line:84%
I started putting
things in that truck

00:03:17.070 --> 00:03:21.100 align:middle line:84%
that my daughter
appears and fades away,

00:03:21.100 --> 00:03:23.590 align:middle line:84%
that she's coming
into her phenotypes

00:03:23.590 --> 00:03:26.860 align:middle line:84%
and into her genitals,
and into the pulsing

00:03:26.860 --> 00:03:29.230 align:middle line:84%
network these make
when we turn them

00:03:29.230 --> 00:03:32.330 align:middle line:90%
into identities and stories.

00:03:32.330 --> 00:03:35.630 align:middle line:84%
My need to be her
archive, to arrest her

00:03:35.630 --> 00:03:40.780 align:middle line:84%
as an artifact of her origin,
yet to see her in process,

00:03:40.780 --> 00:03:45.850 align:middle line:84%
delaying form, disturbed
and disturbing, and my need

00:03:45.850 --> 00:03:50.710 align:middle line:84%
to know how we can within and
through archive, narrative,

00:03:50.710 --> 00:03:54.370 align:middle line:84%
photograph, and painting,
see anything at all."

00:03:54.370 --> 00:04:03.120 align:middle line:90%


00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:06.530 align:middle line:84%
One more prefatory remark,
this is a quotation

00:04:06.530 --> 00:04:10.160 align:middle line:84%
that I found in an essay
by Nathaniel Mackey

00:04:10.160 --> 00:04:12.650 align:middle line:90%
on the poetry of Robert Duncan.

00:04:12.650 --> 00:04:14.930 align:middle line:84%
Charles Alexander encouraged
me to read this essay.

00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:16.972 align:middle line:84%
I don't know if he's here
tonight, but thank you,

00:04:16.972 --> 00:04:18.920 align:middle line:90%
Charles.

00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:21.890 align:middle line:84%
And I intend this as a
self-critical gesture.

00:04:21.890 --> 00:04:28.470 align:middle line:84%
Rene Char apparently said,
"Art knows nothing of history,

00:04:28.470 --> 00:04:32.120 align:middle line:90%
but helps itself to its terror."

00:04:32.120 --> 00:04:33.000 align:middle line:90%