WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.250 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.250 --> 00:00:09.730 align:middle line:84% I guess I will read this evening in the spirit of that notion 00:00:09.730 --> 00:00:12.280 align:middle line:84% of the little talk I will give tomorrow, 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:15.040 align:middle line:84% which would be half written out and half improvised. 00:00:15.040 --> 00:00:18.640 align:middle line:90% 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:21.730 align:middle line:84% Not a lecture, but talking with people. 00:00:21.730 --> 00:00:26.780 align:middle line:84% In the spirit of the persons of the poem, 00:00:26.780 --> 00:00:30.940 align:middle line:84% which is to say all those people who occupy the space that I 00:00:30.940 --> 00:00:34.690 align:middle line:84% am supposed to be responsible for now, 00:00:34.690 --> 00:00:41.290 align:middle line:84% in terms of my work of the shared labor of making poetry 00:00:41.290 --> 00:00:43.570 align:middle line:90% at a given time in our history. 00:00:43.570 --> 00:00:55.510 align:middle line:84% It seems to me now in the terribly vexed moment 00:00:55.510 --> 00:01:00.430 align:middle line:84% we are experiencing of American history 00:01:00.430 --> 00:01:07.360 align:middle line:84% in our imperial ambitions, that this sense of the shared 00:01:07.360 --> 00:01:16.840 align:middle line:84% alternative space of poetry outside the discourse of power 00:01:16.840 --> 00:01:20.110 align:middle line:84% is more important than ever, even as it becomes 00:01:20.110 --> 00:01:24.700 align:middle line:84% marginalized by the cultural authorities or the people who 00:01:24.700 --> 00:01:27.880 align:middle line:84% would be the purported cultural authorities. 00:01:27.880 --> 00:01:33.370 align:middle line:84% I think and feel that it takes on a role that 00:01:33.370 --> 00:01:40.180 align:middle line:84% is more and more essential to some alternative space, perhaps 00:01:40.180 --> 00:01:41.080 align:middle line:90% this-- 00:01:41.080 --> 00:01:43.510 align:middle line:84% just as the poem could be an alternative space, 00:01:43.510 --> 00:01:47.050 align:middle line:84% the stems of the room of the poem; 00:01:47.050 --> 00:01:51.340 align:middle line:84% stems, meaning room in Italian, can be an alternative space. 00:01:51.340 --> 00:01:53.440 align:middle line:84% I think any gathering possibly has 00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:58.030 align:middle line:84% the potential for that alterity, that otherness, that 00:01:58.030 --> 00:02:06.400 align:middle line:84% in the institutional culture of our time is feared 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:08.620 align:middle line:90% and is being denied. 00:02:08.620 --> 00:02:12.310 align:middle line:84% So a number of these things that I'll read tonight 00:02:12.310 --> 00:02:15.970 align:middle line:84% are in the spirit of that echo chamber 00:02:15.970 --> 00:02:17.590 align:middle line:90% that the poem represents. 00:02:17.590 --> 00:02:29.756 align:middle line:90% 00:02:29.756 --> 00:02:30.589 align:middle line:90% I'll start with a -- 00:02:30.589 --> 00:02:38.730 align:middle line:84% No, what I'll start with is, as a kind of a magical invocation, 00:02:38.730 --> 00:02:42.510 align:middle line:84% I'll start with two poems for my daughter from a series of eight 00:02:42.510 --> 00:02:47.490 align:middle line:84% poems that were composed over the period of time of her 00:02:47.490 --> 00:02:52.680 align:middle line:84% growing up, of coming into -- first coming into language 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:56.736 align:middle line:84% in the incredible way that children come into language. 00:02:56.736 --> 00:03:00.080 align:middle line:84% It's so good that if you are a poet daddy, 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:02.870 align:middle line:84% you immediately realize you better steal this language-- 00:03:02.870 --> 00:03:05.720 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:03:05.720 --> 00:03:09.350 align:middle line:84% that you have forgotten and that they are just remembering. 00:03:09.350 --> 00:03:11.270 align:middle line:84% I'll read the first of that series called 00:03:11.270 --> 00:03:15.470 align:middle line:84% "Song of the Round Man", for Sarah when she's older. 00:03:15.470 --> 00:03:19.808 align:middle line:84% And this must have been written when she was around two years 00:03:19.808 --> 00:03:21.350 align:middle line:84% old, I think, or something like that. 00:03:21.350 --> 00:03:22.318 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:03:22.318 --> 00:03:31.520 align:middle line:90% 00:03:31.520 --> 00:03:35.490 align:middle line:84% And this series sort of accessed the wonderful literature 00:03:35.490 --> 00:03:38.450 align:middle line:84% of children's songs and the nonsense 00:03:38.450 --> 00:03:43.790 align:middle line:84% and the magic speech that is involved in-- 00:03:43.790 --> 00:03:47.370 align:middle line:84% just open the Oxford book of nursery rhymes and so on. 00:03:47.370 --> 00:03:50.060 align:middle line:90% 00:03:50.060 --> 00:03:52.970 align:middle line:84% "The round and sad-eyed man puffed cigars 00:03:52.970 --> 00:03:54.950 align:middle line:90% as if he were alive. 00:03:54.950 --> 00:03:58.040 align:middle line:84% Gillyflowers to the left of the apple, purple bells 00:03:58.040 --> 00:04:01.430 align:middle line:84% to the right and a grass-covered hill behind. 00:04:01.430 --> 00:04:04.700 align:middle line:84% I am sad today, said the sad-eyed man, 00:04:04.700 --> 00:04:09.590 align:middle line:84% for I locked my head in a Japanese box and lost the key. 00:04:09.590 --> 00:04:13.070 align:middle line:84% I am sad today, he told me, for there are gillyflowers 00:04:13.070 --> 00:04:17.480 align:middle line:84% by the apple and purple bells I cannot see. 00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:19.550 align:middle line:84% Will you look at them for me, he asked, 00:04:19.550 --> 00:04:21.649 align:middle line:90% and tell me what you find? 00:04:21.649 --> 00:04:27.410 align:middle line:84% I cannot, I reply, for my eyes have grown sugary and dim from 00:04:27.410 --> 00:04:31.310 align:middle line:90% reading too long by candlelight. 00:04:31.310 --> 00:04:33.290 align:middle line:84% Tell me what you've read then, said 00:04:33.290 --> 00:04:36.050 align:middle line:90% the round and sad-eyed man. 00:04:36.050 --> 00:04:41.420 align:middle line:84% I cannot, I replied, for my memory has grown tired and dim 00:04:41.420 --> 00:04:44.810 align:middle line:84% from looking at things that can't be seen by any kind 00:04:44.810 --> 00:04:45.890 align:middle line:90% of light. 00:04:45.890 --> 00:04:48.380 align:middle line:84% And I've locked my head in a Japanese box 00:04:48.380 --> 00:04:50.810 align:middle line:90% and thrown away the key. 00:04:50.810 --> 00:04:56.240 align:middle line:84% Then I am you, and you are me, said sad-eyed man, as if alive. 00:04:56.240 --> 00:04:58.460 align:middle line:84% I'll write you in where I should be, 00:04:58.460 --> 00:05:01.400 align:middle line:84% between the gillyflowers and the purple bells 00:05:01.400 --> 00:05:03.440 align:middle line:90% and the apple and the hill. 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:05.540 align:middle line:84% And we'll puff cigars from noon til 00:05:05.540 --> 00:05:07.355 align:middle line:90% night, as if we were alive." 00:05:07.355 --> 00:05:16.880 align:middle line:90% 00:05:16.880 --> 00:05:22.080 align:middle line:90% "This Time," another for Sarah. 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:26.040 align:middle line:84% "Once I fell in the ocean, when I didn't know I 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:28.050 align:middle line:90% fell in the ocean. 00:05:28.050 --> 00:05:30.450 align:middle line:90% Then mama got me out. 00:05:30.450 --> 00:05:34.560 align:middle line:84% This isn't true, only something I remember. 00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:36.420 align:middle line:84% Once in the park, I broke in half 00:05:36.420 --> 00:05:40.440 align:middle line:84% and lost one half, which half I don't remember. 00:05:40.440 --> 00:05:44.050 align:middle line:84% Once I was in a room that grew larger and larger. 00:05:44.050 --> 00:05:44.630 align:middle line:90% Why? 00:05:44.630 --> 00:05:46.920 align:middle line:90% I don't remember. 00:05:46.920 --> 00:05:52.560 align:middle line:84% One time I turned blue all over, then got clear as glass. 00:05:52.560 --> 00:05:56.700 align:middle line:84% This really happened, but not to me. 00:05:56.700 --> 00:06:01.560 align:middle line:84% Once I couldn't see for a while, so I listened lying down. 00:06:01.560 --> 00:06:03.270 align:middle line:84% Another time, I looked out the window 00:06:03.270 --> 00:06:07.110 align:middle line:84% and saw myself at the window across the street. 00:06:07.110 --> 00:06:08.910 align:middle line:90% This time it was me." 00:06:08.910 --> 00:06:12.390 align:middle line:90% 00:06:12.390 --> 00:06:14.100 align:middle line:84% That's an instance of children having 00:06:14.100 --> 00:06:17.933 align:middle line:84% a problem with schizophrenic splitting 00:06:17.933 --> 00:06:18.850 align:middle line:90% of their subjectivity. 00:06:18.850 --> 00:06:22.401 align:middle line:84% I mean, gee, the more the merrier, you know? 00:06:22.401 --> 00:06:24.620 align:middle line:84% Even now, I'm learning about where the parts of this 00:06:24.620 --> 00:06:27.780 align:middle line:90% are going. 00:06:27.780 --> 00:06:31.800 align:middle line:84% This next one, these few opening poems 00:06:31.800 --> 00:06:34.795 align:middle line:84% I'm reading from a book of mine called The Lion Bridge, which 00:06:34.795 --> 00:06:39.570 align:middle line:84% is selected poems from 1972 to 1995. 00:06:39.570 --> 00:06:46.050 align:middle line:84% And the next one I'll read is an overwriting, not a translation, 00:06:46.050 --> 00:06:49.650 align:middle line:84% but a kind of writing over the top 00:06:49.650 --> 00:06:53.000 align:middle line:84% or under the bottom of a poem by Rilke 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:56.700 align:middle line:84% called "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes," 00:06:56.700 --> 00:07:00.180 align:middle line:84% which is a very striking piece of work involving 00:07:00.180 --> 00:07:04.560 align:middle line:84% the figure of Orpheus descending to retrieve Eurydice 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:12.580 align:middle line:84% with Hermes as the messenger figure passing between them. 00:07:12.580 --> 00:07:14.647 align:middle line:90% But of course, Hermes-- 00:07:14.647 --> 00:07:16.980 align:middle line:84% I've been thinking about it for the last couple of days. 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:20.550 align:middle line:84% He's the bearer of the secret, the hermetic doctrine, 00:07:20.550 --> 00:07:26.940 align:middle line:84% from one world to the other, from the place 00:07:26.940 --> 00:07:29.610 align:middle line:84% that the poem outward and in some way, of course, 00:07:29.610 --> 00:07:31.320 align:middle line:90% it's an impossible job. 00:07:31.320 --> 00:07:32.130 align:middle line:90% You can't do it. 00:07:32.130 --> 00:07:34.500 align:middle line:90% It can't be done. 00:07:34.500 --> 00:07:36.120 align:middle line:84% In another sense, it has to be done. 00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:39.000 align:middle line:90% 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:47.970 align:middle line:84% So the Rilke poem is remarkable because what it involves 00:07:47.970 --> 00:07:49.920 align:middle line:90% is this law of recognition. 00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:53.580 align:middle line:84% Eurydice has passed into another world of the imagining, 00:07:53.580 --> 00:07:57.930 align:middle line:84% into a dream world or an after world 00:07:57.930 --> 00:08:04.350 align:middle line:84% in which the appeal of Orpheus, the soul of Orpheus, 00:08:04.350 --> 00:08:06.120 align:middle line:90% is no longer recognizable. 00:08:06.120 --> 00:08:09.360 align:middle line:84% She's passed into a different sphere. 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:13.270 align:middle line:84% "She says into the dark, almost a question. 00:08:13.270 --> 00:08:16.440 align:middle line:90% She says, don't see things. 00:08:16.440 --> 00:08:17.790 align:middle line:90% This bridge. 00:08:17.790 --> 00:08:24.030 align:middle line:84% Don't listen, she says, turn away, don't turn, and return. 00:08:24.030 --> 00:08:26.850 align:middle line:84% Count no more lines into the poem. 00:08:26.850 --> 00:08:30.180 align:middle line:84% Or could you possibly not have known how song broke apart 00:08:30.180 --> 00:08:32.669 align:middle line:90% while all the rest watched? 00:08:32.669 --> 00:08:34.409 align:middle line:90% That was years ago. 00:08:34.409 --> 00:08:35.909 align:middle line:90% Don't say things. 00:08:35.909 --> 00:08:38.370 align:middle line:90% You can't say things. 00:08:38.370 --> 00:08:43.830 align:middle line:84% The ground is smooth and rough, dried, wet, pull the blue coat 00:08:43.830 --> 00:08:46.170 align:middle line:90% tightly around you. 00:08:46.170 --> 00:08:49.230 align:middle line:90% There are three parts to you. 00:08:49.230 --> 00:08:51.240 align:middle line:90% I'm not the same anymore. 00:08:51.240 --> 00:08:54.360 align:middle line:84% I'm not here where I walk, followed 00:08:54.360 --> 00:08:56.790 align:middle line:90% by the messenger, confused. 00:08:56.790 --> 00:08:59.430 align:middle line:90% He's forgotten his name. 00:08:59.430 --> 00:09:01.530 align:middle line:90% I'm not here as I walk. 00:09:01.530 --> 00:09:03.550 align:middle line:90% Not anywhere on this path. 00:09:03.550 --> 00:09:05.790 align:middle line:84% But a figure of walking, a figure 00:09:05.790 --> 00:09:09.990 align:middle line:84% projected exactly this far, followed by the messenger, 00:09:09.990 --> 00:09:11.700 align:middle line:90% confused. 00:09:11.700 --> 00:09:13.950 align:middle line:90% He's forgotten his name. 00:09:13.950 --> 00:09:16.080 align:middle line:90% Don't say his name for him. 00:09:16.080 --> 00:09:18.090 align:middle line:90% Don't listen to things. 00:09:18.090 --> 00:09:20.970 align:middle line:90% You can't listen to things. 00:09:20.970 --> 00:09:24.780 align:middle line:84% Some stories unthread what there was. 00:09:24.780 --> 00:09:28.800 align:middle line:84% Don't look through an eye thinking to be seen. 00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:30.285 align:middle line:90% Take nothing as yours." 00:09:30.285 --> 00:09:40.020 align:middle line:90% 00:09:40.020 --> 00:09:47.310 align:middle line:84% A few poems from "The Promises of Glass," 00:09:47.310 --> 00:09:50.651 align:middle line:90% which was my last collection. 00:09:50.651 --> 00:09:54.580 align:middle line:90% 00:09:54.580 --> 00:09:57.840 align:middle line:84% And then I'll move on to a new book 00:09:57.840 --> 00:09:59.250 align:middle line:90% that'll be published next year. 00:09:59.250 --> 00:10:01.835 align:middle line:90% 00:10:01.835 --> 00:10:03.210 align:middle line:84% This is called "The Metaphysician 00:10:03.210 --> 00:10:06.300 align:middle line:90% of Prague, Autobiography 11." 00:10:06.300 --> 00:10:08.437 align:middle line:84% Frances mentioned this autobiography series 00:10:08.437 --> 00:10:20.170 align:middle line:90% is in so many different voices. 00:10:20.170 --> 00:10:27.820 align:middle line:84% The figure in this particular one is a figure named Quod, 00:10:27.820 --> 00:10:33.880 align:middle line:84% Q-U-O-D, which has a lot of different meanings in Latin, 00:10:33.880 --> 00:10:35.710 align:middle line:84% for example, it can mean "because." 00:10:35.710 --> 00:10:38.200 align:middle line:84% It can mean a number of other things. 00:10:38.200 --> 00:10:45.200 align:middle line:84% Also in English slang, it means prison. 00:10:45.200 --> 00:10:49.990 align:middle line:84% I was reading a lot of biographical notes-- 00:10:49.990 --> 00:10:53.350 align:middle line:84% no, I guess it was an interview with the great British poet 00:10:53.350 --> 00:10:57.010 align:middle line:84% named Basil Bunting and Basil was talking about-- 00:10:57.010 --> 00:11:00.830 align:middle line:84% he died about ten years ago, I guess, 12 years ago. 00:11:00.830 --> 00:11:04.390 align:middle line:84% And he was talking about getting a little bit batty in France 00:11:04.390 --> 00:11:05.590 align:middle line:90% during World War One. 00:11:05.590 --> 00:11:08.260 align:middle line:84% Fighting in World War One, getting a little bit drunk 00:11:08.260 --> 00:11:12.970 align:middle line:84% and getting arrested by the French police and put in quod. 00:11:12.970 --> 00:11:15.880 align:middle line:90% 00:11:15.880 --> 00:11:18.970 align:middle line:84% But this actually is a composite figure 00:11:18.970 --> 00:11:23.940 align:middle line:84% who runs through different parts of "The Promises of Glass." 00:11:23.940 --> 00:11:27.040 align:middle line:84% Quod libet, of course, means "whatever." 00:11:27.040 --> 00:11:34.520 align:middle line:84% And also, in music has a certain meaning about what follows. 00:11:34.520 --> 00:11:38.600 align:middle line:84% But I remember, there's a great Italian philosopher 00:11:38.600 --> 00:11:40.650 align:middle line:90% named Giorgio Agamben. 00:11:40.650 --> 00:11:43.400 align:middle line:84% And Giorgio was staying at our house once. 00:11:43.400 --> 00:11:45.080 align:middle line:90% He had been teaching at-- 00:11:45.080 --> 00:11:47.750 align:middle line:84% lecturing at the University of California, Berkeley. 00:11:47.750 --> 00:11:53.660 align:middle line:84% And he came over and was lecturing on the Whatever. 00:11:53.660 --> 00:11:57.170 align:middle line:84% And he came over to stay with us at our house in San Francisco 00:11:57.170 --> 00:11:59.180 align:middle line:90% after he was done in Berkeley. 00:11:59.180 --> 00:12:02.840 align:middle line:84% And my daughter was sort of in her Valley Girl phase 00:12:02.840 --> 00:12:05.717 align:middle line:84% and so every third word was, "whatever." 00:12:05.717 --> 00:12:07.000 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:10.100 align:middle line:90% It was really a story. 00:12:10.100 --> 00:12:12.630 align:middle line:84% A school of philosophy on the West Coast. 00:12:12.630 --> 00:12:16.390 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:12:16.390 --> 00:12:18.280 align:middle line:90% 00:12:18.280 --> 00:12:22.810 align:middle line:84% So anyway, this figure develops that includes 00:12:22.810 --> 00:12:26.170 align:middle line:84% Agamben and many other people in a kind of composite. 00:12:26.170 --> 00:12:30.000 align:middle line:90% 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.550 align:middle line:90% "The Metaphysician of Prague." 00:12:32.550 --> 00:12:37.500 align:middle line:84% "The metaphysician of Prague, whom I will call Quod, 00:12:37.500 --> 00:12:40.590 align:middle line:90% short for quod libet. 00:12:40.590 --> 00:12:42.240 align:middle line:90% Do you remember? 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:46.830 align:middle line:84% Do you recall Quod, his corpse at the lock? 00:12:46.830 --> 00:12:51.030 align:middle line:84% Quod as dust, Quod the transparent, 00:12:51.030 --> 00:12:55.200 align:middle line:84% Quod the empty elogist, Quod in love, 00:12:55.200 --> 00:12:58.170 align:middle line:90% Quod in love with the sentence. 00:12:58.170 --> 00:13:01.320 align:middle line:84% Quod in love with an enormous breast, 00:13:01.320 --> 00:13:04.590 align:middle line:84% suspended, illuminated, overhead. 00:13:04.590 --> 00:13:06.480 align:middle line:90% Quod the perplexed. 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:09.600 align:middle line:84% Quod as dreamed by the burning well. 00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:12.210 align:middle line:84% Quod at the work of possible worlds 00:13:12.210 --> 00:13:14.370 align:middle line:90% and among the young girls. 00:13:14.370 --> 00:13:17.250 align:middle line:90% Quod and the watch, stopped. 00:13:17.250 --> 00:13:19.140 align:middle line:90% Quod of departures. 00:13:19.140 --> 00:13:22.320 align:middle line:84% Hungered headless Quod in search of time 00:13:22.320 --> 00:13:25.260 align:middle line:90% passed, in a forest of glass. 00:13:25.260 --> 00:13:27.090 align:middle line:90% Quod the obscure. 00:13:27.090 --> 00:13:29.460 align:middle line:90% Quod the stammerer. 00:13:29.460 --> 00:13:33.690 align:middle line:84% Inebriate, incurious, Quod of the vacant hours. 00:13:33.690 --> 00:13:37.960 align:middle line:84% Quod of the marsh, the sand fire, the scallop and crab 00:13:37.960 --> 00:13:39.720 align:middle line:90% cloud the hut of reeds. 00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:42.240 align:middle line:90% Quod of life, Quod of fog. 00:13:42.240 --> 00:13:45.390 align:middle line:84% Quod of the single eye and the braided tongue. 00:13:45.390 --> 00:13:49.170 align:middle line:84% Quod the metaphrast, the leveler, the fractionist. 00:13:49.170 --> 00:13:53.640 align:middle line:84% Quod of the mist, at the bridge, anaclitic Quod, 00:13:53.640 --> 00:13:55.605 align:middle line:90% seated with jug. 00:13:55.605 --> 00:13:57.960 align:middle line:90% Quod the erect. 00:13:57.960 --> 00:14:00.210 align:middle line:90% Quad as abjection. 00:14:00.210 --> 00:14:01.980 align:middle line:90% Quod of the customs house. 00:14:01.980 --> 00:14:03.690 align:middle line:90% Quod the mute. 00:14:03.690 --> 00:14:06.600 align:middle line:84% Saint Quod of the forgotten paradox. 00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:09.210 align:middle line:84% Quod of the fragment, at the crossroads, 00:14:09.210 --> 00:14:11.220 align:middle line:90% where the lovers meet. 00:14:11.220 --> 00:14:14.120 align:middle line:90% His lies and withered lungs. 00:14:14.120 --> 00:14:15.990 align:middle line:90% Quod of the street of screams. 00:14:15.990 --> 00:14:21.750 align:middle line:84% Quod as vertigo, his works and days, numbers and names. 00:14:21.750 --> 00:14:25.560 align:middle line:84% Quod of the paper cross, the wind through that house. 00:14:25.560 --> 00:14:27.360 align:middle line:90% Quod before a door. 00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:31.020 align:middle line:84% Quod of the last light, the soil that shifts. 00:14:31.020 --> 00:14:35.800 align:middle line:84% And Quod, whiter than white, whiter than the page. 00:14:35.800 --> 00:14:36.930 align:middle line:90% Do you remember the page?" 00:14:36.930 --> 00:14:44.910 align:middle line:90% 00:14:44.910 --> 00:14:48.840 align:middle line:84% This is in the same series, it's called "Sao Paulo Sighs, 00:14:48.840 --> 00:14:50.055 align:middle line:90% Autobiography 15." 00:14:50.055 --> 00:14:53.340 align:middle line:90% 00:14:53.340 --> 00:15:06.170 align:middle line:84% And it's-- it's dedicated to a poet named-- 00:15:06.170 --> 00:15:08.870 align:middle line:84% a Brazilian man named Regis Bonvincino. 00:15:08.870 --> 00:15:12.710 align:middle line:84% I was in Sao Paulo to introduce an anthology 00:15:12.710 --> 00:15:15.830 align:middle line:84% of contemporary Brazilian poetry that I'd 00:15:15.830 --> 00:15:19.400 align:middle line:84% helped translate and edit and Sao 00:15:19.400 --> 00:15:27.860 align:middle line:84% Paulo this extraordinary self devouring city, 00:15:27.860 --> 00:15:31.760 align:middle line:84% in the words of one of its poets, Mario de Andrade. 00:15:31.760 --> 00:15:34.910 align:middle line:90% 00:15:34.910 --> 00:15:38.870 align:middle line:90% Self-cannibalizing city. 00:15:38.870 --> 00:15:41.560 align:middle line:90% Unzoned in all senses. 00:15:41.560 --> 00:15:46.490 align:middle line:84% And so I was reading the work of Mario de Andrade, 00:15:46.490 --> 00:15:53.840 align:middle line:84% this early 20th century vanguardist poet 00:15:53.840 --> 00:15:58.190 align:middle line:84% from the 1920s who was a Sao Paulisto. 00:15:58.190 --> 00:16:05.300 align:middle line:84% And experiencing the eroticism and disorder-- 00:16:05.300 --> 00:16:06.930 align:middle line:90% maybe they're the same thing-- 00:16:06.930 --> 00:16:09.470 align:middle line:90% of Sao Paulo. 00:16:09.470 --> 00:16:12.800 align:middle line:90% And this poem came about. 00:16:12.800 --> 00:16:16.970 align:middle line:84% "Sao Paulo Sighs, Autobiography 14." 00:16:16.970 --> 00:16:21.800 align:middle line:84% And there's quite a bit stolen from Mario de Andrade 00:16:21.800 --> 00:16:26.900 align:middle line:84% in this poem and also from a great poet of the '60s 00:16:26.900 --> 00:16:31.850 align:middle line:84% and '70s, a Brazilian poet named Paulo Leminski. 00:16:31.850 --> 00:16:36.320 align:middle line:84% "Our sighs in Sao Paulo sounded something like this-- 00:16:36.320 --> 00:16:41.060 align:middle line:84% a kiss is just a kiss, be it rain or simply mist. 00:16:41.060 --> 00:16:45.740 align:middle line:84% The animal alphabet passed overhead with its 23 wings, 00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:48.980 align:middle line:90% rhythming a samba for the dead. 00:16:48.980 --> 00:16:53.330 align:middle line:84% We walked and walked and we saw a rock star 00:16:53.330 --> 00:16:58.370 align:middle line:84% without his rock, two pictures of a rose in the dark. 00:16:58.370 --> 00:17:02.870 align:middle line:84% We saw the shorn locks of a nun beside an abandoned well 00:17:02.870 --> 00:17:05.599 align:middle line:84% and we peered into our porous hearts, 00:17:05.599 --> 00:17:08.400 align:middle line:90% where militiamen secretly dwell. 00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:10.819 align:middle line:90% We walked and walked, we three. 00:17:10.819 --> 00:17:14.960 align:middle line:84% The professor of everything, the professor of nothing, and yours 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:17.329 align:middle line:90% very truly. 00:17:17.329 --> 00:17:20.119 align:middle line:84% We witnessed the theoretical arrival 00:17:20.119 --> 00:17:23.900 align:middle line:84% of the worker's paradise by means of its statuary. 00:17:23.900 --> 00:17:27.349 align:middle line:84% We examined a woman's skeleton, perfectly drawn. 00:17:27.349 --> 00:17:30.480 align:middle line:84% Skeleton of everything, skeleton of nothing, 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:33.260 align:middle line:90% on a blue light bar room wall. 00:17:33.260 --> 00:17:35.810 align:middle line:84% And we noted the sun's utter failure 00:17:35.810 --> 00:17:38.630 align:middle line:84% to explain anything at all, regarding 00:17:38.630 --> 00:17:41.610 align:middle line:90% the mist and the rain. 00:17:41.610 --> 00:17:44.450 align:middle line:84% There's no cosmic close out on raincoats, 00:17:44.450 --> 00:17:49.580 align:middle line:84% no discount on drizzles, so you must remember this. 00:17:49.580 --> 00:17:53.450 align:middle line:84% When Sao Paulo sighs, a kiss is just a kiss." 00:17:53.450 --> 00:17:59.980 align:middle line:90% 00:17:59.980 --> 00:18:01.990 align:middle line:84% I refer to the professor of everything 00:18:01.990 --> 00:18:05.370 align:middle line:84% and the professor nothing in that poem. 00:18:05.370 --> 00:18:07.890 align:middle line:84% I had two other editors with me working 00:18:07.890 --> 00:18:16.170 align:middle line:84% on this Brazilian anthology and one of them 00:18:16.170 --> 00:18:19.080 align:middle line:84% I named the professor of everything 00:18:19.080 --> 00:18:23.760 align:middle line:84% because he had a library of 20 or 30,000 books, all of which 00:18:23.760 --> 00:18:24.885 align:middle line:90% he had committed to memory. 00:18:24.885 --> 00:18:25.830 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:25.830 --> 00:18:33.060 align:middle line:84% And the other was a figure of 100 negativity in denial. 00:18:33.060 --> 00:18:36.840 align:middle line:84% So, when you asked the professor of everything 00:18:36.840 --> 00:18:39.690 align:middle line:84% what he thought the weather would be like tomorrow 00:18:39.690 --> 00:18:42.445 align:middle line:84% in Sao Paulo, he would begin by explaining 00:18:42.445 --> 00:18:43.570 align:middle line:90% the history of meteorology. 00:18:43.570 --> 00:18:45.540 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:45.540 --> 00:18:48.180 align:middle line:90% In Brazil. 00:18:48.180 --> 00:18:53.290 align:middle line:84% And its derivations from the sun sciences, and so on. 00:18:53.290 --> 00:18:55.930 align:middle line:84% Then 24 hours later, we'd of course, 00:18:55.930 --> 00:18:57.810 align:middle line:90% be in the weather of tomorrow. 00:18:57.810 --> 00:19:00.565 align:middle line:84% And you would say, well, it looks like it's drizzling. 00:19:00.565 --> 00:19:02.430 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:19:02.430 --> 00:19:04.840 align:middle line:84% And the other one was the exact opposite. 00:19:04.840 --> 00:19:08.750 align:middle line:84% We would ask him a question, like, what time is it? 00:19:08.750 --> 00:19:11.880 align:middle line:84% He would say, how do you expect me to know a thing like that? 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:13.560 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:19:13.560 --> 00:19:16.050 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:19:16.050 --> 00:19:18.780 align:middle line:90% And I can tell you-- 00:19:18.780 --> 00:19:20.670 align:middle line:84% an extraordinary adventure never, 00:19:20.670 --> 00:19:22.590 align:middle line:84% I hope, to be repeated, to try and edit 00:19:22.590 --> 00:19:24.090 align:middle line:90% an anthology with these guys. 00:19:24.090 --> 00:19:39.890 align:middle line:90% 00:19:39.890 --> 00:19:41.820 align:middle line:84% This is called, "Untitled, May '99." 00:19:41.820 --> 00:19:46.100 align:middle line:90% 00:19:46.100 --> 00:19:49.750 align:middle line:84% I guess it's really dedicated to do a friend who's 00:19:49.750 --> 00:19:56.840 align:middle line:84% a New Vaudevillian named Geoff Hoyle who, 00:19:56.840 --> 00:20:02.050 align:middle line:84% among other things, does an extraordinary three-legged 00:20:02.050 --> 00:20:07.740 align:middle line:84% dance, where you can never tell what the phantom limb is. 00:20:07.740 --> 00:20:09.720 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:13.270 align:middle line:84% But then, of course, I realized as I was writing this, 00:20:13.270 --> 00:20:14.130 align:middle line:90% I had Jeff-- 00:20:14.130 --> 00:20:18.390 align:middle line:84% someone in my mind, and his magical performances, 00:20:18.390 --> 00:20:19.740 align:middle line:90% and sad performances. 00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:23.862 align:middle line:84% Like all great clowns, he's a deeply sad man. 00:20:23.862 --> 00:20:26.320 align:middle line:84% He makes people laugh and it makes him sadder and sadder. 00:20:26.320 --> 00:20:28.770 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:28.770 --> 00:20:30.950 align:middle line:84% But then, of course, I also realized-- 00:20:30.950 --> 00:20:34.080 align:middle line:84% this was years after finishing the poem-- 00:20:34.080 --> 00:20:37.710 align:middle line:84% that it had something to do with the riddle of the Sphinx 00:20:37.710 --> 00:20:42.270 align:middle line:84% and the end of our lives as three legged men, and so on. 00:20:42.270 --> 00:20:43.530 align:middle line:90% "Untitled, May '99." 00:20:43.530 --> 00:20:48.060 align:middle line:90% 00:20:48.060 --> 00:20:51.010 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:20:51.010 --> 00:20:53.920 align:middle line:84% "The dance of the three-legged man. 00:20:53.920 --> 00:20:55.840 align:middle line:90% Oh, yes, I remember that. 00:20:55.840 --> 00:20:57.970 align:middle line:90% His many colored coat, his hat-- 00:20:57.970 --> 00:21:01.900 align:middle line:84% I remember that better even than my own name, 00:21:01.900 --> 00:21:05.620 align:middle line:84% if not as well as the required equations implanted 00:21:05.620 --> 00:21:07.060 align:middle line:90% in my youth. 00:21:07.060 --> 00:21:11.220 align:middle line:84% That youth, I'm now told, I never actually had. 00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:13.480 align:middle line:84% And better than the rumble of streetcars, 00:21:13.480 --> 00:21:17.650 align:middle line:84% causing our beds to tremble even as the heavy guns approached 00:21:17.650 --> 00:21:22.810 align:middle line:84% the city's crumbling walls, guns that remind us of harpsichords, 00:21:22.810 --> 00:21:26.590 align:middle line:84% plucking out their variations, seemingly once again 00:21:26.590 --> 00:21:28.240 align:middle line:90% for the final time. 00:21:28.240 --> 00:21:30.700 align:middle line:84% One last dance, three-legged man." 00:21:30.700 --> 00:21:33.370 align:middle line:90% 00:21:33.370 --> 00:21:36.790 align:middle line:84% So, it's old age but it's also youth. 00:21:36.790 --> 00:21:37.930 align:middle line:90% It's the whole spectrum. 00:21:37.930 --> 00:21:44.350 align:middle line:84% Which is, of course, the case in the riddle of the Sphinx. 00:21:44.350 --> 00:21:47.830 align:middle line:84% "That youth, I'm now told, I never actually had." 00:21:47.830 --> 00:21:49.900 align:middle line:84% There was an extraordinary thing that happened 00:21:49.900 --> 00:21:51.440 align:middle line:90% about 15 or 20 years ago. 00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:54.490 align:middle line:90% I worked at a dance company. 00:21:54.490 --> 00:21:57.970 align:middle line:84% And this is how poems become greedy in a funny way 00:21:57.970 --> 00:21:59.350 align:middle line:90% as you go along. 00:21:59.350 --> 00:22:01.540 align:middle line:84% I worked with a modern dance company 00:22:01.540 --> 00:22:05.440 align:middle line:84% in San Francisco, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, 00:22:05.440 --> 00:22:12.430 align:middle line:84% and the company went to perform in New York at City 00:22:12.430 --> 00:22:14.380 align:middle line:90% Center or something like that. 00:22:14.380 --> 00:22:17.920 align:middle line:84% This must have been 15 years ago or more. 00:22:17.920 --> 00:22:21.550 align:middle line:84% And Margaret, the choreographer, the head of the company, 00:22:21.550 --> 00:22:25.360 align:middle line:84% called me up and said, well, we're in New York. 00:22:25.360 --> 00:22:28.060 align:middle line:84% And I said where are you staying? 00:22:28.060 --> 00:22:31.390 align:middle line:84% And she said, we're staying in the Hotel Wentworth. 00:22:31.390 --> 00:22:34.840 align:middle line:84% And I said, no, I'm not staying in the Hotel Wentworth. 00:22:34.840 --> 00:22:37.480 align:middle line:84% She said, why are we not staying at the Hotel Wentworth? 00:22:37.480 --> 00:22:40.780 align:middle line:84% I said, it's because I grew up in the Hotel Wentworth. 00:22:40.780 --> 00:22:43.780 align:middle line:84% My father was the manager of the Hotel Wentworth. 00:22:43.780 --> 00:22:45.640 align:middle line:84% The landscape of my childhood was 00:22:45.640 --> 00:22:49.810 align:middle line:84% this semi-sordid little hotel on 46th Street 00:22:49.810 --> 00:22:52.390 align:middle line:90% between 5th and 6th Avenue. 00:22:52.390 --> 00:22:54.400 align:middle line:84% And so Margaret said, I'll get back to you. 00:22:54.400 --> 00:22:56.830 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:22:56.830 --> 00:22:59.500 align:middle line:84% So, naturally, being the energetic person 00:22:59.500 --> 00:23:02.950 align:middle line:84% she was, she interrogated everyone 00:23:02.950 --> 00:23:04.750 align:middle line:84% who worked at the Hotel Wentworth 00:23:04.750 --> 00:23:08.440 align:middle line:84% and she finally found a man who had been there 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:09.790 align:middle line:90% when I was there as a child. 00:23:09.790 --> 00:23:12.380 align:middle line:90% 00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:18.280 align:middle line:84% And she said, you know, what was Michael like as a kid? 00:23:18.280 --> 00:23:20.890 align:middle line:84% And this person, named Paul [INAUDIBLE] 00:23:20.890 --> 00:23:23.080 align:middle line:90% said, oh, he was never a child. 00:23:23.080 --> 00:23:25.172 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:23:25.172 --> 00:23:27.690 align:middle line:90% I thought about that. 00:23:27.690 --> 00:23:29.710 align:middle line:84% Because I came into my second childhood 00:23:29.710 --> 00:23:33.090 align:middle line:84% in order to overcompensate for this. 00:23:33.090 --> 00:23:36.170 align:middle line:90% 00:23:36.170 --> 00:23:36.670 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:23:36.670 --> 00:23:42.840 align:middle line:90% 00:23:42.840 --> 00:23:51.335 align:middle line:84% I'll read from a new book of mine called Company of Moths, 00:23:51.335 --> 00:23:52.710 align:middle line:84% which, I think, New Directions is 00:23:52.710 --> 00:23:56.900 align:middle line:84% going to publish in 2005 if they're still in business. 00:23:56.900 --> 00:23:59.102 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:23:59.102 --> 00:24:01.560 align:middle line:84% After they publish, whether they're going to be in business 00:24:01.560 --> 00:24:02.730 align:middle line:90% is another question. 00:24:02.730 --> 00:24:03.910 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:24:03.910 --> 00:24:05.640 align:middle line:90% 00:24:05.640 --> 00:24:10.800 align:middle line:84% It begins with an epigraph from Carlos Drummond de 00:24:10.800 --> 00:24:13.860 align:middle line:84% Andrade, the great Brazilian modernist 00:24:13.860 --> 00:24:18.180 align:middle line:84% poet, which reads, "Enter into the kingdom of words 00:24:18.180 --> 00:24:19.395 align:middle line:90% as if you were deaf." 00:24:19.395 --> 00:24:33.580 align:middle line:90% 00:24:33.580 --> 00:24:40.270 align:middle line:84% The first one is called "And," A-N-D. 00:24:40.270 --> 00:24:47.780 align:middle line:84% And it came about a few years ago. 00:24:47.780 --> 00:24:51.580 align:middle line:84% A wonderful, ungovernable and kind 00:24:51.580 --> 00:25:06.810 align:middle line:84% of lunatic gathering of notes by the scholar, a thinker, 00:25:06.810 --> 00:25:10.200 align:middle line:84% a poetic thinker named Walter Benjamin, 00:25:10.200 --> 00:25:14.340 align:middle line:84% was published as the Arcades Project, finally translated 00:25:14.340 --> 00:25:15.090 align:middle line:90% into English. 00:25:15.090 --> 00:25:20.610 align:middle line:84% And it's his notes towards an impossible summation 00:25:20.610 --> 00:25:24.330 align:middle line:84% of 19th century commodity culture 00:25:24.330 --> 00:25:26.370 align:middle line:84% and the Paris of the 19th century, 00:25:26.370 --> 00:25:31.320 align:middle line:84% the Paris of Baudelaire, the Paris of the shopping arcades 00:25:31.320 --> 00:25:34.980 align:middle line:84% and the arising of the commodity. 00:25:34.980 --> 00:25:37.890 align:middle line:84% But more than that, it's a meditation 00:25:37.890 --> 00:25:43.170 align:middle line:84% on the phantasmagoria that we've -- 00:25:43.170 --> 00:25:51.030 align:middle line:84% of materialism, all the stuff with all these obscure objects 00:25:51.030 --> 00:25:55.050 align:middle line:84% of desire as they're put in front of us. 00:25:55.050 --> 00:25:58.020 align:middle line:84% They're first celebrated in a particular way 00:25:58.020 --> 00:26:02.910 align:middle line:84% in that 19th century Paris as the new shopping malls. 00:26:02.910 --> 00:26:06.000 align:middle line:84% The arcades were the predecessors of malls. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:08.100 align:middle line:84% And the great stores began to arise 00:26:08.100 --> 00:26:13.590 align:middle line:84% and Bourgeois culture suddenly has all the stuff 00:26:13.590 --> 00:26:16.200 align:middle line:84% that they ever needed to buy, which they can-- 00:26:16.200 --> 00:26:20.130 align:middle line:84% anyway, so it's a beautiful book to pick up and put down. 00:26:20.130 --> 00:26:21.600 align:middle line:84% It's not a book you read through. 00:26:21.600 --> 00:26:24.750 align:middle line:90% 00:26:24.750 --> 00:26:26.190 align:middle line:90% "And." 00:26:26.190 --> 00:26:30.630 align:middle line:84% "This ship, what was her name, its name? 00:26:30.630 --> 00:26:36.000 align:middle line:84% Was it The Moth or The Moth that Electrifies Night? 00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:38.220 align:middle line:84% Or The Moth that Divides the Night 00:26:38.220 --> 00:26:42.300 align:middle line:84% in Half in its Passage towards the Fire? 00:26:42.300 --> 00:26:46.200 align:middle line:84% The fire of forgetting, that is, as we remember it. 00:26:46.200 --> 00:26:51.060 align:middle line:84% While in the scatter song of dailiness, as it eddies out, 00:26:51.060 --> 00:26:53.130 align:middle line:90% near turns to far. 00:26:53.130 --> 00:26:59.190 align:middle line:84% Beeches, red cedars and oaks, dating to the revolution, 00:26:59.190 --> 00:27:02.310 align:middle line:84% and the few long before, suddenly in unison 00:27:02.310 --> 00:27:06.300 align:middle line:84% are seen to fall for so somewhere it is writ. 00:27:06.300 --> 00:27:09.820 align:middle line:84% And your project, abandoned in fragments, there 00:27:09.820 --> 00:27:13.620 align:middle line:84% beneath the elements, the snow of the season unfolding it, 00:27:13.620 --> 00:27:17.970 align:middle line:84% the flames of the season consuming it, improving it, 00:27:17.970 --> 00:27:19.080 align:middle line:90% hashish. 00:27:19.080 --> 00:27:20.970 align:middle line:90% The tales it tells. 00:27:20.970 --> 00:27:23.670 align:middle line:84% The scented oils and modern festivals, 00:27:23.670 --> 00:27:27.660 align:middle line:84% the Sphinx-like heads and the shining ornaments, 00:27:27.660 --> 00:27:34.980 align:middle line:84% for ankle, waist, neck, and wrist, dioramas, cosmoramas, 00:27:34.980 --> 00:27:40.440 align:middle line:84% plaeoramas (from pleo "I sail", "I go by water"). 00:27:40.440 --> 00:27:43.140 align:middle line:84% The hierophant in wax, the iron and glass, 00:27:43.140 --> 00:27:46.890 align:middle line:84% the artificial rain and winds, mosaic thresholds, 00:27:46.890 --> 00:27:51.840 align:middle line:84% all of this bathed from above in diffuse light. 00:27:51.840 --> 00:27:56.250 align:middle line:84% We share the invisible nature of these things, our bodies 00:27:56.250 --> 00:27:57.450 align:middle line:90% and theirs. 00:27:57.450 --> 00:28:01.260 align:middle line:84% And the moon did not appear that night." 00:28:01.260 --> 00:28:03.720 align:middle line:84% It's dedicated to the memory of a suicide, Benjamin 00:28:03.720 --> 00:28:06.780 align:middle line:84% having killed himself when he was 00:28:06.780 --> 00:28:10.950 align:middle line:84% failing to cross the border between France and Spain. 00:28:10.950 --> 00:28:13.860 align:middle line:84% And afterward, [INAUDIBLE] and felt 00:28:13.860 --> 00:28:17.100 align:middle line:84% that he was going to fall into the hands of the Gestapo. 00:28:17.100 --> 00:28:19.500 align:middle line:90% He was a Jew. 00:28:19.500 --> 00:28:27.235 align:middle line:90% So in 1943, I think it was. 00:28:27.235 --> 00:28:29.650 align:middle line:90% This is a poem called "Stone". 00:28:29.650 --> 00:28:37.090 align:middle line:84% And it's a kind of homage to Osip Mandelstam, 00:28:37.090 --> 00:28:42.040 align:middle line:84% the great Russian poet of the '20s and '30s 00:28:42.040 --> 00:28:51.070 align:middle line:84% who died in Stalin's camps and who thought of poems as stones. 00:28:51.070 --> 00:28:56.230 align:middle line:84% And a number of the images are drawn 00:28:56.230 --> 00:28:59.500 align:middle line:84% from a collection of his book, Stone, 00:28:59.500 --> 00:29:04.420 align:middle line:84% one of them being the notion of the wolfhound at his back. 00:29:04.420 --> 00:29:07.300 align:middle line:84% Well, the wolfhound was Stalin and did catch up with him. 00:29:07.300 --> 00:29:11.000 align:middle line:90% 00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:12.040 align:middle line:90% "Stone." 00:29:12.040 --> 00:29:15.550 align:middle line:84% "What of that wolfhound at full stride? 00:29:15.550 --> 00:29:18.130 align:middle line:84% What of the woman in technical dress 00:29:18.130 --> 00:29:22.390 align:middle line:84% and the amber eye that serves as feral guide and witness 00:29:22.390 --> 00:29:23.950 align:middle line:90% to the snowy hive? 00:29:23.950 --> 00:29:29.710 align:middle line:84% What of the singer robed in red and frozen at mid-song? 00:29:29.710 --> 00:29:32.920 align:middle line:90% And a stone, its brokenness? 00:29:32.920 --> 00:29:36.670 align:middle line:84% Or the voice off-scene that says, note the dragonfly 00:29:36.670 --> 00:29:40.480 align:middle line:84% by the iris, but ask no questions of flight, 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.720 align:middle line:90% no questions of iridescence? 00:29:43.720 --> 00:29:46.420 align:middle line:84% All of this, and the faint promise 00:29:46.420 --> 00:29:50.920 align:middle line:84% of a sleeve, the shuttle's course, the weave, what 00:29:50.920 --> 00:29:52.690 align:middle line:90% of these? 00:29:52.690 --> 00:29:54.560 align:middle line:90% What of the century? 00:29:54.560 --> 00:29:56.920 align:middle line:90% Did you see it pass? 00:29:56.920 --> 00:29:58.660 align:middle line:84% What of that wolfhound at your back?" 00:29:58.660 --> 00:30:08.130 align:middle line:90% 00:30:08.130 --> 00:30:15.280 align:middle line:90% "Untitled, February of 2000." 00:30:15.280 --> 00:30:19.750 align:middle line:84% A wonderful poet, Canadian-born poet, 00:30:19.750 --> 00:30:26.980 align:middle line:84% who lives nearby me in San Francisco, named Norma Cole, 00:30:26.980 --> 00:30:29.645 align:middle line:90% came to me one day a couple of-- 00:30:29.645 --> 00:30:33.820 align:middle line:84% well, three years ago now, and said, 00:30:33.820 --> 00:30:35.980 align:middle line:84% I've just see an extraordinary thing 00:30:35.980 --> 00:30:38.150 align:middle line:84% that I want to share with you, which 00:30:38.150 --> 00:30:42.430 align:middle line:90% was on a street very near us. 00:30:42.430 --> 00:30:46.990 align:middle line:84% I saw a naked woman playing the violin 00:30:46.990 --> 00:30:49.420 align:middle line:90% in the window on 23rd Street. 00:30:49.420 --> 00:30:50.410 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:50.410 --> 00:30:53.489 align:middle line:84% And just thought I'd let you know. 00:30:53.489 --> 00:30:56.483 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:56.483 --> 00:31:01.810 align:middle line:84% So I thought about that for a while. 00:31:01.810 --> 00:31:03.250 align:middle line:90% I went up to 23rd Street. 00:31:03.250 --> 00:31:04.705 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:04.705 --> 00:31:08.140 align:middle line:90% And I never did see her. 00:31:08.140 --> 00:31:10.800 align:middle line:84% But I guess it didn't have to, since Norma did. 00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:13.930 align:middle line:84% And then a couple years later I was giving a reading, actually 00:31:13.930 --> 00:31:18.070 align:middle line:84% with [INAUDIBLE] in San Francisco at the University 00:31:18.070 --> 00:31:20.980 align:middle line:84% of San Francisco, I read the poem and a woman 00:31:20.980 --> 00:31:23.410 align:middle line:84% came up to me very excited and said, 00:31:23.410 --> 00:31:25.840 align:middle line:84% I live in the Northern Valley, I saw that woman. 00:31:25.840 --> 00:31:26.820 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:26.820 --> 00:31:30.090 align:middle line:90% So [INAUDIBLE] projection. 00:31:30.090 --> 00:31:33.260 align:middle line:90% She exists, but not for me. 00:31:33.260 --> 00:31:36.000 align:middle line:90% "Untitled, February 2000." 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:38.930 align:middle line:84% "The naked woman at the window, her back to you, 00:31:38.930 --> 00:31:41.930 align:middle line:84% bowing the violin behind the lace curtain 00:31:41.930 --> 00:31:44.930 align:middle line:84% directly above the screen is not a fiction. 00:31:44.930 --> 00:31:49.520 align:middle line:84% As the partito is not a fiction, its theme and variations 00:31:49.520 --> 00:31:53.030 align:middle line:84% ornaments and fiddles, not a fiction. 00:31:53.030 --> 00:31:55.730 align:middle line:84% As the one-way street still wet from all 00:31:55.730 --> 00:31:58.310 align:middle line:90% this rain is not a fiction. 00:31:58.310 --> 00:32:01.610 align:middle line:90% And nakedness, not a fiction. 00:32:01.610 --> 00:32:05.210 align:middle line:84% It reads us like a book as we listen to its music 00:32:05.210 --> 00:32:08.630 align:middle line:90% through milky eyes wide shut. 00:32:08.630 --> 00:32:11.240 align:middle line:84% And what does this fiction think of us? 00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:15.380 align:middle line:84% The rain, the notes, both softly fall. 00:32:15.380 --> 00:32:17.360 align:middle line:84% Slight errors of intonation do not 00:32:17.360 --> 00:32:20.390 align:middle line:84% matter in the faded green notebooks 00:32:20.390 --> 00:32:24.740 align:middle line:84% where we record these things and conceal other things. 00:32:24.740 --> 00:32:27.530 align:middle line:84% What's the name of that tree, anyway, 00:32:27.530 --> 00:32:30.290 align:middle line:84% with yellow flowers, small silver leaves 00:32:30.290 --> 00:32:32.120 align:middle line:90% planted in the concrete? 00:32:32.120 --> 00:32:34.070 align:middle line:90% I used to know. 00:32:34.070 --> 00:32:38.435 align:middle line:84% As for today, Leap Year Day, the window was empty." 00:32:38.435 --> 00:32:52.140 align:middle line:90% 00:32:52.140 --> 00:32:54.780 align:middle line:90% This poem is called "Homage." 00:32:54.780 --> 00:32:56.930 align:middle line:90% It's in little prose stanzas. 00:32:56.930 --> 00:33:04.910 align:middle line:90% 00:33:04.910 --> 00:33:10.800 align:middle line:84% A couple of years ago a famous American poet 00:33:10.800 --> 00:33:14.130 align:middle line:84% came out to the University of California 00:33:14.130 --> 00:33:20.766 align:middle line:84% at Berkeley to give a reading to-- 00:33:20.766 --> 00:33:22.980 align:middle line:90% an event to support the-- 00:33:22.980 --> 00:33:27.000 align:middle line:84% there's a wonderful writer and painter named 00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:29.190 align:middle line:90% Joe Brainard, a collagist. 00:33:29.190 --> 00:33:31.500 align:middle line:90% And Joe died maybe 10 years ago. 00:33:31.500 --> 00:33:34.680 align:middle line:84% And Berkeley had put on a wonderful retrospective 00:33:34.680 --> 00:33:42.390 align:middle line:84% of his very lovely, somewhat light-hearted work. 00:33:42.390 --> 00:33:47.820 align:middle line:84% And this poet came out to do a benefit reading for the show. 00:33:47.820 --> 00:33:49.530 align:middle line:84% And he gave a beautiful reading and there 00:33:49.530 --> 00:33:51.180 align:middle line:90% were hundreds of people there. 00:33:51.180 --> 00:33:54.210 align:middle line:84% And there was a dinner afterwards, 00:33:54.210 --> 00:33:57.750 align:middle line:84% and we were seated at separate tables. 00:33:57.750 --> 00:34:02.580 align:middle line:84% And after the day was over, I went up 00:34:02.580 --> 00:34:06.566 align:middle line:84% to the famous American poet and gave him a hug 00:34:06.566 --> 00:34:12.190 align:middle line:84% and to thank him for the reading and for coming out generously 00:34:12.190 --> 00:34:13.900 align:middle line:90% to do this benefit. 00:34:13.900 --> 00:34:17.500 align:middle line:84% And his words to me were, I'm sorry, Michael. 00:34:17.500 --> 00:34:19.909 align:middle line:90% I know I'm a terrible poet. 00:34:19.909 --> 00:34:20.409 align:middle line:90% And-- 00:34:20.409 --> 00:34:22.420 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:22.420 --> 00:34:27.805 align:middle line:84% --all I could think to say was, we all know we're terrible. 00:34:27.805 --> 00:34:29.469 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:29.469 --> 00:34:37.539 align:middle line:84% And so this little piece grew out of that moment. 00:34:37.539 --> 00:34:40.630 align:middle line:90% 00:34:40.630 --> 00:34:44.409 align:middle line:84% And somehow it became overrun with rats. 00:34:44.409 --> 00:34:50.170 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:50.170 --> 00:34:53.010 align:middle line:84% My editor in New York at New Directions 00:34:53.010 --> 00:34:56.382 align:middle line:84% was a wonderful reader in a sweet way. 00:34:56.382 --> 00:34:58.590 align:middle line:84% It was right at the time at the beginning of the Bush 00:34:58.590 --> 00:35:00.520 align:middle line:84% administration, which immediately 00:35:00.520 --> 00:35:03.440 align:middle line:90% rendered this [INAUDIBLE]. 00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:06.000 align:middle line:90% And it has turned out to be one. 00:35:06.000 --> 00:35:08.010 align:middle line:90% It's called a "Homage." 00:35:08.010 --> 00:35:12.270 align:middle line:84% It starts with a couple of sentences in quotation. 00:35:12.270 --> 00:35:16.950 align:middle line:84% Quote, "The rats outnumber the roses in our garden. 00:35:16.950 --> 00:35:19.770 align:middle line:84% That's why we've named it the rat garden," unquote. 00:35:19.770 --> 00:35:22.050 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:35:22.050 --> 00:35:25.050 align:middle line:84% "A discussion of the sublime ensued. 00:35:25.050 --> 00:35:28.800 align:middle line:84% Aunt Klara served her ginger peach tea. 00:35:28.800 --> 00:35:32.320 align:middle line:84% At 96, many of her parts still worked. 00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:37.050 align:middle line:84% Quote, "It is life that should inspire fear, not death," 00:35:37.050 --> 00:35:41.820 align:middle line:84% she would say, quoting the Dietrich once again. 00:35:41.820 --> 00:35:45.480 align:middle line:84% It was the first May Day of the new millennia, 00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:48.930 align:middle line:84% but no one could recall what that day meant. 00:35:48.930 --> 00:35:52.560 align:middle line:84% Quote, 'Perhaps it is the day when the rat lies down with 00:35:52.560 --> 00:35:57.050 align:middle line:84% the rose,' tiny Perdita remarked. 00:35:57.050 --> 00:36:00.120 align:middle line:84% All were aghast, as these were the first words she had ever 00:36:00.120 --> 00:36:02.370 align:middle line:90% uttered. 00:36:02.370 --> 00:36:05.700 align:middle line:84% The sky writers were active that near windless day, 00:36:05.700 --> 00:36:09.630 align:middle line:84% their most frequent message in cursive, 'Rats rule.' 00:36:09.630 --> 00:36:11.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:36:11.040 --> 00:36:12.450 align:middle line:84% Slowly, the letters would thicken 00:36:12.450 --> 00:36:14.700 align:middle line:84% and belly out toward the East, then 00:36:14.700 --> 00:36:17.910 align:middle line:90% dissolve into illegible smoke. 00:36:17.910 --> 00:36:19.410 align:middle line:90% The sun declined. 00:36:19.410 --> 00:36:25.380 align:middle line:84% The May flowers made their entrance and the sedulous bats. 00:36:25.380 --> 00:36:27.360 align:middle line:84% Then the great evening feast was placed 00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:32.820 align:middle line:84% before us, pea soup with pork knuckle, the little elver, baby 00:36:32.820 --> 00:36:36.450 align:middle line:84% eels, almost transparent, quickly boiled and served 00:36:36.450 --> 00:36:38.070 align:middle line:90% with mashed turnip. 00:36:38.070 --> 00:36:39.840 align:middle line:84% And, of course, the goose, stuffed 00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:43.110 align:middle line:84% with Nuremberg sausage, chestnuts, onion, 00:36:43.110 --> 00:36:45.390 align:middle line:90% chopped carrot and cream. 00:36:45.390 --> 00:36:49.800 align:middle line:84% And, finally, a Black Forest cake, that baroque confection 00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:55.320 align:middle line:84% of chocolate, whipped cream, sweetened cherries, and Kirsch. 00:36:55.320 --> 00:36:58.980 align:middle line:84% It was over coffee and brandy as the evening drew to a close 00:36:58.980 --> 00:37:03.990 align:middle line:84% that Uncle Johann suddenly blurted out, 'I'm sorry, 00:37:03.990 --> 00:37:05.280 align:middle line:90% I know I'm a terrible poet.' 00:37:05.280 --> 00:37:07.050 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:37:07.050 --> 00:37:11.250 align:middle line:84% At that moment, Perdita formed the second sentence of her 00:37:11.250 --> 00:37:29.320 align:middle line:84% inchoate life, 'All poets know that they are terrible.'" 00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:31.690 align:middle line:84% I'll move to the third section now of the book. 00:37:31.690 --> 00:37:34.540 align:middle line:90% 00:37:34.540 --> 00:37:37.180 align:middle line:84% The first section is called Company of Moths. 00:37:37.180 --> 00:37:39.880 align:middle line:84% The second-- or the first section is called Stone. 00:37:39.880 --> 00:37:42.960 align:middle line:84% The second one, which involves a series of poems as done in kind 00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:44.545 align:middle line:84% of collaboration with a German poet 00:37:44.545 --> 00:37:48.880 align:middle line:84% named Gerhard Richter is named Scale. 00:37:48.880 --> 00:37:51.100 align:middle line:84% And the third section is Company of Moths. 00:37:51.100 --> 00:37:53.250 align:middle line:90% So I'll read a few from that. 00:37:53.250 --> 00:38:02.000 align:middle line:90% 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:03.035 align:middle line:90% "Letter to a Vagrant." 00:38:03.035 --> 00:38:12.010 align:middle line:90% 00:38:12.010 --> 00:38:13.950 align:middle line:84% I was having lunch with a painter 00:38:13.950 --> 00:38:18.640 align:middle line:84% in a kind of assimilationist French cafe in my neighborhood 00:38:18.640 --> 00:38:20.420 align:middle line:90% in San Francisco. 00:38:20.420 --> 00:38:26.320 align:middle line:84% And I was going to write a catalog introduction 00:38:26.320 --> 00:38:28.420 align:middle line:84% for her work, and we were getting together 00:38:28.420 --> 00:38:30.310 align:middle line:90% to talk about that. 00:38:30.310 --> 00:38:32.710 align:middle line:84% And since we were in an assimilationist cafe, 00:38:32.710 --> 00:38:35.890 align:middle line:84% I decided to order the assimilationist frogs' legs. 00:38:35.890 --> 00:38:38.960 align:middle line:90% 00:38:38.960 --> 00:38:43.060 align:middle line:84% And this provoked from her a story 00:38:43.060 --> 00:38:49.030 align:middle line:84% about when she was growing up in El Salvador. 00:38:49.030 --> 00:38:55.030 align:middle line:84% And there was a homeless person in the neighborhood who 00:38:55.030 --> 00:39:00.320 align:middle line:84% would come around and scare the children by saying "there 00:39:00.320 --> 00:39:02.380 align:middle line:90% are frogs in my stomach." 00:39:02.380 --> 00:39:05.740 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:39:05.740 --> 00:39:08.830 align:middle line:90% His name was Cupido. 00:39:08.830 --> 00:39:11.830 align:middle line:84% So I thought this is too good to miss. 00:39:11.830 --> 00:39:13.420 align:middle line:84% It's called "Letter to a Vagrant". 00:39:13.420 --> 00:39:17.080 align:middle line:90% 00:39:17.080 --> 00:39:23.290 align:middle line:84% "Cupido, the frogs in our stomachs are singing as one. 00:39:23.290 --> 00:39:28.900 align:middle line:84% Cupido, there are madeleines in Saks, there's lava in Ghana. 00:39:28.900 --> 00:39:31.750 align:middle line:84% Each day, new elephants on parade. 00:39:31.750 --> 00:39:34.450 align:middle line:84% Each night, new slings, new arrows, 00:39:34.450 --> 00:39:36.910 align:middle line:90% new weapons of mass affection. 00:39:36.910 --> 00:39:40.210 align:middle line:84% So far from silence have we come. 00:39:40.210 --> 00:39:45.130 align:middle line:84% And we no longer make out faces in the clouds, Senor Cupido, 00:39:45.130 --> 00:39:48.190 align:middle line:84% who sails in the lengthening shadows. 00:39:48.190 --> 00:39:53.170 align:middle line:84% Still, a mantis, at least pale green on the garden wall 00:39:53.170 --> 00:39:55.600 align:middle line:90% this morning, now gone. 00:39:55.600 --> 00:39:57.910 align:middle line:84% And their empty words continue to echo, 00:39:57.910 --> 00:40:00.640 align:middle line:84% it seems, between the facing cliffs, 00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:03.550 align:middle line:84% even if there's no one left to hear them, the tourists 00:40:03.550 --> 00:40:07.090 align:middle line:84% having long since departed with their noise machines 00:40:07.090 --> 00:40:10.660 align:middle line:90% and extraterrestrial clothes. 00:40:10.660 --> 00:40:13.270 align:middle line:84% And our war against the mind seems 00:40:13.270 --> 00:40:18.220 align:middle line:84% to be proceeding nicely and against the Earth, Cupido. 00:40:18.220 --> 00:40:23.140 align:middle line:84% All our ducks in a row, prophets surpassing forecasts 00:40:23.140 --> 00:40:27.280 align:middle line:84% like drizzle, sirens and the first of the hyacinths. 00:40:27.280 --> 00:40:31.420 align:middle line:84% So stop you growling, stop scaring the children, 00:40:31.420 --> 00:40:36.130 align:middle line:84% and eat your bread soup and wipe your mouth, Cupido. 00:40:36.130 --> 00:40:40.270 align:middle line:84% Prepare to board the burning boat and sail forth 00:40:40.270 --> 00:40:40.960 align:middle line:90% eyes closed." 00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:48.710 align:middle line:90% 00:40:48.710 --> 00:40:51.350 align:middle line:90% "Untitled, Three Days." 00:40:51.350 --> 00:40:54.410 align:middle line:84% "Yes, I changed the light bulb myself, 00:40:54.410 --> 00:40:57.980 align:middle line:84% so no more jokes about poets and light bulbs, 00:40:57.980 --> 00:41:00.050 align:middle line:90% or poets and light. 00:41:00.050 --> 00:41:04.640 align:middle line:84% No more combing the unconscious for its corybantic folds, 00:41:04.640 --> 00:41:09.390 align:middle line:84% its flows, and no more talk of the bitter wind. 00:41:09.390 --> 00:41:13.580 align:middle line:84% It will do what it must to summon and confound all at once 00:41:13.580 --> 00:41:17.510 align:middle line:84% and rattle the wings of moths at dusk. 00:41:17.510 --> 00:41:21.080 align:middle line:84% Did we not, that same night, carve the voice into parts 00:41:21.080 --> 00:41:25.430 align:middle line:84% and remember that one then one plus one and so on. 00:41:25.430 --> 00:41:28.970 align:middle line:84% Tea from the leaves of mint, the tiny sizzle boats 00:41:28.970 --> 00:41:32.660 align:middle line:84% adrift in shifting currents of error, as if elegy 00:41:32.660 --> 00:41:34.010 align:middle line:90% were endless. 00:41:34.010 --> 00:41:37.055 align:middle line:84% Three days, one light bulb, now this." 00:41:37.055 --> 00:41:40.310 align:middle line:90% 00:41:40.310 --> 00:41:42.860 align:middle line:84% It did take me three days, but the thing broke off. 00:41:42.860 --> 00:41:48.830 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:48.830 --> 00:41:51.650 align:middle line:84% Later someone told me, all you've got to do 00:41:51.650 --> 00:41:55.350 align:middle line:84% is take a potato and stick that in the fixture and then just-- 00:41:55.350 --> 00:41:55.850 align:middle line:90% but-- 00:41:55.850 --> 00:41:57.290 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:57.290 --> 00:42:00.305 align:middle line:90% --too late. 00:42:00.305 --> 00:42:01.170 align:middle line:90% How are we doing? 00:42:01.170 --> 00:42:01.670 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:42:01.670 --> 00:42:07.860 align:middle line:90% 00:42:07.860 --> 00:42:13.410 align:middle line:84% Well, this is called "Arc," A-R-C. 00:42:13.410 --> 00:42:20.325 align:middle line:84% And it's in memory of the great German-born novelist WG Sebald. 00:42:20.325 --> 00:42:24.810 align:middle line:90% 00:42:24.810 --> 00:42:27.180 align:middle line:90% I was working who-- 00:42:27.180 --> 00:42:29.270 align:middle line:84% by coincidence, had a [INAUDIBLE] editor 00:42:29.270 --> 00:42:32.970 align:middle line:84% in New Directions, so I started seeing his work very early on 00:42:32.970 --> 00:42:35.040 align:middle line:84% as it came into American publication. 00:42:35.040 --> 00:42:45.270 align:middle line:84% And he was a marvel of a kind of new voice in prose. 00:42:45.270 --> 00:42:51.340 align:middle line:84% He wrote in German and bless the good translators. 00:42:51.340 --> 00:42:53.770 align:middle line:84% In any case, I was in the midst of this book, 00:42:53.770 --> 00:42:56.500 align:middle line:84% and I told someone that the title was Company of Moths 00:42:56.500 --> 00:42:59.650 align:middle line:84% and that I was working also in collaboration 00:42:59.650 --> 00:43:05.060 align:middle line:84% with a painter around various crepuscular insect themes. 00:43:05.060 --> 00:43:11.740 align:middle line:84% And this woman said, have you read 00:43:11.740 --> 00:43:16.180 align:middle line:84% Sebald's Austerlitz, the last book 00:43:16.180 --> 00:43:17.560 align:middle line:90% to appear while he still alive. 00:43:17.560 --> 00:43:20.140 align:middle line:84% I guess it was right after his death, was it? 00:43:20.140 --> 00:43:21.250 align:middle line:90% And I said I haven't. 00:43:21.250 --> 00:43:23.440 align:middle line:84% I've had it for months and I haven't gotten to it. 00:43:23.440 --> 00:43:26.410 align:middle line:84% She said there's a beautiful passage on moths. 00:43:26.410 --> 00:43:29.890 align:middle line:84% Amazing passage on moths in the book. 00:43:29.890 --> 00:43:34.345 align:middle line:84% And so I pulled out the book and it opened to that passage. 00:43:34.345 --> 00:43:37.660 align:middle line:90% 00:43:37.660 --> 00:43:39.370 align:middle line:84% By then, of course, Sebald was dead. 00:43:39.370 --> 00:43:41.680 align:middle line:84% I had been planning the next time 00:43:41.680 --> 00:43:46.135 align:middle line:84% we were going back to England to meet with him in Istanbul. 00:43:46.135 --> 00:43:48.800 align:middle line:90% 00:43:48.800 --> 00:43:54.610 align:middle line:84% So I recommend his work to any of you 00:43:54.610 --> 00:43:57.640 align:middle line:84% who are interested in great prose fiction 00:43:57.640 --> 00:43:59.215 align:middle line:90% at the end of the 20th century. 00:43:59.215 --> 00:44:02.180 align:middle line:90% 00:44:02.180 --> 00:44:06.790 align:middle line:90% "Arc," in memory of WG Sebald. 00:44:06.790 --> 00:44:10.750 align:middle line:84% "There is the above and the below of each, their wings, 00:44:10.750 --> 00:44:12.370 align:middle line:90% the lining underneath. 00:44:12.370 --> 00:44:16.990 align:middle line:84% There is our daily speech, so clear and meaning-free, 00:44:16.990 --> 00:44:22.120 align:middle line:84% and meaning itself to be erased almost successfully. 00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:25.660 align:middle line:84% There's the red rose and its double in the dark, 00:44:25.660 --> 00:44:27.400 align:middle line:90% avid to swallow us. 00:44:27.400 --> 00:44:31.870 align:middle line:84% The dancing woman, many armed in folds of cloth and gold, 00:44:31.870 --> 00:44:36.550 align:middle line:84% and below her silent counterpart undisclosed. 00:44:36.550 --> 00:44:41.140 align:middle line:84% The tree in full leaf and the tree ablaze are one, 00:44:41.140 --> 00:44:46.030 align:middle line:84% we're told, by the riddling, riperian dream, a dream 00:44:46.030 --> 00:44:49.540 align:middle line:90% I dreamt against the River Wye. 00:44:49.540 --> 00:44:51.490 align:middle line:84% Do you remember how quiet the skies 00:44:51.490 --> 00:44:56.170 align:middle line:84% became that while before the clanging began again? 00:44:56.170 --> 00:45:01.180 align:middle line:84% The wild poppies, their caps, the sentinel owl, the crescents 00:45:01.180 --> 00:45:05.410 align:middle line:84% and veining, windrows and slopes. 00:45:05.410 --> 00:45:11.380 align:middle line:84% Below, they're tracing an arc or enlacement that can't be shown. 00:45:11.380 --> 00:45:14.890 align:middle line:84% 'No contrasts, no shading, anymore...' 00:45:14.890 --> 00:45:15.775 align:middle line:90% They're in the dark." 00:45:15.775 --> 00:45:21.227 align:middle line:90% 00:45:21.227 --> 00:45:22.310 align:middle line:90% I'll just read a few more. 00:45:22.310 --> 00:45:47.520 align:middle line:90% 00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:49.320 align:middle line:90% "Este Mundo." 00:45:49.320 --> 00:45:53.700 align:middle line:84% We were talking about the wonderful Mexican poet 00:45:53.700 --> 00:45:57.360 align:middle line:90% at dinner, Pura López Colomé. 00:45:57.360 --> 00:46:03.180 align:middle line:84% And by coincidence, Pura is a friend 00:46:03.180 --> 00:46:07.080 align:middle line:84% whom I met some years ago at the Berlin International Literature 00:46:07.080 --> 00:46:08.100 align:middle line:90% Festival. 00:46:08.100 --> 00:46:11.550 align:middle line:84% And she then became my Mexican translator. 00:46:11.550 --> 00:46:14.070 align:middle line:84% And so we were invited down to Cuernavaca 00:46:14.070 --> 00:46:20.650 align:middle line:84% for her 50th birthday party a year ago or so. 00:46:20.650 --> 00:46:24.960 align:middle line:84% And I got her-- she read here one-- 00:46:24.960 --> 00:46:26.280 align:middle line:90% Just before that. 00:46:26.280 --> 00:46:27.330 align:middle line:90% Two weeks before that. 00:46:27.330 --> 00:46:28.680 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:46:28.680 --> 00:46:32.520 align:middle line:84% And so this poem I wrote for Pura's 50th birthday. 00:46:32.520 --> 00:46:33.950 align:middle line:90% It's called "Este Mundo." 00:46:33.950 --> 00:46:36.480 align:middle line:90% 00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:41.730 align:middle line:84% "This world with its sounds and that other, with its other, 00:46:41.730 --> 00:46:45.540 align:middle line:84% where words, then solid things, melt into sounds. 00:46:45.540 --> 00:46:46.650 align:middle line:90% Enough? 00:46:46.650 --> 00:46:50.070 align:middle line:84% This writing inside the lids of the eyes enough? 00:46:50.070 --> 00:46:51.360 align:middle line:90% This table enough? 00:46:51.360 --> 00:46:53.880 align:middle line:90% These words enough? 00:46:53.880 --> 00:46:54.900 align:middle line:90% A sip enough? 00:46:54.900 --> 00:46:56.430 align:middle line:90% A glimpse? 00:46:56.430 --> 00:46:59.040 align:middle line:90% Oars spinning. 00:46:59.040 --> 00:47:00.570 align:middle line:90% The broken notes enough? 00:47:00.570 --> 00:47:01.830 align:middle line:90% The drunken boats? 00:47:01.830 --> 00:47:04.290 align:middle line:84% And the idol asleep in the mountain, 00:47:04.290 --> 00:47:08.400 align:middle line:84% his nurse's milk on his lips, he's dreaming of peacocks, 00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:11.490 align:middle line:84% meteors, pyromatic moths, dreaming 00:47:11.490 --> 00:47:16.080 align:middle line:84% of serpents and pyramids, worlds hanging from clouds, the wine 00:47:16.080 --> 00:47:18.840 align:middle line:84% jug, the lover's spine and fire as it 00:47:18.840 --> 00:47:20.760 align:middle line:90% claims the edges of the page. 00:47:20.760 --> 00:47:22.800 align:middle line:90% Bastante? 00:47:22.800 --> 00:47:26.130 align:middle line:84% This world in the fold of an echo, 00:47:26.130 --> 00:47:30.345 align:middle line:84% you can hear them beneath the mown field, the restive songs." 00:47:30.345 --> 00:47:40.140 align:middle line:90% 00:47:40.140 --> 00:47:45.330 align:middle line:84% "Untitled, October 2002", is the title. 00:47:45.330 --> 00:47:50.340 align:middle line:84% "Eva Braun advised me in a dream to always be kind to dogs. 00:47:50.340 --> 00:47:52.860 align:middle line:84% So I gazed at the room with fresh eyes, 00:47:52.860 --> 00:47:55.920 align:middle line:84% the rust on the apple, the sliding sun, 00:47:55.920 --> 00:47:58.590 align:middle line:84% our hard-won freedoms here at home. 00:47:58.590 --> 00:48:01.800 align:middle line:84% Then a famous physicist proudly proclaimed 00:48:01.800 --> 00:48:06.270 align:middle line:84% that this century would be no less exciting than the last. 00:48:06.270 --> 00:48:07.930 align:middle line:90% Not a dream. 00:48:07.930 --> 00:48:12.210 align:middle line:84% So I set a match to my obras completas, all 13 00:48:12.210 --> 00:48:16.950 align:middle line:84% pages, that sad house of paper, and let loose the finch 00:48:16.950 --> 00:48:19.050 align:middle line:90% from its cage. 00:48:19.050 --> 00:48:21.690 align:middle line:84% Next a woman in red, not undressing, 00:48:21.690 --> 00:48:25.500 align:middle line:84% said, stop playing the flaming fool. 00:48:25.500 --> 00:48:28.170 align:middle line:90% But how exactly is that done? 00:48:28.170 --> 00:48:32.130 align:middle line:84% So I summoned my dog, name of Bob, 00:48:32.130 --> 00:48:35.970 align:middle line:84% Marley dog, tossed him a glamorous bone, 00:48:35.970 --> 00:48:37.999 align:middle line:90% told him he was not alone." 00:48:37.999 --> 00:48:39.875 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:48:39.875 --> 00:48:45.040 align:middle line:90% 00:48:45.040 --> 00:48:50.210 align:middle line:90% "Untitled, February 2003." 00:48:50.210 --> 00:48:52.310 align:middle line:84% "It's true that I've sometimes used the word 00:48:52.310 --> 00:48:55.220 align:middle line:90% raisin in place of reason. 00:48:55.220 --> 00:48:58.430 align:middle line:84% True that I'm surprised each time by the sudden progress 00:48:58.430 --> 00:49:03.050 align:middle line:84% of the seasons and that often when all is said all comes 00:49:03.050 --> 00:49:04.580 align:middle line:90% undone. 00:49:04.580 --> 00:49:09.260 align:middle line:84% Look at how the worms turned into gods before our filmy eyes 00:49:09.260 --> 00:49:12.290 align:middle line:84% and how the lyric war machine sings 00:49:12.290 --> 00:49:15.020 align:middle line:90% in the grayness of the morning. 00:49:15.020 --> 00:49:17.960 align:middle line:90% And the name of its song? 00:49:17.960 --> 00:49:21.710 align:middle line:84% But here we are among the dogs, large and small, 00:49:21.710 --> 00:49:23.540 align:middle line:90% of the after dome. 00:49:23.540 --> 00:49:26.630 align:middle line:84% Is it possible to make love in such light 00:49:26.630 --> 00:49:29.660 align:middle line:84% or read from the first pages of silence? 00:49:29.660 --> 00:49:35.420 align:middle line:84% The bright early butterflies and Pura's place under the volcano, 00:49:35.420 --> 00:49:38.270 align:middle line:90% campesinos blockading the roads. 00:49:38.270 --> 00:49:38.930 align:middle line:90% Es bueno." 00:49:38.930 --> 00:49:51.220 align:middle line:90% 00:49:51.220 --> 00:49:52.555 align:middle line:90% I'll read two more poems. 00:49:52.555 --> 00:49:53.680 align:middle line:90% This is called "Una Noche." 00:49:53.680 --> 00:50:01.430 align:middle line:90% 00:50:01.430 --> 00:50:06.620 align:middle line:84% "Then El Presidente, uncoiling his tongue," quote, 00:50:06.620 --> 00:50:10.640 align:middle line:84% "'You cannot stop time, but you can smash all the clocks.' 00:50:10.640 --> 00:50:14.180 align:middle line:84% And so seeking paradise, we have burned the bright house 00:50:14.180 --> 00:50:17.240 align:middle line:90% to the ground, a necessary act. 00:50:17.240 --> 00:50:21.320 align:middle line:84% We have invented glass and ground a dark lens 00:50:21.320 --> 00:50:24.590 align:middle line:84% and in the perilous night, we continue to dance. 00:50:24.590 --> 00:50:27.860 align:middle line:84% The tarantella, the tango, the passadoble 00:50:27.860 --> 00:50:31.550 align:middle line:84% and the jig, the bunny hop, the Cadillac, 00:50:31.550 --> 00:50:36.500 align:middle line:84% the Madison and serabande, mazurka, and the jerk, 00:50:36.500 --> 00:50:39.140 align:middle line:90% the twist on table tops. 00:50:39.140 --> 00:50:44.660 align:middle line:84% Rolling our eyes, flailing our limbs, it's how we keep time. 00:50:44.660 --> 00:50:46.190 align:middle line:90% Our feet never stop." 00:50:46.190 --> 00:50:53.660 align:middle line:90% 00:50:53.660 --> 00:50:55.410 align:middle line:90% I'll read one final poem. 00:50:55.410 --> 00:50:58.176 align:middle line:90% 00:50:58.176 --> 00:51:03.680 align:middle line:84% It's after a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 00:51:03.680 --> 00:51:07.400 align:middle line:84% It's another [INAUDIBLE] whom I quoted 00:51:07.400 --> 00:51:08.810 align:middle line:84% in the epigraph at the beginning. 00:51:08.810 --> 00:51:10.070 align:middle line:90% He was a modernist poet. 00:51:10.070 --> 00:51:14.760 align:middle line:90% 00:51:14.760 --> 00:51:17.790 align:middle line:90% And it's a poem about poetics. 00:51:17.790 --> 00:51:22.650 align:middle line:84% And it's sort of perverse because we're 00:51:22.650 --> 00:51:27.780 align:middle line:84% getting all these appeals, which I approve of in solidarity, 00:51:27.780 --> 00:51:33.060 align:middle line:84% to write poems against the war and to join up 00:51:33.060 --> 00:51:35.590 align:middle line:90% with poets against the war. 00:51:35.590 --> 00:51:38.520 align:middle line:84% And I'm a poet against the war, et cetera. 00:51:38.520 --> 00:51:41.355 align:middle line:84% At the same time, a lot of this poetry is real shit. 00:51:41.355 --> 00:51:44.436 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:51:44.436 --> 00:51:48.170 align:middle line:84% And so we feel, are we having poetry against the war 00:51:48.170 --> 00:51:49.610 align:middle line:90% or a war against poetry? 00:51:49.610 --> 00:51:53.180 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:51:53.180 --> 00:51:58.250 align:middle line:84% So, anyway, I found this poem of Drummond's, which 00:51:58.250 --> 00:51:59.765 align:middle line:90% is a kind of perverse poetic. 00:51:59.765 --> 00:52:01.910 align:middle line:90% It's very ironic, of course. 00:52:01.910 --> 00:52:11.540 align:middle line:84% And I call this one "Your Diamond Shoe," after Drummond. 00:52:11.540 --> 00:52:16.010 align:middle line:84% There's a line in it, don't write about your diamond shoe. 00:52:16.010 --> 00:52:18.980 align:middle line:84% "Don't write poems about what's going on, 00:52:18.980 --> 00:52:22.940 align:middle line:84% murderers and liars, dreams and desires. 00:52:22.940 --> 00:52:25.070 align:middle line:90% They're always going on. 00:52:25.070 --> 00:52:27.320 align:middle line:90% Leave them outside the poem. 00:52:27.320 --> 00:52:31.430 align:middle line:84% Don't describe your sad-eyed summer home or wide-eyed winter 00:52:31.430 --> 00:52:32.300 align:middle line:90% home. 00:52:32.300 --> 00:52:35.930 align:middle line:84% Don't write about being homeless or your home away from home. 00:52:35.930 --> 00:52:39.500 align:middle line:84% Don't write about war, whether you're against or for. 00:52:39.500 --> 00:52:41.660 align:middle line:90% It's the same fucking war. 00:52:41.660 --> 00:52:43.280 align:middle line:90% Don't talk about language. 00:52:43.280 --> 00:52:45.080 align:middle line:90% Don't talk about loss. 00:52:45.080 --> 00:52:50.030 align:middle line:84% Don't mention truth or beauty or your grandpa's bones. 00:52:50.030 --> 00:52:53.780 align:middle line:84% No one wants to know how your father, brother, lover 00:52:53.780 --> 00:52:57.980 align:middle line:84% deducted himself, razor, rope, or gun. 00:52:57.980 --> 00:52:59.660 align:middle line:90% What's the difference? 00:52:59.660 --> 00:53:03.350 align:middle line:84% Whisper nothing of the smell on the Contrescarpe, 00:53:03.350 --> 00:53:07.790 align:middle line:84% nothing of moths, their fluttering arcs, or the towers, 00:53:07.790 --> 00:53:10.070 align:middle line:90% how we watched them fall. 00:53:10.070 --> 00:53:11.810 align:middle line:90% Don't write at all." 00:53:11.810 --> 00:53:12.320 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:53:12.320 --> 00:53:12.920 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:53:12.920 --> 00:53:14.770 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]