WEBVTT

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Thank you so much.

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And thank you for writing
a poem about Springfield.

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I was born in Springfield,
Massachusetts, so.

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Yeah, I was wondering
if you would

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talk a little bit
about your relationship

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with Springfield
and to the story.

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Uh-huh.

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So there was an explosion
in about four years

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ago in Springfield,
Massachusetts

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that occurred at a strip club.

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It was around midday.

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And, can you hear me OK?

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It's a little off.

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It's a little off now.

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Can you [INAUDIBLE]?

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That's a good question.

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Seems like the audio is off.

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Can you hear me now?

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Yes.

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OK.

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And during this incident,
there was a gas leak

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in the establishment.

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And the owner of the club
had the presence of mind

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to roust everybody
from the establishment,

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which is good fortune because
no sooner than the last person

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left, including
workers, [INAUDIBLE],,

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and dancers went across to a
coffee shop, the pipes went up.

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Completely, absolutely exploded.

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Leveled five city blocks.

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There's a daycare next to
the place that on that day

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was on a field trip.

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Which would have devastated it,
it would've been [INAUDIBLE]..

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So I work health,
safety, and environment

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in my work as a day job, one of
my projects that I do for work.

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And when I got the report this
event happened in Springfield,

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I was expecting a tremendous
amount of carnage.

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And when I got the
report in New York City,

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before I took the train
up to Massachusetts,

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I saw that there
was a zero fatality.

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And I thought, wow,
this brought me

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to a fundamental level of
inquiry about [INAUDIBLE]..

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What strip--?

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What is daycare?

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What is care?

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So, it brought me down
to a fundamental level

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and I captured that sort
of fundamental life inquiry

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moment.

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And I just held on to
it and worked my way

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through this piece of writing.

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You know, extended it and
kind of incorporated some

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of my ruminations about
life and politics, whatever.

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But I think honing to the
subtitle of the article--

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actually I think the title
of the newspaper article

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was Explosion Rocks
Springfield, you know.

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It would be like Tucson, you
know, Explosion Rocks Tucson,

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it would be the same
thing or whatever.

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You see, the gas explosions
are all the same.

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And so the sort
of sub-heading was

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The Explosions in Springfield.

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Something very mundane
like that, right?

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And I thought, you know what?

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I'm going to just
bust every term.

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I'm going to go every
little piece [INAUDIBLE]

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and I'm going to crush
[INAUDIBLE] in honor

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of this celebration
and initial wondering.

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It's almost, I'm
going to say it's

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like a mystic [? moment. ?]

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Where to get my shoes?

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Where'd you get your shoes?

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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Yeah?

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OK.

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So like a deeper question and
slightly less deep question.

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Let's do it.

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Have you spent a lot
of time strip clubs?

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No, I haven't.

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OK.

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I wouldn't place no
judgment either way.

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No, I know where
you're going with this.

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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But you know, I'll
tell you one thing.

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I want in-- well, finish
question, I'm sorry.

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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There's actually three, OK.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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Perdepistatiplosive.

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Perdepistatiplosive.

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Found out means to implode
and explode simultaneously.

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Yeah.

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What does that word signify
in your work for you?

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And then what would you also
describe as your ars poetica.

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When you said like I incorporate
some of my other stuff into it,

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I'm assuming that's like
some of that ars poetica.

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What would that be?

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Well, there's one thing about--

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[? everything ?] is
explosive, right?

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Implosive.

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But with the root
of that is plod.

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And plod is a very
mundane concept,

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which means to break a barrier,
a pressure barrier between one

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state of energy into the next.

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To be negative to positive.

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Perdepistatiplosive
was sort of a joke

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that sort of referred to a
perambulation around ploding.

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Which is to stay
with the phenomenon

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of ploding in terms of
a meditation, psyche

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like [INAUDIBLE].

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Before something-- not
before, but as something,

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or not even as, it
is something you

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know would break into
another state of energy.

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You kind of resist it and
you go with, resist and go.

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Or go and resist is
perdepistatiplosive.

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It's a psychological
phenomenon that I

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try to describe in my
thinking at the time in sort

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of positing these new words.

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Words that don't, or
phenomena that don't have

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yet, that don't have words yet.

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And I think that's
fair game for poets.

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How many times did
Shakespeare come up with?

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Was it 633 authentic new
words that we use every day?

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Torquing grammar and language
to fit our contemporary reality.

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So, I always feel at
liberty to exercise

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this thing [INAUDIBLE].

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When I'm doing it and I'm
aware that it's punchy

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and that it's kind of jokey.

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And yet, I think
through the course

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of my life and, of
course of the manuscript,

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these nonnce words
pick up the charge

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that by the end of the
manuscript before you

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read it is, oh, I know it I
know what frabba jabba means.

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It's kind of a culture, it's
kind of about conforming,

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it's kind of about--.

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Like but you.

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You don't.

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But it's kind of like--
but it's frabba jabba.

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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Incidentally, frabba jabba
comes from West Side Story.

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You remember West Side
Story in the film, whenever

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they had a they cuss word
they were just substitute

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with frabba jabba instead
of saying this is bullshit,

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they used just go frabba jabba.

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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You know.

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And I just thought
it was excellent.

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So I just called it you
know, why not, frabba jabba.

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So, but I think you were
you're picking it something.

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Go on with your second question.

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Ars poetica.

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My ars poetica?

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Yes.

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Boy, that's a [INAUDIBLE] term.

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I don't have a
stable ars poetica.

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I mean I-- this is
a Horace, right?

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The Latin satirist came up
with the famous set of satire

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called Ars Poetica.

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The first poetica
is the most famous.

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And in that essay,
or verse essay,

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the horse tries to
lay down what is

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proper to engage as a poet
in Roman times or whatever.

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And I pick up flecks of
what's proper, right.

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And I test them as against
other flecks of what's proper.

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And in that combustion
chamber that's

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my art, the Toscano
Frabba Jabba if you will.

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Does that make sense?

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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So, what I'm getting is you
have like classical ideas

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of ars poetica, and part
of your poetry and part

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of what you do with it
is to rebel against that.

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Kind of.

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OK.

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Yeah.

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Well, I think fair.

00:09:28.182 --> 00:09:29.200 align:middle line:90%
I think that's well put.

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I think one arrives
at a classicism

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of one's own making, which is to
say one becomes parallelistic.

00:09:40.630 --> 00:09:42.600 align:middle line:90%
That's part of classicism.

00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:44.910 align:middle line:90%
One's become sort of--

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what's another
aspect of classicism.

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Would be the figure as
against the structure.

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And somehow there's
a sinking of that.

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That's classicism period
in your art or life.

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The Romantic is a more of
a brocaded rhapsodic agency

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that kind of finds solution.

00:10:08.850 --> 00:10:10.000 align:middle line:90%
And guess what?

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You know, rhapsodic,
you know, embedded

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like a Russian nesting doll.

00:10:17.820 --> 00:10:21.370 align:middle line:90%
So, yeah.

00:10:21.370 --> 00:10:23.280 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:28.470 align:middle line:84%
One arrives at embarrassing
moments and in one's aesthetic.

00:10:28.470 --> 00:10:35.840 align:middle line:84%
And my philosophy is to display
them before you so that we

00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:36.840 align:middle line:90%
can have a conversation.

00:10:36.840 --> 00:10:42.360 align:middle line:90%
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:46.080 align:middle line:84%
That seems like a pretty
good answer to things on,

00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:47.580 align:middle line:84%
I'm sure we'll
have more questions

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and we can ask you in person.

00:10:49.090 --> 00:10:49.590 align:middle line:90%
Yeah.

00:10:49.590 --> 00:10:50.740 align:middle line:90%
Thank you so much.

00:10:50.740 --> 00:10:52.360 align:middle line:90%
That was amazing.

00:10:52.360 --> 00:10:52.860 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:10:52.860 --> 00:10:54.500 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

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