WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.922 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:02.922 --> 00:00:03.900 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.900 --> 00:00:06.675 align:middle line:84% That was one of the best introductions ever-- 00:00:06.675 --> 00:00:08.650 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:08.650 --> 00:00:09.150 align:middle line:90% --ever-- 00:00:09.150 --> 00:00:10.330 align:middle line:90% Yay. 00:00:10.330 --> 00:00:10.830 align:middle line:90% --ever. 00:00:10.830 --> 00:00:13.410 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:13.410 --> 00:00:15.930 align:middle line:84% And not because it was about me, but because it 00:00:15.930 --> 00:00:17.400 align:middle line:90% was really, really good. 00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:20.190 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Kou. 00:00:20.190 --> 00:00:21.900 align:middle line:84% So I wasn't going to read anything 00:00:21.900 --> 00:00:23.820 align:middle line:90% but what's in the new book. 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:28.152 align:middle line:84% But I'll read a new poem because I ran into another student 00:00:28.152 --> 00:00:28.860 align:middle line:90% and friend today. 00:00:28.860 --> 00:00:32.549 align:middle line:84% And he asked about maybe reading new poems, 00:00:32.549 --> 00:00:33.690 align:middle line:90% so he changed my mind. 00:00:33.690 --> 00:00:36.420 align:middle line:90% 00:00:36.420 --> 00:00:38.165 align:middle line:90% I'll just read the one new poem. 00:00:38.165 --> 00:00:42.030 align:middle line:84% It makes a reference to Proud Boys, NoFap. 00:00:42.030 --> 00:00:45.720 align:middle line:84% Proud Boys, NoFap-- "no fap" is not masturbating. 00:00:45.720 --> 00:00:49.980 align:middle line:84% Proud Boys is a contemporary masculinity movement 00:00:49.980 --> 00:00:53.370 align:middle line:84% in this country that's centered around not masturbating. 00:00:53.370 --> 00:00:57.630 align:middle line:84% Many of its adherents do not masturbate in order 00:00:57.630 --> 00:01:02.400 align:middle line:84% that they may have relations with actual women. 00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:07.080 align:middle line:84% Many of those folks are driven by an ideology 00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:12.510 align:middle line:84% to marry and to establish a nuclear family as a building 00:01:12.510 --> 00:01:16.680 align:middle line:84% block for the nation, and is a corrective to what they see 00:01:16.680 --> 00:01:20.010 align:middle line:90% as the excesses of feminism. 00:01:20.010 --> 00:01:23.040 align:middle line:90% So we got that, NoFap. 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:27.210 align:middle line:84% But the poem is for a good friend, a poet, 00:01:27.210 --> 00:01:30.060 align:middle line:84% Palestinian-American, Fady Joudah, 00:01:30.060 --> 00:01:33.570 align:middle line:84% who can't seem to get a review in The New York Times, 00:01:33.570 --> 00:01:37.650 align:middle line:84% though many, many wonderful writers petitioned The New York 00:01:37.650 --> 00:01:41.010 align:middle line:84% Times to be able to review his work there. 00:01:41.010 --> 00:01:42.780 align:middle line:90% And, you know, who cares? 00:01:42.780 --> 00:01:46.260 align:middle line:84% But The New York Times is only one symptom of the way 00:01:46.260 --> 00:01:49.740 align:middle line:84% that I think Arabs and Palestinians 00:01:49.740 --> 00:01:54.460 align:middle line:84% and Palestinian-Americans are particularly disposable. 00:01:54.460 --> 00:01:57.570 align:middle line:84% And the poem is called "Scale Up for Fady Joudah." 00:01:57.570 --> 00:01:58.932 align:middle line:90% Can you speak up? 00:01:58.932 --> 00:02:01.660 align:middle line:90% 00:02:01.660 --> 00:02:04.000 align:middle line:90% I sure can. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:06.220 align:middle line:90% How's that? 00:02:06.220 --> 00:02:08.139 align:middle line:84% So the poem is called "Scale Up--" 00:02:08.139 --> 00:02:11.350 align:middle line:84% but you got to tell me to tone it down if it gets too much-- 00:02:11.350 --> 00:02:14.410 align:middle line:90% "for Fady Joudah." 00:02:14.410 --> 00:02:17.680 align:middle line:84% "Dignified or bruised with looking 00:02:17.680 --> 00:02:24.280 align:middle line:84% at an inflatable swan in my pool large as our times 00:02:24.280 --> 00:02:29.210 align:middle line:90% dares all ancestors to scale up. 00:02:29.210 --> 00:02:33.890 align:middle line:84% Desert heat folding forwards and back into a fine point 00:02:33.890 --> 00:02:37.400 align:middle line:84% to hold onto their adulthood like it's 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:42.110 align:middle line:84% the thing from which most of time will run away. 00:02:42.110 --> 00:02:46.580 align:middle line:84% So much, ideas, tasks that don't really 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:53.210 align:middle line:84% ask for names to burn in some America's idea of presentness 00:02:53.210 --> 00:02:58.760 align:middle line:84% peeled, cheap rubies from my mother's ring loosely given 00:02:58.760 --> 00:03:00.630 align:middle line:90% in a pouch. 00:03:00.630 --> 00:03:04.880 align:middle line:84% It's dark in there, and I can see anything. 00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:09.590 align:middle line:84% Terribly enjoined to the [? bros ?] of first settlement, 00:03:09.590 --> 00:03:13.310 align:middle line:84% to all this every day still in their dedicated habit 00:03:13.310 --> 00:03:17.420 align:middle line:84% for one another, white men seem to love me. 00:03:17.420 --> 00:03:24.140 align:middle line:84% Ask about my American Sentence Shapes, Sweet Thing Proud, 00:03:24.140 --> 00:03:32.510 align:middle line:84% Boys, (No Fap), The, New York, Times, Bad, Examples, 00:03:32.510 --> 00:03:38.540 align:middle line:84% of transiting elements, now crush the buds in the old way. 00:03:38.540 --> 00:03:42.770 align:middle line:84% Through the boiling water, stretch the resin with a friend 00:03:42.770 --> 00:03:44.330 align:middle line:90% into thinning sheets. 00:03:44.330 --> 00:03:49.220 align:middle line:84% From our mouths and fingers comes a coating where 00:03:49.220 --> 00:03:53.150 align:middle line:84% to render one of the pretender gods, 00:03:53.150 --> 00:03:56.060 align:middle line:84% scaled to look like layers of depth 00:03:56.060 --> 00:03:59.990 align:middle line:84% the men heard they wanted to see. 00:03:59.990 --> 00:04:03.050 align:middle line:84% If our resin could rescue local wood 00:04:03.050 --> 00:04:06.920 align:middle line:84% into a high gloss forevering, exactly 00:04:06.920 --> 00:04:11.540 align:middle line:84% like "cultivate your power" brings news 00:04:11.540 --> 00:04:15.740 align:middle line:84% to each new theater of war resting in my nerve 00:04:15.740 --> 00:04:17.779 align:middle line:90% to write about it. 00:04:17.779 --> 00:04:22.700 align:middle line:84% Tear gas by way of a drone and the tin frame of my mirror 00:04:22.700 --> 00:04:25.850 align:middle line:90% wanting to be polished. 00:04:25.850 --> 00:04:32.630 align:middle line:84% Now say "enjoyable morning" to have left a nation's bed 00:04:32.630 --> 00:04:38.960 align:middle line:84% shining, basically eagle shaped tasting of a sugar 00:04:38.960 --> 00:04:41.810 align:middle line:90% that delays what's sweet. 00:04:41.810 --> 00:04:46.987 align:middle line:84% Sorry, not sorry for the dirt on my feet." 00:04:46.987 --> 00:04:47.487 align:middle line:90%