WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.700 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:01.700 --> 00:00:02.738 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Hannah. 00:00:02.738 --> 00:00:05.030 align:middle line:84% I've got to say that what you just said is a lot better 00:00:05.030 --> 00:00:06.322 align:middle line:90% than anything I'm going to say. 00:00:06.322 --> 00:00:08.720 align:middle line:90% That was [INAUDIBLE] thoughtful. 00:00:08.720 --> 00:00:09.860 align:middle line:90% Can everybody hear me? 00:00:09.860 --> 00:00:10.910 align:middle line:90% Is this all right? 00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:12.950 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to figure out how to not rattle 00:00:12.950 --> 00:00:14.720 align:middle line:90% the mic while I'm doing this. 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:18.800 align:middle line:84% Thank you, seriously, Hannah and Tyler and Janice 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:21.170 align:middle line:84% and her amazing crew of poet scholars 00:00:21.170 --> 00:00:24.480 align:middle line:84% that I got to talk to today, and the Poetry Center community, 00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:24.980 align:middle line:90% in general. 00:00:24.980 --> 00:00:26.300 align:middle line:90% It's been great being here. 00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:28.008 align:middle line:84% I feel like I just want to stay, like I'm 00:00:28.008 --> 00:00:31.970 align:middle line:84% going to be that unwelcomed guest that just won't leave. 00:00:31.970 --> 00:00:34.160 align:middle line:90% It's really something. 00:00:34.160 --> 00:00:37.250 align:middle line:84% I decided that Tucson is awesome. 00:00:37.250 --> 00:00:40.940 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to read a piece that I 00:00:40.940 --> 00:00:43.640 align:middle line:90% wrote about spectacle first. 00:00:43.640 --> 00:00:47.480 align:middle line:84% And I rewrote it last night, so I really have to read it. 00:00:47.480 --> 00:00:50.690 align:middle line:84% And then I'm going to read some poems from The Big Smoke. 00:00:50.690 --> 00:00:53.270 align:middle line:84% And there are poems mixed into the thing that I wrote. 00:00:53.270 --> 00:00:56.312 align:middle line:84% And I called it "Self as Spectacle, Poem as Self" 00:00:56.312 --> 00:00:57.770 align:middle line:84% because I know everything like this 00:00:57.770 --> 00:00:59.570 align:middle line:90% has to have a title, right? 00:00:59.570 --> 00:01:01.921 align:middle line:90% Otherwise, it's not serious. 00:01:01.921 --> 00:01:04.129 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to apologize in advance that I'm reading 00:01:04.129 --> 00:01:05.793 align:middle line:90% this straight from the notes. 00:01:05.793 --> 00:01:07.460 align:middle line:84% "It's been really useful for me to think 00:01:07.460 --> 00:01:11.870 align:middle line:84% about the idea of spectacle, in general, and in poetry, 00:01:11.870 --> 00:01:12.920 align:middle line:90% specifically. 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:15.020 align:middle line:90% I'm from the Midwest, right? 00:01:15.020 --> 00:01:17.520 align:middle line:84% Representing for the great state of Indiana. 00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:19.770 align:middle line:84% And even though we moved quite a bit when I was a kid, 00:01:19.770 --> 00:01:22.700 align:middle line:84% I believe the modesty and openness of Indiana, 00:01:22.700 --> 00:01:25.095 align:middle line:84% or at least some parts of Indiana, 00:01:25.095 --> 00:01:26.720 align:middle line:84% have informed the way I approach things 00:01:26.720 --> 00:01:29.360 align:middle line:84% from various postures and the places that I take 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:31.280 align:middle line:84% and the worlds that I explore in my poems 00:01:31.280 --> 00:01:33.680 align:middle line:84% and the kind of code switching that I'm interested in, 00:01:33.680 --> 00:01:35.300 align:middle line:84% the way I choose my summer vegetables. 00:01:35.300 --> 00:01:38.780 align:middle line:84% All of this has to do with Indiana and where I'm from. 00:01:38.780 --> 00:01:41.450 align:middle line:84% Every gesture that I've picked up 00:01:41.450 --> 00:01:44.912 align:middle line:84% came from the geography in which I grew up. 00:01:44.912 --> 00:01:46.370 align:middle line:84% There was this thing that my mother 00:01:46.370 --> 00:01:49.160 align:middle line:84% used to say to us when we'd start acting out. 00:01:49.160 --> 00:01:52.437 align:middle line:84% She'd say, don't make a spectacle of yourself." 00:01:52.437 --> 00:01:54.020 align:middle line:84% Have you all heard that phrase before? 00:01:54.020 --> 00:01:54.690 align:middle line:90% [INTERPOSING VOICES] 00:01:54.690 --> 00:01:54.790 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:01:54.790 --> 00:01:57.243 align:middle line:84% See, because we were talking about it yesterday at lunch. 00:01:57.243 --> 00:01:58.910 align:middle line:84% And Janice said that she'd heard it, too. 00:01:58.910 --> 00:02:01.010 align:middle line:84% I thought it was something that my mom made up. 00:02:01.010 --> 00:02:04.280 align:middle line:84% I thought this was my mother being awesome because she's 00:02:04.280 --> 00:02:06.540 align:middle line:90% complicated like that. 00:02:06.540 --> 00:02:08.592 align:middle line:84% So I thought it maybe was Midwestern or regional, 00:02:08.592 --> 00:02:09.259 align:middle line:90% but I guess not. 00:02:09.259 --> 00:02:10.070 align:middle line:90% So never mind. 00:02:10.070 --> 00:02:12.980 align:middle line:90% I'll skip that part. 00:02:12.980 --> 00:02:15.440 align:middle line:84% "Don't make a spectacle of yourself, boy. 00:02:15.440 --> 00:02:16.970 align:middle line:90% That's what she would say to me. 00:02:16.970 --> 00:02:19.490 align:middle line:84% And it was her way of warning me to act right. 00:02:19.490 --> 00:02:21.200 align:middle line:84% And there was only one warning, right? 00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:23.480 align:middle line:84% You get one before you get snatched. 00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:26.150 align:middle line:84% And we head out of the store or the theater or the mall 00:02:26.150 --> 00:02:29.633 align:middle line:90% or wherever I decided to act up. 00:02:29.633 --> 00:02:32.050 align:middle line:84% I'm talking about my mother right now because every time I 00:02:32.050 --> 00:02:34.240 align:middle line:84% tried to write something about spectacle 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:36.280 align:middle line:84% in a theoretical or figurative way 00:02:36.280 --> 00:02:38.050 align:middle line:84% and tried to relate it to poetry, 00:02:38.050 --> 00:02:40.150 align:middle line:84% I could hear my mother admonishing me not 00:02:40.150 --> 00:02:42.683 align:middle line:90% to make a spectacle of myself. 00:02:42.683 --> 00:02:44.350 align:middle line:84% And that's when I realized that, for me, 00:02:44.350 --> 00:02:46.225 align:middle line:84% and certainly for the poems in The Big Smoke, 00:02:46.225 --> 00:02:48.760 align:middle line:84% which is what I'm going to read from mostly today, 00:02:48.760 --> 00:02:51.590 align:middle line:84% spectacle is a little moment of autobiography, 00:02:51.590 --> 00:02:53.680 align:middle line:84% biography, or communal understanding 00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:57.580 align:middle line:84% that is the catalyst for, and great motivator of, poetry. 00:02:57.580 --> 00:03:00.760 align:middle line:84% It's showing out, if people still remember that phrase, 00:03:00.760 --> 00:03:02.750 align:middle line:90% but not in a bad way. 00:03:02.750 --> 00:03:05.020 align:middle line:84% The poem itself is not a spectacle, necessarily, 00:03:05.020 --> 00:03:07.690 align:middle line:84% but it can act in a kind of personal spectacle 00:03:07.690 --> 00:03:10.590 align:middle line:90% my mother warned us against."