WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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That was a great introduction.

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And the fact that you--

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for poetry failed or
messed up your psych exam,

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it's exciting when
you think about Freud.

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Do you all know this
quote from Freud?

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He said-- and this
is a direct quote--

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"Everywhere I go, I find a
poet has been there before me."

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So there you go, not
philosopher, not novelist.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'm so grateful to be here.

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Thank you so much for having me.

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Everybody who makes
the Poetry Center--

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it's just been an
incredible week so far.

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We'll see how the
reading goes, but--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--and my friends, Molly and
Rebecca, who I just spent

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a week with before coming here.

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I love Tucson.

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It's really-- I can't believe--

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this is the most
amazing city, and you

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have a Poetry Center here.

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I know you already know.

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[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

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I'm just saying.

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No, I'm just saying.

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I can't believe every city
doesn't have one because, I

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don't know, it's kind of
ridiculous that we don't.

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Well, I'm going to start off by
reading some of my (Soma)tics.

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Just to briefly tell you
what (Soma)tics are--

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so I come from a
working class community

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in rural Pennsylvania.

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And when I was growing
up, I wanted nothing

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to do with the factories.

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When I was a child,
all my family

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worked in the same factory.

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The Conrad family
in Pennsylvania

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had been working
in a coffin factory

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since the late 19th century.

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And then when NAFTA
went through, of course,

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like a lot of factory jobs,
it went south to Mexico.

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And then I started working in
other factories, dental floss

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factories, cardboard
box factories.

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And I just really
hated these factories.

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My family, they were
very creative people,

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but they couldn't access it.

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They could not access
their creativity

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after a while from
the factory work.

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The factory just extended
itself through the walls,

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outside the walls.

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And they just-- they still
are kind of miserable people.

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And it makes me sad because
they're wise, creative people.

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But I wanted nothing to
do with the factories,

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so I left for Philadelphia
when I was younger.

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And I thought that I
was doing pretty good,

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living the life I
wanted to live, writing.

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And then in 2005, I
went back to where

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I grew up for a family reunion.

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And while I was there, I
got to hear stories, again,

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about the factory, which--

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they were all very
unpleasant and depressing.

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But the thing is-- it
was the train ride home.

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The train ride home
is when I realized

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that I had turned my poetry
into an assembly line.

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And it just-- it makes sense.

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I come from that world.

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I come from a culture
of factory workers, so.

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But it freaked me out
that I was doing that.

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Everything I was--
the way I was writing,

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the way I was tabulating
poems, getting

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ready for magazines, everything
was an assembly line.

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And I stopped.

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I just stopped writing for
the better part of a month,

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because I didn't want to
be part of the factory.

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And toward the
end of that month,

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I woke up one
morning and decided

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that I needed to
figure this out,

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because I was either going
to stop writing altogether

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and take up something, anything,
to get out of this factory.

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Or I was going to
change what I was doing.

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And so I decided to make
a list of all the problems

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with the factory, which
was a very long list.

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But towards the top of
that list was a sentence

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that I wrote that said, "The
inability to be present."

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That was a big deal.

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The more I thought
about it, the more

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I realized-- my father
never was in the present.

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He was never there
when he was there--

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ever.

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And why would he want to be?

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And he hated his job.

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So I said, that's what
I want to work on.

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I want to work on this.

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So that's what I decided to do.

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I decided to create
something, rituals,

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where, when I did
them, I was living

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inside an extreme
present, something

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that while I was doing
them, I couldn't possibly

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be anywhere else.

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And the first series that I did
that are in this book Beautiful

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Marsupial Afternoon,
were color poems,

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where I would eat a single
color food for a day.

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First was red.

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And I wore a red wig that
I found in a beauty academy

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dumpster.

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It was half permed and
half straight, stuck

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to a Styrofoam head.

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You've seen these.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it was exciting.

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It started working right away.

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I mean, just the solution--

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I'm so lucky to find
the solution right away.

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And that solution grew
into this enormous--

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which I'm considering a lifelong
way of living, not just writing

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poetry.

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TC Tolbert gave this very
generous shop talk in this room

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a couple of nights ago.

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And he-- were we in this room?

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Yes.

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OK.

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Sorry, it just looks so
different with the wall open.

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Anyway, and he said that he
considered me a religious poet.

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And I was like, all right.

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Well, so the thing is--

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yeah, I get it.

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I understand why
he's saying that.

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But the fact of the
matter is this living

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in an extreme present to
write has extended itself

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outside of the writing.

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And I'm finding just this
ease with the present

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throughout my daily life which
makes me nothing but happy.

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So I have a lot of
Buddhist friends

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who are always trying to say,
well, this is very Buddhist.

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And I'm like, OK.

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That's nice.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Nothing wrong with
that, I suppose.

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So anyway, this book--
so these rituals

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became more and more elaborate.

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And I want to read for you the
first piece in this new book.

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And I wanted to open
the book up with a piece

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where I visit the home
of Emily Dickinson.

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And the reason behind
that is Emily Dickinson

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was so important to me
when I was growing up

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because it's a pretty illiterate
community where I come

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from in rural Pennsylvania.

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Nobody reads.

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But the library-- while it
didn't have a lot of books,

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especially a lot of poetry--

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they did have Emily Dickinson.

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It's the United
States, after all.

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And I fell in love
with her right away.

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She was doing something so odd
that I wanted to experience.

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And then,
unfortunately, teachers

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started talking about her in
this way that just infuriated

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me, painting her in the corner
as this wilting lily who's

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hiding in her house,
writing her poems,

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not letting anybody
publish them.

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It's just stupid, that
whole argument against her.

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It's absolutely
impossible that somebody

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can have centuries of poetry
walking up to their door,

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and they reject it all to
build something brand new.

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That's not a wilting lily.

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That's a courageous person.

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Emily Dickinson
changed poetry forever.

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Anyway, so that's my little
Emily Dickinson speech.

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