[CLAPPING]
If like in Japan we had national treasures,
Alison would be a national treasure for us.
[CLAPPING]
Thank you, Alison.
So tonight I'm going to read my own poetry,
but I'm going to read some poetry by other people too,
and because I feel like that constitutes me--
the people that I've read, and people that I've translated
have become very much a part of me,
so I feel like it's an honest thing to do.
Oh, I'm really glad to take this off.
Also, tonight January 6th is my wife
of 35 years' birthday, C.D. Wright.
She died in 2016 suddenly.
And so I would really like to start with some poems of hers,
and I've asked two people to help me read them
because I have a hard time reading
her work in public anymore.
So if you don't know C.D. Wright,
she was, I think in a lot of other people
think one of the most major poets of her generation.
In her obituary in the New York Times,
it said that she was of--
that she constituted a school of precisely one person.
And she was just one of the most original
and ethical and passionate people and poet
that I've ever met.
So to begin I've asked Diana Delgado if she would read
a poem of C.D.'s and I should say,
also I brought one book of C.D.'s, one of her last books,
Casting Deep Shade, a really beautiful book with images
that I'll have over by the bookstall over there.
And I also brought some of my translations.
If you buy this book or any of my translations,
that money will go directly to Tyler Meier's secret account
in Switzerland.
No, that money will go-- where are you, Tyler?
Yeah, that money I'm donating to the Poetry Center
here, which is a spectacular and legendary place.
And Tyler, thank you for helping make what it is, what it is,
and Diana you too, thank you.
OK, so would you come up and read C.D.'s poem?
C.D. Wright, from One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana.
Dear virtual lifer, this is a strictly what if proposition.
What if I were to trade my manumission
for your incarceration.
If only for a day, at the end of which the shoes must
be left at the main gate to be filled
by their original occupants.
There is no point, and we will not shrink from it.
There is only this day to reinvent everything and lose it
all over again.
Nothing will be settled or made easy.
If you were me, if you wanted blueberries,
you could have a big bowl.
Two dozen bushes right on your hill,
and thornless raspberries at the bottom.
Walk barefooted, there's no glass.
If you want to kiss your kid, you can.
If you want a porch, put it on the installment plan.
You have so many good books, you can't begin to count them.
Walk the dog to the Bay every living day.
The air is salted.
Septembers you can hear the blues
jumping before seeing water through the vault
in the leaves.
Watch the wren nesting in the sculpture by the shed.
Smoke if you feel like it, or swim, call a friend,
or keep it perfectly still.
The morning's free.
If I were you, fuck up today and its solitary, sister woman,
the padded dress with a food log to gnaw upon.
This is where you enter the eye of the fart.
The air is foul.
The dirt is gumbo.
Avoid all physical contact.
Come nightfall, the bugs will carry you off.
You don't have a clue, do you?
Thank you.
The eye of the fart.
Only she would come up with that.
Another poem will be read by the poet Jami McCarty.