WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.210 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.210 --> 00:00:01.710 align:middle line:90% Hello. 00:00:01.710 --> 00:00:02.400 align:middle line:90% Welcome. 00:00:02.400 --> 00:00:03.025 align:middle line:90% Good afternoon. 00:00:03.025 --> 00:00:04.311 align:middle line:90% [BACKGROUND CONVERSATION] 00:00:04.311 --> 00:00:05.690 align:middle line:90% Is the mic working? 00:00:05.690 --> 00:00:07.980 align:middle line:90% Test, one two. 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:10.170 align:middle line:90% Test. 00:00:10.170 --> 00:00:11.700 align:middle line:90% Hello. 00:00:11.700 --> 00:00:13.240 align:middle line:90% Is the mic working? 00:00:13.240 --> 00:00:13.740 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:13.740 --> 00:00:16.140 align:middle line:90% Great. 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:18.930 align:middle line:84% Welcome to Conceptual Poetry and Its Others. 00:00:18.930 --> 00:00:20.640 align:middle line:84% We're thrilled to have all of you here. 00:00:20.640 --> 00:00:24.240 align:middle line:84% I know a lot of you have come from great distances, cooler 00:00:24.240 --> 00:00:28.650 align:middle line:84% distances, and faraway time zones. 00:00:28.650 --> 00:00:30.730 align:middle line:84% So we're appreciative to have you here. 00:00:30.730 --> 00:00:32.340 align:middle line:90% Thank you for making the effort. 00:00:32.340 --> 00:00:36.300 align:middle line:84% And I am Frances Sjoberg, the Literary Director 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:37.950 align:middle line:90% here at the Poetry Center. 00:00:37.950 --> 00:00:41.500 align:middle line:84% And we're thrilled to have you here as we define, explore, 00:00:41.500 --> 00:00:45.570 align:middle line:84% and celebrate conceptual poetry over the next three days. 00:00:45.570 --> 00:00:48.180 align:middle line:84% Conceptual poetry and Its Others is made possible by grants 00:00:48.180 --> 00:00:50.970 align:middle line:84% from the Arizona Humanities Council, the National Endowment 00:00:50.970 --> 00:00:54.090 align:middle line:84% for the Arts, Poets and Writers, and we have also 00:00:54.090 --> 00:00:56.970 align:middle line:84% received symposium support from the Arizona Inn, 00:00:56.970 --> 00:01:00.390 align:middle line:84% College of Humanities, Book Stop used books, 00:01:00.390 --> 00:01:02.970 align:middle line:84% and friends of the Poetry Center, most especially, 00:01:02.970 --> 00:01:04.718 align:middle line:90% Helen S. Schaefer. 00:01:04.718 --> 00:01:06.510 align:middle line:84% I would also like to thank Marjorie Perloff 00:01:06.510 --> 00:01:08.370 align:middle line:84% for her inspiration and her participation 00:01:08.370 --> 00:01:10.470 align:middle line:84% in the development of this program. 00:01:10.470 --> 00:01:13.103 align:middle line:84% It's been great to work with you. 00:01:13.103 --> 00:01:15.270 align:middle line:84% Throughout the symposium, I will introduce the poets 00:01:15.270 --> 00:01:18.240 align:middle line:84% by reading seven carefully excerpted sentences 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:21.570 align:middle line:84% from his or her published articles, reviews, blogs, 00:01:21.570 --> 00:01:22.200 align:middle line:90% or interviews. 00:01:22.200 --> 00:01:23.070 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:23.070 --> 00:01:25.680 align:middle line:84% I tried to limit myself to five, but rebelled 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:29.040 align:middle line:84% against my own constraints because I consistently couldn't 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:31.890 align:middle line:90% exact those last two cuts. 00:01:31.890 --> 00:01:35.850 align:middle line:84% So these entrance intros I hope will serve two-fold. 00:01:35.850 --> 00:01:38.340 align:middle line:84% They will give you a sense of the range of each poet's 00:01:38.340 --> 00:01:40.350 align:middle line:84% articulated poetic, and they will 00:01:40.350 --> 00:01:42.150 align:middle line:84% keep my mic time relatively brief 00:01:42.150 --> 00:01:45.870 align:middle line:84% as we are here to hear, foremost, our featured guests. 00:01:45.870 --> 00:01:48.630 align:middle line:84% Feel free to supplement these non-chronologized, 00:01:48.630 --> 00:01:50.760 align:middle line:84% non-contextualized statements with the bios 00:01:50.760 --> 00:01:54.120 align:middle line:84% in your program that are a little more standard. 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:55.980 align:middle line:84% Our symposium begins tonight with readings 00:01:55.980 --> 00:02:00.580 align:middle line:84% by Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris. 00:02:00.580 --> 00:02:05.740 align:middle line:84% Tracie Morris, from HereComesEverybody.Blogspot.com, 00:02:05.740 --> 00:02:11.200 align:middle line:84% Hemi.NYU.edu/jou rnalAfroFuturism, 00:02:11.200 --> 00:02:17.360 align:middle line:84% TraciesWebsite.net/Afropoetry, TracieMorris.blogspot.com-- 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:17.860 align:middle line:90% Oh god. 00:02:17.860 --> 00:02:22.930 align:middle line:84% --VillageVoice.com, TraciesWebsite.net/Lit. 00:02:22.930 --> 00:02:24.310 align:middle line:90% Oh God-- it's out there. 00:02:24.310 --> 00:02:26.860 align:middle line:90% It's there for me to use. 00:02:26.860 --> 00:02:27.370 align:middle line:90% One. 00:02:27.370 --> 00:02:30.850 align:middle line:84% "Conceptual frameworks always determine the scope and form 00:02:30.850 --> 00:02:34.750 align:middle line:84% of my poems, particularly the improvised ones." 00:02:34.750 --> 00:02:35.700 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:02:35.700 --> 00:02:39.910 align:middle line:84% "We often associate medical advances as helping the body, 00:02:39.910 --> 00:02:42.730 align:middle line:84% but here I want to emphasize the structural or conceptual 00:02:42.730 --> 00:02:45.520 align:middle line:84% dystopia of sexism that impacts the structure 00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:47.830 align:middle line:90% of the female body." 00:02:47.830 --> 00:02:48.730 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:02:48.730 --> 00:02:51.490 align:middle line:84% "We will be looking at the performative utterances 00:02:51.490 --> 00:02:55.000 align:middle line:84% of Black women poetically, and in some cases, musically. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:57.730 align:middle line:84% The interpretation gives us insight into how different 00:02:57.730 --> 00:03:01.960 align:middle line:84% vocal modes, sounds, and tones are understood by the listener 00:03:01.960 --> 00:03:04.040 align:middle line:90% and reader." 00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:06.340 align:middle line:84% "Philly-- if I ate cheesesteak, I'd be in heaven. 00:03:06.340 --> 00:03:09.250 align:middle line:84% But as it is, I'll be happy to be back East with the hardcore 00:03:09.250 --> 00:03:12.070 align:middle line:84% language school posse as they beat me into submission 00:03:12.070 --> 00:03:13.270 align:middle line:90% before I join the club." 00:03:13.270 --> 00:03:16.900 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:16.900 --> 00:03:17.815 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:03:17.815 --> 00:03:19.600 align:middle line:90% "The text is the body. 00:03:19.600 --> 00:03:22.660 align:middle line:90% The body tests text." 00:03:22.660 --> 00:03:23.380 align:middle line:90% Six. 00:03:23.380 --> 00:03:25.750 align:middle line:84% "Racial and sexual power dynamics 00:03:25.750 --> 00:03:28.690 align:middle line:84% have not changed for 500 years," Morris says, 00:03:28.690 --> 00:03:31.390 align:middle line:84% and she "doesn't expect a change for 500 more." 00:03:31.390 --> 00:03:32.860 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:32.860 --> 00:03:33.790 align:middle line:90% Seven. 00:03:33.790 --> 00:03:37.150 align:middle line:84% "The requirements are consistent attendance and promptness. 00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:38.590 align:middle line:90% This is mandatory. 00:03:38.590 --> 00:03:41.620 align:middle line:84% No late papers will be accepted and no incompletes 00:03:41.620 --> 00:03:42.850 align:middle line:90% are offered for this class." 00:03:42.850 --> 00:03:43.870 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:43.870 --> 00:03:46.007 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Tracie Morris. 00:03:46.007 --> 00:03:48.442 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:48.442 --> 00:03:57.710 align:middle line:90% 00:03:57.710 --> 00:04:00.500 align:middle line:84% - I am so glad I have been prompt today. 00:04:00.500 --> 00:04:01.910 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:01.910 --> 00:04:03.650 align:middle line:90% Would have got busted! 00:04:03.650 --> 00:04:05.720 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much Frances. 00:04:05.720 --> 00:04:08.730 align:middle line:84% I'm very, very happy to be back in Arizona. 00:04:08.730 --> 00:04:10.130 align:middle line:90% And this is my kind of weather. 00:04:10.130 --> 00:04:13.990 align:middle line:84% I am not complaining about the weather at all. 00:04:13.990 --> 00:04:16.829 align:middle line:90% It's beautiful-- hot. 00:04:16.829 --> 00:04:18.829 align:middle line:84% And I'm glad you mentioned some of those things. 00:04:18.829 --> 00:04:22.500 align:middle line:84% I forgot I said them, so now I can repudiate and denounce 00:04:22.500 --> 00:04:23.000 align:middle line:90% myself. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:25.520 align:middle line:90% 00:04:25.520 --> 00:04:27.590 align:middle line:84% Can be like-- well, anyway, I'll talk politics 00:04:27.590 --> 00:04:28.590 align:middle line:90% a little bit more later. 00:04:28.590 --> 00:04:32.008 align:middle line:84% Me, talking politics-- it's so surprising. 00:04:32.008 --> 00:04:33.050 align:middle line:90% I'm going to ask a favor. 00:04:33.050 --> 00:04:34.520 align:middle line:90% I got to get my power strip. 00:04:34.520 --> 00:04:38.360 align:middle line:84% Because one time I did a reading at a big, fancy, Ivy League 00:04:38.360 --> 00:04:44.000 align:middle line:84% presentation on Langston Hughes, and right when I was going on, 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:45.680 align:middle line:90% my computer went dead. 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:48.595 align:middle line:84% This is sad, but I obsessed over it so much 00:04:48.595 --> 00:04:50.720 align:middle line:84% that I had kind of known it by heart, which is bad, 00:04:50.720 --> 00:04:52.012 align:middle line:90% because it's an academic paper. 00:04:52.012 --> 00:04:54.110 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:54.110 --> 00:04:55.758 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:55.758 --> 00:04:57.300 align:middle line:84% So I don't want that to happen again. 00:04:57.300 --> 00:04:59.240 align:middle line:90% I had that experience. 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:01.375 align:middle line:84% And now I just need to plug this in. 00:05:01.375 --> 00:05:02.550 align:middle line:90% Right behind you. 00:05:02.550 --> 00:05:03.050 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:05:03.050 --> 00:05:04.970 align:middle line:84% He's going to use the power strip, though. 00:05:04.970 --> 00:05:06.600 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Charles. 00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:11.930 align:middle line:84% So I'm very, very happy to be back in Arizona 00:05:11.930 --> 00:05:14.340 align:middle line:84% because I'm an ardent McCain supporter, 00:05:14.340 --> 00:05:16.340 align:middle line:84% and I just want to be here to give him the love. 00:05:16.340 --> 00:05:19.073 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:19.073 --> 00:05:21.740 align:middle line:84% It's funny how, you know, when I don't make jokes, people laugh. 00:05:21.740 --> 00:05:24.000 align:middle line:84% And when I make jokes, people don't get the jokes. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:24.500 align:middle line:90% No. 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:27.081 align:middle line:90% Just kidding-- both times. 00:05:27.081 --> 00:05:29.490 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:29.490 --> 00:05:31.340 align:middle line:84% So I thought I would try some things 00:05:31.340 --> 00:05:33.920 align:middle line:84% in honor of the really prestigious company I'm 00:05:33.920 --> 00:05:35.510 align:middle line:90% trying to keep here. 00:05:35.510 --> 00:05:39.080 align:middle line:84% It's very unnerving to be in such-- 00:05:39.080 --> 00:05:43.700 align:middle line:84% I'm not being humble, I'm really like who? 00:05:43.700 --> 00:05:46.010 align:middle line:90% Why are you calling me? 00:05:46.010 --> 00:05:48.260 align:middle line:84% So I'm very, very honored to be here. 00:05:48.260 --> 00:05:50.750 align:middle line:84% So I thought I would try a couple of things 00:05:50.750 --> 00:05:54.050 align:middle line:84% that I have read before, and some stuff that I 00:05:54.050 --> 00:05:58.610 align:middle line:84% haven't read before, and also work with some found text. 00:05:58.610 --> 00:06:01.100 align:middle line:84% And I guess during the talks over the next couple of days, 00:06:01.100 --> 00:06:03.800 align:middle line:84% we can talk about why I want to read stuff I read, 00:06:03.800 --> 00:06:06.300 align:middle line:84% or we can talk about something a little bit more interesting 00:06:06.300 --> 00:06:07.550 align:middle line:90% than my problems. 00:06:07.550 --> 00:06:10.400 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:10.400 --> 00:06:12.197 align:middle line:90% And I know I look like-- 00:06:12.197 --> 00:06:14.780 align:middle line:84% I was telling Charles-- like the old lady who really does have 00:06:14.780 --> 00:06:18.080 align:middle line:84% like a million bond in her homelessness suitcase, 00:06:18.080 --> 00:06:22.220 align:middle line:84% but I can't really read stuff before I know where I'm at 00:06:22.220 --> 00:06:24.440 align:middle line:90% and how it feels. 00:06:24.440 --> 00:06:27.260 align:middle line:84% Tried that a few times in my career, and it hasn't worked. 00:06:27.260 --> 00:06:30.380 align:middle line:84% So I just decided what I'm reading just now. 00:06:30.380 --> 00:06:33.020 align:middle line:90% 00:06:33.020 --> 00:06:34.460 align:middle line:84% But the landscape here reminds me 00:06:34.460 --> 00:06:38.600 align:middle line:84% very much of living on the planet Earth. 00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:40.157 align:middle line:84% I was telling the gentleman-- where 00:06:40.157 --> 00:06:41.240 align:middle line:90% is he-- who drove the van. 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:42.440 align:middle line:84% Where's the man who drove the van? 00:06:42.440 --> 00:06:43.370 align:middle line:90% What's your name again? 00:06:43.370 --> 00:06:43.790 align:middle line:90% Tony. 00:06:43.790 --> 00:06:44.323 align:middle line:90% Tony. 00:06:44.323 --> 00:06:44.990 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Tony. 00:06:44.990 --> 00:06:45.490 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:06:45.490 --> 00:06:46.730 align:middle line:90% I'm nervous. 00:06:46.730 --> 00:06:48.320 align:middle line:84% I like the plants here because they're 00:06:48.320 --> 00:06:50.450 align:middle line:90% very rebellious kind of plants. 00:06:50.450 --> 00:06:52.850 align:middle line:84% They kind of like, we're living in a desert-- 00:06:52.850 --> 00:06:53.510 align:middle line:90% deal with it. 00:06:53.510 --> 00:06:54.470 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:54.470 --> 00:06:55.850 align:middle line:90% They're like New York plants. 00:06:55.850 --> 00:06:56.650 align:middle line:90% They're like what? 00:06:56.650 --> 00:06:57.150 align:middle line:90% What? 00:06:57.150 --> 00:06:57.802 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:57.802 --> 00:06:59.620 align:middle line:84% We're green, we're in the desert. 00:06:59.620 --> 00:07:00.980 align:middle line:90% You tell me it's hot? 00:07:00.980 --> 00:07:02.510 align:middle line:90% I'm a plant. 00:07:02.510 --> 00:07:04.670 align:middle line:84% So anyway, for a while I was writing 00:07:04.670 --> 00:07:07.790 align:middle line:84% these poems about the environment 00:07:07.790 --> 00:07:11.300 align:middle line:84% because for all of the import that race, and gender, 00:07:11.300 --> 00:07:13.610 align:middle line:84% and sexuality, and class and all that stuff, 00:07:13.610 --> 00:07:16.893 align:middle line:84% it's very, very important, and I read about that a lot, 00:07:16.893 --> 00:07:18.560 align:middle line:84% but you know, if we don't have a planet, 00:07:18.560 --> 00:07:20.810 align:middle line:84% it's really kind of hard to talk about all those other things. 00:07:20.810 --> 00:07:21.570 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:07:21.570 --> 00:07:22.850 align:middle line:90% It's moot without the planet. 00:07:22.850 --> 00:07:25.220 align:middle line:90% The planet is essential. 00:07:25.220 --> 00:07:29.135 align:middle line:84% So this one is called "Apology to Pangaea." 00:07:29.135 --> 00:07:34.700 align:middle line:84% "I sent you blue, the silk on a peacock feathered eyelet, 00:07:34.700 --> 00:07:39.200 align:middle line:84% corona around the old's pupil, dye with expensive taste. 00:07:39.200 --> 00:07:42.770 align:middle line:84% Red corpuscles of dyers, heavy in the underbelly 00:07:42.770 --> 00:07:46.190 align:middle line:84% of current coffin canoes weighing down. 00:07:46.190 --> 00:07:49.370 align:middle line:84% Here we are with our capes, Spandex, big hair, 00:07:49.370 --> 00:07:53.330 align:middle line:84% hieroglyphs spelling us super duper people who made atoms, 00:07:53.330 --> 00:07:56.150 align:middle line:90% momma molecules, and mourning. 00:07:56.150 --> 00:07:58.880 align:middle line:84% That was me with the buck dance and chicken head, 00:07:58.880 --> 00:08:01.370 align:middle line:90% me making grits gris-gris, wif. 00:08:01.370 --> 00:08:04.970 align:middle line:84% Can I say sorry for let them sweep over your feet, ma'am? 00:08:04.970 --> 00:08:07.584 align:middle line:84% Do I throw coarse salt over my shoulder?" 00:08:07.584 --> 00:08:11.220 align:middle line:90% 00:08:11.220 --> 00:08:13.020 align:middle line:90% This next poem is-- 00:08:13.020 --> 00:08:16.800 align:middle line:90% 00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:21.120 align:middle line:84% it's a poem, but I'm kind of making 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:26.130 align:middle line:84% it a found poem, Kenny, by making it 00:08:26.130 --> 00:08:29.130 align:middle line:90% sound a little bit different. 00:08:29.130 --> 00:08:32.159 align:middle line:84% I hear this poem as lyric, so I'm 00:08:32.159 --> 00:08:34.169 align:middle line:84% going to recite it as lyric even though it's 00:08:34.169 --> 00:08:35.520 align:middle line:90% an established poem. 00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:38.370 align:middle line:84% And I know you guys will know who it is, to poetry eggheads, 00:08:38.370 --> 00:08:40.139 align:middle line:90% but I'll tell you after. 00:08:40.139 --> 00:08:41.579 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:08:41.579 --> 00:08:44.556 align:middle line:90% "Dream Within a Dream" 00:08:44.556 --> 00:08:48.600 align:middle line:84% [SINGING] Take this kiss upon the brow, and in parting 00:08:48.600 --> 00:08:50.760 align:middle line:90% from you now. 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:54.660 align:middle line:84% Thus much let me avow, you are not 00:08:54.660 --> 00:08:59.070 align:middle line:84% wrong who deem that my days have been a dream. 00:08:59.070 --> 00:09:06.030 align:middle line:84% Yet if hope has flown away in a night or in a day, in a vision 00:09:06.030 --> 00:09:11.220 align:middle line:84% or in none, it is therefore the less gone. 00:09:11.220 --> 00:09:16.341 align:middle line:84% All that we see or seen is but a dream within a dream. 00:09:16.341 --> 00:09:18.780 align:middle line:90% A dream within a dream. 00:09:18.780 --> 00:09:22.105 align:middle line:90% 00:09:22.105 --> 00:09:22.605 align:middle line:90% Dream. 00:09:22.605 --> 00:09:25.260 align:middle line:90% 00:09:25.260 --> 00:09:27.360 align:middle line:84% And then that's an excerpt from whom? 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:28.000 align:middle line:90% Anybody know? 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:28.500 align:middle line:90% Poe. 00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:29.100 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:09:29.100 --> 00:09:31.980 align:middle line:84% Edgar Allan Poe, "Dream Within a Dream." 00:09:31.980 --> 00:09:34.330 align:middle line:90% 00:09:34.330 --> 00:09:34.830 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:09:34.830 --> 00:09:36.705 align:middle line:84% I just keep thinking of what we're imagining. 00:09:36.705 --> 00:09:39.840 align:middle line:84% Like imagining we're going to have a planet 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:44.790 align:middle line:84% and how fabulous we all are while everything 00:09:44.790 --> 00:09:46.410 align:middle line:90% is crashing down around us. 00:09:46.410 --> 00:09:50.580 align:middle line:90% 00:09:50.580 --> 00:09:55.620 align:middle line:84% The next poem I'd like to read is kind of long. 00:09:55.620 --> 00:10:05.280 align:middle line:84% It's a poem that I wrote after Allen Ginsberg passed away. 00:10:05.280 --> 00:10:08.940 align:middle line:84% And since this is the right month coming up-- 00:10:08.940 --> 00:10:15.120 align:middle line:84% Allen was a Gemini, is a Gemini, and so am I. 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:16.690 align:middle line:84% And that's way too much information. 00:10:16.690 --> 00:10:17.190 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:17.190 --> 00:10:19.470 align:middle line:84% I'm still not telling you my age, Kenny, so don't even 00:10:19.470 --> 00:10:20.340 align:middle line:90% ask me again. 00:10:20.340 --> 00:10:24.030 align:middle line:90% 00:10:24.030 --> 00:10:27.840 align:middle line:84% But yeah, so I wanted to read something 00:10:27.840 --> 00:10:32.070 align:middle line:84% in honor of the May time and the spring time. 00:10:32.070 --> 00:10:35.460 align:middle line:90% Made me think of Allen. 00:10:35.460 --> 00:10:38.180 align:middle line:84% He used to kiss my hand, which is true. 00:10:38.180 --> 00:10:40.500 align:middle line:84% "Oh Allen, now after your death, I finally 00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:43.890 align:middle line:84% look at you working under my current age in school, 00:10:43.890 --> 00:10:45.630 align:middle line:90% after you left school funny. 00:10:45.630 --> 00:10:48.390 align:middle line:84% After the shows, the floral arrangements at St Ann's. 00:10:48.390 --> 00:10:50.850 align:middle line:84% After reading Poe together, I see your notes. 00:10:50.850 --> 00:10:51.990 align:middle line:90% You read the bells. 00:10:51.990 --> 00:10:55.380 align:middle line:84% I thought of L.L. I sang 'Dream Within a Dream,' and who'd know 00:10:55.380 --> 00:10:57.210 align:middle line:90% you'd become one right after? 00:10:57.210 --> 00:10:59.100 align:middle line:84% We'd pay tolls to get from one stop 00:10:59.100 --> 00:11:01.740 align:middle line:84% to the other, wish for stars, not to become them. 00:11:01.740 --> 00:11:05.040 align:middle line:84% Wanting always to touch and be one. 00:11:05.040 --> 00:11:08.310 align:middle line:84% After your tie, glasses, neat male pattern 00:11:08.310 --> 00:11:10.200 align:middle line:84% baldness of the cranium circumscribed 00:11:10.200 --> 00:11:14.895 align:middle line:84% by the ears, your teachers hip at Brooklyn College, Columbia 00:11:14.895 --> 00:11:17.580 align:middle line:90% U, this is beyond irony, it is. 00:11:17.580 --> 00:11:20.310 align:middle line:84% In death, I call you familiarly, first name. 00:11:20.310 --> 00:11:20.910 align:middle line:90% Chuckle. 00:11:20.910 --> 00:11:24.390 align:middle line:84% Now this-- our paths cannot cross your trail. 00:11:24.390 --> 00:11:26.550 align:middle line:84% And it was fun to see you in the mirror, camera 00:11:26.550 --> 00:11:28.710 align:middle line:84% turned to the side to see your other half. 00:11:28.710 --> 00:11:31.860 align:middle line:84% You in silhouette, profiling me for clip, clip, 00:11:31.860 --> 00:11:34.770 align:middle line:84% at this type-writerly way, ostensibly 00:11:34.770 --> 00:11:37.590 align:middle line:84% is what we have in common only, besides our affection 00:11:37.590 --> 00:11:40.800 align:middle line:90% for Amiri LeRoi Baraka's Jones. 00:11:40.800 --> 00:11:43.440 align:middle line:84% Icons of mine and not ologies, but ials-- 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:46.350 align:middle line:84% financial, commercial, residential, et cetera. 00:11:46.350 --> 00:11:47.910 align:middle line:90% I'd shock optimism. 00:11:47.910 --> 00:11:50.790 align:middle line:84% You were not a '50s cleaver, but someone did. 00:11:50.790 --> 00:11:52.440 align:middle line:90% You subbed them for Eldridge. 00:11:52.440 --> 00:11:53.790 align:middle line:90% I remember my OGs-- 00:11:53.790 --> 00:11:55.110 align:middle line:90% Rakim, Mos Def. 00:11:55.110 --> 00:11:56.550 align:middle line:90% Should we lie for a poem? 00:11:56.550 --> 00:11:59.250 align:middle line:84% Should we untruths together, exaggerating 00:11:59.250 --> 00:12:00.750 align:middle line:90% in the name of what? 00:12:00.750 --> 00:12:01.440 align:middle line:90% Salvation? 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:02.910 align:middle line:90% Second coming? 00:12:02.910 --> 00:12:03.900 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:12:03.900 --> 00:12:06.120 align:middle line:84% It is not the North Star that binds us. 00:12:06.120 --> 00:12:06.990 align:middle line:90% It is the heavens. 00:12:06.990 --> 00:12:10.410 align:middle line:84% 20 from the month of heat and flowers, your birthday 00:12:10.410 --> 00:12:13.290 align:middle line:84% came earlier than mine but bound by hands. 00:12:13.290 --> 00:12:16.740 align:middle line:84% Every time we read, you would take my hand and kiss the back. 00:12:16.740 --> 00:12:19.500 align:middle line:84% You know my kind, and would like that. 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:21.900 align:middle line:90% With jazz, hip-hop for me. 00:12:21.900 --> 00:12:25.290 align:middle line:84% And you, bagels, and don't forget Bob K-- as if. 00:12:25.290 --> 00:12:27.900 align:middle line:84% How do you human interact on ology, 00:12:27.900 --> 00:12:31.650 align:middle line:84% cause, the diamond crystals of sunrise ship? 00:12:31.650 --> 00:12:34.830 align:middle line:84% Our stars roll shoulders, talking, thinking, 00:12:34.830 --> 00:12:36.510 align:middle line:90% doubles and dados. 00:12:36.510 --> 00:12:38.280 align:middle line:90% Getting down with fractions. 00:12:38.280 --> 00:12:41.880 align:middle line:84% How do I get it all in like you, ticking off each thing? 00:12:41.880 --> 00:12:45.660 align:middle line:84% Conflagrations, these are not yours list simply. 00:12:45.660 --> 00:12:48.270 align:middle line:84% These are wars with your precious self. 00:12:48.270 --> 00:12:50.760 align:middle line:84% There is Nixon in this poem, and with the barrage, 00:12:50.760 --> 00:12:54.270 align:middle line:84% Kaufman's silence, and Ted's, then James'. 00:12:54.270 --> 00:12:56.250 align:middle line:84% My generation's minds were not as 00:12:56.250 --> 00:12:59.190 align:middle line:84% eager as yours to eat from the Garden of Good and Evil. 00:12:59.190 --> 00:13:02.850 align:middle line:84% We eat McDonald's, wore Victoria's Secret personal ad 00:13:02.850 --> 00:13:03.870 align:middle line:90% meat markets. 00:13:03.870 --> 00:13:06.600 align:middle line:84% The refinement of a conscription at the watery gate, 00:13:06.600 --> 00:13:10.620 align:middle line:84% we drown in vertisements and get words from the same place. 00:13:10.620 --> 00:13:13.950 align:middle line:84% You talk reflections every place-- same, same, same. 00:13:13.950 --> 00:13:16.740 align:middle line:84% From all spots, we get deluged by sound bites-- 00:13:16.740 --> 00:13:19.170 align:middle line:84% not from one, no diff, diff stiff. 00:13:19.170 --> 00:13:21.540 align:middle line:90% 1 plus 1 plus equals 1. 00:13:21.540 --> 00:13:23.340 align:middle line:90% We're not one, one us. 00:13:23.340 --> 00:13:24.000 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:25.410 align:middle line:90% I wish we had a god to call. 00:13:25.410 --> 00:13:26.340 align:middle line:90% I wish we had angels. 00:13:26.340 --> 00:13:28.110 align:middle line:90% I wish we had angles clear. 00:13:28.110 --> 00:13:31.260 align:middle line:84% I wish we could trust planes, logic, common sense. 00:13:31.260 --> 00:13:33.210 align:middle line:84% I wish there was a synthesis now. 00:13:33.210 --> 00:13:35.040 align:middle line:84% We are not in the Aquarian age, you'd 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:37.140 align:middle line:90% hope, hopping here and here. 00:13:37.140 --> 00:13:40.530 align:middle line:84% We are not in waves, air, just the cold hard element. 00:13:40.530 --> 00:13:42.900 align:middle line:84% We are not a blend, not in multiple states-- 00:13:42.900 --> 00:13:46.260 align:middle line:84% un-revolution, un-stasis, unrequited stillness, 00:13:46.260 --> 00:13:47.520 align:middle line:90% undirected motion. 00:13:47.520 --> 00:13:50.400 align:middle line:84% Who are the cabalistic words to intone now? 00:13:50.400 --> 00:13:53.190 align:middle line:84% Tree of life stumped from saying Om. 00:13:53.190 --> 00:13:56.100 align:middle line:84% Have you seen the foliage in Brazil lately? 00:13:56.100 --> 00:13:57.300 align:middle line:90% A long lawn. 00:13:57.300 --> 00:13:59.760 align:middle line:84% Speaking of bored, it is catchy, is it? 00:13:59.760 --> 00:14:02.130 align:middle line:84% All of the names have become curses. 00:14:02.130 --> 00:14:04.320 align:middle line:90% No power to invoke or intimate. 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:07.170 align:middle line:84% Martyrdom has become endorsement, neon anti 00:14:07.170 --> 00:14:08.970 align:middle line:90% deep breath against ozone. 00:14:08.970 --> 00:14:11.220 align:middle line:84% Did you know that there was an albino kangaroo born 00:14:11.220 --> 00:14:15.060 align:middle line:84% in Australia whose ears they had to put suntan lotion on? 00:14:15.060 --> 00:14:16.560 align:middle line:90% Portal to hell, I think. 00:14:16.560 --> 00:14:17.910 align:middle line:90% Deceptively spherical. 00:14:17.910 --> 00:14:19.320 align:middle line:90% A heavenly body. 00:14:19.320 --> 00:14:22.560 align:middle line:84% I am feline, AG, sitting on your papers and purring. 00:14:22.560 --> 00:14:25.200 align:middle line:84% You bray here, stubbornly and canine. 00:14:25.200 --> 00:14:26.310 align:middle line:90% Bray and Bray. 00:14:26.310 --> 00:14:27.240 align:middle line:90% Pray and pray." 00:14:27.240 --> 00:14:33.642 align:middle line:90% 00:14:33.642 --> 00:14:34.142 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:14:34.142 --> 00:14:43.320 align:middle line:90% 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:47.370 align:middle line:84% It's another seasonal poem that I took, 00:14:47.370 --> 00:14:49.380 align:middle line:90% been messing with a little bit. 00:14:49.380 --> 00:14:51.960 align:middle line:84% Been trying to mess with some words, some sounds, lately. 00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:54.510 align:middle line:90% 00:14:54.510 --> 00:14:57.904 align:middle line:90% I can find it. 00:14:57.904 --> 00:14:58.404 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:14:58.404 --> 00:15:09.272 align:middle line:90% 00:15:09.272 --> 00:15:34.340 align:middle line:84% [SINGING] Your dad is rich and your mama's good looking. 00:15:34.340 --> 00:15:37.990 align:middle line:90% 00:15:37.990 --> 00:15:42.554 align:middle line:90% So hush, don't you cry. 00:15:42.554 --> 00:15:47.625 align:middle line:90% Baby, don't cry. 00:15:47.625 --> 00:15:50.645 align:middle line:90% 00:15:50.645 --> 00:15:51.145 align:middle line:90% Tonight. 00:15:51.145 --> 00:15:54.600 align:middle line:90% 00:15:54.600 --> 00:16:10.970 align:middle line:90% Tonight won't be just any night. 00:16:10.970 --> 00:16:23.590 align:middle line:90% Tonight, no morning star today. 00:16:23.590 --> 00:16:31.910 align:middle line:90% The minutes seem like hours. 00:16:31.910 --> 00:16:40.520 align:middle line:90% I was lonely until sky is light. 00:16:40.520 --> 00:16:48.260 align:middle line:84% And last day and night yesterday. 00:16:48.260 --> 00:17:04.510 align:middle line:84% Yes days I knew happy, sweet sequestered olden days. 00:17:04.510 --> 00:17:12.310 align:middle line:90% Mad romance, gay youth was mine. 00:17:12.310 --> 00:17:20.680 align:middle line:84% Joyous, free, and flame and life, then sooth was mine. 00:17:20.680 --> 00:17:27.819 align:middle line:84% Sad am I, glad am I, for today I'm 00:17:27.819 --> 00:17:32.620 align:middle line:84% dreaming in a dream of yesterday. 00:17:32.620 --> 00:17:35.410 align:middle line:90% 00:17:35.410 --> 00:17:43.910 align:middle line:90% Yesterday, sequester day. 00:17:43.910 --> 00:17:49.100 align:middle line:84% Your daddy's rich and mama's good-looking. 00:17:49.100 --> 00:17:52.120 align:middle line:90% 00:17:52.120 --> 00:17:59.100 align:middle line:84% So hush, little baby, don't you cry. 00:17:59.100 --> 00:18:00.190 align:middle line:90% Don't cry. 00:18:00.190 --> 00:18:02.890 align:middle line:90% 00:18:02.890 --> 00:18:03.720 align:middle line:90% Don't cry. 00:18:03.720 --> 00:18:13.466 align:middle line:90% 00:18:13.466 --> 00:18:14.400 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:18:14.400 --> 00:18:16.992 align:middle line:90% OK, it's a medley. 00:18:16.992 --> 00:18:18.864 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:18:18.864 --> 00:18:20.736 align:middle line:90% 00:18:20.736 --> 00:18:23.580 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:18:23.580 --> 00:18:25.680 align:middle line:84% This one, I don't know if you caught 00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:32.130 align:middle line:84% this one in your surveillance of my work there, Ms. Sjoberg. 00:18:32.130 --> 00:18:34.440 align:middle line:90% But this one is a poem. 00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:38.940 align:middle line:84% This is a lot of odes today, actually, I'm now thinking. 00:18:38.940 --> 00:18:41.130 align:middle line:84% Probably because I'm around so much tradition 00:18:41.130 --> 00:18:42.465 align:middle line:90% and this prestige. 00:18:42.465 --> 00:18:44.683 align:middle line:90% 00:18:44.683 --> 00:18:46.350 align:middle line:84% But this is a poem that I wrote that was 00:18:46.350 --> 00:18:47.790 align:middle line:90% in Callaloo for Bob Kaufman. 00:18:47.790 --> 00:18:49.080 align:middle line:90% It's called "The Clicker." 00:18:49.080 --> 00:18:51.690 align:middle line:84% "Instead of Orville, Deborah Norville 00:18:51.690 --> 00:18:54.420 align:middle line:90% breaks it on Hard Copy. 00:18:54.420 --> 00:18:57.780 align:middle line:90% Norwegian grass is blue. 00:18:57.780 --> 00:19:01.380 align:middle line:84% Poverty is eunuchs crying about high pitch 00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:04.500 align:middle line:84% while choruses wail away at the Amen corner." 00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:07.780 align:middle line:90% 00:19:07.780 --> 00:19:24.360 align:middle line:84% And this is a piece that I wrote for someone else, Ralph Lemon. 00:19:24.360 --> 00:19:27.185 align:middle line:90% It's an excerpt. 00:19:27.185 --> 00:19:29.310 align:middle line:84% I think I read this the first time myself with you, 00:19:29.310 --> 00:19:30.120 align:middle line:90% Charles, when we did it-- 00:19:30.120 --> 00:19:30.620 align:middle line:90% Right. 00:19:30.620 --> 00:19:31.330 align:middle line:90% -- at EMU. 00:19:31.330 --> 00:19:31.830 align:middle line:90% --EMU. 00:19:31.830 --> 00:19:40.194 align:middle line:90% 00:19:40.194 --> 00:19:42.920 align:middle line:84% "My mammy, my mammy, my mammy, my mammy, my mammy, 00:19:42.920 --> 00:19:44.720 align:middle line:90% my mammy, my mammy, my man. 00:19:44.720 --> 00:19:47.450 align:middle line:84% My mammy, my mammy, my mammy, my mammy, my mammy, my mammy, 00:19:47.450 --> 00:19:50.432 align:middle line:84% my mammy, my man is guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, 00:19:50.432 --> 00:19:52.640 align:middle line:84% guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, 00:19:52.640 --> 00:19:54.500 align:middle line:84% guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, 00:19:54.500 --> 00:19:56.450 align:middle line:84% guarded, guarded, guarded, guarded, gone. 00:19:56.450 --> 00:19:58.760 align:middle line:84% Is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, 00:19:58.760 --> 00:20:01.277 align:middle line:84% is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, 00:20:01.277 --> 00:20:03.485 align:middle line:84% is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead, is dead instead." 00:20:03.485 --> 00:20:13.460 align:middle line:90% 00:20:13.460 --> 00:20:16.540 align:middle line:84% This is another poem about slavery. 00:20:16.540 --> 00:20:19.550 align:middle line:84% It's like, those poems were about slavery? 00:20:19.550 --> 00:20:21.470 align:middle line:84% Probably every poem I write has something 00:20:21.470 --> 00:20:28.040 align:middle line:84% to do with slavery, which is why I'm so pro-McCain. 00:20:28.040 --> 00:20:31.231 align:middle line:84% Because he was there for Martin Luther King! 00:20:31.231 --> 00:20:33.973 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:33.973 --> 00:20:37.260 align:middle line:84% Who, as we know, was running a hostile anti-American, 00:20:37.260 --> 00:20:38.560 align:middle line:90% anti-slavery platform. 00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:44.998 align:middle line:90% 00:20:44.998 --> 00:20:48.720 align:middle line:84% "Her mind was halved by the horizon. 00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:49.500 align:middle line:90% One. 00:20:49.500 --> 00:20:51.390 align:middle line:90% Not the water she wished. 00:20:51.390 --> 00:20:53.640 align:middle line:84% She remembered when she went under. 00:20:53.640 --> 00:20:55.210 align:middle line:90% There was a brook by her home. 00:20:55.210 --> 00:20:59.130 align:middle line:84% It was the last babbling she heard that was intelligible. 00:20:59.130 --> 00:21:01.380 align:middle line:90% Then the blindfold, two by two. 00:21:01.380 --> 00:21:03.270 align:middle line:90% The arc of her back to the pole. 00:21:03.270 --> 00:21:04.740 align:middle line:90% Mast against water. 00:21:04.740 --> 00:21:07.230 align:middle line:84% Heartbeat slow to waves frozen in the deep. 00:21:07.230 --> 00:21:10.080 align:middle line:84% She dreamed of a weird womb, an underbelly. 00:21:10.080 --> 00:21:14.040 align:middle line:84% Where is this [INAUDIBLE] and what is Neptune? 00:21:14.040 --> 00:21:16.420 align:middle line:90% Salt still in and on her face. 00:21:16.420 --> 00:21:17.610 align:middle line:90% She was backwards. 00:21:17.610 --> 00:21:19.140 align:middle line:90% Something tied her. 00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:20.850 align:middle line:90% She's 16 and playing dead. 00:21:20.850 --> 00:21:24.210 align:middle line:84% Her meat smelled, and so she was left in peach. 00:21:24.210 --> 00:21:25.410 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:21:25.410 --> 00:21:26.970 align:middle line:90% Even the sun was evil. 00:21:26.970 --> 00:21:29.580 align:middle line:84% She married the depths to be in stasis. 00:21:29.580 --> 00:21:31.800 align:middle line:90% She recalled rays as an aside. 00:21:31.800 --> 00:21:36.330 align:middle line:84% Shoots used to hold them by the same toe, the squeak now likes. 00:21:36.330 --> 00:21:39.450 align:middle line:84% It would later blaze on the white Earth which blinded her 00:21:39.450 --> 00:21:41.340 align:middle line:90% by those sails of bone. 00:21:41.340 --> 00:21:45.060 align:middle line:84% Ash and arms pull to the outside, displaced from posture 00:21:45.060 --> 00:21:45.960 align:middle line:90% and pose. 00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:49.410 align:middle line:84% Not a foot pedestrian simply scraped. 00:21:49.410 --> 00:21:50.895 align:middle line:84% The day was brighter than teeth." 00:21:50.895 --> 00:21:56.950 align:middle line:90% 00:21:56.950 --> 00:21:58.675 align:middle line:90% How am I doing on time? 00:21:58.675 --> 00:22:00.155 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:22:00.155 --> 00:22:00.655 align:middle line:90% Five? 00:22:00.655 --> 00:22:01.650 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:22:01.650 --> 00:22:05.020 align:middle line:84% This is a poem that recently became a cycle. 00:22:05.020 --> 00:22:08.590 align:middle line:84% Two of them, I wrote this in my second book, Intermission, 00:22:08.590 --> 00:22:10.960 align:middle line:90% and the third one is not. 00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:14.140 align:middle line:90% It's from the "Plutonic" cycle. 00:22:14.140 --> 00:22:17.650 align:middle line:84% The one that's not is in lieu of Demeter. 00:22:17.650 --> 00:22:21.460 align:middle line:90% It's the Yoruba goddess Oya. 00:22:21.460 --> 00:22:24.380 align:middle line:90% So I'll just read those three. 00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:27.040 align:middle line:84% The first one is on Pluto, the second is Persephone, 00:22:27.040 --> 00:22:29.855 align:middle line:84% and the third one is Oya in place of Demeter. 00:22:29.855 --> 00:22:30.355 align:middle line:90% "Plutonic." 00:22:30.355 --> 00:22:32.080 align:middle line:90% "One. 00:22:32.080 --> 00:22:35.230 align:middle line:84% Dusty death piled and fell around her dress. 00:22:35.230 --> 00:22:38.380 align:middle line:84% Me truly due to delve deep, melt the seed. 00:22:38.380 --> 00:22:41.440 align:middle line:84% Sweet pheremone Persephone, elicits, 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:44.740 align:middle line:84% elixir the first life I've seen since my flames flickered 00:22:44.740 --> 00:22:45.700 align:middle line:90% invection. 00:22:45.700 --> 00:22:49.810 align:middle line:84% Unearthly allies, she bewitching I and Hell's fury [? bowed ?] 00:22:49.810 --> 00:22:51.490 align:middle line:90% apron string smother. 00:22:51.490 --> 00:22:54.340 align:middle line:84% Cupidity trickster in the cheeked [? full up ?].. 00:22:54.340 --> 00:22:58.660 align:middle line:84% Stoke flushed my pyre, blush is fire unbrushed. 00:22:58.660 --> 00:23:03.520 align:middle line:84% Eye make-up, dye space, the five bride price, worldly sacrifice. 00:23:03.520 --> 00:23:06.550 align:middle line:84% All others mistake and hasten to make me beast 00:23:06.550 --> 00:23:08.980 align:middle line:90% bequest their failure. 00:23:08.980 --> 00:23:10.180 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:23:10.180 --> 00:23:14.260 align:middle line:84% Just I lust for one shard of light being cut off and under. 00:23:14.260 --> 00:23:16.540 align:middle line:84% Spacious coffin does not delight bring, 00:23:16.540 --> 00:23:19.540 align:middle line:84% but done springs hot and heaven sent revealing. 00:23:19.540 --> 00:23:20.680 align:middle line:90% Come see. 00:23:20.680 --> 00:23:22.480 align:middle line:90% I mirror of thee. 00:23:22.480 --> 00:23:23.680 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:23:23.680 --> 00:23:25.660 align:middle line:84% Now the world's weight falls on me. 00:23:25.660 --> 00:23:27.760 align:middle line:90% Whining I pine, ever motherly. 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:31.480 align:middle line:84% Yearning, return of garden's gift locked in diamonic glass. 00:23:31.480 --> 00:23:34.780 align:middle line:84% She bloomed mine in violet crystal. 00:23:34.780 --> 00:23:38.980 align:middle line:84% Ache of ripened fruit plucked, felled, beguiled, bruised. 00:23:38.980 --> 00:23:40.840 align:middle line:90% Nuanced colors. 00:23:40.840 --> 00:23:41.950 align:middle line:90% Blue deeper. 00:23:41.950 --> 00:23:43.660 align:middle line:90% A huge denouement. 00:23:43.660 --> 00:23:47.740 align:middle line:84% I recall the first frail pink that synced her time with mine. 00:23:47.740 --> 00:23:50.800 align:middle line:84% Her redressed twists skirting north winds fly. 00:23:50.800 --> 00:23:52.990 align:middle line:90% I'm pounding, desert dry. 00:23:52.990 --> 00:23:54.460 align:middle line:90% Cooling at twilight. 00:23:54.460 --> 00:23:58.810 align:middle line:84% My scream linked, tearing the barren banshee's broken rope. 00:23:58.810 --> 00:24:02.510 align:middle line:90% [SINGING] Eee-- ah-- 00:24:02.510 --> 00:24:05.170 align:middle line:90% aha-- ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. 00:24:05.170 --> 00:24:06.400 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:24:06.400 --> 00:24:10.875 align:middle line:84% I know green grass grew tired of unrelenting dawn and reaching. 00:24:10.875 --> 00:24:13.630 align:middle line:84% It beseeched me for sleep lest it cease. 00:24:13.630 --> 00:24:16.780 align:middle line:84% Blessing the rapture endow time for torpor. 00:24:16.780 --> 00:24:19.870 align:middle line:90% Fate appreciated my recreation. 00:24:19.870 --> 00:24:23.380 align:middle line:84% Huddled, formed embrace awakening me greater. 00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:25.690 align:middle line:90% Full arrest of verdant heat. 00:24:25.690 --> 00:24:30.790 align:middle line:84% Treasured treat betrothed and sweet, sweet, sweet. 00:24:30.790 --> 00:24:32.980 align:middle line:90% Hard Kore. 00:24:32.980 --> 00:24:34.570 align:middle line:90% In the end, I said fuck it. 00:24:34.570 --> 00:24:36.280 align:middle line:90% Everything had changed anyway. 00:24:36.280 --> 00:24:37.810 align:middle line:90% Yeah, sure, I'm raw-- 00:24:37.810 --> 00:24:40.750 align:middle line:90% rubbed the wrong way. 00:24:40.750 --> 00:24:41.830 align:middle line:90% He came to me in youth. 00:24:41.830 --> 00:24:44.440 align:middle line:90% I was wearing something frilly. 00:24:44.440 --> 00:24:46.510 align:middle line:90% Bugs' wings? 00:24:46.510 --> 00:24:50.290 align:middle line:84% He was the coldest man I'd ever met, and from such a hot place. 00:24:50.290 --> 00:24:51.700 align:middle line:90% And had a big dick." 00:24:51.700 --> 00:24:52.780 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:24:52.780 --> 00:24:54.760 align:middle line:90% "How could I help but notice? 00:24:54.760 --> 00:24:56.680 align:middle line:90% Innocent, not blind. 00:24:56.680 --> 00:24:59.320 align:middle line:84% I walked, half kicking and screaming. 00:24:59.320 --> 00:25:01.420 align:middle line:90% Dark there, but pitiless. 00:25:01.420 --> 00:25:06.560 align:middle line:84% Well, an abrupt introduction to everlasting, to say the least. 00:25:06.560 --> 00:25:09.160 align:middle line:90% Mother was frantic, weathered. 00:25:09.160 --> 00:25:10.420 align:middle line:90% Oh, me? 00:25:10.420 --> 00:25:12.580 align:middle line:90% True, I swallowed seed. 00:25:12.580 --> 00:25:16.000 align:middle line:84% Held out, but eventually hunger got the best of me." 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.632 align:middle line:90% 00:25:19.632 --> 00:25:21.980 align:middle line:90% "Django's Wife." 00:25:21.980 --> 00:25:24.950 align:middle line:90% "Red is my love's hair. 00:25:24.950 --> 00:25:28.220 align:middle line:84% Masai mud his face, painted white with chalk. 00:25:28.220 --> 00:25:31.820 align:middle line:84% The outline of Black line, a seam of skin so round, 00:25:31.820 --> 00:25:34.700 align:middle line:90% round the nose, his cleft chin. 00:25:34.700 --> 00:25:38.390 align:middle line:84% Nina's lips, vagina, the color of blackberry stains, 00:25:38.390 --> 00:25:40.700 align:middle line:90% them Brenda Sykes's luster. 00:25:40.700 --> 00:25:43.940 align:middle line:84% Matted hair, he has coiled at the base, a borrowed 00:25:43.940 --> 00:25:45.920 align:middle line:90% Senegalese palm roll. 00:25:45.920 --> 00:25:48.590 align:middle line:84% Look how Black gold reddens the skin. 00:25:48.590 --> 00:25:53.210 align:middle line:84% Iron ore coagulates the blood, brings together that color. 00:25:53.210 --> 00:25:57.710 align:middle line:84% The hidden head, his uncircumcised self mischievous 00:25:57.710 --> 00:26:00.680 align:middle line:84% peekaboo, my own peek in the mons. 00:26:00.680 --> 00:26:04.550 align:middle line:84% He was along the tree like dog doo. 00:26:04.550 --> 00:26:06.830 align:middle line:90% In the tree, cobwebs. 00:26:06.830 --> 00:26:09.740 align:middle line:90% Up the tree, a nest. 00:26:09.740 --> 00:26:15.080 align:middle line:84% The hollow sound's a skull, a seashell to the ear, see? 00:26:15.080 --> 00:26:16.610 align:middle line:90% The young god wins, a tangle." 00:26:16.610 --> 00:26:21.180 align:middle line:90% 00:26:21.180 --> 00:26:21.680 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:25.290 align:middle line:84% The last two poems I'm going to read are sound oriented poems. 00:26:25.290 --> 00:26:30.420 align:middle line:84% And this one is the coda of a poem 00:26:30.420 --> 00:26:33.300 align:middle line:84% that was called "My Great Grand Aunt Speaks to a Bush--" 00:26:33.300 --> 00:26:34.530 align:middle line:90% [COUGHING] 00:26:34.530 --> 00:26:36.090 align:middle line:90% --which I will not read. 00:26:36.090 --> 00:26:38.730 align:middle line:90% 00:26:38.730 --> 00:26:40.860 align:middle line:90% Let's just say he was told off. 00:26:40.860 --> 00:26:44.168 align:middle line:84% And [LAUGHING] even though my aunts didn't actually 00:26:44.168 --> 00:26:45.210 align:middle line:90% settle things with words. 00:26:45.210 --> 00:26:47.400 align:middle line:84% They settled them with violence, back in the day. 00:26:47.400 --> 00:26:49.740 align:middle line:90% I'm a word person, I guess. 00:26:49.740 --> 00:26:51.450 align:middle line:90% So this is a coda to that poem. 00:26:51.450 --> 00:26:54.450 align:middle line:90% 00:26:54.450 --> 00:27:04.680 align:middle line:84% [SINGING] Je-- sus, save your soul. 00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:13.734 align:middle line:90% Je-- sus save your soul. 00:27:13.734 --> 00:27:23.620 align:middle line:90% Je-- sus save soul. 00:27:23.620 --> 00:27:32.772 align:middle line:90% Je-- sus saves soul. 00:27:32.772 --> 00:27:42.090 align:middle line:90% 00:27:42.090 --> 00:27:45.690 align:middle line:84% And the last one poem I'm going to read is-- 00:27:45.690 --> 00:27:49.586 align:middle line:90% started as a collaboration. 00:27:49.586 --> 00:27:52.370 align:middle line:84% I guess it's worth telling the story quickly. 00:27:52.370 --> 00:27:55.160 align:middle line:84% There's a sample of that one of my collaborators, Val Jeanty, 00:27:55.160 --> 00:28:00.130 align:middle line:84% who's a wonderful electronic drummer, 00:28:00.130 --> 00:28:03.870 align:middle line:84% she had this little piece with the great Geoffrey Holder. 00:28:03.870 --> 00:28:06.430 align:middle line:90% Anybody know Geoffrey Holder? 00:28:06.430 --> 00:28:07.990 align:middle line:90% Show your age. 00:28:07.990 --> 00:28:09.050 align:middle line:90% Nobody wants to tell. 00:28:09.050 --> 00:28:10.030 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:28:10.030 --> 00:28:12.928 align:middle line:84% See the original "Doctor Doolittle" with Dick Van Dyke, 00:28:12.928 --> 00:28:14.220 align:middle line:90% and you'll see Geoffrey Holder. 00:28:14.220 --> 00:28:16.240 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:18.100 align:middle line:90% Really way too much information. 00:28:18.100 --> 00:28:19.120 align:middle line:90% Anyways. 00:28:19.120 --> 00:28:19.810 align:middle line:90% She's tall. 00:28:19.810 --> 00:28:21.370 align:middle line:84% She's got this like beautiful voice. 00:28:21.370 --> 00:28:24.010 align:middle line:84% And he comes-- I swear to god it's him, because his 00:28:24.010 --> 00:28:25.720 align:middle line:90% is a sort of singular voice. 00:28:25.720 --> 00:28:29.380 align:middle line:84% And he says, "it all started when we were brought here 00:28:29.380 --> 00:28:32.590 align:middle line:90% as slaves from Africa." 00:28:32.590 --> 00:28:35.500 align:middle line:84% Very like, Afro Shakespearean diction. 00:28:35.500 --> 00:28:36.370 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:28:36.370 --> 00:28:40.810 align:middle line:84% And so Val used that sample, and then I kind of did 00:28:40.810 --> 00:28:43.390 align:middle line:90% a vocal leads based on that. 00:28:43.390 --> 00:28:46.000 align:middle line:90% And after that was recorded-- 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:47.560 align:middle line:84% I think it's in the marked scene, 00:28:47.560 --> 00:28:50.710 align:middle line:90% you can still find it online-- 00:28:50.710 --> 00:28:52.300 align:middle line:90% we did a collaboration. 00:28:52.300 --> 00:28:55.260 align:middle line:84% But we couldn't get the sample right, so it started as-- 00:28:55.260 --> 00:29:00.550 align:middle line:84% [SLOW, DISTORTED SPEECH] It all started as we were brought here 00:29:00.550 --> 00:29:02.492 align:middle line:90% as slaves from A-a-a-frica. 00:29:02.492 --> 00:29:03.730 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:29:03.730 --> 00:29:07.165 align:middle line:84% And I was like, now you're doing my job, Geoffrey. 00:29:07.165 --> 00:29:09.790 align:middle line:84% And we could never sample it the way that he originally did it. 00:29:09.790 --> 00:29:10.570 align:middle line:90% It was strange. 00:29:10.570 --> 00:29:14.470 align:middle line:84% So I decided to do a poem found on Geoffrey Holder's 00:29:14.470 --> 00:29:19.660 align:middle line:84% reading of this one line in this piece that Val already did. 00:29:19.660 --> 00:29:21.970 align:middle line:90% I swear that's how it happened. 00:29:21.970 --> 00:29:25.210 align:middle line:84% [SINGING] It all started when we were brought here 00:29:25.210 --> 00:29:27.890 align:middle line:90% as slaves from Africa. 00:29:27.890 --> 00:29:31.350 align:middle line:84% It all-- sit all, sit all, sit all, sit all, sit ar, sit ar, 00:29:31.350 --> 00:29:34.090 align:middle line:84% sit ar, sit ar, it all started when 00:29:34.090 --> 00:29:38.755 align:middle line:84% we were brought here as, as, as, as, as, lafs, lafs, lafs, as, 00:29:38.755 --> 00:29:42.485 align:middle line:84% as slaves from Afr, it all, it all, it all, it all, it all, it 00:29:42.485 --> 00:29:44.610 align:middle line:84% all, st-- it all, it all, it all, it all, sta-dall, 00:29:44.610 --> 00:29:45.110 align:middle line:90% sta-dall. 00:29:45.110 --> 00:29:47.110 align:middle line:84% It all, it all, start-- it all, it 00:29:47.110 --> 00:29:50.140 align:middle line:84% all, st-art, st-art, st-art, st-art, st-art, st-art, 00:29:50.140 --> 00:29:52.803 align:middle line:84% start, it all started when we were br-- brought, 00:29:52.803 --> 00:29:54.970 align:middle line:84% brought here as sl-sl-slaves, slaves, slave, slaves, 00:29:54.970 --> 00:29:55.790 align:middle line:90% from Africa. 00:29:55.790 --> 00:29:57.922 align:middle line:84% It all st-dall, it all started when 00:29:57.922 --> 00:30:01.714 align:middle line:84% we were, when we were, when we, when when we, when when we, 00:30:01.714 --> 00:30:05.560 align:middle line:84% when when-- it all started when we were brought here as sla-- 00:30:05.560 --> 00:30:07.710 align:middle line:90% slaves from Africa. 00:30:07.710 --> 00:30:09.810 align:middle line:84% It all-- it all started when we were-- 00:30:09.810 --> 00:30:11.710 align:middle line:84% when we were brought, when we were brought, 00:30:11.710 --> 00:30:13.570 align:middle line:84% when we were, when we, when we-- it 00:30:13.570 --> 00:30:17.930 align:middle line:84% all started when we were brought here as slaves from Africa. 00:30:17.930 --> 00:30:22.210 align:middle line:84% It all st-- it all when we were Afr-- it all started wi--wi-- 00:30:22.210 --> 00:30:22.780 align:middle line:90% with Africa. 00:30:22.780 --> 00:30:25.230 align:middle line:84% It all started with Afr-- with Africa. 00:30:25.230 --> 00:30:25.930 align:middle line:90% With Africa. 00:30:25.930 --> 00:30:29.500 align:middle line:84% It all started when we were-- when we, when we, when we, 00:30:29.500 --> 00:30:30.370 align:middle line:90% were Africa. 00:30:30.370 --> 00:30:32.670 align:middle line:90% It all st-sta--sta, it all s-- 00:30:32.670 --> 00:30:34.940 align:middle line:84% it-it all, it-it-it all sta-- it-all sta-- 00:30:34.940 --> 00:30:39.320 align:middle line:84% it-it all started when we, when we were Afric-- it all, it all, 00:30:39.320 --> 00:30:42.410 align:middle line:84% it all started when we were brought here as sla-- as sla-- 00:30:42.410 --> 00:30:43.460 align:middle line:90% as sla-- 00:30:43.460 --> 00:30:44.510 align:middle line:90% in Africa. 00:30:44.510 --> 00:30:46.760 align:middle line:84% It all started when we were brought here 00:30:46.760 --> 00:30:48.600 align:middle line:90% as sla-- from Africa. 00:30:48.600 --> 00:30:51.580 align:middle line:84% It all started when we were-- we--we-- when w-w--we, 00:30:51.580 --> 00:30:55.360 align:middle line:84% when w-w-we, when w-w-we, when w-w-we- when we, when w-w-we, 00:30:55.360 --> 00:30:59.190 align:middle line:84% w- when we, w-w-w-w- we, when w-w-w-w--we were, 00:30:59.190 --> 00:31:01.910 align:middle line:84% when we were when we were Africa. 00:31:01.910 --> 00:31:04.176 align:middle line:84% It all started when we were Afri-- it all started, 00:31:04.176 --> 00:31:08.140 align:middle line:84% all started, all, when we, we, we, were African. 00:31:08.140 --> 00:31:11.260 align:middle line:90% It all started when we. 00:31:11.260 --> 00:31:12.268 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:31:12.268 --> 00:31:15.256 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:31:15.256 --> 00:31:20.734 align:middle line:84% Thank you for coming to hear me talk. 00:31:20.734 --> 00:31:28.730 align:middle line:90% 00:31:28.730 --> 00:31:31.120 align:middle line:84% So now you got the real headliner here, 00:31:31.120 --> 00:31:32.410 align:middle line:90% Charles Bernstein coming up. 00:31:32.410 --> 00:31:43.864 align:middle line:90% 00:31:43.864 --> 00:31:44.860 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:31:44.860 --> 00:31:53.850 align:middle line:90% 00:31:53.850 --> 00:31:56.865 align:middle line:84% Charles Bernstein from UbuWeb.com, 00:31:56.865 --> 00:32:01.470 align:middle line:84% a conversation with Richard Forman, EPCBuffalo.edu, 00:32:01.470 --> 00:32:05.520 align:middle line:84% Seminary Co-op Bookstore's interview, 00:32:05.520 --> 00:32:10.080 align:middle line:84% PShares.blogspot.com, Press.UChicago.edu, 00:32:10.080 --> 00:32:17.550 align:middle line:84% Home.JPS.net/TildaNada, an interview with Bradford 00:32:17.550 --> 00:32:23.550 align:middle line:84% Senning, Writing.UPenn,ed u/Bernstein/experiments, 00:32:23.550 --> 00:32:29.400 align:middle line:84% ArgotistOnline.co.uk, an interview with Eric Denut. 00:32:29.400 --> 00:32:30.090 align:middle line:90% One. 00:32:30.090 --> 00:32:33.180 align:middle line:84% "In poetry, they talk about finding your voice, which 00:32:33.180 --> 00:32:35.790 align:middle line:84% is too often a way of evading the voices to be 00:32:35.790 --> 00:32:38.430 align:middle line:90% found in the writing." 00:32:38.430 --> 00:32:39.900 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:32:39.900 --> 00:32:42.570 align:middle line:84% Not only do I consider works of official verse culture 00:32:42.570 --> 00:32:46.300 align:middle line:84% to be poetry, which is not for me an honorific category--" 00:32:46.300 --> 00:32:46.800 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:32:46.800 --> 00:32:50.190 align:middle line:84% "--but also one of the key features of official verse 00:32:50.190 --> 00:32:53.310 align:middle line:84% culture is that it could necessarily include some poetry 00:32:53.310 --> 00:32:55.560 align:middle line:90% that I like quite a lot." 00:32:55.560 --> 00:32:56.595 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:32:56.595 --> 00:32:58.697 align:middle line:84% "I prefer minerals to insects, but I've 00:32:58.697 --> 00:33:00.405 align:middle line:84% been working on this with my ontologist." 00:33:00.405 --> 00:33:03.270 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:03.270 --> 00:33:04.140 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:33:04.140 --> 00:33:06.630 align:middle line:84% "As an alternative to National Poetry Month, 00:33:06.630 --> 00:33:09.420 align:middle line:84% I propose that we have an international anti-Poetry 00:33:09.420 --> 00:33:10.470 align:middle line:90% Month. 00:33:10.470 --> 00:33:13.260 align:middle line:84% As part of the activities, all verse in public places 00:33:13.260 --> 00:33:15.690 align:middle line:84% will be covered over from the Statue of Liberty 00:33:15.690 --> 00:33:18.540 align:middle line:84% to the friezes on many of our government buildings. 00:33:18.540 --> 00:33:20.970 align:middle line:84% Parents will be asked not to read Mother Goose. 00:33:20.970 --> 00:33:24.270 align:middle line:84% Religious institutions will have to forgo reading verse passages 00:33:24.270 --> 00:33:27.720 align:middle line:84% from the liturgy, with hymns strictly banned. 00:33:27.720 --> 00:33:29.910 align:middle line:84% No vocal music will be played on the radio 00:33:29.910 --> 00:33:32.130 align:middle line:90% or sung in concert halls. 00:33:32.130 --> 00:33:34.830 align:middle line:84% Children will have to stop playing all slapping, 00:33:34.830 --> 00:33:36.900 align:middle line:84% and counting, and singing games, and stick 00:33:36.900 --> 00:33:39.900 align:middle line:90% to board games and football." 00:33:39.900 --> 00:33:40.890 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:33:40.890 --> 00:33:44.040 align:middle line:84% "Oddly, it is a form of dissent these days 00:33:44.040 --> 00:33:47.370 align:middle line:84% to hold out that art that doesn't get the market share 00:33:47.370 --> 00:33:51.000 align:middle line:84% can actually be as valuable as the art that does. 00:33:51.000 --> 00:33:54.210 align:middle line:84% I'm for the ketchup that loses the race." 00:33:54.210 --> 00:33:55.275 align:middle line:90% Six. 00:33:55.275 --> 00:33:58.410 align:middle line:84% "Attention: write down everything 00:33:58.410 --> 00:34:00.510 align:middle line:90% you hear for one hour." 00:34:00.510 --> 00:34:01.545 align:middle line:90% Seven. 00:34:01.545 --> 00:34:04.740 align:middle line:84% "There is still a great deal of conceptualizing that leads up 00:34:04.740 --> 00:34:06.480 align:middle line:90% to any intuition." 00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:07.950 align:middle line:84% Please welcome Charles Bernstein. 00:34:07.950 --> 00:34:09.879 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:34:09.879 --> 00:34:13.309 align:middle line:90% 00:34:13.309 --> 00:34:15.269 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:34:15.269 --> 00:34:22.790 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read one work tonight called "Recantorium-- 00:34:22.790 --> 00:34:26.810 align:middle line:84% a Bachelor Machine after Duchamp after Kafka." 00:34:26.810 --> 00:34:28.909 align:middle line:84% But then on Saturday, in the session, 00:34:28.909 --> 00:34:31.010 align:middle line:84% Tracie and I will read the collaborations we did 00:34:31.010 --> 00:34:32.052 align:middle line:90% and I'll read some poems. 00:34:32.052 --> 00:34:33.770 align:middle line:90% So today, just this one work-- 00:34:33.770 --> 00:34:34.983 align:middle line:90% "Recantorium." 00:34:34.983 --> 00:34:53.261 align:middle line:90% 00:34:53.261 --> 00:34:58.830 align:middle line:84% "I, Charles, son of the late Joseph Herman, 00:34:58.830 --> 00:35:03.900 align:middle line:84% later known as Herman Joseph, and Shirley Kay, later known 00:35:03.900 --> 00:35:08.580 align:middle line:84% as Sherry, New Yorker, aged 58 years, 00:35:08.580 --> 00:35:14.700 align:middle line:84% arraigned personally before this esteemed body and kneeling 00:35:14.700 --> 00:35:19.380 align:middle line:84% before you, most eminent and reverent readers, inquisitor 00:35:19.380 --> 00:35:22.980 align:middle line:84% generals against the heretical depravity 00:35:22.980 --> 00:35:26.130 align:middle line:84% throughout the entire poetry commonwealth, 00:35:26.130 --> 00:35:30.030 align:middle line:84% having before my eyes and touching with my hands 00:35:30.030 --> 00:35:31.860 align:middle line:90% the books of accessible poets--" 00:35:31.860 --> 00:35:32.790 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:35:32.790 --> 00:35:37.980 align:middle line:84% "--swear that I have always believed, do believe, 00:35:37.980 --> 00:35:40.140 align:middle line:84% and by your help will, in the future, 00:35:40.140 --> 00:35:43.410 align:middle line:84% believe all that is held, preached, taught, 00:35:43.410 --> 00:35:46.875 align:middle line:84% and expressed by the books of accessible poets." 00:35:46.875 --> 00:35:47.640 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:35:47.640 --> 00:35:50.280 align:middle line:90% "I was wrong. 00:35:50.280 --> 00:35:52.260 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:35:52.260 --> 00:35:54.120 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:35:54.120 --> 00:35:57.180 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:35:57.180 --> 00:35:59.790 align:middle line:84% that National Poetry Month is not good 00:35:59.790 --> 00:36:02.190 align:middle line:90% for poetry and for poets. 00:36:02.190 --> 00:36:07.200 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and apostasy, 00:36:07.200 --> 00:36:11.370 align:middle line:84% and I now freely and openly attest 00:36:11.370 --> 00:36:14.310 align:middle line:84% to the virtues of National Poetry Month 00:36:14.310 --> 00:36:18.160 align:middle line:84% in throwing a national spotlight on poetry. 00:36:18.160 --> 00:36:23.580 align:middle line:84% So crucial to keeping verse alive in the 21st century. 00:36:23.580 --> 00:36:24.960 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:36:24.960 --> 00:36:27.540 align:middle line:90% I apologize and recant. 00:36:27.540 --> 00:36:29.730 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:36:29.730 --> 00:36:33.600 align:middle line:84% that only elitist and obscure poetry should be praised. 00:36:33.600 --> 00:36:38.550 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, detest, and renounce the aforesaid error 00:36:38.550 --> 00:36:40.110 align:middle line:90% and aversion. 00:36:40.110 --> 00:36:42.930 align:middle line:84% And I now freely and openly attest 00:36:42.930 --> 00:36:47.490 align:middle line:84% that the best way to get general readers to start to read poetry 00:36:47.490 --> 00:36:51.030 align:middle line:84% is to present them with broadly appealing work 00:36:51.030 --> 00:36:57.930 align:middle line:84% with strong emotional content and a clear narrative line. 00:36:57.930 --> 00:36:59.400 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:36:59.400 --> 00:37:00.390 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:37:00.390 --> 00:37:00.990 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:37:00.990 --> 00:37:02.760 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:37:02.760 --> 00:37:05.850 align:middle line:84% that to raise the profile for poetry, 00:37:05.850 --> 00:37:08.835 align:middle line:84% events involving celebrities reading poems--" 00:37:08.835 --> 00:37:10.050 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:37:10.050 --> 00:37:13.020 align:middle line:84% "--such as the one each year that is the centerpiece 00:37:13.020 --> 00:37:17.010 align:middle line:84% of National Poetry Month are not as valuable as events 00:37:17.010 --> 00:37:21.060 align:middle line:84% presenting poets reading their own works. 00:37:21.060 --> 00:37:23.700 align:middle line:84% I acknowledge and regret my error. 00:37:23.700 --> 00:37:27.270 align:middle line:84% Poets would turn off the large and wealthy audience 00:37:27.270 --> 00:37:29.070 align:middle line:90% of arts patrons. 00:37:29.070 --> 00:37:35.850 align:middle line:84% Like the retarded or crippled stepchildren in fairy tales, 00:37:35.850 --> 00:37:39.810 align:middle line:84% it is best to have the poet stay in the back room 00:37:39.810 --> 00:37:43.110 align:middle line:84% during the party lest they frighten the guests." 00:37:43.110 --> 00:37:45.300 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:37:45.300 --> 00:37:47.130 align:middle line:90% "I was wrong. 00:37:47.130 --> 00:37:48.330 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:37:48.330 --> 00:37:49.830 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:37:49.830 --> 00:37:52.740 align:middle line:84% I altogether reject, abjure and denounce 00:37:52.740 --> 00:37:57.370 align:middle line:84% the sarcasm that just now has undercut the sincerity 00:37:57.370 --> 00:37:58.120 align:middle line:90% of my profession." 00:37:58.120 --> 00:37:58.860 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:37:58.860 --> 00:38:03.310 align:middle line:84% "My comments about poets as retarded or crippled 00:38:03.310 --> 00:38:07.000 align:middle line:90% stepchildren are offensive. 00:38:07.000 --> 00:38:11.860 align:middle line:84% I abase and prostrate myself in humbly and sincerely asking 00:38:11.860 --> 00:38:14.890 align:middle line:84% for your forgiveness, and the forgiveness of all those 00:38:14.890 --> 00:38:21.490 align:middle line:84% who seek, above all, sincerity and authenticity in poetry. 00:38:21.490 --> 00:38:22.360 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:23.290 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:38:23.290 --> 00:38:24.790 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:38:24.790 --> 00:38:27.430 align:middle line:84% Midway in my journey as a poet, I 00:38:27.430 --> 00:38:31.900 align:middle line:84% have given my name in encomium and book cover endorsement 00:38:31.900 --> 00:38:35.860 align:middle line:84% both for ads and announcements, catalogs and brochures, print 00:38:35.860 --> 00:38:41.470 align:middle line:84% and digital, to works that are not of the highest order 00:38:41.470 --> 00:38:46.240 align:middle line:84% as established by time, authority, and fashion, lapsing 00:38:46.240 --> 00:38:49.690 align:middle line:84% into stubborn selection based on personal preference, 00:38:49.690 --> 00:38:51.370 align:middle line:90% or appreciation, or liking-- 00:38:51.370 --> 00:38:56.140 align:middle line:84% on intuitions and hunches rather than rational principle 00:38:56.140 --> 00:38:59.060 align:middle line:90% and promulgated theory. 00:38:59.060 --> 00:39:01.490 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:39:01.490 --> 00:39:02.570 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:39:02.570 --> 00:39:04.580 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:39:04.580 --> 00:39:07.910 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon and renounce the false opinion 00:39:07.910 --> 00:39:12.200 align:middle line:84% that poetry is a social and ideological construction 00:39:12.200 --> 00:39:17.840 align:middle line:84% and not the expression of the pure feelings of the poet, 00:39:17.840 --> 00:39:20.810 align:middle line:84% and declare the sovereign human self 00:39:20.810 --> 00:39:25.550 align:middle line:84% is the sole origin of authentic expression and meaning. 00:39:25.550 --> 00:39:29.000 align:middle line:84% In full recognition and acknowledgment of my error, 00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:32.300 align:middle line:84% I hereby declare and swear to all present company 00:39:32.300 --> 00:39:35.660 align:middle line:84% that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way, 00:39:35.660 --> 00:39:38.720 align:middle line:84% whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said 00:39:38.720 --> 00:39:40.550 align:middle line:90% false doctrine. 00:39:40.550 --> 00:39:41.660 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:39:41.660 --> 00:39:43.370 align:middle line:90% I apologize and recant. 00:39:43.370 --> 00:39:45.140 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:39:45.140 --> 00:39:48.620 align:middle line:84% that the head of a major writing organization 00:39:48.620 --> 00:39:53.300 align:middle line:84% was out of line when he called me morally repugnant for not 00:39:53.300 --> 00:39:56.390 align:middle line:90% sharing his views about poetry. 00:39:56.390 --> 00:40:00.050 align:middle line:84% As one of the blessed of the doctrine of authentic poetry 00:40:00.050 --> 00:40:04.700 align:middle line:84% pointed out in rebuking me, he is entitled to his views, 00:40:04.700 --> 00:40:09.020 align:middle line:84% and my criticism of him was divisive, and partisan, 00:40:09.020 --> 00:40:10.130 align:middle line:90% and morally repugnant." 00:40:10.130 --> 00:40:10.985 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:40:10.985 --> 00:40:12.590 align:middle line:90% 'I was wrong. 00:40:12.590 --> 00:40:13.470 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:40:13.470 --> 00:40:13.970 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:40:13.970 --> 00:40:16.310 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:40:16.310 --> 00:40:20.180 align:middle line:84% that official verse culture, through prestigious prizes 00:40:20.180 --> 00:40:23.690 align:middle line:84% awarded for merit and reviews in nationally circulated 00:40:23.690 --> 00:40:25.820 align:middle line:84% publications selected for major importance, 00:40:25.820 --> 00:40:29.240 align:middle line:84% and including the appointment of the poets laureate, 00:40:29.240 --> 00:40:32.450 align:middle line:84% do not represent the best and the finest, 00:40:32.450 --> 00:40:33.980 align:middle line:84% the most profound and significant, 00:40:33.980 --> 00:40:37.130 align:middle line:84% the richest and most rewarding poetry of our nation. 00:40:37.130 --> 00:40:41.360 align:middle line:84% And now that I, myself, in my person and through my work 00:40:41.360 --> 00:40:46.580 align:middle line:84% have ascended to this exalted company 00:40:46.580 --> 00:40:49.880 align:middle line:84% and joined the rarefied and incorrigible company 00:40:49.880 --> 00:40:53.450 align:middle line:84% of official verse culture, do here cast stones and sticks, 00:40:53.450 --> 00:40:57.200 align:middle line:84% and call an abomination, and curse, and scorn, and repudiate 00:40:57.200 --> 00:41:01.850 align:middle line:84% any who would not cherish and adore both the process 00:41:01.850 --> 00:41:03.740 align:middle line:84% and product of that official verse culture 00:41:03.740 --> 00:41:06.980 align:middle line:84% that has embraced with trepidation, and embarrassment, 00:41:06.980 --> 00:41:09.860 align:middle line:84% and with noses tightly pinched and ear muffs 00:41:09.860 --> 00:41:14.000 align:middle line:90% in place, my unworthy ascent. 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:15.170 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:41:15.170 --> 00:41:16.790 align:middle line:90% I apologize and recant. 00:41:16.790 --> 00:41:19.130 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:41:19.130 --> 00:41:21.080 align:middle line:84% that there was a value in working together 00:41:21.080 --> 00:41:24.050 align:middle line:84% collaboratively with other poets, 00:41:24.050 --> 00:41:27.350 align:middle line:84% along the lines of shared aesthetic engagements. 00:41:27.350 --> 00:41:31.520 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion. 00:41:31.520 --> 00:41:36.740 align:middle line:84% I now see clearly and openly, and without coercion 00:41:36.740 --> 00:41:40.220 align:middle line:84% acknowledged to all virtually or actually present, 00:41:40.220 --> 00:41:42.980 align:middle line:84% now and in the future in this life 00:41:42.980 --> 00:41:45.530 align:middle line:84% and in all subsequent lives on Earth, 00:41:45.530 --> 00:41:50.420 align:middle line:84% as well as on planets populated by intelligent beings, 00:41:50.420 --> 00:41:53.420 align:middle line:84% that only poets working in solitude 00:41:53.420 --> 00:41:59.000 align:middle line:84% and individually can produce poems of enduring value. 00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:01.030 align:middle line:90% I did wrong. 00:42:01.030 --> 00:42:02.740 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:42:02.740 --> 00:42:04.360 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:08.320 align:middle line:84% Having advocated in youth a set of radical approaches 00:42:08.320 --> 00:42:11.260 align:middle line:84% in poetry, I later abandoned, or altered, 00:42:11.260 --> 00:42:13.480 align:middle line:84% or undermined these very approaches 00:42:13.480 --> 00:42:17.170 align:middle line:84% of my own and my comrades devising, shifting my views 00:42:17.170 --> 00:42:19.960 align:middle line:84% with the tides, putting my personal aesthetics 00:42:19.960 --> 00:42:24.190 align:middle line:84% above these principles, my preferences and interests 00:42:24.190 --> 00:42:28.030 align:middle line:84% above the ideals and interests of the group. 00:42:28.030 --> 00:42:30.550 align:middle line:90% I did and was wrong. 00:42:30.550 --> 00:42:36.120 align:middle line:84% I recant and renounce the time for my way's 00:42:36.120 --> 00:42:42.030 align:middle line:84% erroneous and peripatetic errant and wandering has expired. 00:42:42.030 --> 00:42:45.510 align:middle line:84% The time for a poetry of the doggedly particular 00:42:45.510 --> 00:42:49.530 align:middle line:84% and the quotidian detail of the un-symbological, 00:42:49.530 --> 00:42:54.360 align:middle line:84% of the minor and the off-key has expired, 00:42:54.360 --> 00:42:58.470 align:middle line:84% just as the time has expired for obscurantist theories propping 00:42:58.470 --> 00:43:01.050 align:middle line:84% up obscurantist poems, poems that 00:43:01.050 --> 00:43:04.740 align:middle line:84% turn their backs on meaning, story, emotion, 00:43:04.740 --> 00:43:08.160 align:middle line:84% and pleasure as these values have been promulgated 00:43:08.160 --> 00:43:12.210 align:middle line:84% in the books of accessible poems which is the only 00:43:12.210 --> 00:43:16.050 align:middle line:84% sure guide away from empty rhetoric 00:43:16.050 --> 00:43:19.050 align:middle line:84% and toward the pure achievement of meaning, 00:43:19.050 --> 00:43:23.420 align:middle line:90% story, emotion, and pleasure. 00:43:23.420 --> 00:43:27.650 align:middle line:84% I now, and I aver this before you assembled here 00:43:27.650 --> 00:43:29.900 align:middle line:84% virtually and actually, before you 00:43:29.900 --> 00:43:33.590 align:middle line:84% I aver and embrace a poetry without limits 00:43:33.590 --> 00:43:38.420 align:middle line:84% of time or place, a poetry of universal address 00:43:38.420 --> 00:43:43.860 align:middle line:84% and true to the timeless human spirit. 00:43:43.860 --> 00:43:45.030 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:43:45.030 --> 00:43:46.950 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:43:46.950 --> 00:43:49.120 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:43:49.120 --> 00:43:52.900 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandoned the false doctrine of social poetics 00:43:52.900 --> 00:43:56.320 align:middle line:84% in which poems are read in their cultural and bibliographic 00:43:56.320 --> 00:43:57.940 align:middle line:90% contexts. 00:43:57.940 --> 00:44:04.360 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and apostasy. 00:44:04.360 --> 00:44:09.100 align:middle line:84% I now declare openly and without fear of punishment, ridicule, 00:44:09.100 --> 00:44:11.860 align:middle line:84% neglect, disparagement, or coercion to all 00:44:11.860 --> 00:44:15.220 align:middle line:84% virtually or actually present now and in the future 00:44:15.220 --> 00:44:17.440 align:middle line:84% in this life, and in all subsequent lives 00:44:17.440 --> 00:44:20.080 align:middle line:84% on Earth as well as on other planets populated 00:44:20.080 --> 00:44:25.630 align:middle line:84% by intelligent beings, that social poetics demeans poetry, 00:44:25.630 --> 00:44:29.890 align:middle line:84% which in its purest form is a timeless expression 00:44:29.890 --> 00:44:33.670 align:middle line:90% of universal human feeling. 00:44:33.670 --> 00:44:35.500 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:44:35.500 --> 00:44:36.550 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:44:36.550 --> 00:44:37.960 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:44:37.960 --> 00:44:41.770 align:middle line:84% I totally and absolutely, with shame and guilt, 00:44:41.770 --> 00:44:45.940 align:middle line:84% abandon the false doctrine that social and cultural history 00:44:45.940 --> 00:44:50.200 align:middle line:84% might include poetry in the field of study or use poetry 00:44:50.200 --> 00:44:54.660 align:middle line:84% as models for thinking about society and culture. 00:44:54.660 --> 00:44:59.040 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, detest and renounce the aforesaid error 00:44:59.040 --> 00:44:59.970 align:middle line:90% and aversion. 00:44:59.970 --> 00:45:04.800 align:middle line:84% I now admit and acknowledge, proclaim and announce openly 00:45:04.800 --> 00:45:09.030 align:middle line:84% and without coercion, or fear, or punishment, or ridicule, 00:45:09.030 --> 00:45:12.630 align:middle line:84% or disparagement to all virtually or actually present 00:45:12.630 --> 00:45:14.730 align:middle line:84% now and in the future, in this life 00:45:14.730 --> 00:45:17.850 align:middle line:84% and in all subsequent lives on Earth, as well 00:45:17.850 --> 00:45:22.710 align:middle line:84% as on other planets populated by intelligent beings, 00:45:22.710 --> 00:45:27.180 align:middle line:84% that prose narratives are the only suitable work 00:45:27.180 --> 00:45:30.270 align:middle line:84% for cultural and historical study, 00:45:30.270 --> 00:45:34.200 align:middle line:84% and that expository prose can provide the only 00:45:34.200 --> 00:45:39.290 align:middle line:90% suitable models for such study. 00:45:39.290 --> 00:45:41.120 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:45:41.120 --> 00:45:42.140 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:45:42.140 --> 00:45:42.770 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:45:42.770 --> 00:45:44.978 align:middle line:84% I altogether and totally, completely, and thoroughly, 00:45:44.978 --> 00:45:47.570 align:middle line:84% without reservation, quibble, or question, 00:45:47.570 --> 00:45:52.790 align:middle line:84% and with newly faithful heart, abandon the false doctrine that 00:45:52.790 --> 00:45:59.030 align:middle line:84% meandering, digressive, or paratactic prose, prose that 00:45:59.030 --> 00:46:02.210 align:middle line:84% fails to state clearly its meaning, 00:46:02.210 --> 00:46:06.950 align:middle line:84% sentences that get caught up in their own rhythms, and sounds, 00:46:06.950 --> 00:46:11.970 align:middle line:84% and cadences, nuances and nooks, rather than 00:46:11.970 --> 00:46:17.450 align:middle line:84% in getting to the point, or meat, or heart of the matter, 00:46:17.450 --> 00:46:20.420 align:middle line:84% or meaning, or substance, or as I say, 00:46:20.420 --> 00:46:23.000 align:middle line:84% I abandon and renounce the false doctrine 00:46:23.000 --> 00:46:25.970 align:middle line:84% that crooked and bent prose can have 00:46:25.970 --> 00:46:30.110 align:middle line:84% any value for truthful discourse or accurate representation. 00:46:30.110 --> 00:46:35.000 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion, 00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:40.070 align:middle line:84% and the many related errors and aversions that flow inevitably 00:46:40.070 --> 00:46:44.090 align:middle line:84% as a consequence of the aforesaid error and aversion 00:46:44.090 --> 00:46:48.560 align:middle line:84% as a baby inevitably flows from its mother, 00:46:48.560 --> 00:46:53.180 align:middle line:84% or an ocean from its rivers, or a false conclusion 00:46:53.180 --> 00:46:58.520 align:middle line:84% from a flawed premise, or a disease from a virus, 00:46:58.520 --> 00:47:02.525 align:middle line:84% or death from repeated blows with a blunt instrument--" 00:47:02.525 --> 00:47:05.648 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:47:05.648 --> 00:47:10.910 align:middle line:84% "--or gorging from a starving child given food. 00:47:10.910 --> 00:47:14.970 align:middle line:84% Clearly written expository prose with delineated argument, 00:47:14.970 --> 00:47:17.930 align:middle line:84% including a beginning, middle, and end, 00:47:17.930 --> 00:47:22.580 align:middle line:84% is the only guarantor of rational mind. 00:47:22.580 --> 00:47:24.980 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:47:24.980 --> 00:47:26.630 align:middle line:90% I apologize and recant. 00:47:26.630 --> 00:47:28.550 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false doctrine 00:47:28.550 --> 00:47:33.590 align:middle line:84% that ambiguity and irony are anything more than sophistry. 00:47:33.590 --> 00:47:37.010 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and apostasy 00:47:37.010 --> 00:47:40.970 align:middle line:84% which I have lapsed into again and again, 00:47:40.970 --> 00:47:44.360 align:middle line:84% like an habitual drinker seeking his 5 o'clock 00:47:44.360 --> 00:47:47.870 align:middle line:84% Martini, or an erotomaniac seeking 00:47:47.870 --> 00:47:51.560 align:middle line:84% non-procreative sexual experiences, 00:47:51.560 --> 00:47:57.050 align:middle line:84% or a worker idling on the job, or an habitual truant passing 00:47:57.050 --> 00:47:59.420 align:middle line:90% notes in class. 00:47:59.420 --> 00:48:01.160 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:48:01.160 --> 00:48:02.030 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:48:02.030 --> 00:48:02.600 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:48:02.600 --> 00:48:04.310 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:48:04.310 --> 00:48:08.690 align:middle line:84% that abnormal poetry techniques such as fragmentation, 00:48:08.690 --> 00:48:11.900 align:middle line:84% dissociation, discontinuity, collage, disjunction, 00:48:11.900 --> 00:48:16.940 align:middle line:84% seriality, constellation, and unnatural constraints 00:48:16.940 --> 00:48:20.420 align:middle line:84% of whatever times have any contribution 00:48:20.420 --> 00:48:22.310 align:middle line:90% to make to poetic craft. 00:48:22.310 --> 00:48:25.580 align:middle line:84% After it had been notified to me that the said doctrine was 00:48:25.580 --> 00:48:28.250 align:middle line:84% contrary to the books of accessible poets, 00:48:28.250 --> 00:48:30.470 align:middle line:84% I wrote and published works in which 00:48:30.470 --> 00:48:35.240 align:middle line:84% I discuss this new doctrine, already condemned, 00:48:35.240 --> 00:48:39.080 align:middle line:84% and adduced arguments of great cogency in its favor 00:48:39.080 --> 00:48:42.290 align:middle line:84% without presenting any negation of these. 00:48:42.290 --> 00:48:45.590 align:middle line:84% And for this reason, I have been vehemently rebuked. 00:48:45.590 --> 00:48:48.530 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, detest and renounce the aforesaid errors 00:48:48.530 --> 00:48:52.040 align:middle line:84% and aversions which are symptoms of a queer 00:48:52.040 --> 00:48:56.000 align:middle line:84% and degenerate avoidance of meaning, coherence, truth, 00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:58.970 align:middle line:84% morality, and the literary tradition 00:48:58.970 --> 00:49:00.245 align:middle line:90% if rightly understood." 00:49:00.245 --> 00:49:02.282 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:49:02.282 --> 00:49:04.910 align:middle line:84% "I must not hold, defend, or teach 00:49:04.910 --> 00:49:07.340 align:middle line:84% in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, 00:49:07.340 --> 00:49:09.440 align:middle line:90% the said false doctrine. 00:49:09.440 --> 00:49:10.040 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:49:10.040 --> 00:49:10.610 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:49:10.610 --> 00:49:11.110 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:49:11.110 --> 00:49:14.540 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion that form in poetry 00:49:14.540 --> 00:49:17.480 align:middle line:90% is political and social. 00:49:17.480 --> 00:49:20.850 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion, 00:49:20.850 --> 00:49:23.470 align:middle line:84% which is a symptom of a queer and degenerate 00:49:23.470 --> 00:49:26.240 align:middle line:84% avoidance of meaning, coherence, truth, morality, 00:49:26.240 --> 00:49:30.650 align:middle line:84% and the literary tradition if rightly understood. 00:49:30.650 --> 00:49:33.080 align:middle line:84% Form in poetry is a transparent means 00:49:33.080 --> 00:49:36.740 align:middle line:84% of conveying the emotional truth of the poem 00:49:36.740 --> 00:49:39.890 align:middle line:84% and should never interfere with or contradict 00:49:39.890 --> 00:49:43.490 align:middle line:90% the emotional truth of the poem. 00:49:43.490 --> 00:49:45.320 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:49:45.320 --> 00:49:47.640 align:middle line:90% I apologize and I recant. 00:49:47.640 --> 00:49:52.070 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon, disavow, and retract the false doctrine 00:49:52.070 --> 00:49:56.210 align:middle line:84% that the imagination is anything more than can 00:49:56.210 --> 00:49:59.420 align:middle line:90% be grasped by rational mind. 00:49:59.420 --> 00:50:02.120 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion 00:50:02.120 --> 00:50:05.420 align:middle line:84% which I have lapsed into again and again, 00:50:05.420 --> 00:50:08.570 align:middle line:84% like a milkman singing on his route 00:50:08.570 --> 00:50:10.895 align:middle line:84% or a pony that refuses to be ridden." 00:50:10.895 --> 00:50:11.940 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:50:11.940 --> 00:50:13.700 align:middle line:90% "I was wrong. 00:50:13.700 --> 00:50:15.620 align:middle line:90% I most humbly apologize. 00:50:15.620 --> 00:50:16.310 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:50:16.310 --> 00:50:19.820 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon, disavow, and retract the false doctrine 00:50:19.820 --> 00:50:22.880 align:middle line:84% that poets should write poetics and criticism. 00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:25.520 align:middle line:90% I recant my cant. 00:50:25.520 --> 00:50:28.460 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest and renounce 00:50:28.460 --> 00:50:29.900 align:middle line:84% the aforesaid error and apostasy, 00:50:29.900 --> 00:50:33.050 align:middle line:84% and the merely related errors and apostasies 00:50:33.050 --> 00:50:35.390 align:middle line:84% that flow inevitably as a consequence 00:50:35.390 --> 00:50:37.850 align:middle line:84% of the aforesaid error and apostasy 00:50:37.850 --> 00:50:41.930 align:middle line:84% as a baby inevitably flows from its mother, 00:50:41.930 --> 00:50:45.140 align:middle line:84% or an ocean from its rivers, or a false conclusion 00:50:45.140 --> 00:50:49.160 align:middle line:84% from a flawed premise, or a disease from a virus, 00:50:49.160 --> 00:50:54.380 align:middle line:84% or death from repeated blows with a blunt instrument, 00:50:54.380 --> 00:50:59.420 align:middle line:84% or gorging from a starving child given food. 00:50:59.420 --> 00:51:02.990 align:middle line:84% Poetics and critical thinking inhibit 00:51:02.990 --> 00:51:07.400 align:middle line:84% the creativity of the poet and should be left to academics." 00:51:07.400 --> 00:51:08.750 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:51:08.750 --> 00:51:13.340 align:middle line:84% "I am filled with regret and overcome 00:51:13.340 --> 00:51:15.890 align:middle line:84% with the errors of my ways, for I 00:51:15.890 --> 00:51:18.140 align:middle line:84% have preferred the crooked path over the straight, 00:51:18.140 --> 00:51:21.560 align:middle line:84% the bent over the upright, the hunched over the erect. 00:51:21.560 --> 00:51:24.080 align:middle line:90% I recant my cant. 00:51:24.080 --> 00:51:28.580 align:middle line:84% I recant and cant my recantation while supporting 00:51:28.580 --> 00:51:31.640 align:middle line:84% the work of small and independent and non-commercial 00:51:31.640 --> 00:51:35.330 align:middle line:84% publishers, presses, magazines, zines, mags, rags, periodicals, 00:51:35.330 --> 00:51:38.060 align:middle line:84% blogs, organizations, groups, galleries, websites, series, 00:51:38.060 --> 00:51:40.190 align:middle line:90% centers and non centers. 00:51:40.190 --> 00:51:43.310 align:middle line:84% I nonetheless, with callous disregard for these loyalties 00:51:43.310 --> 00:51:46.700 align:middle line:84% and affiliations, have betrayed, abandoned and disappointed 00:51:46.700 --> 00:51:49.150 align:middle line:84% these publishers, presses, magazine, zines, mags, rags, 00:51:49.150 --> 00:51:50.900 align:middle line:84% periodicals, blogs, organizations, groups, 00:51:50.900 --> 00:51:52.880 align:middle line:84% websites, series, centers, and non 00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:55.310 align:middle line:84% centers by arranging and agreeing 00:51:55.310 --> 00:51:59.180 align:middle line:84% to have my work published, presented, and co-opted 00:51:59.180 --> 00:52:02.690 align:middle line:84% by established, and mainstream, and commercial publishers, 00:52:02.690 --> 00:52:05.450 align:middle line:84% presses, magazines, journals, periodicals, blogs, 00:52:05.450 --> 00:52:08.810 align:middle line:84% organizations, groups, galleries, websites, series, 00:52:08.810 --> 00:52:11.480 align:middle line:90% and centers. 00:52:11.480 --> 00:52:14.285 align:middle line:90% I am, with regret fill-ed--" 00:52:14.285 --> 00:52:14.945 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:52:14.945 --> 00:52:20.630 align:middle line:84% "-and by errors o'erwhelmed, having chosen the broken path 00:52:20.630 --> 00:52:23.900 align:middle line:84% over the righteous, the warped over the erect. 00:52:23.900 --> 00:52:27.210 align:middle line:90% I cant and recant. 00:52:27.210 --> 00:52:29.280 align:middle line:84% I've altogether abandoned the false doctrine 00:52:29.280 --> 00:52:33.990 align:middle line:84% that poets can remain radical while working as academics. 00:52:33.990 --> 00:52:36.960 align:middle line:84% After it had been notified to me that the said doctrine was 00:52:36.960 --> 00:52:40.710 align:middle line:84% contrary to the books of the accessible poets, 00:52:40.710 --> 00:52:42.300 align:middle line:84% I wrote and published works in which 00:52:42.300 --> 00:52:45.690 align:middle line:84% I discussed this new doctrine, already condemned, and adduced 00:52:45.690 --> 00:52:47.880 align:middle line:84% arguments of great cogency in its favor, 00:52:47.880 --> 00:52:50.370 align:middle line:84% without presenting any negation of these. 00:52:50.370 --> 00:52:54.420 align:middle line:84% And for this reason, I have been vehemently and justly rebuked. 00:52:54.420 --> 00:52:59.220 align:middle line:84% I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid error and aversion. 00:52:59.220 --> 00:53:03.240 align:middle line:84% Academic employment is the mark of a compromised 00:53:03.240 --> 00:53:05.520 align:middle line:90% poet who has sold out. 00:53:05.520 --> 00:53:09.750 align:middle line:84% Radical poets prove their authenticity through poverty." 00:53:09.750 --> 00:53:11.952 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:53:11.952 --> 00:53:14.217 align:middle line:90% 00:53:14.217 --> 00:53:21.390 align:middle line:84% "I am with regret fill-ed, and by errors o'erwhelmed, 00:53:21.390 --> 00:53:23.590 align:middle line:84% having chosen the broken path over the righteous, 00:53:23.590 --> 00:53:24.840 align:middle line:90% the warped over the erect. 00:53:24.840 --> 00:53:26.100 align:middle line:90% I cant and recant. 00:53:26.100 --> 00:53:27.930 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 00:53:27.930 --> 00:53:30.930 align:middle line:84% that advocacy or partisan positioning 00:53:30.930 --> 00:53:33.240 align:middle line:84% has any place in poetry and poetic. 00:53:33.240 --> 00:53:34.830 align:middle line:84% Poetry and poetic should be reserved 00:53:34.830 --> 00:53:38.310 align:middle line:84% for those who look beyond the contentions of the present 00:53:38.310 --> 00:53:43.530 align:middle line:84% into the eternal verities, the truth beyond this world that 00:53:43.530 --> 00:53:48.270 align:middle line:84% never changes as represented in the books of the accessible 00:53:48.270 --> 00:53:49.200 align:middle line:90% poets. 00:53:49.200 --> 00:53:52.200 align:middle line:84% I further stipulate that I recant categorically 00:53:52.200 --> 00:53:55.020 align:middle line:84% that poetry is an activity of the intellect, 00:53:55.020 --> 00:53:57.780 align:middle line:84% and herewith and hereby declare and proclaim 00:53:57.780 --> 00:53:59.415 align:middle line:90% that poop-- that true poetry--" 00:53:59.415 --> 00:54:00.060 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:54:00.060 --> 00:54:06.210 align:middle line:84% "--is an affair of a heart and only the heart. 00:54:06.210 --> 00:54:07.320 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:54:07.320 --> 00:54:13.080 align:middle line:84% I apologize most humbly before you and with great contrition. 00:54:13.080 --> 00:54:14.580 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:54:14.580 --> 00:54:16.260 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon, and renounce, 00:54:16.260 --> 00:54:22.590 align:middle line:84% and revile the use of found or appropriated texts and poems, 00:54:22.590 --> 00:54:24.450 align:middle line:84% whether attributed or unattributed, 00:54:24.450 --> 00:54:27.300 align:middle line:84% or the use of any external constraints, operations, 00:54:27.300 --> 00:54:29.760 align:middle line:84% procedures, algorithms, engines or devices, 00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:33.210 align:middle line:84% whether machinic or manual, automated or calculated, 00:54:33.210 --> 00:54:38.190 align:middle line:84% digital or analogic, real or imaginary, virtual or actual. 00:54:38.190 --> 00:54:42.390 align:middle line:84% Such approaches to poetry soil, defame, 00:54:42.390 --> 00:54:45.930 align:middle line:84% and besmirch all traces of human expression, which 00:54:45.930 --> 00:54:48.630 align:middle line:84% is the necessary foundation for all poetry. 00:54:48.630 --> 00:54:52.080 align:middle line:84% And in pernicious and insidious ways, 00:54:52.080 --> 00:54:54.960 align:middle line:84% foster depersonalization and inauthenticity 00:54:54.960 --> 00:54:57.630 align:middle line:84% by means of the substitution of the plagiarized 00:54:57.630 --> 00:55:04.260 align:middle line:84% and manufactured for the original and creative. 00:55:04.260 --> 00:55:05.220 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:55:05.220 --> 00:55:06.180 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:55:06.180 --> 00:55:06.870 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:55:06.870 --> 00:55:11.270 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon, renounce, and revile 00:55:11.270 --> 00:55:15.290 align:middle line:84% syntactic and grammatical turpitude, 00:55:15.290 --> 00:55:18.950 align:middle line:84% improper coupling of subjects, and verbs, and objects, 00:55:18.950 --> 00:55:21.470 align:middle line:84% run on sentences and sentence fragments, 00:55:21.470 --> 00:55:23.750 align:middle line:84% suppression of natural connectives, 00:55:23.750 --> 00:55:27.020 align:middle line:84% erosion of necessary subordination of clauses, 00:55:27.020 --> 00:55:30.380 align:middle line:84% intentional and unconscious solecisms, 00:55:30.380 --> 00:55:34.190 align:middle line:84% or any relaxation, deviation, perversion, 00:55:34.190 --> 00:55:37.820 align:middle line:84% or inversion of the highest and strictest 00:55:37.820 --> 00:55:41.660 align:middle line:90% standards for English. 00:55:41.660 --> 00:55:47.360 align:middle line:84% I am with regret fill-ed and by errors o'erwhelmed, 00:55:47.360 --> 00:55:49.670 align:middle line:84% having chosen the broken path over the righteous, 00:55:49.670 --> 00:55:50.990 align:middle line:90% the warped over the erect. 00:55:50.990 --> 00:55:52.100 align:middle line:90% I cant and recant. 00:55:52.100 --> 00:55:55.850 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon and renounce the false opinion 00:55:55.850 --> 00:55:59.870 align:middle line:84% that American poetry is founded on a mixed and miscegenated 00:55:59.870 --> 00:56:03.830 align:middle line:84% overlay of languages from the native tongues of immigrants 00:56:03.830 --> 00:56:06.740 align:middle line:84% to the echoes of Africa, to the lost 00:56:06.740 --> 00:56:11.030 align:middle line:84% languages of natives indigenous to our social space. 00:56:11.030 --> 00:56:13.760 align:middle line:84% I abandon and altogether renounced the false opinion 00:56:13.760 --> 00:56:17.390 align:middle line:84% that slangs, patois, pidgins, accents, dialects and idialects 00:56:17.390 --> 00:56:20.550 align:middle line:84% are any more than bad grammar deserving an F--" 00:56:20.550 --> 00:56:21.050 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:56:21.050 --> 00:56:25.120 align:middle line:84% "--and a slap on the face by those who uphold grammatical 00:56:25.120 --> 00:56:27.900 align:middle line:84% correctness and decry the deterioration of proper English 00:56:27.900 --> 00:56:29.610 align:middle line:90% usage and pronunciation. 00:56:29.610 --> 00:56:31.890 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon and renounce the false opinion 00:56:31.890 --> 00:56:36.930 align:middle line:84% that bilingualism, trilingualism and n-legalism has 00:56:36.930 --> 00:56:40.030 align:middle line:84% any place in our literature, and I endorse those efforts 00:56:40.030 --> 00:56:43.530 align:middle line:84% real and imaginary to build a wall 00:56:43.530 --> 00:56:47.250 align:middle line:84% from shore to shore that separates us 00:56:47.250 --> 00:56:52.020 align:middle line:84% from any foreign contamination of our linguistic norms. 00:56:52.020 --> 00:56:55.140 align:middle line:84% I am filled with regret and overcome 00:56:55.140 --> 00:56:57.642 align:middle line:84% with errors of my ways, for I have preferred 00:56:57.642 --> 00:56:59.100 align:middle line:84% the crooked path over the straight, 00:56:59.100 --> 00:57:04.750 align:middle line:84% the bent over the upright, the hunched over the erect. 00:57:04.750 --> 00:57:08.950 align:middle line:84% I recant and cant my recantation. 00:57:08.950 --> 00:57:11.380 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the fetishizing 00:57:11.380 --> 00:57:14.080 align:middle line:84% of sounds, and forms, and appearance, 00:57:14.080 --> 00:57:16.000 align:middle line:90% and rhetoric of a poem. 00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:19.750 align:middle line:84% The innermost meanings of poems reveal themselves 00:57:19.750 --> 00:57:26.890 align:middle line:84% when form, appearance, sound, rhetoric, and oratory 00:57:26.890 --> 00:57:29.330 align:middle line:90% fall away. 00:57:29.330 --> 00:57:29.920 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:57:29.920 --> 00:57:30.650 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:57:30.650 --> 00:57:31.150 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:57:31.150 --> 00:57:35.020 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the opinion that beauty 00:57:35.020 --> 00:57:38.140 align:middle line:84% can be found in the tattered, torn, ripped, battered, 00:57:38.140 --> 00:57:42.130 align:middle line:84% crippled, crumpled, odd, discounted, inconsequential, 00:57:42.130 --> 00:57:44.110 align:middle line:84% or in the asymmetric, particular, approximate, 00:57:44.110 --> 00:57:46.660 align:middle line:84% conceptual, cacophonous, or cacophonous, 00:57:46.660 --> 00:57:51.310 align:middle line:84% in the clouded or off-key, in the stray marks on the page 00:57:51.310 --> 00:57:55.260 align:middle line:84% or in the transient or ephemeral. 00:57:55.260 --> 00:57:59.370 align:middle line:84% Beauty is always and only the manifestation 00:57:59.370 --> 00:58:01.560 align:middle line:90% of the ideal or perfect. 00:58:01.560 --> 00:58:06.810 align:middle line:84% Beauty is only and always the image of the eternally true. 00:58:06.810 --> 00:58:10.230 align:middle line:84% After it had been notified to me that the said doctrine 00:58:10.230 --> 00:58:13.860 align:middle line:84% was contrary to the books of the accessible poet and the beliefs 00:58:13.860 --> 00:58:16.290 align:middle line:84% and doctrines of all poets and readers 00:58:16.290 --> 00:58:19.960 align:middle line:84% who believe in authenticity and expression, 00:58:19.960 --> 00:58:25.290 align:middle line:84% whether true or not, memoir or fake memoir, lyric or epic. 00:58:25.290 --> 00:58:27.630 align:middle line:84% Nonetheless and still, even though I had been warned 00:58:27.630 --> 00:58:30.135 align:middle line:84% and cursed, I persisted, wrote, and published 00:58:30.135 --> 00:58:32.760 align:middle line:84% works in which I discussed this new doctrine already condemned, 00:58:32.760 --> 00:58:35.820 align:middle line:84% and adduced arguments of great cogency in its favor 00:58:35.820 --> 00:58:37.410 align:middle line:84% without presenting any nullification 00:58:37.410 --> 00:58:39.330 align:middle line:84% of these arguments in accord with decency, 00:58:39.330 --> 00:58:41.880 align:middle line:84% and right thinking, and the moral approach 00:58:41.880 --> 00:58:42.990 align:middle line:90% to poetry and poetics. 00:58:42.990 --> 00:58:47.070 align:middle line:84% And for this reason, I have been vehemently rebuked. 00:58:47.070 --> 00:58:50.490 align:middle line:84% And I say and declare, vow and proclaim 00:58:50.490 --> 00:58:54.450 align:middle line:84% to all assembled here who may read this document in print 00:58:54.450 --> 00:58:59.040 align:middle line:84% or digital form, or may hear it through audio recording, 00:58:59.040 --> 00:59:02.100 align:middle line:84% I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, 00:59:02.100 --> 00:59:06.210 align:middle line:84% verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine. 00:59:06.210 --> 00:59:07.200 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 00:59:07.200 --> 00:59:07.830 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 00:59:07.830 --> 00:59:08.520 align:middle line:90% I recant. 00:59:08.520 --> 00:59:15.190 align:middle line:84% Like the black sheep who strays too far from the adoring flock 00:59:15.190 --> 00:59:18.445 align:middle line:84% or like the drunk with a pale green beret--" 00:59:18.445 --> 00:59:19.584 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:59:19.584 --> 00:59:24.100 align:middle line:84% "--who deep into the night and desperate for one more absinthe 00:59:24.100 --> 00:59:28.240 align:middle line:84% before closing time babbles uncontrollably to the deaf 00:59:28.240 --> 00:59:30.280 align:middle line:90% and crippled barkeep. 00:59:30.280 --> 00:59:33.460 align:middle line:84% I embraced an elitism that put me out 00:59:33.460 --> 00:59:36.460 align:middle line:84% of touch with the sentiments, feelings, convictions, beliefs, 00:59:36.460 --> 00:59:39.400 align:middle line:84% preferences, perspectives, and dyspepsia 00:59:39.400 --> 00:59:43.300 align:middle line:84% of everyday, ordinary, run-of-the mill people. 00:59:43.300 --> 00:59:46.630 align:middle line:84% The Johns, and Joans, and Janes and Jills. 00:59:46.630 --> 00:59:49.540 align:middle line:84% The Billies and Bobs, the Shirleys and Toms. 00:59:49.540 --> 00:59:54.190 align:middle line:84% The Frans and Fritzes, the Millies and Moes. 00:59:54.190 --> 00:59:57.010 align:middle line:84% Not only thinking I was better than John and Joe--" 00:59:57.010 --> 00:59:59.315 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:59:59.315 --> 01:00:04.290 align:middle line:84% "--Mary and Harry, but that their sentiments, feelings, 01:00:04.290 --> 01:00:06.750 align:middle line:84% convictions, beliefs, preferences, perspectives, 01:00:06.750 --> 01:00:10.900 align:middle line:90% and dyspepsia did not matter. 01:00:10.900 --> 01:00:15.150 align:middle line:84% I spent my time hunting for thoughts rather than 01:00:15.150 --> 01:00:16.575 align:middle line:90% hunting quail." 01:00:16.575 --> 01:00:17.565 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:00:17.565 --> 01:00:21.420 align:middle line:84% "My solipsism overcame me so that I wrote and professed 01:00:21.420 --> 01:00:25.560 align:middle line:84% for others to write words that communicated to no one, 01:00:25.560 --> 01:00:29.070 align:middle line:84% that meant nothing, that defied the laws of meaning 01:00:29.070 --> 01:00:32.460 align:middle line:84% and the fundamentals of grammar, praising over and above clear 01:00:32.460 --> 01:00:35.580 align:middle line:84% sense and good syntax the incoherent, the nonsensical, 01:00:35.580 --> 01:00:38.790 align:middle line:84% the aberrant, the foolish, the deformed, the contradictory, 01:00:38.790 --> 01:00:41.910 align:middle line:84% the awkward, the frivolous, the ungainly, the self-indulgent, 01:00:41.910 --> 01:00:45.630 align:middle line:84% the infantile, the stubborn, the phony and fake-- 01:00:45.630 --> 01:00:48.840 align:middle line:84% the prevaricated, the disorderly. 01:00:48.840 --> 01:00:54.480 align:middle line:84% In my promiscuous dalliance with affect rather than emotion, 01:00:54.480 --> 01:00:58.650 align:middle line:84% I cast my lot with the excessively cerebral 01:00:58.650 --> 01:01:01.410 align:middle line:90% and the cerebrally excessive. 01:01:01.410 --> 01:01:03.900 align:middle line:90% I recant this cant. 01:01:03.900 --> 01:01:08.160 align:middle line:84% Now I stand before you to repudiate and abjure, 01:01:08.160 --> 01:01:14.130 align:middle line:84% to cast away and revile this stiff-necked arrogance in order 01:01:14.130 --> 01:01:20.210 align:middle line:84% to dedicate myself to the freedom in right thinking. 01:01:20.210 --> 01:01:22.370 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 01:01:22.370 --> 01:01:24.170 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 01:01:24.170 --> 01:01:26.100 align:middle line:90% I recant. 01:01:26.100 --> 01:01:32.670 align:middle line:84% Like a rat seeking a dark cavity to eat its hapless prey, 01:01:32.670 --> 01:01:34.620 align:middle line:90% I succumb. 01:01:34.620 --> 01:01:38.340 align:middle line:84% I succumb to the dictatorship of relativism, 01:01:38.340 --> 01:01:42.060 align:middle line:84% a state of profound confusion in which I could not recognize 01:01:42.060 --> 01:01:45.300 align:middle line:84% anything as definitive and base my judgment solely 01:01:45.300 --> 01:01:47.340 align:middle line:90% on my own ego and desires. 01:01:47.340 --> 01:01:50.460 align:middle line:84% In this graceless state, I falsely 01:01:50.460 --> 01:01:53.610 align:middle line:84% believed that the real tyranny was 01:01:53.610 --> 01:01:56.220 align:middle line:84% intolerance to those who do not adhere 01:01:56.220 --> 01:02:00.450 align:middle line:84% to the aesthetic values of honesty, coherence, clarity, 01:02:00.450 --> 01:02:03.420 align:middle line:84% and truth, as revealed to all with a moral conviction 01:02:03.420 --> 01:02:07.660 align:middle line:84% and a commitment to the timeless human story. 01:02:07.660 --> 01:02:11.070 align:middle line:84% I repudiate this gutless indulgence 01:02:11.070 --> 01:02:13.740 align:middle line:84% toward benighted and fallen ideas 01:02:13.740 --> 01:02:19.900 align:middle line:84% and commit myself to the dictatorship of obedience. 01:02:19.900 --> 01:02:20.980 align:middle line:90% I was in error. 01:02:20.980 --> 01:02:22.750 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 01:02:22.750 --> 01:02:24.520 align:middle line:90% I recant. 01:02:24.520 --> 01:02:29.410 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false doctrine of Midrashic 01:02:29.410 --> 01:02:33.370 align:middle line:84% and bent studies which I have promulgated in my writings, 01:02:33.370 --> 01:02:36.940 align:middle line:84% lectures, teachings, with its base and cowardly insistence 01:02:36.940 --> 01:02:40.660 align:middle line:84% on ethical, dialogic, and situational values 01:02:40.660 --> 01:02:44.050 align:middle line:84% rather than fixed and immutable moral laws. 01:02:44.050 --> 01:02:47.560 align:middle line:84% I loved language more than truth, 01:02:47.560 --> 01:02:51.070 align:middle line:84% discourse more than reality, and so 01:02:51.070 --> 01:02:53.560 align:middle line:84% allowed to spread in myself and in others 01:02:53.560 --> 01:02:56.890 align:middle line:84% an intellectual virus that uproots 01:02:56.890 --> 01:03:00.120 align:middle line:90% the plain sense of the word. 01:03:00.120 --> 01:03:00.780 align:middle line:90% I was wrong. 01:03:00.780 --> 01:03:01.680 align:middle line:90% I apologize. 01:03:01.680 --> 01:03:02.700 align:middle line:90% I recant. 01:03:02.700 --> 01:03:04.620 align:middle line:84% I altogether abandon the false opinion 01:03:04.620 --> 01:03:08.340 align:middle line:84% that the sun is the center of the world, and immovable. 01:03:08.340 --> 01:03:14.310 align:middle line:84% And that the Earth is not the center of the world, and moves. 01:03:14.310 --> 01:03:16.680 align:middle line:84% I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, 01:03:16.680 --> 01:03:20.570 align:middle line:84% verbally in writing, the said false doctrine. 01:03:20.570 --> 01:03:23.300 align:middle line:84% Quivering with tiny, rapid oscillations, 01:03:23.300 --> 01:03:27.740 align:middle line:84% these recantations are inscribed upon the bed of my thought 01:03:27.740 --> 01:03:32.420 align:middle line:84% as a harrow incises the ground before the seeds are planted. 01:03:32.420 --> 01:03:36.470 align:middle line:84% My sentence is written onto me as I merge with it, 01:03:36.470 --> 01:03:41.540 align:middle line:84% yet I cannot comprehend it even as it apprehends me. 01:03:41.540 --> 01:03:48.730 align:middle line:84% For yet, you have already seen my errors abound around me, 01:03:48.730 --> 01:03:54.820 align:middle line:84% and I, I am engulf-ed by them as an harpooned whale 01:03:54.820 --> 01:03:59.260 align:middle line:84% is overcome by the very waters that had buoyed him. 01:03:59.260 --> 01:04:03.760 align:middle line:84% I am in anxiety and in sorrow for my wrongs known 01:04:03.760 --> 01:04:04.600 align:middle line:90% and unknown. 01:04:04.600 --> 01:04:07.570 align:middle line:84% For I have here, now, in this very moment 01:04:07.570 --> 01:04:11.320 align:middle line:84% done badly and wrongly with the hypocrisy, the bad faith 01:04:11.320 --> 01:04:15.130 align:middle line:84% of this recantation which reflects pride and arrogance, 01:04:15.130 --> 01:04:19.210 align:middle line:84% flippancy, sarcasm, resentment, hyperbole, 01:04:19.210 --> 01:04:22.180 align:middle line:84% and a fundamentally false analogy. 01:04:22.180 --> 01:04:25.000 align:middle line:84% And I regret already as my mouth speaks 01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:27.880 align:middle line:84% the words my unsupportable and an offensive 01:04:27.880 --> 01:04:30.730 align:middle line:84% identifications in placing myself, 01:04:30.730 --> 01:04:33.640 align:middle line:84% even if only imaginatively, rhetorically, or didactically, 01:04:33.640 --> 01:04:36.250 align:middle line:84% even if only paratically, or satirically, or ironically, 01:04:36.250 --> 01:04:39.910 align:middle line:84% in the position of poets, and writers, and artists, 01:04:39.910 --> 01:04:41.530 align:middle line:84% and scientists in the past who've 01:04:41.530 --> 01:04:46.030 align:middle line:84% confronted most cruel, most terrible, and most violent 01:04:46.030 --> 01:04:49.180 align:middle line:84% sanctions for their work, for their thinking, 01:04:49.180 --> 01:04:51.730 align:middle line:90% for their discoveries. 01:04:51.730 --> 01:04:53.860 align:middle line:84% But also poets, and writers, and artists, 01:04:53.860 --> 01:04:57.500 align:middle line:84% and scientists in the present, now in this moment as we speak 01:04:57.500 --> 01:04:59.770 align:middle line:84% and as we listen, here and in other places, 01:04:59.770 --> 01:05:03.790 align:middle line:84% at home and abroad, who daily, and even hourly 01:05:03.790 --> 01:05:07.480 align:middle line:84% confront most violent, most terrible, and most cruel 01:05:07.480 --> 01:05:09.820 align:middle line:84% sanctions for their work, for their thinking, 01:05:09.820 --> 01:05:13.720 align:middle line:84% and for their discoveries while I am at leisure, relatively 01:05:13.720 --> 01:05:16.480 align:middle line:84% free of fierce and wounding reprisals 01:05:16.480 --> 01:05:19.570 align:middle line:90% and may cant and recant. 01:05:19.570 --> 01:05:25.570 align:middle line:84% Recant and cant, for the most part at my own discretion. 01:05:25.570 --> 01:05:28.570 align:middle line:84% For verily, I have fallen deep into error, an error 01:05:28.570 --> 01:05:32.380 align:middle line:84% that I can't ironize, or satirize, or joke my way out 01:05:32.380 --> 01:05:32.920 align:middle line:90% of. 01:05:32.920 --> 01:05:36.010 align:middle line:84% And I have a queasy feeling of unease in my regret, 01:05:36.010 --> 01:05:37.820 align:middle line:84% for I realize I am making a mistake. 01:05:37.820 --> 01:05:39.730 align:middle line:84% These words are all out of proportion 01:05:39.730 --> 01:05:42.340 align:middle line:84% and grotesquely exaggerated, suggesting equivalence 01:05:42.340 --> 01:05:46.660 align:middle line:84% of violent political repression with often minor, 01:05:46.660 --> 01:05:49.510 align:middle line:84% and petty, silly and stupid, ignorant and harmless 01:05:49.510 --> 01:05:52.090 align:middle line:84% doctrines, beliefs, sentiments, or even sometimes perfectly 01:05:52.090 --> 01:05:53.800 align:middle line:84% reasonable views and perspectives 01:05:53.800 --> 01:05:57.970 align:middle line:84% with which I have had cause to quarrel, and whose only crime 01:05:57.970 --> 01:06:01.120 align:middle line:84% is my disagreement, fomented by an increasingly, 01:06:01.120 --> 01:06:05.110 align:middle line:84% and inexcusable, and unjustified crankiness, ungratefulness 01:06:05.110 --> 01:06:09.190 align:middle line:84% and belligerence abetted by a morbid fascination 01:06:09.190 --> 01:06:12.520 align:middle line:84% with the structure of such disciplining machines. 01:06:12.520 --> 01:06:17.440 align:middle line:84% Perfected by a series of reigns of terror 01:06:17.440 --> 01:06:21.670 align:middle line:84% from all of which I have been spared, 01:06:21.670 --> 01:06:25.330 align:middle line:84% or else such exercises as this would be impossible 01:06:25.330 --> 01:06:29.320 align:middle line:84% since it is my freedom, however relative and circumscribed, 01:06:29.320 --> 01:06:32.200 align:middle line:84% that both lets me compose this and is 01:06:32.200 --> 01:06:35.350 align:middle line:90% the measure of its failure. 01:06:35.350 --> 01:06:38.290 align:middle line:84% For after all is said and done, after the fury and the sound, 01:06:38.290 --> 01:06:41.350 align:middle line:84% after the pomp, and bombast, and self-regard, after the myopia 01:06:41.350 --> 01:06:43.420 align:middle line:84% and insufferably inappropriate and unjustified 01:06:43.420 --> 01:06:47.050 align:middle line:84% delusions of persecution, this recantation 01:06:47.050 --> 01:06:50.680 align:middle line:84% enacts a false and offensive analogy to woefully pernicious 01:06:50.680 --> 01:06:55.390 align:middle line:84% life-destroying belief systems, states, or religions. 01:06:55.390 --> 01:06:58.390 align:middle line:90% And for this, I recant my cant. 01:06:58.390 --> 01:06:59.710 align:middle line:90% Cant and recant. 01:06:59.710 --> 01:07:00.850 align:middle line:90% I am wrong. 01:07:00.850 --> 01:07:05.650 align:middle line:84% I have strayed from the path of decency, restraint, and honor. 01:07:05.650 --> 01:07:09.340 align:middle line:84% Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds 01:07:09.340 --> 01:07:13.930 align:middle line:84% of your eminences and of all faithful poets and poetry 01:07:13.930 --> 01:07:19.200 align:middle line:84% readers this vehement suspicion justly conceived against me, 01:07:19.200 --> 01:07:23.400 align:middle line:84% with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, 01:07:23.400 --> 01:07:27.990 align:middle line:84% and detest the aforesaid errors and aversions, and generally, 01:07:27.990 --> 01:07:32.130 align:middle line:84% every other error, apostasy, and sect whatsoever 01:07:32.130 --> 01:07:35.370 align:middle line:84% contrary to the books of accessible poets. 01:07:35.370 --> 01:07:36.900 align:middle line:84% And I swear that in the future, I 01:07:36.900 --> 01:07:39.720 align:middle line:84% will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, 01:07:39.720 --> 01:07:41.340 align:middle line:84% anything that might furnish occasion 01:07:41.340 --> 01:07:43.680 align:middle line:84% for similar suspicion regarding me. 01:07:43.680 --> 01:07:47.610 align:middle line:84% But that should I know any dissenter or persons 01:07:47.610 --> 01:07:51.330 align:middle line:84% suspected of dissent, I will denounce him 01:07:51.330 --> 01:07:54.990 align:middle line:84% to the inquisitor of the place where I may be, 01:07:54.990 --> 01:08:01.680 align:middle line:84% and also to the inquisitor that is in me, that I have become. 01:08:01.680 --> 01:08:04.380 align:middle line:84% Further, I swear and promise to fulfill and observe 01:08:04.380 --> 01:08:07.860 align:middle line:84% in their integrity all penances that have been 01:08:07.860 --> 01:08:10.520 align:middle line:90% or shall be imposed upon me. 01:08:10.520 --> 01:08:12.380 align:middle line:84% And in the event to my contravening 01:08:12.380 --> 01:08:14.690 align:middle line:84% of any of these promises and oaths, 01:08:14.690 --> 01:08:18.380 align:middle line:84% I submit myself to all the pains and penalties imposed 01:08:18.380 --> 01:08:21.560 align:middle line:84% and promulgated in the canons and other constitutions, 01:08:21.560 --> 01:08:26.510 align:middle line:84% general and particular, against such delinquents as myself. 01:08:26.510 --> 01:08:31.790 align:middle line:84% I, the said Charles Bernstein, have abjured, sworn, promised, 01:08:31.790 --> 01:08:33.830 align:middle line:90% and bound myself as above. 01:08:33.830 --> 01:08:35.750 align:middle line:84% And in witness of the truth thereof, 01:08:35.750 --> 01:08:38.600 align:middle line:84% I have with my own hand subscribed 01:08:38.600 --> 01:08:42.560 align:middle line:84% to the present document of my abjurated and abjection 01:08:42.560 --> 01:08:45.680 align:middle line:84% and recited it word for word at Tucson, 01:08:45.680 --> 01:08:49.340 align:middle line:84% formerly Cuk Son at the base of the Black 01:08:49.340 --> 01:08:54.170 align:middle line:84% Mountain in the long shadow of Baboquivari 01:08:54.170 --> 01:08:57.109 align:middle line:84% in the County of Pima, state of Arizona, 01:08:57.109 --> 01:09:02.390 align:middle line:84% on the border of Estados Unidos Mexicanos 01:09:02.390 --> 01:09:09.980 align:middle line:84% on this last day of May in the year 2008 of the current year." 01:09:09.980 --> 01:09:10.480 align:middle line:90% Woo! 01:09:10.480 --> 01:09:12.280 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:09:12.280 --> 01:09:16.480 align:middle line:90% 01:09:16.480 --> 01:09:18.030 align:middle line:90% Woo! 01:09:18.030 --> 01:09:22.000 align:middle line:90%