WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.250 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.250 --> 00:00:07.140 align:middle line:84% Trying to make sense of the traveling the poems inside that 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:12.390 align:middle line:84% experience, I started to gather them together in sections, 00:00:12.390 --> 00:00:15.210 align:middle line:90% but they wouldn't hold. 00:00:15.210 --> 00:00:20.400 align:middle line:84% I had been traveling everywhere trying to understand it. 00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:22.560 align:middle line:90% I split them-- 00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:25.260 align:middle line:84% I split the poems into regions, poems 00:00:25.260 --> 00:00:28.950 align:middle line:84% from New York in New York, Seattle in Seattle. 00:00:28.950 --> 00:00:31.380 align:middle line:84% These are the places I lived and the places 00:00:31.380 --> 00:00:34.020 align:middle line:84% I had been writing the poems from. 00:00:34.020 --> 00:00:37.290 align:middle line:84% The poems from the desert calling them "The Desert," 00:00:37.290 --> 00:00:41.100 align:middle line:84% and the poems sort of contorted to fit. 00:00:41.100 --> 00:00:44.400 align:middle line:84% Even a poem obviously and comfortably located 00:00:44.400 --> 00:00:47.010 align:middle line:84% in the desert is strangely altered 00:00:47.010 --> 00:00:50.160 align:middle line:84% by having the word desert before it 00:00:50.160 --> 00:00:52.500 align:middle line:84% and having a group of other poems sharing 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:56.220 align:middle line:84% that location and the strange reality of locating 00:00:56.220 --> 00:00:59.730 align:middle line:84% the other places, New York and Seattle. 00:00:59.730 --> 00:01:04.500 align:middle line:84% These poems all traveled back and forth with me for years. 00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:08.760 align:middle line:84% And it maybe strikes one as odd, but even the slightest shifts 00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:10.980 align:middle line:90% in language register. 00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:14.970 align:middle line:84% A line break or a change becomes an invisible notched 00:01:14.970 --> 00:01:19.080 align:middle line:84% marking so that some part, some energy 00:01:19.080 --> 00:01:21.970 align:middle line:90% is from a different place. 00:01:21.970 --> 00:01:26.760 align:middle line:84% But to no place at all was about a kind of truthful human 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:28.930 align:middle line:90% presence and grounding. 00:01:28.930 --> 00:01:33.270 align:middle line:84% So that eventually the fact of their basic itinerancy 00:01:33.270 --> 00:01:38.100 align:middle line:84% made it too uncomfortable for me to designate them this way. 00:01:38.100 --> 00:01:41.070 align:middle line:84% And it took months for them to shake back out 00:01:41.070 --> 00:01:47.370 align:middle line:84% and seem next to one another untethered by their locales 00:01:47.370 --> 00:01:51.000 align:middle line:84% and opened up again to a grounding as much 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:52.905 align:middle line:90% in time or body as place. 00:01:52.905 --> 00:01:55.680 align:middle line:90% 00:01:55.680 --> 00:01:59.370 align:middle line:84% Not disloyal or cruel, my sorrows 00:01:59.370 --> 00:02:04.590 align:middle line:84% are the body I'd say, a down red pain in my knee I walk along 00:02:04.590 --> 00:02:05.730 align:middle line:90% and sit in pain. 00:02:05.730 --> 00:02:08.910 align:middle line:90% 00:02:08.910 --> 00:02:14.220 align:middle line:84% New fable of little yellow mouth opens up on window. 00:02:14.220 --> 00:02:18.900 align:middle line:84% Grasping lots and waving fragrant plumes, I most lonely 00:02:18.900 --> 00:02:23.680 align:middle line:84% have been everywhere walking streets and island water drops 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:24.180 align:middle line:90% in eye. 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:27.530 align:middle line:90% 00:02:27.530 --> 00:02:31.130 align:middle line:84% Sleep-- a fitted sleep, I lay there in my bed 00:02:31.130 --> 00:02:36.260 align:middle line:84% a kind of dried out me, this high plain to the cactus 00:02:36.260 --> 00:02:40.565 align:middle line:84% and the heat, but quickly they flower their roots I read. 00:02:40.565 --> 00:02:43.760 align:middle line:90% 00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:46.010 align:middle line:84% In all the different places, the search 00:02:46.010 --> 00:02:49.610 align:middle line:84% seemed to be for the most private, intimate. 00:02:49.610 --> 00:02:52.280 align:middle line:84% I was saying I didn't want to separate 00:02:52.280 --> 00:02:55.040 align:middle line:84% from the physical experience of writing them, 00:02:55.040 --> 00:02:57.890 align:middle line:84% of them coming to be even in sharing, 00:02:57.890 --> 00:03:02.030 align:middle line:84% handing over a small pile standing nearby. 00:03:02.030 --> 00:03:05.090 align:middle line:84% Those being the only copies and not 00:03:05.090 --> 00:03:09.830 align:middle line:84% other paper sized even or just reading them aloud 00:03:09.830 --> 00:03:14.270 align:middle line:84% to people or with them or them to me. 00:03:14.270 --> 00:03:17.840 align:middle line:84% When people ask what your poems are about, 00:03:17.840 --> 00:03:22.160 align:middle line:84% it's confusing and overwhelming, and it's easy to-- 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:25.100 align:middle line:84% out of a desire not to be reductive-- 00:03:25.100 --> 00:03:28.670 align:middle line:90% to flail and not really answer. 00:03:28.670 --> 00:03:31.430 align:middle line:90% But I found I wanted to answer. 00:03:31.430 --> 00:03:33.890 align:middle line:84% I found the poems were so present I really 00:03:33.890 --> 00:03:35.630 align:middle line:90% needed to answer. 00:03:35.630 --> 00:03:37.160 align:middle line:90% I'd hand some over. 00:03:37.160 --> 00:03:41.390 align:middle line:84% I'd say bits of presence and experience. 00:03:41.390 --> 00:03:45.650 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I'd say they were like abstract moments of sunlight 00:03:45.650 --> 00:03:49.190 align:middle line:84% or voice, the gleams, the reflections. 00:03:49.190 --> 00:03:51.530 align:middle line:84% And there were always some poems there 00:03:51.530 --> 00:03:55.340 align:middle line:84% in the pile that felt like the answer to the question, 00:03:55.340 --> 00:03:59.810 align:middle line:84% helping me and others know the work. 00:03:59.810 --> 00:04:05.150 align:middle line:84% Clouds on cloud top now above the actual town 00:04:05.150 --> 00:04:09.830 align:middle line:84% in the mountains pooled up water where people sometimes live. 00:04:09.830 --> 00:04:13.120 align:middle line:90% 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:19.300 align:middle line:84% This arching bit of tumult too, too smoothed, like a man 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:22.900 align:middle line:84% propped against a wet glass wall unpresent. 00:04:22.900 --> 00:04:28.280 align:middle line:90% 00:04:28.280 --> 00:04:32.930 align:middle line:84% Twist of eye and, yes, I walked my dog in the cold park 00:04:32.930 --> 00:04:38.090 align:middle line:84% today beneath the sprouted trees, colored finely mustard 00:04:38.090 --> 00:04:42.050 align:middle line:84% green, thinking capture maybe in yourself 00:04:42.050 --> 00:04:44.630 align:middle line:90% a few simple thoughtful things. 00:04:44.630 --> 00:04:48.070 align:middle line:90% 00:04:48.070 --> 00:04:52.090 align:middle line:84% And these had felt really at the core 00:04:52.090 --> 00:04:56.800 align:middle line:84% always in the pile with others constellating around them. 00:04:56.800 --> 00:04:59.200 align:middle line:84% There are poems to which others are attracted, 00:04:59.200 --> 00:05:01.270 align:middle line:90% around which others grow. 00:05:01.270 --> 00:05:04.780 align:middle line:84% There are poems that lead and poems that gather, 00:05:04.780 --> 00:05:08.060 align:middle line:84% poems that propel and construct the ones around them, 00:05:08.060 --> 00:05:12.370 align:middle line:84% and so for me these were, in a real way, they are, 00:05:12.370 --> 00:05:16.120 align:middle line:84% they remain at some center of things. 00:05:16.120 --> 00:05:19.120 align:middle line:84% But none of these poems, none of the ones 00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:23.290 align:middle line:84% you've heard this evening, are actually in the book. 00:05:23.290 --> 00:05:26.290 align:middle line:84% I wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems. 00:05:26.290 --> 00:05:30.550 align:middle line:84% Also I made that book, which is something else. 00:05:30.550 --> 00:05:33.640 align:middle line:84% And the lives of these poems are just different. 00:05:33.640 --> 00:05:37.660 align:middle line:84% Not better, not worse, not something more 00:05:37.660 --> 00:05:39.520 align:middle line:90% or less successful. 00:05:39.520 --> 00:05:43.210 align:middle line:84% Their lives just continue in a more private fashion 00:05:43.210 --> 00:05:46.840 align:middle line:84% except for maybe moments like this when they poke out 00:05:46.840 --> 00:05:49.270 align:middle line:90% their heads and say hello. 00:05:49.270 --> 00:05:50.770 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:05:50.770 --> 00:05:52.500 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:05:52.500 --> 00:05:53.000 align:middle line:90%