WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.830 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.830 --> 00:00:05.130 align:middle line:84% It's good to be back, see you all again. 00:00:05.130 --> 00:00:06.210 align:middle line:90% Tyler. 00:00:06.210 --> 00:00:08.060 align:middle line:90% This beautiful building. 00:00:08.060 --> 00:00:11.160 align:middle line:84% Um, yeah, well you know this would not 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:19.980 align:middle line:84% exist without Wave, Charlie, Matthew, Heidi, Ellen, Joshua, 00:00:19.980 --> 00:00:22.198 align:middle line:90% everybody there. 00:00:22.198 --> 00:00:24.240 align:middle line:84% So what I'm going to do for is going to be pretty 00:00:24.240 --> 00:00:26.580 align:middle line:90% straightforward, I think. 00:00:26.580 --> 00:00:32.390 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to read like the beginning and end of this book 00:00:32.390 --> 00:00:34.890 align:middle line:84% because what's in the middle, I think a lot of the lectures, 00:00:34.890 --> 00:00:37.980 align:middle line:84% maybe, at this point you could probably find online. 00:00:37.980 --> 00:00:40.188 align:middle line:84% And so I did what they ask me to do, do the lectures, 00:00:40.188 --> 00:00:42.397 align:middle line:84% but then I was like but they're going to actually let 00:00:42.397 --> 00:00:45.390 align:middle line:84% me do whatever I really want to do, so, as opposed to just like 00:00:45.390 --> 00:00:46.230 align:middle line:90% coming out with the lectures. 00:00:46.230 --> 00:00:48.230 align:middle line:84% I was like, well, can I put some drawings in it? 00:00:48.230 --> 00:00:49.410 align:middle line:90% They were like yeah. 00:00:49.410 --> 00:00:51.270 align:middle line:84% Can I put like a graphic poem in it? 00:00:51.270 --> 00:00:52.387 align:middle line:90% Can I like draw a poem? 00:00:52.387 --> 00:00:53.220 align:middle line:90% They were like yeah. 00:00:53.220 --> 00:00:55.890 align:middle line:84% Can I put a map-- can I put old poems from old books in it? 00:00:55.890 --> 00:00:57.150 align:middle line:90% They're like yeah. 00:00:57.150 --> 00:01:01.410 align:middle line:84% So either that means that what this 00:01:01.410 --> 00:01:04.170 align:middle line:84% is it'll never exist again, I'll never do it again. 00:01:04.170 --> 00:01:05.860 align:middle line:84% Or it's all I'm going to do from now on, 00:01:05.860 --> 00:01:08.520 align:middle line:84% I'm going to only, like, draw essays. 00:01:08.520 --> 00:01:09.330 align:middle line:90% Anyway, OK. 00:01:09.330 --> 00:01:12.853 align:middle line:84% So if I read what I have in the beginning, 00:01:12.853 --> 00:01:15.520 align:middle line:84% I wrote it so I wouldn't have to talk through all of this stuff, 00:01:15.520 --> 00:01:16.520 align:middle line:90% so I'm going to do that. 00:01:16.520 --> 00:01:18.555 align:middle line:84% But the first thing I'll do, and I 00:01:18.555 --> 00:01:21.180 align:middle line:84% guess I'm going to have to tell you a little bit, so it'll be-- 00:01:21.180 --> 00:01:22.805 align:middle line:84% I'll repeat it when I start reading it, 00:01:22.805 --> 00:01:25.740 align:middle line:84% is that the book is kind of like I'm 00:01:25.740 --> 00:01:28.920 align:middle line:84% pretending I'm Charles Kinbote, if you know who that is. 00:01:28.920 --> 00:01:30.750 align:middle line:84% So if you don't, I'll explain it. 00:01:30.750 --> 00:01:35.220 align:middle line:84% But essentially, the essays and lectures and drawings 00:01:35.220 --> 00:01:38.670 align:middle line:84% are kind of down inside this poem, "The Idea of Ancestry" 00:01:38.670 --> 00:01:41.250 align:middle line:90% by Etheridge Knight. 00:01:41.250 --> 00:01:42.930 align:middle line:84% And of course, Matthew started by saying 00:01:42.930 --> 00:01:45.330 align:middle line:84% that if you ask the poet about his poetics, he's going 00:01:45.330 --> 00:01:48.030 align:middle line:84% or she's going to talk about anybody other than herself. 00:01:48.030 --> 00:01:50.010 align:middle line:90% And that was my intention. 00:01:50.010 --> 00:01:51.430 align:middle line:90% That is what I do. 00:01:51.430 --> 00:01:55.110 align:middle line:84% And so, but this, again, with the freedom they gave me, 00:01:55.110 --> 00:01:57.938 align:middle line:84% allowed me to do that and then some other stuff. 00:01:57.938 --> 00:01:59.730 align:middle line:84% So anyway, OK, so now we're going to start. 00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:01.352 align:middle line:84% That's the beginning my 20 minutes. 00:02:01.352 --> 00:02:02.560 align:middle line:90% I'm going to start right now. 00:02:02.560 --> 00:02:04.110 align:middle line:84% So we'll start with this poem that 00:02:04.110 --> 00:02:05.318 align:middle line:90% really frames the whole book. 00:02:05.318 --> 00:02:07.410 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to let you hear him read it. 00:02:07.410 --> 00:02:10.403 align:middle line:84% So this is Etheridge Knight reading "The Idea of Ancestry." 00:02:10.403 --> 00:02:12.570 align:middle line:84% And then I'll read you like some stuff from line one 00:02:12.570 --> 00:02:14.405 align:middle line:84% in the poem taped to the wall of my cell. 00:02:14.405 --> 00:02:15.780 align:middle line:84% And then I'll read you some stuff 00:02:15.780 --> 00:02:18.750 align:middle line:84% from the last line, a phrase in the last line, which 00:02:18.750 --> 00:02:19.860 align:middle line:90% is like I am me. 00:02:19.860 --> 00:02:22.740 align:middle line:84% But this is the poem that I'll be sort of referencing 00:02:22.740 --> 00:02:24.210 align:middle line:90% a lot inside of it. 00:02:24.210 --> 00:02:27.520 align:middle line:90% 00:02:27.520 --> 00:02:29.380 align:middle line:90% When I was in solitary one-- 00:02:29.380 --> 00:02:32.170 align:middle line:84% I started making up this poem when I was in solitary one 00:02:32.170 --> 00:02:32.740 align:middle line:90% time. 00:02:32.740 --> 00:02:38.950 align:middle line:84% After being called by a number for five years, 30562, 00:02:38.950 --> 00:02:41.980 align:middle line:84% I was beginning to forget who I was. 00:02:41.980 --> 00:02:44.920 align:middle line:90% The idea of ancestry. 00:02:44.920 --> 00:02:51.490 align:middle line:84% Taped to the wall of my cell of 47 pictures: 47 black faces: 00:02:51.490 --> 00:02:55.480 align:middle line:84% my father, mother, grandmothers-- one dead-- 00:02:55.480 --> 00:03:00.500 align:middle line:84% grandfathers-- both dead-- brothers, sisters, uncles, 00:03:00.500 --> 00:03:01.870 align:middle line:90% aunts, cousins-- 00:03:01.870 --> 00:03:05.590 align:middle line:84% first and second-- nieces and nephews. 00:03:05.590 --> 00:03:09.820 align:middle line:84% They stare across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. 00:03:09.820 --> 00:03:13.070 align:middle line:84% I know their dark eyes, they know mine. 00:03:13.070 --> 00:03:15.760 align:middle line:84% I know their style, they know mine. 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:19.690 align:middle line:84% I am all of them, they are all of me; they are farmers, 00:03:19.690 --> 00:03:24.160 align:middle line:84% I am a thief, I am me, they are thee. 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:26.050 align:middle line:84% I have at one time or another been in love 00:03:26.050 --> 00:03:30.970 align:middle line:84% with my mother, one grandmother, two sisters, two aunts-- 00:03:30.970 --> 00:03:32.620 align:middle line:90% one went to the asylum-- 00:03:32.620 --> 00:03:34.750 align:middle line:90% and five cousins. 00:03:34.750 --> 00:03:37.660 align:middle line:84% I am now in love with a 7-year-old niece-- 00:03:37.660 --> 00:03:40.810 align:middle line:84% she sends me letters written in large block print, 00:03:40.810 --> 00:03:45.010 align:middle line:84% and her picture is the only one that smiles at me. 00:03:45.010 --> 00:03:48.940 align:middle line:84% I have the same name as one grandfather, three cousins, 00:03:48.940 --> 00:03:51.610 align:middle line:90% three nephews, and one uncle. 00:03:51.610 --> 00:03:54.220 align:middle line:84% The uncle disappeared when he was 15, 00:03:54.220 --> 00:03:57.610 align:middle line:84% just took off and caught a freight, they say. 00:03:57.610 --> 00:04:01.510 align:middle line:84% He's discussed each year when the family has a reunion, 00:04:01.510 --> 00:04:06.820 align:middle line:84% he causes uneasiness in the clan, he is an empty space. 00:04:06.820 --> 00:04:10.750 align:middle line:84% My father's mother, who is 93 and he keeps the family 00:04:10.750 --> 00:04:15.130 align:middle line:84% Bible with everybody's birth dates and death dates in it, 00:04:15.130 --> 00:04:17.320 align:middle line:90% always mentions him. 00:04:17.320 --> 00:04:22.810 align:middle line:84% There is no place in her Bible for whereabouts unknown. 00:04:22.810 --> 00:04:26.320 align:middle line:84% Each fall, the graves of my grandfathers call me, 00:04:26.320 --> 00:04:29.980 align:middle line:84% the brown hills and red gullies of Mississippi 00:04:29.980 --> 00:04:34.750 align:middle line:84% send out their electric messages, galvanizing my genes. 00:04:34.750 --> 00:04:38.650 align:middle line:84% Last year, like a salmon quitting the cold ocean, 00:04:38.650 --> 00:04:41.620 align:middle line:84% leaping and bucking up his birth stream, 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:46.090 align:middle line:84% I hitchhiked my way from LA with 16 caps in my pocket 00:04:46.090 --> 00:04:49.090 align:middle line:84% and a monkey on my back, and I almost 00:04:49.090 --> 00:04:51.370 align:middle line:90% kicked it with the kinfolks. 00:04:51.370 --> 00:04:54.850 align:middle line:84% I walked barefooted in my grandmother's backyard. 00:04:54.850 --> 00:04:57.880 align:middle line:84% I smelled the old land and the woods. 00:04:57.880 --> 00:05:01.330 align:middle line:84% I sipped corn whiskey from food jars with the men. 00:05:01.330 --> 00:05:03.010 align:middle line:90% I flirted with the women. 00:05:03.010 --> 00:05:07.780 align:middle line:84% I had a ball till the caps ran out and my habit came down. 00:05:07.780 --> 00:05:10.990 align:middle line:84% That night, I looked at my grandmother and split. 00:05:10.990 --> 00:05:15.310 align:middle line:84% My guts were screaming for junk, but I was almost contented. 00:05:15.310 --> 00:05:18.580 align:middle line:90% I had almost caught up with me. 00:05:18.580 --> 00:05:21.370 align:middle line:84% The next day in Memphis, I cracked a croaker's crib 00:05:21.370 --> 00:05:23.950 align:middle line:90% for a fix. 00:05:23.950 --> 00:05:28.480 align:middle line:84% This year, there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, 00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:31.570 align:middle line:84% and when the falling leaves stir my genes, 00:05:31.570 --> 00:05:34.570 align:middle line:84% I pace my cell or flop on my bunk 00:05:34.570 --> 00:05:39.070 align:middle line:84% and stare at 47 black faces across the space. 00:05:39.070 --> 00:05:44.320 align:middle line:84% I am all of them, they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, 00:05:44.320 --> 00:05:47.360 align:middle line:84% and I have no sons to float in the space between. 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:50.080 align:middle line:90% 00:05:50.080 --> 00:05:52.930 align:middle line:84% I realize this is an earlier version of that poem, 00:05:52.930 --> 00:05:55.630 align:middle line:84% because I'm going to talk about this later in the last piece I 00:05:55.630 --> 00:05:58.180 align:middle line:84% read, he eventually changed it to children, 00:05:58.180 --> 00:06:00.280 align:middle line:84% but that is a version where he says 00:06:00.280 --> 00:06:02.640 align:middle line:84% I have no sons to float in the space between. 00:06:02.640 --> 00:06:03.640 align:middle line:90% All right, so let's see. 00:06:03.640 --> 00:06:04.990 align:middle line:90% I'll just read-- 00:06:04.990 --> 00:06:06.490 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to figure out how to read 00:06:06.490 --> 00:06:09.310 align:middle line:90% without talking to you all. 00:06:09.310 --> 00:06:12.010 align:middle line:84% Taped to the wall of my cell, so that first section, I, like, 00:06:12.010 --> 00:06:16.240 align:middle line:84% I drew a cell and put some stuff in it. 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:21.340 align:middle line:84% And I had this excerpt from questions about The Molecular 00:06:21.340 --> 00:06:25.600 align:middle line:84% Biology of a Cell from David A. Shaywitz and Douglas A. Melton. 00:06:25.600 --> 00:06:27.820 align:middle line:84% So this is like, I'm inside that line, taped 00:06:27.820 --> 00:06:29.440 align:middle line:84% to the wall of my cell, but I have 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:31.720 align:middle line:84% this quote about molecular biology 00:06:31.720 --> 00:06:33.970 align:middle line:84% as they asked a series of questions. 00:06:33.970 --> 00:06:37.390 align:middle line:84% As we study the life and lineage of a particular adult cell, 00:06:37.390 --> 00:06:39.610 align:middle line:84% we ask the same questions that a biographer 00:06:39.610 --> 00:06:43.060 align:middle line:84% asks of her subject: what were the critical decisions that 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:46.720 align:middle line:84% define the trajectory of this life and when were they made? 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:48.760 align:middle line:84% What were the contributions of neighbors 00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:51.700 align:middle line:84% and what role was played by more distant influences? 00:06:51.700 --> 00:06:53.350 align:middle line:90% What was the role of chance? 00:06:53.350 --> 00:06:57.040 align:middle line:84% At what point was the final fate initially specified 00:06:57.040 --> 00:06:59.710 align:middle line:84% and when was it ultimately sealed? 00:06:59.710 --> 00:07:01.810 align:middle line:84% In essence, we would like to understand 00:07:01.810 --> 00:07:05.240 align:middle line:84% the molecular biology, the molecular biography, 00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:05.740 align:middle line:90% of the cell. 00:07:05.740 --> 00:07:06.880 align:middle line:90% Have I been saying biology? 00:07:06.880 --> 00:07:09.568 align:middle line:84% The molecular biography of the cell, it's a play on words 00:07:09.568 --> 00:07:10.360 align:middle line:90% that they're doing. 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:12.040 align:middle line:84% So in this section, I just answered 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:13.457 align:middle line:84% a few of those questions, and I'll 00:07:13.457 --> 00:07:16.810 align:middle line:84% read like maybe two of them to give you a sense of where 00:07:16.810 --> 00:07:18.710 align:middle line:90% all this is coming from. 00:07:18.710 --> 00:07:21.430 align:middle line:84% So one question, what were the critical decisions 00:07:21.430 --> 00:07:24.580 align:middle line:84% that define the trajectory of this life? 00:07:24.580 --> 00:07:26.880 align:middle line:84% When I began collecting interviews and stories 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:29.370 align:middle line:84% about Etheridge Knight more than a decade ago, 00:07:29.370 --> 00:07:32.640 align:middle line:84% I said, mostly to the few people I cornered for interviews, 00:07:32.640 --> 00:07:35.190 align:middle line:84% that I'd never write a biography because it would take 00:07:35.190 --> 00:07:37.080 align:middle line:90% more than a decade to do it. 00:07:37.080 --> 00:07:39.390 align:middle line:84% This is not a biography, but perhaps it 00:07:39.390 --> 00:07:41.910 align:middle line:84% will encourage a future Knight biographer. 00:07:41.910 --> 00:07:46.080 align:middle line:84% Consider this a collection of essays as speculative, motley, 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:48.090 align:middle line:90% and adrift as Knight himself. 00:07:48.090 --> 00:07:50.760 align:middle line:84% His various personae grace the book 00:07:50.760 --> 00:07:54.600 align:middle line:84% covers that are at my side at any given moment. 00:07:54.600 --> 00:07:56.460 align:middle line:84% The bespectacled Knight in a prison 00:07:56.460 --> 00:08:00.210 align:middle line:84% cell on the back of his 1969 book, Poems from Prison, 00:08:00.210 --> 00:08:04.200 align:middle line:84% the nappy, bohemian Knight on the cover of 1973's Belly Song 00:08:04.200 --> 00:08:07.350 align:middle line:84% and Other Poems, the Mississippi Knight in a cap 00:08:07.350 --> 00:08:10.740 align:middle line:84% and overalls on the cover of 1980's Born of a Woman: 00:08:10.740 --> 00:08:14.340 align:middle line:84% New and Selected Poems, and the sober, intellectual Knight 00:08:14.340 --> 00:08:18.150 align:middle line:84% on the cover of 1988's The Essential Etheridge Knight. 00:08:18.150 --> 00:08:21.390 align:middle line:84% Because he has been on my mind for virtually all of my writing 00:08:21.390 --> 00:08:24.660 align:middle line:84% life, he has appeared from time to time among my poems, 00:08:24.660 --> 00:08:27.990 align:middle line:84% influencing perspective, as in the poet 00:08:27.990 --> 00:08:30.880 align:middle line:84% dying at the window from my first book, 00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:33.929 align:middle line:84% influencing voice as in the poem "The Blue Knight" 00:08:33.929 --> 00:08:36.630 align:middle line:84% from my third book, and an influence in form, 00:08:36.630 --> 00:08:41.070 align:middle line:84% as in "Portrait of Etheridge Knight in the Style of a Crime 00:08:41.070 --> 00:08:43.179 align:middle line:90% Report" from my fifth book. 00:08:43.179 --> 00:08:45.878 align:middle line:84% So again, the poems are around there in the books-- 00:08:45.878 --> 00:08:47.920 align:middle line:84% and they let me put those poems in the book, too, 00:08:47.920 --> 00:08:51.300 align:middle line:84% so when you get the book, you can see those, too. 00:08:51.300 --> 00:08:53.130 align:middle line:84% Each time I've returned to my work 00:08:53.130 --> 00:08:56.310 align:middle line:84% on Knight between publications of my own poetry, 00:08:56.310 --> 00:08:58.620 align:middle line:84% and only the impossibility of a biography 00:08:58.620 --> 00:09:00.060 align:middle line:90% has remained consistent. 00:09:00.060 --> 00:09:04.230 align:middle line:84% He remains both muse and mystery. 00:09:04.230 --> 00:09:07.470 align:middle line:84% Another question here, what were the critical decisions 00:09:07.470 --> 00:09:10.630 align:middle line:84% that define the trajectory of this life? 00:09:10.630 --> 00:09:13.950 align:middle line:84% At some point, in my years wandering and wondering 00:09:13.950 --> 00:09:16.470 align:middle line:84% in between the lines of The Idea of Ancestry, 00:09:16.470 --> 00:09:20.040 align:middle line:84% I began to think of myself as a real life Charles Kinbote, 00:09:20.040 --> 00:09:24.150 align:middle line:84% the deranged scholar in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel, 00:09:24.150 --> 00:09:28.830 align:middle line:84% Pale Fire, except where Kinbote is literally a mad professor 00:09:28.830 --> 00:09:32.970 align:middle line:84% unraveling a 999-line poem by his neighbor poet, 00:09:32.970 --> 00:09:36.180 align:middle line:84% the murdered John Shade-- they say maybe he killed him-- 00:09:36.180 --> 00:09:40.440 align:middle line:84% I am me, a poet, a brother, a southerner, 00:09:40.440 --> 00:09:44.550 align:middle line:84% unraveling The Idea of Ancestry, a poem by Etheridge Knight. 00:09:44.550 --> 00:09:47.670 align:middle line:84% The distinction between a scholar on the trail of a poet 00:09:47.670 --> 00:09:51.150 align:middle line:84% and a poet on the trail of a poet is an important one. 00:09:51.150 --> 00:09:53.610 align:middle line:84% The scholar looks upon his life-- 00:09:53.610 --> 00:09:56.400 align:middle line:84% looks upon his subject as if through a window. 00:09:56.400 --> 00:09:58.920 align:middle line:84% The scholar aims to frame the poet's work 00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:03.060 align:middle line:84% according to things like genre, talent, culture, history. 00:10:03.060 --> 00:10:06.600 align:middle line:84% A clear pane of logic interpretation and appreciation 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:08.520 align:middle line:90% separates him from this subject. 00:10:08.520 --> 00:10:11.880 align:middle line:84% Conversely, a poet looking upon the poetry of another poet 00:10:11.880 --> 00:10:14.580 align:middle line:84% sees something of himself reflected in the pain. 00:10:14.580 --> 00:10:18.720 align:middle line:84% Process, imitation, competition are reflected in the work. 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:20.940 align:middle line:84% A poet looks upon the work of another poet 00:10:20.940 --> 00:10:23.300 align:middle line:90% as if it is a mirror. 00:10:23.300 --> 00:10:25.770 align:middle line:84% Please forgive my generalizations. 00:10:25.770 --> 00:10:27.960 align:middle line:84% What's odd about Kinbote is, number one, 00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:31.590 align:middle line:84% he believes the window is a mirror, so he sees only himself 00:10:31.590 --> 00:10:35.070 align:middle line:84% when he looks into it, and two, he means to lift the window 00:10:35.070 --> 00:10:37.920 align:middle line:84% and climb as a peeping Tom or Goldilocks would 00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:40.350 align:middle line:84% into the lives of his subject, if you are following me. 00:10:40.350 --> 00:10:42.600 align:middle line:84% He sees himself everywhere in the poem, 00:10:42.600 --> 00:10:44.160 align:middle line:84% and the interpretation of the poem 00:10:44.160 --> 00:10:46.290 align:middle line:90% is hogtied to the interpreter. 00:10:46.290 --> 00:10:49.590 align:middle line:84% The great distorting power of Kinbote's imagination 00:10:49.590 --> 00:10:52.950 align:middle line:84% gives Nabokov's novel its tension and trajectory, 00:10:52.950 --> 00:10:55.320 align:middle line:84% lampooning the practice of close reading. 00:10:55.320 --> 00:10:59.400 align:middle line:84% Pale Fire shows how expertise slides down a slippery slope 00:10:59.400 --> 00:11:00.660 align:middle line:90% into delusion. 00:11:00.660 --> 00:11:02.760 align:middle line:84% Delusion, depending on how you look at it, 00:11:02.760 --> 00:11:05.100 align:middle line:90% is a form of the imagination. 00:11:05.100 --> 00:11:08.280 align:middle line:84% Can imagination be a form of critical study? 00:11:08.280 --> 00:11:11.010 align:middle line:84% For more than a decade, I have been imagining my way 00:11:11.010 --> 00:11:13.500 align:middle line:84% into the slants and lines of Etheridge Knight. 00:11:13.500 --> 00:11:15.525 align:middle line:84% So that pretty much gives you my premise 00:11:15.525 --> 00:11:16.650 align:middle line:90% for everything in the book. 00:11:16.650 --> 00:11:19.350 align:middle line:84% Like if imagination is a form of critical study, 00:11:19.350 --> 00:11:21.900 align:middle line:84% then I can put drawings in it, I can wander, 00:11:21.900 --> 00:11:24.490 align:middle line:84% and I can do what I'm going to read you all here, 00:11:24.490 --> 00:11:26.130 align:middle line:84% the last two pieces and I'll be done. 00:11:26.130 --> 00:11:32.910 align:middle line:84% So since I drew the cell, the image of the cell 00:11:32.910 --> 00:11:35.100 align:middle line:84% with the parts in it, this would be 00:11:35.100 --> 00:11:40.260 align:middle line:84% me sort of like imagining the link between the actual cell, 00:11:40.260 --> 00:11:45.010 align:middle line:84% the biological cell, and then his cell and the middle ground. 00:11:45.010 --> 00:11:47.190 align:middle line:90% So what was the role of chance? 00:11:47.190 --> 00:11:49.860 align:middle line:84% The nucleolus parts of the cell is 00:11:49.860 --> 00:11:53.190 align:middle line:84% an essential, inexplicable, unadulterated self. 00:11:53.190 --> 00:11:56.100 align:middle line:84% The lover personality, the trickster personality, 00:11:56.100 --> 00:11:59.385 align:middle line:84% the intuitive personality, the multiple true names in a cell-- 00:11:59.385 --> 00:12:01.260 align:middle line:84% remember, he's taped to the wall of his cell, 00:12:01.260 --> 00:12:03.420 align:middle line:84% so I'm really thinking about Etheridge Knight. 00:12:03.420 --> 00:12:07.440 align:middle line:84% The nucleus is a sphere of identity-- southerner, black, 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:09.780 align:middle line:90% son, male, convict, poet-- 00:12:09.780 --> 00:12:12.030 align:middle line:90% around the nucleolus. 00:12:12.030 --> 00:12:16.830 align:middle line:84% Identity drifts over the mind and body in a cell. 00:12:16.830 --> 00:12:17.760 align:middle line:90% Loves. 00:12:17.760 --> 00:12:21.750 align:middle line:84% Loves resemble lightning rods, asymmetrical tracks, 00:12:21.750 --> 00:12:26.310 align:middle line:84% slanted crosses, bone tired bones, prostate limbs, 00:12:26.310 --> 00:12:29.100 align:middle line:84% as in the old footpath of a first love, 00:12:29.100 --> 00:12:32.190 align:middle line:84% the barely discernible trail of a crush. 00:12:32.190 --> 00:12:34.950 align:middle line:84% It is easier to love without speaking. 00:12:34.950 --> 00:12:38.830 align:middle line:84% Orpheus dragged long silences around with him. 00:12:38.830 --> 00:12:41.470 align:middle line:84% When I traveled to the smallest part of my body, 00:12:41.470 --> 00:12:44.650 align:middle line:90% I found cytoplasmic space. 00:12:44.650 --> 00:12:47.170 align:middle line:90% I am often a stranger to myself. 00:12:47.170 --> 00:12:49.840 align:middle line:84% It is in the restless wrestling to make a song out 00:12:49.840 --> 00:12:53.860 align:middle line:84% of despair that hope begins to wheel and vibrate. 00:12:53.860 --> 00:12:57.280 align:middle line:84% Family is a vast system of interconnected members 00:12:57.280 --> 00:13:01.540 align:middle line:84% in folded and convoluted sacks of nurture and/or trouble, 00:13:01.540 --> 00:13:04.480 align:middle line:90% located in the cell's cytoplasm. 00:13:04.480 --> 00:13:09.340 align:middle line:84% Some family smoothly transports nostalgia, hope, esteem, love, 00:13:09.340 --> 00:13:11.830 align:middle line:84% and other positive materials through the cell. 00:13:11.830 --> 00:13:14.590 align:middle line:84% Some family is a hive, a rough patch, 00:13:14.590 --> 00:13:17.530 align:middle line:84% an outbreak that gives the appearance of several chips 00:13:17.530 --> 00:13:19.240 align:middle line:90% on the shoulder. 00:13:19.240 --> 00:13:22.840 align:middle line:84% A flattened, layered sac-like sack of fears 00:13:22.840 --> 00:13:25.180 align:middle line:90% hover near the heart of things. 00:13:25.180 --> 00:13:28.120 align:middle line:84% Fuck-ups move fear to other regions. 00:13:28.120 --> 00:13:31.870 align:middle line:84% Regarding love and addiction, it's not the highs that last. 00:13:31.870 --> 00:13:34.840 align:middle line:84% It's that one wants them to end so-- 00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:35.530 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:13:35.530 --> 00:13:38.290 align:middle line:90% It's not the highs that last. 00:13:38.290 --> 00:13:41.200 align:middle line:84% It's that one wants them to end, so nostalgia 00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:43.120 align:middle line:90% can take root in the future. 00:13:43.120 --> 00:13:46.630 align:middle line:84% Memory is more enduring than the event. 00:13:46.630 --> 00:13:49.390 align:middle line:84% The influence of teachers, the influence of friends 00:13:49.390 --> 00:13:52.150 align:middle line:84% who become teachers, as in relationships that convert 00:13:52.150 --> 00:13:54.490 align:middle line:84% the energy found in ignorance to the energy 00:13:54.490 --> 00:13:57.820 align:middle line:84% found in acquaintance, benevolence, fellowship. 00:13:57.820 --> 00:14:01.120 align:middle line:84% I'm still mulling the multiple dimensions of a cell. 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:02.800 align:middle line:90% Biology is chance. 00:14:02.800 --> 00:14:05.830 align:middle line:90% Biographer is chance. 00:14:05.830 --> 00:14:08.470 align:middle line:84% OK, so look, let me just get to this last part. 00:14:08.470 --> 00:14:09.970 align:middle line:84% This is what I want to read you all. 00:14:09.970 --> 00:14:11.140 align:middle line:84% So I just thought I would read some stuff 00:14:11.140 --> 00:14:12.015 align:middle line:90% I hadn't read before. 00:14:12.015 --> 00:14:15.932 align:middle line:90% 00:14:15.932 --> 00:14:17.140 align:middle line:90% So I don't know what this is. 00:14:17.140 --> 00:14:24.600 align:middle line:90% 00:14:24.600 --> 00:14:27.130 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:14:27.130 --> 00:14:29.712 align:middle line:90% Later, OK line 38. 00:14:29.712 --> 00:14:30.420 align:middle line:90% This is I and me. 00:14:30.420 --> 00:14:32.003 align:middle line:84% This is like the last line of the poem 00:14:32.003 --> 00:14:33.520 align:middle line:84% and I'm just sort of inside of it, 00:14:33.520 --> 00:14:36.880 align:middle line:84% riffing on some of the stuff that happens in that last line. 00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:40.190 align:middle line:84% As I said, if he later edited the poem, and that's just-- 00:14:40.190 --> 00:14:44.470 align:middle line:84% it's a blip in this piece, but I'll bring it up anyway 00:14:44.470 --> 00:14:46.090 align:middle line:84% to give you a sense of how I'm dealing 00:14:46.090 --> 00:14:47.770 align:middle line:84% with the book and the poem in general. 00:14:47.770 --> 00:14:51.340 align:middle line:84% So knowing that he had that poem, "Idea of Ancestry" 00:14:51.340 --> 00:14:54.400 align:middle line:84% and at one point, it was I have no sons 00:14:54.400 --> 00:14:55.900 align:middle line:84% to float in the space between and it 00:14:55.900 --> 00:14:58.810 align:middle line:84% became I have no children, so a little bit of mulling on that. 00:14:58.810 --> 00:15:01.270 align:middle line:84% And maybe that comes up in the more serious lectures 00:15:01.270 --> 00:15:04.480 align:middle line:84% and essays, but here, it's just a blip. 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:06.670 align:middle line:90% OK, I am me. 00:15:06.670 --> 00:15:10.150 align:middle line:84% Later, I dreamed I was on a night plane somewhere 00:15:10.150 --> 00:15:13.810 align:middle line:84% between the stars and Indianapolis. 00:15:13.810 --> 00:15:18.730 align:middle line:84% It was the crows' sky, ominous, black, sparkling. 00:15:18.730 --> 00:15:21.790 align:middle line:84% The man across the aisle, he sounded African, 00:15:21.790 --> 00:15:24.340 align:middle line:84% talked to a drowsy white woman about something 00:15:24.340 --> 00:15:28.960 align:middle line:84% that frequently featured the words Obama and oh mama. 00:15:28.960 --> 00:15:30.700 align:middle line:90% It was none of my business. 00:15:30.700 --> 00:15:32.710 align:middle line:84% When I looked down from the plane window, 00:15:32.710 --> 00:15:34.930 align:middle line:90% I saw cemetary shapes. 00:15:34.930 --> 00:15:37.210 align:middle line:84% The African said to the drowsy woman, 00:15:37.210 --> 00:15:39.370 align:middle line:84% it is not often an African marries 00:15:39.370 --> 00:15:42.140 align:middle line:84% an American white woman, but when it happens, 00:15:42.140 --> 00:15:44.830 align:middle line:84% our offspring rules the free world. 00:15:44.830 --> 00:15:48.100 align:middle line:84% I heard him say cost of living and yeah, 00:15:48.100 --> 00:15:52.220 align:middle line:84% and then thank you Lord when our plane touched the ground. 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:55.780 align:middle line:84% I visited Indianapolis once in my waking life. 00:15:55.780 --> 00:15:58.510 align:middle line:84% Nearly 15 years after Etheridge Knight's death 00:15:58.510 --> 00:16:01.510 align:middle line:84% I'd arrived with a satchel of books and questions, 00:16:01.510 --> 00:16:03.820 align:middle line:84% invited by Knight's sister Eunice 00:16:03.820 --> 00:16:06.910 align:middle line:84% to read my poems at the Etheridge Knight festival. 00:16:06.910 --> 00:16:09.130 align:middle line:84% When I spoke with her about her brother 00:16:09.130 --> 00:16:11.740 align:middle line:84% a few hours in a downtown hotel, she 00:16:11.740 --> 00:16:13.870 align:middle line:90% let me record our conversation. 00:16:13.870 --> 00:16:17.950 align:middle line:84% She wore a blue headscarf and shared her cigarettes with me. 00:16:17.950 --> 00:16:21.490 align:middle line:84% I'd already decided a biography needed to be written 00:16:21.490 --> 00:16:23.980 align:middle line:84% and that I would not be the one to write it. 00:16:23.980 --> 00:16:27.610 align:middle line:84% My aim was to gather stories some future biographer could 00:16:27.610 --> 00:16:29.190 align:middle line:90% use. 00:16:29.190 --> 00:16:34.050 align:middle line:84% I know I should not admit I was dreaming in the dream, vision 00:16:34.050 --> 00:16:35.760 align:middle line:90% being what it is in a dream. 00:16:35.760 --> 00:16:37.860 align:middle line:84% From a distance, I thought the driver 00:16:37.860 --> 00:16:39.750 align:middle line:84% awaiting me near the baggage claim 00:16:39.750 --> 00:16:42.120 align:middle line:84% was none other than three time NCAA 00:16:42.120 --> 00:16:44.940 align:middle line:90% championship coach Bobby Knight. 00:16:44.940 --> 00:16:47.190 align:middle line:84% When I saw-- when I neared, I saw 00:16:47.190 --> 00:16:51.060 align:middle line:84% he was actually James Whitcomb Riley, the 19th century 00:16:51.060 --> 00:16:54.690 align:middle line:84% poet from the age of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 00:16:54.690 --> 00:16:58.410 align:middle line:84% William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, something 00:16:58.410 --> 00:17:00.900 align:middle line:90% sumptuous in a three-word name. 00:17:00.900 --> 00:17:03.570 align:middle line:84% Old James Whitcomb Riley shrugged a bit, 00:17:03.570 --> 00:17:08.130 align:middle line:84% dragging my book-heavy bags to the trunk of a sedan, longer 00:17:08.130 --> 00:17:11.361 align:middle line:90% and blacker than a hearse. 00:17:11.361 --> 00:17:12.819 align:middle line:84% That shouldn't be, that should be-- 00:17:12.819 --> 00:17:14.319 align:middle line:84% is that right, James Whitcomb Riley? 00:17:14.319 --> 00:17:15.190 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:17:15.190 --> 00:17:20.050 align:middle line:84% During my first trip to Indy, Eunice told me Junior-- 00:17:20.050 --> 00:17:21.910 align:middle line:84% the family's nickname for Knight-- 00:17:21.910 --> 00:17:24.910 align:middle line:84% loved no one more than his mother. 00:17:24.910 --> 00:17:28.210 align:middle line:84% Eunice also took me to Crown Hill Cemetery. 00:17:28.210 --> 00:17:31.060 align:middle line:84% As the third or fourth largest cemetery in the country, 00:17:31.060 --> 00:17:33.760 align:middle line:84% it is a storehouse, a ghost archive, 00:17:33.760 --> 00:17:40.000 align:middle line:90% to more than 190,000 names. 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:41.650 align:middle line:84% This will help me get my bearing, 00:17:41.650 --> 00:17:43.720 align:middle line:84% Eunice said from the top of the hill, 00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:47.290 align:middle line:84% where the grand, white columns of James Whitcomb Riley's tomb 00:17:47.290 --> 00:17:50.080 align:middle line:84% loomed at the highest point in the city. 00:17:50.080 --> 00:17:52.660 align:middle line:84% She scanned the acres of headstones around us, 00:17:52.660 --> 00:17:55.330 align:middle line:84% adjusting her eyeglasses like binoculars 00:17:55.330 --> 00:17:58.420 align:middle line:84% as she looked for the vicinity of her brother's plot. 00:17:58.420 --> 00:18:00.910 align:middle line:84% She was happy, I think, that I had come, 00:18:00.910 --> 00:18:05.380 align:middle line:84% maybe the first to ever come asking her brother's story. 00:18:05.380 --> 00:18:08.200 align:middle line:84% My bags waited downhill in a pickup truck 00:18:08.200 --> 00:18:10.570 align:middle line:84% with an obese, melancholy white woman, 00:18:10.570 --> 00:18:12.280 align:middle line:90% Eunice's daughter-in-law. 00:18:12.280 --> 00:18:15.910 align:middle line:84% The plump, biracial girl in the black seat was Eunice's-- 00:18:15.910 --> 00:18:18.430 align:middle line:84% the plump, biracial girl in the backseat 00:18:18.430 --> 00:18:20.470 align:middle line:90% was Eunice's grandchild. 00:18:20.470 --> 00:18:23.470 align:middle line:84% Eunice called out plot numbers, swinging her cigarette 00:18:23.470 --> 00:18:26.830 align:middle line:84% in various directions like a smoldering conductor's wand, 00:18:26.830 --> 00:18:29.380 align:middle line:84% like she was casting some sort of spell. 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:32.920 align:middle line:84% And I could see she was proud to show me the Riley tomb. 00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:35.710 align:middle line:84% It's possible any out-of-towner visiting 00:18:35.710 --> 00:18:39.550 align:middle line:84% Crown Hill for the first time is shown the Hoosier poet's 00:18:39.550 --> 00:18:40.660 align:middle line:90% resting place. 00:18:40.660 --> 00:18:44.740 align:middle line:84% It's possible countless Indiana children have taken field trips 00:18:44.740 --> 00:18:50.290 align:middle line:84% to visit the Hoosier poet every year since his death in 1916. 00:18:50.290 --> 00:18:54.220 align:middle line:84% In the dream, I'd already decided a biography 00:18:54.220 --> 00:18:56.110 align:middle line:84% of Etheridge Knight needed to be written, 00:18:56.110 --> 00:18:59.230 align:middle line:84% and I flew to Indianapolis-- one of his haunts-- 00:18:59.230 --> 00:19:02.840 align:middle line:84% to begin it, I'd need to fact check everything 00:19:02.840 --> 00:19:06.920 align:middle line:84% about a man with a slippery relationship to facts. 00:19:06.920 --> 00:19:09.320 align:middle line:84% In the bags with me in the dream were 00:19:09.320 --> 00:19:13.220 align:middle line:84% flyers, files, outlines, interviews, books, journals, 00:19:13.220 --> 00:19:15.350 align:middle line:90% essays, and essay fragments. 00:19:15.350 --> 00:19:19.490 align:middle line:84% My life was always interrupted when I turned to Knight's life. 00:19:19.490 --> 00:19:22.010 align:middle line:84% Plus, whenever I thought about the specter 00:19:22.010 --> 00:19:24.980 align:middle line:84% of writing a biography, I was overcome with fear. 00:19:24.980 --> 00:19:26.930 align:middle line:90% Knnight was a good talker. 00:19:26.930 --> 00:19:30.800 align:middle line:84% I am a good talker, but I have no sense of plot, really, 00:19:30.800 --> 00:19:34.010 align:middle line:84% and I generally prefer imagination over research. 00:19:34.010 --> 00:19:36.180 align:middle line:84% I had not visited Kentucky, where 00:19:36.180 --> 00:19:38.660 align:middle line:84% a biographical plot featuring the young Knight 00:19:38.660 --> 00:19:42.530 align:middle line:84% as a runaway, a black Huck Finn, could be researched. 00:19:42.530 --> 00:19:46.100 align:middle line:84% I had not visited Korea, where a biographical plot featuring 00:19:46.100 --> 00:19:49.280 align:middle line:84% the young Knight as a 17-year-old soldier and runaway 00:19:49.280 --> 00:19:51.080 align:middle line:90% could be researched. 00:19:51.080 --> 00:19:53.990 align:middle line:84% I had not visited Indiana State Penitentiary, 00:19:53.990 --> 00:19:56.030 align:middle line:84% where a biographical plot featuring 00:19:56.030 --> 00:19:58.610 align:middle line:84% the young Knight as an inmate could be researched. 00:19:58.610 --> 00:20:00.260 align:middle line:84% And most significantly, I had not 00:20:00.260 --> 00:20:04.160 align:middle line:84% visited Corinth, Mississippi, where Knight had been born. 00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:07.520 align:middle line:84% The various plots of Corinth include in its namesake 00:20:07.520 --> 00:20:12.200 align:middle line:84% the Greek city-state destroyed by Rome in 146 BC. 00:20:12.200 --> 00:20:15.620 align:middle line:84% The plots of Corinth include the year 1854, 00:20:15.620 --> 00:20:17.870 align:middle line:84% when a railroad town development called 00:20:17.870 --> 00:20:20.750 align:middle line:90% Cross City was renamed Corinth. 00:20:20.750 --> 00:20:23.210 align:middle line:84% The plots of Corinth include the ghosts 00:20:23.210 --> 00:20:27.620 align:middle line:84% of the 473 rebel soldiers killed in the second battle of Corinth 00:20:27.620 --> 00:20:29.930 align:middle line:90% during the American Civil War. 00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:32.750 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, you can have no more than an idea 00:20:32.750 --> 00:20:34.310 align:middle line:90% of history's plots. 00:20:34.310 --> 00:20:38.450 align:middle line:84% Plots are filled with dirt and antiquated clothes, 00:20:38.450 --> 00:20:43.080 align:middle line:84% the black landowners just out of earshot. 00:20:43.080 --> 00:20:44.390 align:middle line:90% What did this just do? 00:20:44.390 --> 00:20:46.730 align:middle line:84% The Black landowners just out of earshot 00:20:46.730 --> 00:20:49.760 align:middle line:84% of the trains's whistles and dereliction. 00:20:49.760 --> 00:20:51.950 align:middle line:84% The various plots of Corinth include 00:20:51.950 --> 00:20:54.260 align:middle line:84% Knight's mother, Belzora, breathing 00:20:54.260 --> 00:20:57.920 align:middle line:84% the wide, free, green air at the turn of the century. 00:20:57.920 --> 00:21:00.950 align:middle line:84% My mother always wore shoes, Eunice told me. 00:21:00.950 --> 00:21:02.840 align:middle line:84% They raised everything they needed. 00:21:02.840 --> 00:21:06.470 align:middle line:84% Even the whites called her grandfather Mr. Cozart. 00:21:06.470 --> 00:21:08.480 align:middle line:84% This, Eunice said, was the privilege 00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:12.200 align:middle line:84% her brother was born into in 1931, the privilege he'd 00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:15.350 align:middle line:90% wanted all his life, she says. 00:21:15.350 --> 00:21:17.870 align:middle line:84% On the back of Etheridge Knights, Born of a Woman: 00:21:17.870 --> 00:21:19.760 align:middle line:84% New and Selected Poems, published 00:21:19.760 --> 00:21:21.980 align:middle line:84% on Houghton Mifflin in 1980, Knight 00:21:21.980 --> 00:21:24.770 align:middle line:84% grins from a porch in Mississippi. 00:21:24.770 --> 00:21:29.330 align:middle line:84% Gray-haired Mr. Pink Knight and Etheridge Knight wear overalls. 00:21:29.330 --> 00:21:32.510 align:middle line:84% Mr. Pink Knight stoops behind three young girls 00:21:32.510 --> 00:21:34.640 align:middle line:90% peering at the camera. 00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:36.560 align:middle line:84% Etheridge Knight seems to be looking off, 00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:39.770 align:middle line:84% across the field perhaps, caught in mid-sentence. 00:21:39.770 --> 00:21:42.920 align:middle line:84% The light reflected in the wide lenses of his eyeglasses 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:46.790 align:middle line:84% make his eyes two white bursts below his newsboy cap. 00:21:46.790 --> 00:21:49.250 align:middle line:84% The three girls pose exactly as they would have 00:21:49.250 --> 00:21:51.380 align:middle line:90% for an elementary school photo. 00:21:51.380 --> 00:21:53.810 align:middle line:84% Mr. Pink Knight seems to be rising 00:21:53.810 --> 00:21:55.910 align:middle line:90% from the porch behind him. 00:21:55.910 --> 00:21:58.040 align:middle line:84% A woman stands over his shoulder, 00:21:58.040 --> 00:22:00.410 align:middle line:84% peering down from the porch with the hand resting 00:22:00.410 --> 00:22:05.000 align:middle line:84% on her rotund waist, a pose that is both maternal and amused. 00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:08.060 align:middle line:84% A few feet behind her, a second, much thinner woman 00:22:08.060 --> 00:22:09.740 align:middle line:90% stands with her arms crossed. 00:22:09.740 --> 00:22:12.080 align:middle line:84% Her face is washed out by the shadows. 00:22:12.080 --> 00:22:14.480 align:middle line:84% She seems headless, apparitional, 00:22:14.480 --> 00:22:17.000 align:middle line:84% a slightly perturbed ghost in a white dress. 00:22:17.000 --> 00:22:19.430 align:middle line:84% We've got ghost theme going tonight. 00:22:19.430 --> 00:22:21.860 align:middle line:84% They are, perhaps, the two aunts Knight mentions 00:22:21.860 --> 00:22:24.110 align:middle line:90% in "The Idea of Ancestry." 00:22:24.110 --> 00:22:26.240 align:middle line:84% The photo was taken by Ellen Slack. 00:22:26.240 --> 00:22:29.630 align:middle line:84% In the 1988 issue of Painted Bride Quarterly dedicated 00:22:29.630 --> 00:22:32.060 align:middle line:84% to Knight, Slack writes Etheridge 00:22:32.060 --> 00:22:35.810 align:middle line:84% had heard that his relative Pink Knight was staying with family, 00:22:35.810 --> 00:22:37.940 align:middle line:84% and he wanted me to take some photographs. 00:22:37.940 --> 00:22:40.340 align:middle line:84% No birth records existed for Pink Knight, 00:22:40.340 --> 00:22:44.420 align:middle line:84% but by all accounts, he had to be at least 110 years old, 00:22:44.420 --> 00:22:46.610 align:middle line:84% meaning he was born in Mississippi shortly 00:22:46.610 --> 00:22:48.440 align:middle line:90% after the Civil War. 00:22:48.440 --> 00:22:50.060 align:middle line:84% This is what the photographer said. 00:22:50.060 --> 00:22:53.570 align:middle line:84% Knight wanted to record the plots and plights of his oldest 00:22:53.570 --> 00:22:55.130 align:middle line:90% living ancestor. 00:22:55.130 --> 00:22:58.280 align:middle line:84% He wanted more than an idea of ancestry. 00:22:58.280 --> 00:23:01.430 align:middle line:84% A Corinth Mississippi plot includes Etheridge Knight 00:23:01.430 --> 00:23:03.570 align:middle line:90% smiling in the photograph. 00:23:03.570 --> 00:23:07.520 align:middle line:84% I thought once a life was simply an accumulation of details. 00:23:07.520 --> 00:23:09.980 align:middle line:90% Maybe, I think this even now. 00:23:09.980 --> 00:23:12.860 align:middle line:84% Knight was often blowing smoke over details, 00:23:12.860 --> 00:23:15.200 align:middle line:84% and to write a biography, one would 00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:18.620 align:middle line:84% need to gather all that smoke into something solid, something 00:23:18.620 --> 00:23:22.340 align:middle line:84% you could hold and turn over in your hands. 00:23:22.340 --> 00:23:26.990 align:middle line:84% Time, patience, and discipline are irrelevant in a dream. 00:23:26.990 --> 00:23:29.150 align:middle line:84% I should not admit it was a dream. 00:23:29.150 --> 00:23:31.970 align:middle line:84% I reached the same hotel I stayed at to interview 00:23:31.970 --> 00:23:33.740 align:middle line:90% Eunice years before. 00:23:33.740 --> 00:23:36.620 align:middle line:84% I arrived after midnight with a satchel of books, 00:23:36.620 --> 00:23:39.590 align:middle line:84% seeking stories of the poet's life on Earth. 00:23:39.590 --> 00:23:41.180 align:middle line:90% I did not sleep. 00:23:41.180 --> 00:23:44.270 align:middle line:84% There was an old but functional typewriter in my room. 00:23:44.270 --> 00:23:48.900 align:middle line:84% The housekeeper said each room had paper and a typewriter. 00:23:48.900 --> 00:23:52.040 align:middle line:84% We like to call them pianos, she told me. 00:23:52.040 --> 00:23:55.970 align:middle line:84% The first time I stayed there when I was awake and real, 00:23:55.970 --> 00:23:57.860 align:middle line:84% Eunice said the hotel had been the haunt 00:23:57.860 --> 00:24:01.520 align:middle line:84% for many Black writers, including Mari Evans. 00:24:01.520 --> 00:24:07.190 align:middle line:84% Mari Evans, born the summer of 1923, author of several poetry 00:24:07.190 --> 00:24:10.370 align:middle line:84% books, children books and plays, was and is still 00:24:10.370 --> 00:24:11.870 align:middle line:90% alive somewhere in Indianapolis. 00:24:11.870 --> 00:24:16.895 align:middle line:84% I actually think she died last year, you know, at like 500. 00:24:16.895 --> 00:24:18.020 align:middle line:90% And really, like, recently. 00:24:18.020 --> 00:24:22.940 align:middle line:84% As further evidence of my lousy research biographer skills, 00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:24.230 align:middle line:90% I didn't meet her. 00:24:24.230 --> 00:24:26.510 align:middle line:84% But in a dream, she worked the desk 00:24:26.510 --> 00:24:29.090 align:middle line:84% wearing an ornate watercolor dress 00:24:29.090 --> 00:24:31.280 align:middle line:84% while reciting her best known poem, 00:24:31.280 --> 00:24:33.620 align:middle line:84% "I am a Black Woman" to anyone who 00:24:33.620 --> 00:24:36.830 align:middle line:84% looked like the wrong sort of hotel guest, 00:24:36.830 --> 00:24:39.740 align:middle line:84% anyone who was used to talking more than listening, 00:24:39.740 --> 00:24:41.930 align:middle line:84% anyone who did not look you in the eye 00:24:41.930 --> 00:24:43.910 align:middle line:90% when looking you in the face. 00:24:43.910 --> 00:24:46.580 align:middle line:84% She did not hand me my room key until the poem's 00:24:46.580 --> 00:24:48.740 align:middle line:84% dramatic ending, beyond all-- this 00:24:48.740 --> 00:24:51.320 align:middle line:84% is her poem-- beyond all definitions still, 00:24:51.320 --> 00:24:54.320 align:middle line:84% defying space and time and circumstance, assailed, 00:24:54.320 --> 00:24:59.090 align:middle line:84% impervious, indestructible, look on me and be renewed. 00:24:59.090 --> 00:25:00.680 align:middle line:90% I did not sleep. 00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:03.560 align:middle line:84% Each time I closed my door or eyes, 00:25:03.560 --> 00:25:06.920 align:middle line:84% someone showed up to offer a tale about Knight. 00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:09.800 align:middle line:84% A woman who looked no more than 25 years old 00:25:09.800 --> 00:25:14.420 align:middle line:84% wanted to tell me about the day she spent with Knight in 1956. 00:25:14.420 --> 00:25:17.030 align:middle line:84% One of my own teachers, Ed Ochester, 00:25:17.030 --> 00:25:20.150 align:middle line:84% appeared with the tale of big Beefeater bottles 00:25:20.150 --> 00:25:22.940 align:middle line:84% and a whole pig roasting in a spit at the wake 00:25:22.940 --> 00:25:24.680 align:middle line:90% Knight held for himself. 00:25:24.680 --> 00:25:27.680 align:middle line:84% Poets Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, Christopher Gilbert 00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:29.600 align:middle line:90% showed up to share poems. 00:25:29.600 --> 00:25:32.210 align:middle line:84% Jeanne D'Amico stopped by to tell me 00:25:32.210 --> 00:25:35.180 align:middle line:84% a version of the story she had told me when I interviewed her 00:25:35.180 --> 00:25:36.710 align:middle line:90% in my waking life. 00:25:36.710 --> 00:25:38.780 align:middle line:90% Knight's leg had been-- 00:25:38.780 --> 00:25:42.530 align:middle line:84% Knight's leg was amputated after a car wreck in Philadelphia 00:25:42.530 --> 00:25:44.450 align:middle line:90% in 1988. 00:25:44.450 --> 00:25:47.840 align:middle line:84% In the dream, she told me the tracks and scars 00:25:47.840 --> 00:25:51.560 align:middle line:84% glowed like half-lit embers in the darkness of his body. 00:25:51.560 --> 00:25:54.650 align:middle line:84% His face was swollen and more than half dead, 00:25:54.650 --> 00:25:58.490 align:middle line:84% but he still had that voice, like burlap soaked in molasses. 00:25:58.490 --> 00:26:01.370 align:middle line:84% She handed me a small, silver ring, 00:26:01.370 --> 00:26:04.490 align:middle line:84% and made me promise to place it on the shy, black pinky 00:26:04.490 --> 00:26:08.860 align:middle line:84% toe of Knight's remaining foot when I met him. 00:26:08.860 --> 00:26:12.220 align:middle line:84% An old man named Houndmouth promised 00:26:12.220 --> 00:26:16.210 align:middle line:84% I'd be taken to Knight after undertaking a special task. 00:26:16.210 --> 00:26:19.420 align:middle line:84% Houndmouth had spent years gathering the piles 00:26:19.420 --> 00:26:21.670 align:middle line:90% of butts left by Etheridge. 00:26:21.670 --> 00:26:24.580 align:middle line:84% He organized them into cigarette, into categories. 00:26:24.580 --> 00:26:26.950 align:middle line:84% Cigarettes smoked in prison, cigarettes 00:26:26.950 --> 00:26:30.190 align:middle line:84% smoked after making love, cigarettes smoked in Memphis 00:26:30.190 --> 00:26:33.940 align:middle line:84% and Massachusetts and Minnesota, cigarettes smashed under boots, 00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:36.250 align:middle line:90% cigarettes tossed in rivers. 00:26:36.250 --> 00:26:38.680 align:middle line:84% He had no research to prove they should 00:26:38.680 --> 00:26:40.240 align:middle line:90% have been ordered in this way. 00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:43.000 align:middle line:84% He just held each button to his nose or to the light 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:46.720 align:middle line:84% and then let his own intuition decide its place. 00:26:46.720 --> 00:26:50.950 align:middle line:84% My task was to match specific butts to specific poems. 00:26:50.950 --> 00:26:54.010 align:middle line:84% I sat with him for what felt like half an eternity just 00:26:54.010 --> 00:26:56.450 align:middle line:84% looking at it all on my first visit. 00:26:56.450 --> 00:26:58.450 align:middle line:84% I had a little tape recorder with me. 00:26:58.450 --> 00:27:01.000 align:middle line:84% I ate a little corner of Houndmouth's ham and cheese 00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:01.930 align:middle line:90% sandwich. 00:27:01.930 --> 00:27:06.000 align:middle line:84% I sat twice as long the next day. 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:08.850 align:middle line:84% Eventually, Houndmouth gave up on me. 00:27:08.850 --> 00:27:11.460 align:middle line:84% In the dream, he confessed Knight was still 00:27:11.460 --> 00:27:14.370 align:middle line:84% alive and incarcerated in an assisted living 00:27:14.370 --> 00:27:16.260 align:middle line:90% facility across town. 00:27:16.260 --> 00:27:20.220 align:middle line:84% We came to a security guard at a small desk in the building's 00:27:20.220 --> 00:27:21.840 align:middle line:90% cavernous lounge. 00:27:21.840 --> 00:27:25.890 align:middle line:84% When Houndmouth told me the guard was Knight's only son, 00:27:25.890 --> 00:27:28.950 align:middle line:84% Isaac Bushie Blackburn Knight, I blurted, 00:27:28.950 --> 00:27:33.000 align:middle line:84% almost without thinking, I like sons better than children. 00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:35.730 align:middle line:84% Yeah, me too, he said, looking down. 00:27:35.730 --> 00:27:38.850 align:middle line:84% During my waking visit in Indianapolis, 00:27:38.850 --> 00:27:42.150 align:middle line:84% Eunice told me someone casually suggested children 00:27:42.150 --> 00:27:44.070 align:middle line:84% for the end of "Idea of Ancestry" 00:27:44.070 --> 00:27:47.500 align:middle line:84% so Knight had changed it from sons to children. 00:27:47.500 --> 00:27:50.500 align:middle line:84% Sons is not the same as children. 00:27:50.500 --> 00:27:54.880 align:middle line:84% Sons are not soft, amorphous offspring. 00:27:54.880 --> 00:27:58.540 align:middle line:84% Sons are born with knives or pistols, pissing and pointing, 00:27:58.540 --> 00:28:00.340 align:middle line:90% because they are sons. 00:28:00.340 --> 00:28:03.280 align:middle line:84% God only had sons, according to Christians. 00:28:03.280 --> 00:28:05.830 align:middle line:84% That tells you some of the trouble with God. 00:28:05.830 --> 00:28:08.590 align:middle line:90% Sons are both old and brand new. 00:28:08.590 --> 00:28:10.540 align:middle line:90% Sons are miniature men. 00:28:10.540 --> 00:28:13.300 align:middle line:84% But children are as generic as people, 00:28:13.300 --> 00:28:16.780 align:middle line:84% sometimes horribly innocent, sometimes horribly attractive, 00:28:16.780 --> 00:28:18.310 align:middle line:90% sometimes horrible. 00:28:18.310 --> 00:28:20.560 align:middle line:90% Children have no gender. 00:28:20.560 --> 00:28:22.600 align:middle line:84% It is false, but widely believed, 00:28:22.600 --> 00:28:24.290 align:middle line:90% children are universal. 00:28:24.290 --> 00:28:27.280 align:middle line:84% It is only true children are universal if universal 00:28:27.280 --> 00:28:28.840 align:middle line:90% means full of space. 00:28:28.840 --> 00:28:32.380 align:middle line:84% Space is expansive, impermanent, and mysterious. 00:28:32.380 --> 00:28:35.500 align:middle line:84% Knight lived with children who were not his children. 00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:38.320 align:middle line:84% They had names and nicknames before he met them. 00:28:38.320 --> 00:28:40.990 align:middle line:84% But there is little on record about the children 00:28:40.990 --> 00:28:43.360 align:middle line:84% because they are thought of as children. 00:28:43.360 --> 00:28:46.690 align:middle line:84% Children become invisible, because the adults are looking 00:28:46.690 --> 00:28:49.240 align:middle line:84% elsewhere, but also because the children do not 00:28:49.240 --> 00:28:50.770 align:middle line:90% wish to be seen. 00:28:50.770 --> 00:28:54.310 align:middle line:84% They were sons before they were children in the poem "The Idea 00:28:54.310 --> 00:28:55.990 align:middle line:90% of Ancestry." 00:28:55.990 --> 00:28:58.990 align:middle line:84% Farmers, soldiers, preachers wearing Knight's name 00:28:58.990 --> 00:29:00.610 align:middle line:90% with the princely carriage. 00:29:00.610 --> 00:29:03.160 align:middle line:84% He dreamed of them inside that cell. 00:29:03.160 --> 00:29:06.370 align:middle line:84% He sat in the dark with the premonition of the damage that 00:29:06.370 --> 00:29:08.020 align:middle line:90% would befall his sons. 00:29:08.020 --> 00:29:11.020 align:middle line:84% He would have to abandon them to make them stronger. 00:29:11.020 --> 00:29:14.600 align:middle line:84% He would have to change them to children. 00:29:14.600 --> 00:29:17.900 align:middle line:84% The suggestion to change the line from I have no sons to I 00:29:17.900 --> 00:29:20.810 align:middle line:84% have no children came before Knight had a son, 00:29:20.810 --> 00:29:24.860 align:middle line:84% but now, here was his son, half black, half white, 00:29:24.860 --> 00:29:27.290 align:middle line:84% a lobby guard with the goatee thick and woolly 00:29:27.290 --> 00:29:28.910 align:middle line:90% as a surgical mask. 00:29:28.910 --> 00:29:31.440 align:middle line:90% I could not see his face. 00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:34.620 align:middle line:84% In my waking life, I'd wondered often about the boy's 00:29:34.620 --> 00:29:36.540 align:middle line:90% appearance and whereabouts. 00:29:36.540 --> 00:29:38.970 align:middle line:84% Did he have his mother's mouth and nose? 00:29:38.970 --> 00:29:40.500 align:middle line:90% Did he have siblings? 00:29:40.500 --> 00:29:43.320 align:middle line:84% Did he imagine his father's ghost was with him 00:29:43.320 --> 00:29:45.480 align:middle line:84% when he graduated from high school or college 00:29:45.480 --> 00:29:48.960 align:middle line:84% or is admitted to an emergency room for a broken bone? 00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:51.360 align:middle line:84% Did he know he was the son of a poet? 00:29:51.360 --> 00:29:53.610 align:middle line:84% Had he grown up reading his father's books? 00:29:53.610 --> 00:29:55.920 align:middle line:84% Had he shunned the books stacked tall and smelling 00:29:55.920 --> 00:29:57.960 align:middle line:90% of difficulty and tobacco? 00:29:57.960 --> 00:30:01.770 align:middle line:84% Had the son seen the photograph of his father in the half lotus 00:30:01.770 --> 00:30:06.690 align:middle line:84% tree yoga pose in the Las Vegas tuxedo shop before the 1987 00:30:06.690 --> 00:30:07.860 align:middle line:90% American Book Awards. 00:30:07.860 --> 00:30:10.320 align:middle line:84% So those pictures that I talk about are in here. 00:30:10.320 --> 00:30:14.460 align:middle line:84% Did the son possess photographs of his father's dark sleeping 00:30:14.460 --> 00:30:17.490 align:middle line:84% head and unzipped, oblivious mouth? 00:30:17.490 --> 00:30:20.490 align:middle line:84% Did the son rage and weep in his sleep? 00:30:20.490 --> 00:30:23.310 align:middle line:84% He'd be a man now, with children of his own, 00:30:23.310 --> 00:30:27.030 align:middle line:84% but I had done none of the research to find him. 00:30:27.030 --> 00:30:30.720 align:middle line:84% In the dream, the watchman was Knight's only son, 00:30:30.720 --> 00:30:33.690 align:middle line:90% Isaac Bushie Blackburn Knight. 00:30:33.690 --> 00:30:35.910 align:middle line:90% He nodded and let me pass. 00:30:35.910 --> 00:30:38.130 align:middle line:84% The building had more floors than there 00:30:38.130 --> 00:30:39.930 align:middle line:90% were stars over the city. 00:30:39.930 --> 00:30:42.600 align:middle line:84% The elevator ride up was so long that I 00:30:42.600 --> 00:30:45.390 align:middle line:84% dozed off and dreamed I was being driven 00:30:45.390 --> 00:30:47.580 align:middle line:90% north by my little brother. 00:30:47.580 --> 00:30:50.550 align:middle line:84% He was telling me a tale about a soldier who 00:30:50.550 --> 00:30:53.580 align:middle line:84% had given a testimony in church one Sunday. 00:30:53.580 --> 00:30:55.950 align:middle line:84% He'd been a prisoner of war, bound 00:30:55.950 --> 00:30:58.740 align:middle line:84% in the cellar of a farmer and his wife. 00:30:58.740 --> 00:31:05.670 align:middle line:84% I was saved by a big, black dog, a hound whose master had 00:31:05.670 --> 00:31:08.190 align:middle line:84% probably been killed in the war, the soldier 00:31:08.190 --> 00:31:10.530 align:middle line:84% told the dumbstruck congregation, 00:31:10.530 --> 00:31:12.780 align:middle line:90% my brother among them. 00:31:12.780 --> 00:31:15.060 align:middle line:84% For a moment, I thought the dog was 00:31:15.060 --> 00:31:18.450 align:middle line:84% no more than a lean shadow in the corner, a darkness 00:31:18.450 --> 00:31:21.900 align:middle line:84% slipping over the antiques and contraptions of my captors. 00:31:21.900 --> 00:31:25.980 align:middle line:84% But then, the dog pulled the rope from my wrist and ankles. 00:31:25.980 --> 00:31:29.010 align:middle line:84% When he touched his cool muzzle to my jaw, 00:31:29.010 --> 00:31:31.420 align:middle line:84% I knew he wished to lead me away. 00:31:31.420 --> 00:31:33.930 align:middle line:84% I crawled through the cellar window behind him 00:31:33.930 --> 00:31:36.330 align:middle line:90% and then tried to rise. 00:31:36.330 --> 00:31:37.350 align:middle line:90% And I'm sorry-- 00:31:37.350 --> 00:31:41.550 align:middle line:84% I crawled through the cellar window behind him and then, 00:31:41.550 --> 00:31:44.940 align:middle line:84% too tired to rise, followed on my hands and knees 00:31:44.940 --> 00:31:48.330 align:middle line:84% to the fields and into the deep, dark forest. 00:31:48.330 --> 00:31:50.460 align:middle line:84% Had anyone seen me, they would have thought 00:31:50.460 --> 00:31:53.580 align:middle line:90% a dog was following a dog. 00:31:53.580 --> 00:31:56.340 align:middle line:84% We were between borders on a mountain highway 00:31:56.340 --> 00:31:58.590 align:middle line:84% when my brother told me this story. 00:31:58.590 --> 00:32:03.000 align:middle line:84% Before this trip, I had not been alone with him for more-- 00:32:03.000 --> 00:32:05.640 align:middle line:84% before this trip, I had not been alone with him 00:32:05.640 --> 00:32:08.250 align:middle line:84% for that long since our childhood. 00:32:08.250 --> 00:32:11.700 align:middle line:84% In the dream, there was a black train in the distance. 00:32:11.700 --> 00:32:14.670 align:middle line:84% I pray for you, my brother said to me. 00:32:14.670 --> 00:32:17.310 align:middle line:84% After a year of marriage, he had changed 00:32:17.310 --> 00:32:20.940 align:middle line:84% as a man bound by love or grief is bound to change. 00:32:20.940 --> 00:32:23.770 align:middle line:84% Their first child had not survived. 00:32:23.770 --> 00:32:27.330 align:middle line:84% He had laid his sorrows down and put on a new name. 00:32:27.330 --> 00:32:30.610 align:middle line:84% Sundays now, the preacher came to dine. 00:32:30.610 --> 00:32:32.950 align:middle line:90% I wanted to ask a few questions. 00:32:32.950 --> 00:32:36.070 align:middle line:84% White fog covered the nose of the car. 00:32:36.070 --> 00:32:38.260 align:middle line:84% I was falling into the kind of sleep 00:32:38.260 --> 00:32:40.480 align:middle line:90% that requires no darkness. 00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:44.050 align:middle line:84% He reached our church with the look that reminded me of you, 00:32:44.050 --> 00:32:46.570 align:middle line:84% my brother said to me in the dream. 00:32:46.570 --> 00:32:50.350 align:middle line:84% We thought he'd come that day to give thanks to God, 00:32:50.350 --> 00:32:54.820 align:middle line:84% but he'd only come to ask, who among us was his kin. 00:32:54.820 --> 00:32:56.500 align:middle line:90% That's it, y'all. 00:32:56.500 --> 00:32:57.000 align:middle line:90%