All right.
So I guess, I'll begin by saying what I said a minute ago, which
is mostly what I think about when I'm working,
or the last thing I finished, and the thing I'm
trying to finish.
So I really don't, I mean, I've never done that.
I've never read from all of my books in a reading.
And so, this one poem that I think is mostly done,
I realized that is connected to you, guys,
I'm one of y'all's poets.
So I don't know of how to get to it, though.
I'm like, isn't always nice, it's new.
So I don't know if I want to end with it.
So maybe I'll talk about it.
So what I'll tell you is the poem
is called "The Poet Ai as Dylann Roof."
So the thing is, I'm from South Carolina.
And Dylann Roof went into the church,
and he killed the nine folks.
And so, usually, when things happen, I just--
I work on them at my pace.
So I'm always thinking about stuff,
but I'm not a poet who goes and writes immediately in response,
really to anything.
So my poems they take a year sometimes
to make things happen.
But someone in town was like, oh, we
want to do this thing about these guys.
And you're from South Carolina, somewhere
in Pittsburgh, where I am.
So they were like, will you do something?
So I tried a bunch of poems.
The first thing I did was this little song
that I just lost a nerve, I could never sing it.
So I'm not going to sing it.
But it's after this dude--
I actually have him singing it, but I'm not
going to play him singing it, either, Richard Dawson--
and so I wrote this thing last summer.
And it only becomes relevant, because it'll
explain how we get to Ai.
So this was me trying to write about again a spectacle, like,
their spectacle for you, spectacle of violence,
like, nine people killed in a church.
I mean, you can't get more spectacular than that.
And so, what I thought was, again, maybe,
we'll have this conversation in the Q and A,
my impulse was not to look at it but to look away from it,
to metaphor.
So I wrote this thing.
It's called "Carolina Lullaby."
Say hello to the little boy whose poor
head is filled with noise.
For I'm the bird he's fixed to kill for singing
this song in the field.
Blue blackbirds, blue blackbirds,
hear what is done to the singing birds.
His hands around my wondrous wings,
plucked feathers my mother once stroked.
I held the song within my throat.
I sang until my body broke.
Black bluebird, black bluebird, hear
what is done to a singing bird.
And now, to make my music still, he
took a stone up from the field.
I sang to the stone like a lover,
though, for none could crushed my trembling throat.
Poor small boy, poor small boy, hear
what you did to a singing bird.
His blows beat down upon my song.
But the song remained when I was gone.
When the boy walked home to a lonely room,
this was the tune he hummed.
[HUMMING]