And I'm going to read you the title poem from Victims
of the Last Dance Craze.
And the catalyst for this poem was playing, what if?
And it was one of my last big what if poems.
That first book, Kartunes, had a lot of me just
trying to play what if.
There was two big themes in it.
That was one.
The other one was talking about my family, which
is one of the guarantees that I always give to young writers.
I always give this challenge.
And someone can send me a book--
it's care of Stony Brook if you can find this,
if next time you go into a bookstore,
and you look for a poet's first book,
I can guarantee you somewhere in the book,
you will find a poem about their family.
One way or another.
And I have never seen this not to fail.
And if you can find that book, send it to me.
[LAUGHS]
And so, those are two themes.
And this is my last-- this is probably
my last big great what if poem.
And the idea from this was kind of imagining
what would happen if a dance step hit
and was sort of like a virus.
Once you got infected with it--
[LAUGHTER]
--what would happen was that you started
to reveal your true self-- the self that you
don't show to everybody else-- your deeper self.
And the analogy I like to use for this is Emily Dickinson.
You try to give it kind of an idea of what
I mean when I say your deeper self, your true self.
Emily Dickinson, who spent most of her life
in this kind of isolation [LAUGHS] and in her house,
basically was just living the real life of poems.
She'd wait till her family went to sleep
and everything was quiet.
And she usually wrote at night, if I remember correctly.
That's where she said she lived her real life--
writing poems, her deeper self, true self.
That's what it's hopefully tapping into.
This is called-- this is "Victims of the Latest Dance
Craze."
"The streamers choking the main arteries downtown.
The brass band-- led by a child from the home
for the handicapped.
The old men showing their hair--
what's left of it.
The buttons of their shirts popping in time
to the salsa flooding out of their portable headphones.
And mothers letting their babies be held by strangers.
And the bus drivers taping over their fare boxes
and willing to give directions.
[LAUGHTER]
Is there any reason to mention all the drinks are
on the house?
Thick adolescent boys dismantle their BB guns.
Here is the world--
what's left of it-- in brilliant motion.
The oil slick at the curb danced into 1,000 splintered steps.
The bag ladies toss off their garments to reveal wings.
This dance you do draws the cop.
What do you call it?
We call that scalding the air.
We call it dying with your shoes on.
And across the street, the bodies of trance
stumble in a sober language.
And across the street, shy young girls step
behind their nameless boyfriends,
twirling their skirts.
And under an archway, a delivery boy
discovers his body has learned to speak.
And what does this street look like if not a runway--
a polished wood floor?
From the air, insects drawn by the sweat, alight when
possible on the blur of torsos.
It is the ride of their tiny lives.
The wind that burns their wings, the heaving oblivious flesh,
mountains stuffed with panic, an ocean
that can't make up its mind--
they drop away with a scorched taste of vertigo.
And under a swinging light bulb, some children
invent a game with a shadow the bulb makes
and the beat of their hearts.
They call it dust in the mouth.
They call it horse with no rider.
They call it school with empty books.
In the next room, their mother throws her dress away
to chance.
It drops to the floor, like a brush sighs across a drum head.
And when she takes her lover, what are they thinking of,
if not a ballroom filled with mirrors?
A world where no one has the right to stumble.
In a parking lot, an old man says this.
I am a ghost dance.
I remember the way my hair felt, damp with sweat and wind.
When the wind kisses the leaves, I am dancing.
When the subway hits the third rail, I am dancing.
When the barrel goes over Niagara Falls, I am dancing.
Oh, jazz has come from heaven, he says.
And at the Z, he jumps, arching his back like a heron's neck,
and stands suddenly revealed as a balanced demon--
a home for Stetson hats.
We have all caught the itch.
The neon artist wiring up his legs.
The tourist couple recording the twist
on their Instamatic camera.
And in a factory, a janitor answers his broom for a waltz.
And he grasps it like a woman, he'd
have to live another life to meet.
And he spins around the dustbin and machines and thinks,
is everybody happy?
And he spins out the side door, avoiding the cracks
in the sidewalk.
Grinning as if he'd just received
the deepest kiss in the world."
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks.