WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.610 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:02.610 --> 00:00:05.730 align:middle line:84% Thanks, everyone, for coming out. 00:00:05.730 --> 00:00:07.050 align:middle line:90% It's great to be back here. 00:00:07.050 --> 00:00:07.950 align:middle line:90% It's been a while. 00:00:07.950 --> 00:00:10.710 align:middle line:84% It was a different building when I was here last. 00:00:10.710 --> 00:00:16.800 align:middle line:84% And spent an amazing part of the day 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:19.440 align:middle line:84% today looking through books, and also remembering 00:00:19.440 --> 00:00:23.070 align:middle line:90% when I was here last, getting-- 00:00:23.070 --> 00:00:25.230 align:middle line:84% being introduced to people I had never 00:00:25.230 --> 00:00:28.740 align:middle line:84% gotten to hear or see before, because there 00:00:28.740 --> 00:00:30.810 align:middle line:90% was a recorded archive. 00:00:30.810 --> 00:00:33.810 align:middle line:84% And this was before things were so available online. 00:00:33.810 --> 00:00:39.450 align:middle line:84% And it's just, it's a pleasure to be back meeting friends, 00:00:39.450 --> 00:00:41.100 align:middle line:90% seeing friends. 00:00:41.100 --> 00:00:42.720 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:42.720 --> 00:00:46.515 align:middle line:84% The title of my lecture is The Lives of the Poems. 00:00:46.515 --> 00:00:56.140 align:middle line:90% 00:00:56.140 --> 00:01:01.630 align:middle line:84% What I'd like to do today is to introduce you to some poems, 00:01:01.630 --> 00:01:06.310 align:middle line:84% tell you about their lives, experiences, and ways. 00:01:06.310 --> 00:01:10.450 align:middle line:84% I would like to tell you about my life with them, our lives 00:01:10.450 --> 00:01:15.610 align:middle line:84% together, the social space we occupy and share. 00:01:15.610 --> 00:01:20.390 align:middle line:84% And to some extent, I hope, how we have come to be the ways 00:01:20.390 --> 00:01:20.890 align:middle line:90% we are. 00:01:20.890 --> 00:01:23.540 align:middle line:90% 00:01:23.540 --> 00:01:28.070 align:middle line:84% I was working on this pile of poems spread out on my table 00:01:28.070 --> 00:01:29.900 align:middle line:90% at a coffee shop. 00:01:29.900 --> 00:01:31.370 align:middle line:90% The waitress walked by. 00:01:31.370 --> 00:01:35.285 align:middle line:84% She said, without even slowing for an answer, "Haiku?" 00:01:35.285 --> 00:01:36.860 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:36.860 --> 00:01:39.740 align:middle line:90% So I should say my answer. 00:01:39.740 --> 00:01:42.290 align:middle line:84% The one that almost came out of me 00:01:42.290 --> 00:01:47.510 align:middle line:84% was, "Yes," not exactly because I think of them as haiku. 00:01:47.510 --> 00:01:49.250 align:middle line:84% Or, not at all because I think of them 00:01:49.250 --> 00:01:52.400 align:middle line:84% as haiku, but because there is something 00:01:52.400 --> 00:01:55.220 align:middle line:84% in the experience of making haiku, 00:01:55.220 --> 00:01:58.880 align:middle line:84% of reading haiku that is important to me, a way 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:00.680 align:middle line:90% I'm close to. 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:05.000 align:middle line:84% The experience of the haiku poet as itinerant, 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:11.060 align:middle line:84% traveling, and making a kind of document, time, and movement, 00:02:11.060 --> 00:02:16.610 align:middle line:84% and the experience of the haiku poet as daily practitioner. 00:02:16.610 --> 00:02:19.190 align:middle line:90% The moments, all of them-- 00:02:19.190 --> 00:02:23.660 align:middle line:84% the small scales of time, the spaces they make. 00:02:23.660 --> 00:02:26.360 align:middle line:84% The constant presence of the poem. 00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:28.850 align:middle line:90% The poetry in the world. 00:02:28.850 --> 00:02:30.020 align:middle line:90% The world in it. 00:02:30.020 --> 00:02:32.300 align:middle line:90% That it can happen at any time. 00:02:32.300 --> 00:02:36.290 align:middle line:90% That it can happen in any place. 00:02:36.290 --> 00:02:41.030 align:middle line:84% I met a haiku poet once, and I didn't know any Japanese. 00:02:41.030 --> 00:02:43.310 align:middle line:90% And he didn't know any English. 00:02:43.310 --> 00:02:46.280 align:middle line:84% And we couldn't have been together 5 minutes 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:51.440 align:middle line:84% before I pulled out my notebook to write something down. 00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:55.190 align:middle line:84% And he started smiling, and pulled a very similar one out 00:02:55.190 --> 00:02:56.970 align:middle line:90% to show me. 00:02:56.970 --> 00:03:00.410 align:middle line:84% And from that point on, and really before that point, 00:03:00.410 --> 00:03:04.610 align:middle line:84% without us knowing it, we were writing poems together. 00:03:04.610 --> 00:03:07.490 align:middle line:84% And the experience of haiku, its history, 00:03:07.490 --> 00:03:09.890 align:middle line:90% is a collaborative one. 00:03:09.890 --> 00:03:13.700 align:middle line:84% It began as a collaborative form of longer linked parts that 00:03:13.700 --> 00:03:16.940 align:middle line:90% demanded a social practice. 00:03:16.940 --> 00:03:19.280 align:middle line:84% And even after it was refined down 00:03:19.280 --> 00:03:22.460 align:middle line:84% to the way we now commonly think of it, 00:03:22.460 --> 00:03:26.930 align:middle line:84% it maintained, at its core, a practice of sharing-- 00:03:26.930 --> 00:03:29.000 align:middle line:84% of sharing one's own and others', 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.390 align:middle line:84% of traveling and making with other poets 00:03:32.390 --> 00:03:35.810 align:middle line:84% the number, the quantity, the constancy 00:03:35.810 --> 00:03:39.950 align:middle line:84% of presence in the life of the haiku poet-- of the poem, 00:03:39.950 --> 00:03:41.900 align:middle line:90% of poetry. 00:03:41.900 --> 00:03:44.450 align:middle line:84% The haiku poet would write easily thousands 00:03:44.450 --> 00:03:48.050 align:middle line:90% of poems in even a short life. 00:03:48.050 --> 00:03:51.410 align:middle line:84% And what is important about this is 00:03:51.410 --> 00:03:55.100 align:middle line:84% the necessary relation such a process has 00:03:55.100 --> 00:03:57.260 align:middle line:90% to the poet's daily life-- 00:03:57.260 --> 00:04:02.850 align:middle line:84% its saturated qualities, poetry passing in and out of you. 00:04:02.850 --> 00:04:07.920 align:middle line:84% Think how such a practice allows for the presence of language 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:10.500 align:middle line:90% in its fragmentary vibrancy. 00:04:10.500 --> 00:04:13.950 align:middle line:84% Think of how the imaginations and things of the world 00:04:13.950 --> 00:04:15.480 align:middle line:90% are activated-- 00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:20.399 align:middle line:84% the constant realizing of the world in language, ways 00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:24.000 align:middle line:84% that can come to have a gestural quality-- 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:32.520 align:middle line:84% witnessed, iterated, felt, resolved 00:04:32.520 --> 00:04:35.010 align:middle line:84% necessarily and somewhat immediately 00:04:35.010 --> 00:04:38.280 align:middle line:90% into other movements, gesture. 00:04:38.280 --> 00:04:41.580 align:middle line:90% And that happening all the time. 00:04:41.580 --> 00:04:45.900 align:middle line:84% I want you to imagine a poem, an individual poem, 00:04:45.900 --> 00:04:50.220 align:middle line:84% as part of some greater span of poetry-- 00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:54.090 align:middle line:84% like a shock from some expansive energy-- 00:04:54.090 --> 00:04:57.285 align:middle line:84% static and flash from the living world. 00:04:57.285 --> 00:05:00.160 align:middle line:90% 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:06.820 align:middle line:84% Ashy cataracts as plastered sign on my just got up why. 00:05:06.820 --> 00:05:12.150 align:middle line:90% 00:05:12.150 --> 00:05:19.430 align:middle line:84% Balanced lasing like with me and sunshine on the street. 00:05:19.430 --> 00:05:20.000 align:middle line:90%