WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.050 align:middle line:90% "By the Way." 00:00:01.050 --> 00:00:08.320 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.320 --> 00:00:09.310 align:middle line:90% See that's part of it. 00:00:09.310 --> 00:00:11.590 align:middle line:90% Perfectly timed. 00:00:11.590 --> 00:00:14.410 align:middle line:90% "By the Way." 00:00:14.410 --> 00:00:16.329 align:middle line:84% I've been teaching a class called-- 00:00:16.329 --> 00:00:17.740 align:middle line:90% about poetry ancestors. 00:00:17.740 --> 00:00:20.920 align:middle line:84% It's a 400 level poetry workshop, 00:00:20.920 --> 00:00:24.040 align:middle line:84% but all our poems have ancestors. 00:00:24.040 --> 00:00:27.040 align:middle line:84% I have saxophone ancestors, we have ancestors, 00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:29.200 align:middle line:90% the clouds have ancestors. 00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:30.970 align:middle line:90% You know who came before. 00:00:30.970 --> 00:00:32.950 align:middle line:84% And so this has been a class about where 00:00:32.950 --> 00:00:36.400 align:middle line:84% they discover all the influences in their poetry, 00:00:36.400 --> 00:00:37.780 align:middle line:90% and the poems they like. 00:00:37.780 --> 00:00:41.830 align:middle line:84% And discover how it all works as a whole network. 00:00:41.830 --> 00:00:44.200 align:middle line:84% It's been really kind of exciting to develop it, 00:00:44.200 --> 00:00:46.900 align:middle line:84% because I'd only done it for a short little workshops, 00:00:46.900 --> 00:00:49.370 align:middle line:90% and we've done a whole class. 00:00:49.370 --> 00:00:50.820 align:middle line:90% And so this is-- 00:00:50.820 --> 00:00:53.500 align:middle line:84% it's important to acknowledge those ancestors, 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:55.160 align:middle line:90% to acknowledge those gifts. 00:00:55.160 --> 00:01:00.520 align:middle line:84% So this is for one of my ancestors, Adrienne Rich. 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:04.420 align:middle line:84% The poet Adrienne Rich, who is a mentor. 00:01:04.420 --> 00:01:09.010 align:middle line:84% And I read, was it the New Republic. 00:01:09.010 --> 00:01:11.410 align:middle line:84% There was an article, I forget who wrote it. 00:01:11.410 --> 00:01:14.320 align:middle line:84% Talking about-- acknowledging Adrienne, 00:01:14.320 --> 00:01:18.880 align:middle line:84% and I was in a hotel room and I just wrote most of this poem 00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:25.180 align:middle line:84% down roughly, but I remember how much she gave me. 00:01:25.180 --> 00:01:27.730 align:middle line:84% And I guess her voice is so important now. 00:01:27.730 --> 00:01:29.500 align:middle line:84% It always has been important and that's-- 00:01:29.500 --> 00:01:33.610 align:middle line:84% I think that's a sign of a true poet is that, that voice is-- 00:01:33.610 --> 00:01:36.820 align:middle line:84% there's always-- it lives in so many places. 00:01:36.820 --> 00:01:42.230 align:middle line:84% And she's always, she's so important. 00:01:42.230 --> 00:01:46.600 align:middle line:84% So this is "By the Way" for Adrienne Rich. 00:01:46.600 --> 00:01:51.050 align:middle line:84% "I've given it time as if time were mine to give. 00:01:51.050 --> 00:01:55.370 align:middle line:84% There was a dam, larger than Hoover, or the president, 00:01:55.370 --> 00:01:57.590 align:middle line:84% or the patent for the metal creature 00:01:57.590 --> 00:02:00.290 align:middle line:90% that sucks up all the dust. 00:02:00.290 --> 00:02:02.720 align:middle line:84% Words had to stop and ask permission 00:02:02.720 --> 00:02:04.670 align:middle line:90% before crossing over. 00:02:04.670 --> 00:02:08.360 align:middle line:84% Oh, sometimes they were wild with the urgency of sweet 00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:09.139 align:middle line:90% and leaped. 00:02:09.139 --> 00:02:13.240 align:middle line:84% Mostly the rest were kept in the net of swallowed 00:02:13.240 --> 00:02:15.670 align:middle line:90% a forbidden language. 00:02:15.670 --> 00:02:18.910 align:middle line:84% I want to go back and rewrite all the letters. 00:02:18.910 --> 00:02:20.830 align:middle line:90% I lied frequently. 00:02:20.830 --> 00:02:21.820 align:middle line:90% No. 00:02:21.820 --> 00:02:23.830 align:middle line:90% I was not OK. 00:02:23.830 --> 00:02:27.340 align:middle line:84% And neither was James Baldwin, though his essays were 00:02:27.340 --> 00:02:31.000 align:middle line:84% perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the fight 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:35.900 align:middle line:84% to assert humanness in a black and white world. 00:02:35.900 --> 00:02:39.220 align:middle line:84% That's how the blues emerged by the way. 00:02:39.220 --> 00:02:42.400 align:middle line:84% Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess, 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:45.550 align:middle line:84% the music a sack that carries the bones of those left 00:02:45.550 --> 00:02:49.390 align:middle line:84% alongside the Trail of Tears when we were forced to leave 00:02:49.390 --> 00:02:54.580 align:middle line:90% everything we knew by the way. 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:56.800 align:middle line:84% I constructed an individual life in 00:02:56.800 --> 00:02:59.440 align:middle line:90% this so-called civilized world. 00:02:59.440 --> 00:03:00.820 align:middle line:90% We all did. 00:03:00.820 --> 00:03:05.500 align:middle line:84% Far from the trees and plants who had borne and fed us. 00:03:05.500 --> 00:03:08.200 align:middle line:84% All I wanted was the music I would tell you now, 00:03:08.200 --> 00:03:10.990 align:middle line:90% within it what we cannot carry. 00:03:10.990 --> 00:03:16.000 align:middle line:84% I talk about then from a hotel room just miles from your home 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:19.810 align:middle line:84% in the East, before you fled on your personal path of tears 00:03:19.810 --> 00:03:20.650 align:middle line:90% to the West. 00:03:20.650 --> 00:03:24.910 align:middle line:84% That worn out American dream dogging your steps. 00:03:24.910 --> 00:03:27.490 align:middle line:84% You lived on a pedestal for me then, 00:03:27.490 --> 00:03:31.330 align:middle line:84% the driven diver who climbed back up from the abyss. 00:03:31.330 --> 00:03:35.260 align:middle line:84% Venus on a seashell with a dagger in her hands. 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:38.380 align:middle line:84% I had to look and followed your tracks 00:03:38.380 --> 00:03:41.170 align:middle line:90% in the poems cut by suffering. 00:03:41.170 --> 00:03:43.230 align:middle line:90% Aren't they all? 00:03:43.230 --> 00:03:47.040 align:middle line:84% We're in the apocalyptic age of addiction and forgetting. 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:52.860 align:middle line:84% It's worse now, but that dam, I had to tell you, 00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:55.980 align:middle line:90% I broke it open stone by stone. 00:03:55.980 --> 00:03:59.610 align:middle line:84% It took a saxophone, flowers, and your words had something 00:03:59.610 --> 00:04:00.450 align:middle line:90% to do with it. 00:04:00.450 --> 00:04:04.170 align:middle line:84% I can't say exactly how the trajectory wasn't clean, 00:04:04.170 --> 00:04:06.940 align:middle line:90% even though it was sure. 00:04:06.940 --> 00:04:09.350 align:middle line:90% Does that make sense? 00:04:09.350 --> 00:04:13.270 align:middle line:84% Maybe it does only in the precincts of dreams and poetry, 00:04:13.270 --> 00:04:17.380 align:middle line:84% not in a country lit 24 hours a day to keep dreams stuck, 00:04:17.380 --> 00:04:21.459 align:middle line:84% turning in a wheel in the houses of money. 00:04:21.459 --> 00:04:24.730 align:middle line:84% I read about transcendence, how the light came 00:04:24.730 --> 00:04:27.520 align:middle line:84% in through the window of a nearby traveler, 00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:31.150 align:middle line:84% and every cell of creation opened its mouth 00:04:31.150 --> 00:04:33.410 align:middle line:90% to drink grace. 00:04:33.410 --> 00:04:37.000 align:middle line:90% That's what I never told you." 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:38.000 align:middle line:90%