WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.730 align:middle line:84% I learned something from the poet Benjamin Friedlander. 00:00:02.730 --> 00:00:05.710 align:middle line:84% I heard him read poems from a chap book, 00:00:05.710 --> 00:00:10.530 align:middle line:84% and he said he was erasing lines and taking up 00:00:10.530 --> 00:00:12.360 align:middle line:90% their place with brackets. 00:00:12.360 --> 00:00:15.930 align:middle line:84% And he was pronouncing these brackets as blank. 00:00:15.930 --> 00:00:19.260 align:middle line:84% And I was interested in what that could be. 00:00:19.260 --> 00:00:25.080 align:middle line:84% What if you could write about what those blanks looked like 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:27.510 align:middle line:84% or what those blanks could represent? 00:00:27.510 --> 00:00:31.860 align:middle line:84% So I wrote a poem that I started out here, 00:00:31.860 --> 00:00:34.260 align:middle line:84% but I couldn't finish it for a very long time. 00:00:34.260 --> 00:00:39.030 align:middle line:84% And it has an epigraph from Benjamin Friedlander. 00:00:39.030 --> 00:00:40.620 align:middle line:90% Also, it was danced. 00:00:40.620 --> 00:00:43.170 align:middle line:84% It has a lot of artists and dancers in it. 00:00:43.170 --> 00:00:47.070 align:middle line:84% "Landscaping, where thought is a garden. 00:00:47.070 --> 00:00:53.500 align:middle line:84% Blank, blank, Benjamin Friedlander, "Elegant Goo," 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:55.075 align:middle line:90% Partial Objects series one. 00:00:55.075 --> 00:00:58.700 align:middle line:90% 00:00:58.700 --> 00:01:03.140 align:middle line:84% It is cacti lined up closely in a greenery like a tiny city. 00:01:03.140 --> 00:01:06.710 align:middle line:84% It is sunset bouncing narrow avenues and coppery buildings. 00:01:06.710 --> 00:01:09.950 align:middle line:84% It's our lady of the tremendous sunflower, 00:01:09.950 --> 00:01:12.080 align:middle line:84% painting The Shelton With Sunspots, 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:15.080 align:middle line:84% or she's shade bathing in the desert by lying with her canvas 00:01:15.080 --> 00:01:17.480 align:middle line:84% under the belly of her rust-free Ford. 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:20.120 align:middle line:84% It's Jenny Holzer, or it's the early neon 00:01:20.120 --> 00:01:23.120 align:middle line:84% of Times Square trumped up super bulbed into a Singapore 00:01:23.120 --> 00:01:26.570 align:middle line:84% bright vista with billboards that follow you, 00:01:26.570 --> 00:01:30.800 align:middle line:84% a trait created by mating the Mona Lisa with the moon. 00:01:30.800 --> 00:01:33.290 align:middle line:84% We pedestrians click, click our feet. 00:01:33.290 --> 00:01:36.140 align:middle line:90% Image and text change. 00:01:36.140 --> 00:01:39.050 align:middle line:84% Please watch me, and a 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3. 00:01:39.050 --> 00:01:43.550 align:middle line:84% This gesture is the corps de ballet's Swan number 24 B, 00:01:43.550 --> 00:01:46.280 align:middle line:84% or a city block at a regular interval. 00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:48.890 align:middle line:84% This gesture is Baryshnikov hamming it up 00:01:48.890 --> 00:01:51.800 align:middle line:90% or a fragment of Labanotation. 00:01:51.800 --> 00:01:54.890 align:middle line:84% Gesture is a tilde, is air holes in a cello. 00:01:54.890 --> 00:01:58.340 align:middle line:90% The cello is May Ray's Woman. 00:01:58.340 --> 00:02:02.510 align:middle line:84% This gesture is the swing of skyline as the N Train nears 00:02:02.510 --> 00:02:05.600 align:middle line:84% Queens or the space between cacti. 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:09.020 align:middle line:84% Blank is a gesture of Noguchi traveling between Shikoku 00:02:09.020 --> 00:02:13.280 align:middle line:84% Quarry and a studio, or the top of the head flung, 00:02:13.280 --> 00:02:16.070 align:middle line:90% or the galore of maple leaves. 00:02:16.070 --> 00:02:19.550 align:middle line:84% Blank is the sexuality of stacked chairs or trying 00:02:19.550 --> 00:02:22.850 align:middle line:84% on a stranger's hand-tailored suit or intimacy with New York 00:02:22.850 --> 00:02:24.320 align:middle line:90% City proper. 00:02:24.320 --> 00:02:26.930 align:middle line:84% Plant yourself on Union Square's lawn. 00:02:26.930 --> 00:02:30.980 align:middle line:84% Subway vibrato will tunnel up through your sit bones. 00:02:30.980 --> 00:02:35.540 align:middle line:84% Blank is love or a gray ribbon or a thin drama 00:02:35.540 --> 00:02:38.330 align:middle line:90% of shade thrown by a saguaro. 00:02:38.330 --> 00:02:40.010 align:middle line:90% Fit your body there. 00:02:40.010 --> 00:02:41.600 align:middle line:90% Please watch me. 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:44.840 align:middle line:84% Blank is me at age three chalking an alley, bored 00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:48.380 align:middle line:84% on Long Island, tucking my head as the neighbor's station wagon 00:02:48.380 --> 00:02:50.090 align:middle line:90% pulls over me. 00:02:50.090 --> 00:02:52.550 align:middle line:84% I'm run over precisely between the wheels 00:02:52.550 --> 00:02:56.990 align:middle line:84% so I won't be rolled out, ribbed by tire treads like a saguaro, 00:02:56.990 --> 00:03:01.700 align:middle line:84% as inessential as the fruitless peeing of lawn sprinklers. 00:03:01.700 --> 00:03:04.850 align:middle line:84% Blank is a thigh or Fifth Avenue and Broadway vee'd 00:03:04.850 --> 00:03:06.740 align:middle line:90% by Stieglitz's flatiron. 00:03:06.740 --> 00:03:08.870 align:middle line:84% Straighten to the tallness of his photo 00:03:08.870 --> 00:03:12.920 align:middle line:84% or to the port de bras of Arthur Mitchell or basalt columns, 00:03:12.920 --> 00:03:15.140 align:middle line:84% solid and hollowed, or the headline, 00:03:15.140 --> 00:03:17.630 align:middle line:90% No More Separate Spheres. 00:03:17.630 --> 00:03:20.330 align:middle line:84% Blank is Brecht conveying sentences in stances 00:03:20.330 --> 00:03:22.515 align:middle line:84% or the difference between American and Irish sign 00:03:22.515 --> 00:03:23.015 align:middle line:90% language. 00:03:23.015 --> 00:03:26.710 align:middle line:90% 00:03:26.710 --> 00:03:30.670 align:middle line:84% This gesture is-- this gesture is the pattern of the tile. 00:03:30.670 --> 00:03:33.490 align:middle line:84% This gesture is, you're in front of me. 00:03:33.490 --> 00:03:35.830 align:middle line:84% This gesture is, get out of town. 00:03:35.830 --> 00:03:37.480 align:middle line:84% Blank is me hiding in my two door 00:03:37.480 --> 00:03:39.250 align:middle line:90% in a state I can't explain. 00:03:39.250 --> 00:03:41.350 align:middle line:90% This location held by a vise. 00:03:41.350 --> 00:03:44.290 align:middle line:90% Does a vise hold this location? 00:03:44.290 --> 00:03:47.470 align:middle line:84% Blank is a final couplet or the arms 00:03:47.470 --> 00:03:51.460 align:middle line:84% of Venus de Milo or the empty set or a birth date or plea 00:03:51.460 --> 00:03:54.610 align:middle line:84% or the guidelines in a viewfinder. 00:03:54.610 --> 00:03:57.520 align:middle line:90% Blank blank is a honeycomb. 00:03:57.520 --> 00:04:01.630 align:middle line:84% Blank is Noguchi's lyre for Graham's stage, is a flowering. 00:04:01.630 --> 00:04:03.220 align:middle line:90% Blank is wideness. 00:04:03.220 --> 00:04:06.850 align:middle line:84% Wideness is the span of skirt rippling in Graham's arabesque 00:04:06.850 --> 00:04:08.680 align:middle line:90% to the world. 00:04:08.680 --> 00:04:11.830 align:middle line:84% Blank is Dickinson's dash, is jeté, is a singing shape. 00:04:11.830 --> 00:04:15.210 align:middle line:90% 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, and a 1." 00:04:15.210 --> 00:04:17.000 align:middle line:90%