OK, so I'll read a little from Sage.
It's my newest child.
[LAUGHING] So we're celebrating his birth this year.
I'll begin with the first poem.
It's called Looking for the Sage,
and it makes fun of those Tang dynasty Sage
poems in which the Sage is out there in the woods
contemplating the universe.
And it's always this 100-year-old old dude
with a white goatee.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah.
And it's a very simple poem.
We talked a little bit about going back to the basics,
yeah, going back to anaphora.
And clarity, and maybe subversive clarity.
OK.
[LAUGHING]
"Looking for the Sage."
Some say she moved in with her ex-girlfriend in Taiwan.
Some say she went to Florida to wrestle alligators.
Some say she went to peach blossom spring to drink tea
with Tao Qian.
Miho says she's living in Calexico with three
cats and a gerbil named Max.
Some say she's just a shadow of the great society, a parody
of what might have been.
Rhea saw her stark raving mad between 23rd
in the avenue of the Americas wrapped in a flag.
I swear I saw her floating in a motel pool, topless
on a plastic manatee, palms up.
What in hell was she thinking?
[LAUGHTER]
What is poetry?
What are stars?
Whence comes the end of suffering.
[APPLAUSE]
So yes.
I call it radical clarity, that's what I'm doing lately.
[LAUGHING]
We'll see if I stick to that.
[LAUGHING]