Wow.
Thank you so much, Tyler.
Thank you all for coming.
Look at you.
You're gorgeous.
Thank you everyone at the Poetry Center, and thank you,
Tucson poetry community at large,
for making me feel so at home.
Many of you know I've only been here
a little over a year, and this space,
like this physical building that we're in, and in this space,
this community of writers and artists
and students and people interested in art
has made this place so much of a home for me.
I'm really moved to be here, so thank you so much.
Give yourself round of applause for what you make here.
[APPLAUSE]
So I'm going to read some new work
or work that will be forthcoming,
as Tyler mentioned.
I'm going to read a series of poems
that take their titles from dates and the closing
number for the Dow Jones Industrial Average
for each of those dates.
So for about two years around the financial crisis,
I started recording the closing number of the Dow
and decided I was going to let that number be an inspiration
for me in the poems.
And then the other series I'm going to read
is from this book, Utopia Minus.
And I was in the middle of reading maybe
for the 10th time Rilke's Letters
to a Young Poet, which are just beautiful.
And this was kind of the early 2000s,
and I think I was sort of thinking
about the idea of mentorship and intimacy as well as power.
I think it was a time when many of us
felt that we weren't quite in control of the way
our country was going, and many of us
may still feel like that now.
So I started writing these kind of epistolary letters
that were directed towards government officials,
and they were kind of a cross between mentorship and a Dear
Abby letter.
So I'm going to kind of interweave
those two series of poems together
over the course of the reading.
But before I do that, I want to start with a poem
that maybe some of you have heard me read before.
It's actually the poem that is the broadside.
It's called "Meditation," and as a meditation,
there are three mantras that get repeated
over the course of the poem.
And I'm going to ask for your help
in repeating those mantras with me, OK?
This is all of our chance to be on Voca really loud.
So when the mantra comes, I'll raise my hand,
and it'll be easy.
You'll just repeat after me three times.
The first thing I'm going to have you say--
it's a pretty common mantra--
I am the avant garde.
So I'll raise my hand, and you'll say three times,
I am the avant garde.
And then the second mantra is DIY, DIY, DIY, DIY.
Come on, Tucson.
You can do a little better than that.
I saw you guys performing with canned meat
a few weeks ago in this very space.
And the last mantra is, I default.
So I default. I default. I default. That sounds good, OK.
So we'll do that.
I'll raise my hand.
You guys are a smart audience.
You'll know how to follow along, and I
appreciate your participating in this poem.
It's called "Meditation."
"In the party store, Pier 1, Target, Kohl's parking lot,
find a desert willow among the shopping carts.
Walk around it sun-wise, repeating,
I am the avant garde.
I am the avant garde, repeating, DIY, DIY, DIY.
Imagine a chart of median family incomes
as big as the parking lot.
Use it to determine where to abandon your car.
I default. I default. I default.
Your mind is a blood blister rising
on your thumb, a ladybug.
Among these shopping carts, you fortress.
Among the plastic bags, you affirm.
Low, the light from the desert trees
does not speak in numbers, costs us nothing.
Here, as in a butterfly garden, everyone crawls before flight."