WEBVTT

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"So the life is to
exist and integrate

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as thoroughly and
fluidly as possible

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into that existence,
the poetic act.

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It's the becoming.

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All the ways of being
in the world or its way

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through its way,
that it is the space

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through which the sensations
and intelligences pass.

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But saying that is
already too outside,

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a kind of breathing metabolism,
a social and private,

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bodily and immersive, porous,
not controlled and exhibited,

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but moved through, part
of, physical and made.

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Gush of sun, my
body's blood springs

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red beads and winter's done.

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Parasol of dust goes poof.

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And here come the green weeds
up to the brick wall again.

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We so often connect haiku
with the natural world.

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But I end up thinking of
the street photographers

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of the '60s and
'70s walking around

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and immersed in constant
responsive construction.

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I think of Garry
Winogrand, who said,

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I photograph to see what
things look like photographed,

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but was only half
telling the truth.

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When he died, there
were 2000 rolls

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of undeveloped film
in his apartment.

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It seems maybe that
he photographed

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to be photographing.

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So I want to show
you some things,

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and read you some
things, and talk

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about the physical experience
of these poems, how

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they appear and are formed,
how they change and grow.

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The space in time they get made
and how on the page they live.

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Beside each other, with
each other, and me, inside,

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outside me.

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This notebook is where
I see them first,

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where I write them down.

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And there and then, an ink and
paper thing of them is made.

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This book that's always with me.

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I made this book too,
paper folded and sewn

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and put in my pocket and
walked around with always.

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So always or almost always,
when a poem appears for me,

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this is where it appears.

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So then, there it is.

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And I keep carrying it around.

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Or soon, others or
other things of life

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appear beside it,
above it, on top of it,

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and around with me it goes.

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And these poems, the ones
I'm talking about today,

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I wrote between 2008 and 2012.

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I would go home.

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And there, I had a pile
of paper like this."

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I brought things to show,
a pad of paper like this.

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"This is actually some of
it, cut down to a bit bigger

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than 5 by 7 inches.

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I don't know why.

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I just wanted some small
space for each poem, waiting.

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There, the empty pile and easy
to throw into my typewriter

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and type one up.

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And then sit with a pile
of them all together,

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shuffle through and
read them, and always I

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would have a pen or some
whiteout and sort of scratch

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them down or build
them up a bit,

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made things, messing with them.

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And as the pile grows and
gets made, gets bigger.

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The poems could rub
down to nothing.

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I had a kind of perverse
relation to the whiteout,

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knowing that once gone, soon
forgotten, and soon forgotten

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and really gone.

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It was this making
space a kind of relation

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to the physical things,
which had appeared.

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I could then write ever--

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I could then write over where
the white was, some totally

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different words or leave the
space there as air or time

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to be seen or heard as empty
spaces heard, and rewritten,

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I could keep the space and
build it and let it grow.

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And I could hold the
little batch of poems.

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I could hold 100 or 200
in a bag, easy as anything

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and go off wherever
I was off to.

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So I found that they, in
all the traveling I actually

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did, would get
shuffled and shook,

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would get constantly read
aloud when carried around.

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And so one being
next to the other,

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here, I think it is important
how fragmentary they

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are, drifting in and out of
each other, so hearing them.

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And small, how small they are.

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So hearing them one
next to another.

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So speaking them over and
over in varied relation,

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they tug and push
with sound and sense

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as lines might do
to other lines.

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A kind of tuning,
a kind of tumbling.

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The physical
experience is simple.

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I write them and
then I type them up,

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and then I read them and write
them out, and read them again,

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and write things down, and move
them around, and type them up,

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and years pass.

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Light in sky and breath
from thoughtful people

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fills the air.

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I'm patted down like
wet green grass,

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the wind has blown
my hair a bit.

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One so strange and big
and scape of empty sky,

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cut out moon black pillars
resisting opaque time."

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