WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.270 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.270 --> 00:00:03.770 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:03.770 --> 00:00:05.870 align:middle line:90% No, it switched off. 00:00:05.870 --> 00:00:06.500 align:middle line:90% There we go. 00:00:06.500 --> 00:00:09.170 align:middle line:90% Now you can hear me, I imagine. 00:00:09.170 --> 00:00:14.671 align:middle line:84% I have developed your famous Tucson allergies I heard about 00:00:14.671 --> 00:00:16.129 align:middle line:84% before I came, so I hope you don't. 00:00:16.129 --> 00:00:22.700 align:middle line:84% I will probably take this candy out of my mouth at some point. 00:00:22.700 --> 00:00:25.040 align:middle line:84% I'd like to thank, before I start, 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:29.330 align:middle line:84% the wonderful people who made this possible, Alison 00:00:29.330 --> 00:00:31.940 align:middle line:84% and Frances and the Poetry Center, which 00:00:31.940 --> 00:00:35.390 align:middle line:84% I think is one of the new wonders of the world, 00:00:35.390 --> 00:00:38.330 align:middle line:84% and also especially profound thanks to Jane Miller 00:00:38.330 --> 00:00:39.980 align:middle line:90% for thinking of me. 00:00:39.980 --> 00:00:41.270 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Jane. 00:00:41.270 --> 00:00:43.520 align:middle line:84% I never met her until this evening, 00:00:43.520 --> 00:00:45.440 align:middle line:84% and I'm extremely happy to see her face. 00:00:45.440 --> 00:00:54.780 align:middle line:90% 00:00:54.780 --> 00:01:00.360 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to run you through a lot of different projects, 00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:02.700 align:middle line:84% and I'll tell you a little bit, maybe, 00:01:02.700 --> 00:01:06.220 align:middle line:84% about each one before I go into them. 00:01:06.220 --> 00:01:09.700 align:middle line:84% The first thing I'll start with is "The Book of Tendons" 00:01:09.700 --> 00:01:12.870 align:middle line:84% which is two long poems or sequences. 00:01:12.870 --> 00:01:16.410 align:middle line:84% They're actually individual poems that make up the larger 00:01:16.410 --> 00:01:18.075 align:middle line:90% poem, and the two are related. 00:01:18.075 --> 00:01:26.980 align:middle line:90% 00:01:26.980 --> 00:01:30.490 align:middle line:84% "She almost sexed her hair aflame, 00:01:30.490 --> 00:01:34.720 align:middle line:90% mixed blood of north and noon. 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:40.135 align:middle line:84% Here is the book of her tendons, built by a hammer of light. 00:01:40.135 --> 00:01:45.210 align:middle line:90% 00:01:45.210 --> 00:01:50.820 align:middle line:84% In the river's cream, as if milky then could mean anything. 00:01:50.820 --> 00:01:55.080 align:middle line:84% Via Lactica, the road we tore out of summer, 00:01:55.080 --> 00:02:01.740 align:middle line:84% foot split on Eden's damp edge, limbs ghastly, and a glass 00:02:01.740 --> 00:02:04.230 align:middle line:90% of something's water. 00:02:04.230 --> 00:02:07.320 align:middle line:84% At June's door we could not drink it. 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:11.700 align:middle line:84% The atmosphere's a wall of glass we could not open. 00:02:11.700 --> 00:02:15.660 align:middle line:84% Asteroids glanced off the eye corners. 00:02:15.660 --> 00:02:21.630 align:middle line:84% There was grass for a shrapnel bed in the magnum amnesia. 00:02:21.630 --> 00:02:26.340 align:middle line:84% Lay me down, Lord, my little boat gun gone dim. 00:02:26.340 --> 00:02:33.880 align:middle line:90% 00:02:33.880 --> 00:02:38.980 align:middle line:84% Say a man who's built a house on someone else's hand 00:02:38.980 --> 00:02:42.400 align:middle line:84% to find what good came of thunder: 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:50.500 align:middle line:84% the ode in geode, agate pits, earth's sung dirt dark sprung, 00:02:50.500 --> 00:02:53.560 align:middle line:90% in the rock the human stalk. 00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:59.320 align:middle line:84% The story is, once a man set out to eat a bird, 00:02:59.320 --> 00:03:06.905 align:middle line:84% but found instead they're better heard, unless it's a chicken, 00:03:06.905 --> 00:03:07.405 align:middle line:90% I suppose. 00:03:07.405 --> 00:03:12.840 align:middle line:90% 00:03:12.840 --> 00:03:17.640 align:middle line:84% Slipping between atoms on the walkable air, 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:20.490 align:middle line:84% because the best attitude to take 00:03:20.490 --> 00:03:24.990 align:middle line:90% is not always one of falling. 00:03:24.990 --> 00:03:29.170 align:middle line:84% The materials heat animal and un, 00:03:29.170 --> 00:03:33.300 align:middle line:84% a kind of sexiness in the way numbers add up, 00:03:33.300 --> 00:03:38.010 align:middle line:84% one, one sliding into another one. 00:03:38.010 --> 00:03:43.950 align:middle line:84% Rocks, reptiles, thunders and wings, even the ideas, 00:03:43.950 --> 00:03:48.240 align:middle line:84% heads and distance from one point to the next 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:52.910 align:middle line:84% in all is part of everything I can comprehend. 00:03:52.910 --> 00:04:01.790 align:middle line:90% 00:04:01.790 --> 00:04:08.510 align:middle line:84% Stars mar no man light as a bone feather, 00:04:08.510 --> 00:04:12.935 align:middle line:84% therefore his shoulders gather light up. 00:04:12.935 --> 00:04:20.000 align:middle line:90% 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:26.180 align:middle line:84% See these handy calves walk among black hawk consonants, 00:04:26.180 --> 00:04:29.690 align:middle line:84% and light's intention to light, say, 00:04:29.690 --> 00:04:35.180 align:middle line:84% the sky, where he and her sex intersects, 00:04:35.180 --> 00:04:41.060 align:middle line:84% a movable type divine, a creamer among the cavalry, 00:04:41.060 --> 00:04:45.380 align:middle line:84% hence minerals of blue, oh miracles of G, 00:04:45.380 --> 00:04:51.440 align:middle line:84% we have received feelings, last summer's night transom, 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:56.450 align:middle line:84% and the sun of four fold hands, flesh of teeth, 00:04:56.450 --> 00:04:59.890 align:middle line:90% teeth of sun, sun. 00:04:59.890 --> 00:05:06.320 align:middle line:84% I leaves, I do cry down the act of touch, artless, 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:13.370 align:middle line:84% throat of flame, led with blood for a thread, door to door 00:05:13.370 --> 00:05:15.380 align:middle line:90% to the blank house led. 00:05:15.380 --> 00:05:23.430 align:middle line:90% 00:05:23.430 --> 00:05:29.340 align:middle line:84% Dream, we will exchange simultaneously music 00:05:29.340 --> 00:05:36.126 align:middle line:84% for a heart, vacillate between de and un-, sire, 00:05:36.126 --> 00:05:41.190 align:middle line:84% I have cleared myself away of all materials I am not." 00:05:41.190 --> 00:05:55.290 align:middle line:90% 00:05:55.290 --> 00:05:59.190 align:middle line:84% And I'll read, I think, just one poem 00:05:59.190 --> 00:06:03.600 align:middle line:84% from Blue Guide, which is actually from a longer-- 00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:05.820 align:middle line:84% excuse me for blowing my nose between poems. 00:06:05.820 --> 00:06:09.990 align:middle line:90% 00:06:09.990 --> 00:06:14.730 align:middle line:84% This just came out, the first time I'll be reading from it. 00:06:14.730 --> 00:06:20.250 align:middle line:84% It's from a longer manuscript which is also sequential, 00:06:20.250 --> 00:06:22.700 align:middle line:90% but a little bit less so. 00:06:22.700 --> 00:06:26.790 align:middle line:84% The poems are more individual and yet I 00:06:26.790 --> 00:06:30.720 align:middle line:84% don't think of them as separate from this manuscript. 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:37.740 align:middle line:84% The whole is maybe two or three times as big as this chapbook, 00:06:37.740 --> 00:06:40.230 align:middle line:84% and they are very influenced by science. 00:06:40.230 --> 00:06:42.120 align:middle line:84% I was also living in Paris at the time 00:06:42.120 --> 00:06:45.210 align:middle line:84% that I wrote them and had a lot of time to myself, which 00:06:45.210 --> 00:06:46.170 align:middle line:90% was wonderful. 00:06:46.170 --> 00:06:49.260 align:middle line:90% 00:06:49.260 --> 00:06:54.000 align:middle line:84% "Thus speak the chromagraph, saying, 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:59.130 align:middle line:84% one night in a cloud chamber I discovered a thing, 00:06:59.130 --> 00:07:02.610 align:middle line:84% that a thing I used to have, a crown of light, 00:07:02.610 --> 00:07:07.320 align:middle line:84% a thing could be more than true and more again than false. 00:07:07.320 --> 00:07:10.500 align:middle line:84% A thing could carry its name with a ticket 00:07:10.500 --> 00:07:14.130 align:middle line:90% of light called possible. 00:07:14.130 --> 00:07:18.360 align:middle line:84% In a cloud chamber particles are betrayed by movement 00:07:18.360 --> 00:07:22.770 align:middle line:84% and water vapors leave trails discovered 00:07:22.770 --> 00:07:26.220 align:middle line:84% when matter and its antithesis come together, 00:07:26.220 --> 00:07:32.100 align:middle line:84% a disappearing flash of light, our share of night to ear. 00:07:32.100 --> 00:07:34.710 align:middle line:90% I mean what I say. 00:07:34.710 --> 00:07:38.610 align:middle line:84% In contempt of the law, of all excluded thirds, 00:07:38.610 --> 00:07:44.910 align:middle line:84% laws are not symmetrical in the forward and the back of time, 00:07:44.910 --> 00:07:49.950 align:middle line:84% on which side are they stacked, and the sky also 00:07:49.950 --> 00:07:53.790 align:middle line:84% is what made Hart Crane so crazy in the heart. 00:07:53.790 --> 00:07:57.450 align:middle line:84% Continued to pile clouds without a count, 00:07:57.450 --> 00:08:02.490 align:middle line:84% a mass of gases with nothing scribbled under them, a song 00:08:02.490 --> 00:08:07.950 align:middle line:84% in the middle of the crystal pistolet, a cavatina. 00:08:07.950 --> 00:08:11.100 align:middle line:90% We hardly had any bones then. 00:08:11.100 --> 00:08:13.680 align:middle line:90% Did Hart Crane have bones? 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:18.660 align:middle line:84% If so, which kind and how far down? 00:08:18.660 --> 00:08:23.280 align:middle line:84% It was written in the boned hours, the book of weeds, 00:08:23.280 --> 00:08:27.630 align:middle line:84% a treatise on leaving the house at dusk when all buildings have 00:08:27.630 --> 00:08:33.000 align:middle line:84% already had time enough to fit themselves back into shadows, 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:39.900 align:middle line:84% as if there were only this dusk to dusk, dusk and dust, 00:08:39.900 --> 00:08:42.960 align:middle line:84% where no animals asserted themselves 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:46.740 align:middle line:84% as separate from the day, and the night comes again 00:08:46.740 --> 00:08:50.080 align:middle line:90% as it always had done. 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:53.130 align:middle line:84% The fact was that I could not follow the map 00:08:53.130 --> 00:08:55.830 align:middle line:84% because the book of nature was written 00:08:55.830 --> 00:09:00.540 align:middle line:84% in math's uncertain language, author of black rains, 00:09:00.540 --> 00:09:06.060 align:middle line:84% why the naked eye unclothed can see between math's limits, why 00:09:06.060 --> 00:09:08.760 align:middle line:84% a baby's bones are soft as pudding 00:09:08.760 --> 00:09:13.590 align:middle line:84% when first let out of the water and take a long time to harden. 00:09:13.590 --> 00:09:18.090 align:middle line:84% You can flatten a newborn skull by placing it on a board. 00:09:18.090 --> 00:09:21.390 align:middle line:84% The death hole of the cranium takes six months 00:09:21.390 --> 00:09:25.980 align:middle line:90% to close, and then grow brittle. 00:09:25.980 --> 00:09:30.450 align:middle line:84% In describing the last arc of the last circumference, 00:09:30.450 --> 00:09:32.760 align:middle line:90% I missed that halo. 00:09:32.760 --> 00:09:37.305 align:middle line:84% How long it took to understand rivers run toward the sea." 00:09:37.305 --> 00:09:50.760 align:middle line:90% 00:09:50.760 --> 00:09:54.330 align:middle line:84% Actually, I wrote a poem in Tucson, 00:09:54.330 --> 00:09:56.940 align:middle line:84% which I'm not going to read, but since I wrote it here I 00:09:56.940 --> 00:09:59.340 align:middle line:84% thought I'd read you the first two lines and the last two 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:03.388 align:middle line:84% lines, and when the middle is ready, if I ever see you again, 00:10:03.388 --> 00:10:03.930 align:middle line:90% I'll read it. 00:10:03.930 --> 00:10:07.420 align:middle line:90% 00:10:07.420 --> 00:10:08.920 align:middle line:84% Actually, all the part in the middle 00:10:08.920 --> 00:10:11.670 align:middle line:84% is where Tucson is, so you won't recognize anything from-- 00:10:11.670 --> 00:10:15.390 align:middle line:90% 00:10:15.390 --> 00:10:20.625 align:middle line:84% "Where do I winter with Chopin's chopsticks in devilish socks?" 00:10:20.625 --> 00:10:25.545 align:middle line:90% 00:10:25.545 --> 00:10:27.170 align:middle line:84% Oh, I'll read you the last three lines. 00:10:27.170 --> 00:10:30.200 align:middle line:84% "When the dark tail began loosening 00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:33.950 align:middle line:84% the lake, the tiny bottle of Mars Black 00:10:33.950 --> 00:10:37.940 align:middle line:84% that you hold in your hand will write your story now." 00:10:37.940 --> 00:10:44.828 align:middle line:90% 00:10:44.828 --> 00:10:45.995 align:middle line:90% Maybe I'll call it "Tucson." 00:10:45.995 --> 00:10:49.600 align:middle line:90% 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:54.010 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read you some essays which are actually 00:10:54.010 --> 00:11:00.700 align:middle line:84% poems, and they were inspired by Michel de Montaigne's essays 00:11:00.700 --> 00:11:04.720 align:middle line:84% and his idea of what an essay is, and also by Proust, 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:05.755 align:middle line:90% reading a lot of Proust. 00:11:05.755 --> 00:11:10.030 align:middle line:90% 00:11:10.030 --> 00:11:17.140 align:middle line:84% I am continuing to do so, and there are about 90 essays. 00:11:17.140 --> 00:11:20.380 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to read you maybe three or four. 00:11:20.380 --> 00:11:22.720 align:middle line:84% Some of them are histories, some of them 00:11:22.720 --> 00:11:26.770 align:middle line:90% are letters, so "Histories." 00:11:26.770 --> 00:11:30.370 align:middle line:84% "A woman was constructed in 20 ounce antiquity, 00:11:30.370 --> 00:11:31.870 align:middle line:90% certainly she existed. 00:11:31.870 --> 00:11:35.030 align:middle line:90% 00:11:35.030 --> 00:11:41.380 align:middle line:84% It is true that blank discovered the clitoris in 1544, 00:11:41.380 --> 00:11:47.110 align:middle line:84% key to heaven and hell, viewable to the naked eye 00:11:47.110 --> 00:11:55.930 align:middle line:84% like a man in the forest or birds, they spoke Latin. 00:11:55.930 --> 00:11:58.040 align:middle line:90% I itted it. 00:11:58.040 --> 00:12:00.130 align:middle line:90% What did you it? 00:12:00.130 --> 00:12:03.490 align:middle line:90% 'That,' he said, pointing. 00:12:03.490 --> 00:12:08.530 align:middle line:84% The body is a well-oiled machine made for doing things. 00:12:08.530 --> 00:12:13.540 align:middle line:84% 'I forgot what I can do,' she said, talking, talking. 00:12:13.540 --> 00:12:18.040 align:middle line:84% She has taken the care to change her necklace for the domination 00:12:18.040 --> 00:12:21.310 align:middle line:84% of anyone, a female revolutionary 00:12:21.310 --> 00:12:25.150 align:middle line:84% all jellied into action, a living organism 00:12:25.150 --> 00:12:28.570 align:middle line:90% with sizzling feelings. 00:12:28.570 --> 00:12:32.230 align:middle line:84% Right in the middle of something really beautiful happening, 00:12:32.230 --> 00:12:36.760 align:middle line:84% your frontal lobes are scraped out with a nail file. 00:12:36.760 --> 00:12:39.070 align:middle line:84% The beautiful thing that was happening 00:12:39.070 --> 00:12:41.560 align:middle line:90% was happening between us. 00:12:41.560 --> 00:12:45.670 align:middle line:84% It was the highest friable branch of the apple, 00:12:45.670 --> 00:12:49.810 align:middle line:84% like a glass chassis in the glove of a chandelier. 00:12:49.810 --> 00:12:55.150 align:middle line:90% 00:12:55.150 --> 00:13:00.760 align:middle line:84% Dear, dear reformer, do I really have 00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:04.930 align:middle line:84% to become familiar with the ways race and class inform 00:13:04.930 --> 00:13:10.180 align:middle line:84% cinematic representations of relations between the sexes? 00:13:10.180 --> 00:13:15.220 align:middle line:84% I am looking at a man on the train at dawn. 00:13:15.220 --> 00:13:19.990 align:middle line:84% He is wearing a red uniform and I am only interested in him 00:13:19.990 --> 00:13:24.670 align:middle line:84% as a representative of the uniformed species. 00:13:24.670 --> 00:13:27.340 align:middle line:90% The train pulls in underground. 00:13:27.340 --> 00:13:32.140 align:middle line:84% He crosses his ankles when a church goes by, 00:13:32.140 --> 00:13:35.890 align:middle line:84% and when we come out, oh, I am sorry. 00:13:35.890 --> 00:13:38.440 align:middle line:84% You will have to wait until another history 00:13:38.440 --> 00:13:42.384 align:middle line:84% when short butt cracks have come back into favor. 00:13:42.384 --> 00:13:46.840 align:middle line:84% I-- she-- had never contemplated the length of butt cracks till 00:13:46.840 --> 00:13:48.100 align:middle line:90% she met him-- 00:13:48.100 --> 00:13:49.540 align:middle line:90% you. 00:13:49.540 --> 00:13:53.150 align:middle line:84% Before I met him I never thought about butt cracks. 00:13:53.150 --> 00:13:55.790 align:middle line:90% This is my testimony. 00:13:55.790 --> 00:13:58.510 align:middle line:84% I now know he needs a quarter so he 00:13:58.510 --> 00:14:01.990 align:middle line:84% can hide it in there along with the American movies." 00:14:01.990 --> 00:14:04.900 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:14:04.900 --> 00:14:09.655 align:middle line:90% 00:14:09.655 --> 00:14:11.155 align:middle line:84% All right, I see what you guys like. 00:14:11.155 --> 00:14:14.050 align:middle line:90% 00:14:14.050 --> 00:14:27.590 align:middle line:84% In that case, I'll just surprise you with it. 00:14:27.590 --> 00:14:28.460 align:middle line:90% I won't read it now. 00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:37.770 align:middle line:90% 00:14:37.770 --> 00:14:38.895 align:middle line:90% Essay: "Trains." 00:14:38.895 --> 00:14:42.290 align:middle line:90% 00:14:42.290 --> 00:14:44.930 align:middle line:90% "She's fine till work lets out. 00:14:44.930 --> 00:14:51.320 align:middle line:84% Then the conversation begins, the many bags, heavy rumblings, 00:14:51.320 --> 00:14:56.030 align:middle line:84% cardinal questions, a cardboard box somewhere, 00:14:56.030 --> 00:14:59.450 align:middle line:84% the lower versions of cities flattened 00:14:59.450 --> 00:15:02.150 align:middle line:90% under her watery feet. 00:15:02.150 --> 00:15:07.040 align:middle line:84% Susan Queen crosses the river in a flowered skirt. 00:15:07.040 --> 00:15:11.720 align:middle line:84% She is floating, flawless and dead. 00:15:11.720 --> 00:15:14.960 align:middle line:84% The hood of her sweatshirt spreads out 00:15:14.960 --> 00:15:19.220 align:middle line:84% of the ears, the hole crowned head. 00:15:19.220 --> 00:15:23.780 align:middle line:84% A seagull peels back into the gray sky of its wing, 00:15:23.780 --> 00:15:29.570 align:middle line:84% and the sky gray on top of the river below such a. 00:15:29.570 --> 00:15:32.090 align:middle line:90% How many bridges did you take? 00:15:32.090 --> 00:15:38.450 align:middle line:84% Two, I made two, but Queens is still on this island. 00:15:38.450 --> 00:15:41.660 align:middle line:84% If I ever accidentally left all my books, 00:15:41.660 --> 00:15:46.580 align:middle line:84% if I ever left my body in Queens, Long Island, 00:15:46.580 --> 00:15:53.090 align:middle line:84% to see columns of Queens, to paint columns of Queens, 00:15:53.090 --> 00:15:59.540 align:middle line:84% five minutes of furry heart, five minutes of furry heart. 00:15:59.540 --> 00:16:02.510 align:middle line:84% You can't tell the difference, but one's 00:16:02.510 --> 00:16:05.480 align:middle line:90% a furry Valentine-shaped heart. 00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:07.055 align:middle line:90% The other is human." 00:16:07.055 --> 00:16:11.120 align:middle line:90% 00:16:11.120 --> 00:16:15.020 align:middle line:84% I actually did see a dead woman floating in the East River 00:16:15.020 --> 00:16:16.430 align:middle line:84% which is where that poem started. 00:16:16.430 --> 00:16:20.210 align:middle line:90% 00:16:20.210 --> 00:16:23.165 align:middle line:84% Essay: "When I Think of Sex, a Moist Fog." 00:16:23.165 --> 00:16:26.000 align:middle line:90% 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.980 align:middle line:84% "When I think of sex, some people think of seals barking, 00:16:30.980 --> 00:16:34.760 align:middle line:84% but I think of shrimp and bleach. 00:16:34.760 --> 00:16:37.130 align:middle line:84% When I think of sex with some people, 00:16:37.130 --> 00:16:42.710 align:middle line:84% I think of cones and rods, but they think of flywheels. 00:16:42.710 --> 00:16:45.080 align:middle line:84% When some people think of sex, they 00:16:45.080 --> 00:16:48.590 align:middle line:84% think of plastic and rubber and Frisbees, 00:16:48.590 --> 00:16:50.990 align:middle line:84% but when I think of them and sex I 00:16:50.990 --> 00:16:54.590 align:middle line:84% think of international Ultimate championships 00:16:54.590 --> 00:16:58.610 align:middle line:84% and of grass stains on the knees, and flies and zippers, 00:16:58.610 --> 00:17:02.030 align:middle line:84% and X's over their eyes, and they are dead. 00:17:02.030 --> 00:17:04.910 align:middle line:84% And when I think of them and sex, I think, 00:17:04.910 --> 00:17:09.575 align:middle line:84% I do not want to have sex with a dead person until I am dead." 00:17:09.575 --> 00:17:12.365 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:12.365 --> 00:17:14.329 align:middle line:90% 00:17:14.329 --> 00:17:15.770 align:middle line:90% You should think about that. 00:17:15.770 --> 00:17:23.170 align:middle line:90% 00:17:23.170 --> 00:17:26.435 align:middle line:90% So how are you doing? 00:17:26.435 --> 00:17:27.430 align:middle line:90% Doing OK? 00:17:27.430 --> 00:17:29.410 align:middle line:90% Good, good. 00:17:29.410 --> 00:17:36.550 align:middle line:84% I'm going to now read from a long poem for the next 90 00:17:36.550 --> 00:17:37.285 align:middle line:90% minutes or so. 00:17:37.285 --> 00:17:41.590 align:middle line:90% 00:17:41.590 --> 00:17:45.940 align:middle line:84% If you have to go to the bathroom, 00:17:45.940 --> 00:17:49.030 align:middle line:90% actually for about 10 minutes. 00:17:49.030 --> 00:17:52.150 align:middle line:84% It's nice to know what the person up here is doing. 00:17:52.150 --> 00:17:53.950 align:middle line:84% It's called "The California Poem." 00:17:53.950 --> 00:18:00.010 align:middle line:84% Alison mentioned it, and I'm not reading all 74 pages. 00:18:00.010 --> 00:18:01.405 align:middle line:84% I'm going to kind of skip around. 00:18:01.405 --> 00:18:07.460 align:middle line:90% 00:18:07.460 --> 00:18:13.150 align:middle line:84% It starts with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 00:18:13.150 --> 00:18:17.530 align:middle line:84% "Melons and plums and peaches, eating and drinking, 00:18:17.530 --> 00:18:20.690 align:middle line:90% and the bugle, all the day long. 00:18:20.690 --> 00:18:22.820 align:middle line:84% These are the glorious occupations 00:18:22.820 --> 00:18:26.770 align:middle line:84% which engross a proud and thinking being, running 00:18:26.770 --> 00:18:30.415 align:middle line:84% his race of preparation for the eternal world." 00:18:30.415 --> 00:18:35.080 align:middle line:90% 00:18:35.080 --> 00:18:38.440 align:middle line:84% "I want to tell you about the dream. 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:41.140 align:middle line:84% The California is a paradise lake 00:18:41.140 --> 00:18:44.500 align:middle line:90% with colorful animals dream. 00:18:44.500 --> 00:18:46.780 align:middle line:84% The when I go back to my homeland, 00:18:46.780 --> 00:18:51.160 align:middle line:84% California is a paradise, I am happy for you, dream, 00:18:51.160 --> 00:18:54.280 align:middle line:84% in which Alexander the Great invented 00:18:54.280 --> 00:18:57.880 align:middle line:90% the caterpillar personally. 00:18:57.880 --> 00:19:02.530 align:middle line:84% We were going ever so through the dusty eucalyptus. 00:19:02.530 --> 00:19:07.270 align:middle line:84% The dusty eucalyptus and shadow road, and the opposite 00:19:07.270 --> 00:19:10.420 align:middle line:84% of blindness, and relinquished speech, 00:19:10.420 --> 00:19:13.210 align:middle line:84% and focusing on my mother's throat 00:19:13.210 --> 00:19:18.550 align:middle line:84% like taking a picture of it when it's interesting, thinking. 00:19:18.550 --> 00:19:21.070 align:middle line:90% The lake is to the left. 00:19:21.070 --> 00:19:26.530 align:middle line:84% On one side, a tall, pink bird invented by space and time, 00:19:26.530 --> 00:19:31.630 align:middle line:84% called 'heron,' and there, other small and medium birds, 00:19:31.630 --> 00:19:36.950 align:middle line:84% shiny and loose with pockets of durian, ash, gold, 00:19:36.950 --> 00:19:42.070 align:middle line:84% what can be lit, oh, light that, oh, light that for you, dream. 00:19:42.070 --> 00:19:45.910 align:middle line:84% A kissing everything goodbye and the lyric pelt, 00:19:45.910 --> 00:19:51.340 align:middle line:84% and an eye of spit, a throwing gutter full of vowels 00:19:51.340 --> 00:19:54.490 align:middle line:84% out of the battery, and ground in the teeth, 00:19:54.490 --> 00:19:59.890 align:middle line:84% death in the hand, death in the bush, two in the hand. 00:19:59.890 --> 00:20:03.910 align:middle line:84% In the nape of the napalm of sun, shore, sun, 00:20:03.910 --> 00:20:09.190 align:middle line:84% I am an orphan, I am still Ishmael, dream. 00:20:09.190 --> 00:20:13.510 align:middle line:84% Who was counting the ribs in my grandfather's ships? 00:20:13.510 --> 00:20:18.190 align:middle line:84% My fist versus coastal margins of coconut novelties 00:20:18.190 --> 00:20:22.480 align:middle line:84% which recede and advance upon the shelf like a carved animal 00:20:22.480 --> 00:20:27.610 align:middle line:84% army, razor clams, wentletraps drifting away 00:20:27.610 --> 00:20:31.870 align:middle line:84% from the dream of California, which is dust and light, 00:20:31.870 --> 00:20:35.830 align:middle line:84% and dust being tossed in the white chenille 00:20:35.830 --> 00:20:40.090 align:middle line:84% blanket besides the low, white stucco 00:20:40.090 --> 00:20:44.590 align:middle line:84% barracks with roosters between the houses scratching 00:20:44.590 --> 00:20:48.610 align:middle line:84% at the dust of the light of the dream. 00:20:48.610 --> 00:20:52.360 align:middle line:84% Fantastic, thorny shapes that stand in the desert 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:55.600 align:middle line:84% as tall as a house sticking up out of the desert 00:20:55.600 --> 00:20:57.490 align:middle line:90% part of California. 00:20:57.490 --> 00:21:01.150 align:middle line:84% Absurd, tiny flowers frozen in the tips, 00:21:01.150 --> 00:21:07.540 align:middle line:84% needles for the poet named Alice, and goats weed. 00:21:07.540 --> 00:21:10.930 align:middle line:84% This poem is therein, in my dream 00:21:10.930 --> 00:21:16.240 align:middle line:84% of Death Valley, a low depression and gloss of surface 00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:20.320 align:middle line:84% lands, gloss of gloss Angeles, and Inyo County 00:21:20.320 --> 00:21:24.040 align:middle line:84% is just dusty in the bus station at the cold night, 00:21:24.040 --> 00:21:29.200 align:middle line:84% shifting from foot to foot in 1973. 00:21:29.200 --> 00:21:31.990 align:middle line:90% Tumbleweeds go by. 00:21:31.990 --> 00:21:36.550 align:middle line:84% In my sleeping nostalgia for the streets of San Francisco dream, 00:21:36.550 --> 00:21:41.350 align:middle line:84% like seeing Michael Douglas in an elevator in California, 00:21:41.350 --> 00:21:47.380 align:middle line:84% not that satisfying, or my dream of a saguaro flower weather 00:21:47.380 --> 00:21:52.240 align:middle line:84% bath, or California, born in the shape of Karl Malden's nose 00:21:52.240 --> 00:21:56.980 align:middle line:84% as it appears in 'One-Eyed Jacks'. 00:21:56.980 --> 00:21:59.350 align:middle line:84% You know that a bodega is a market, that's 00:21:59.350 --> 00:22:02.560 align:middle line:84% what we call in New York City, we call markets, 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:06.070 align:middle line:84% but there's also Bodega Bay in California. 00:22:06.070 --> 00:22:11.530 align:middle line:84% In California we don't say bodega except for the Bay. 00:22:11.530 --> 00:22:14.650 align:middle line:84% We say market, which is what it is. 00:22:14.650 --> 00:22:19.270 align:middle line:84% We don't say buttercup, we say butter box, or butter cut. 00:22:19.270 --> 00:22:23.590 align:middle line:84% If you say margarine, we bodacious, we don't say you be, 00:22:23.590 --> 00:22:25.060 align:middle line:90% we say I is. 00:22:25.060 --> 00:22:27.880 align:middle line:84% In California, fire hydrant is a way 00:22:27.880 --> 00:22:31.780 align:middle line:84% to say freeway, which in turn turns to freely, 00:22:31.780 --> 00:22:36.220 align:middle line:84% all ye income, free into dust motes, at Lake of Our Lady, 00:22:36.220 --> 00:22:40.000 align:middle line:84% et cetera, by the seashore, and my right hand very 00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:42.460 align:middle line:90% close to the earthly paradise. 00:22:42.460 --> 00:22:46.000 align:middle line:84% California, named for a tribe of ladies 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:48.970 align:middle line:84% with big feet, Rose Bowl football 00:22:48.970 --> 00:22:52.150 align:middle line:84% and the black hole of Livermore, where the flames 00:22:52.150 --> 00:22:54.940 align:middle line:90% and the tripods expired. 00:22:54.940 --> 00:22:59.350 align:middle line:84% It is all of New York, New England, Pennsylvania 00:22:59.350 --> 00:23:00.955 align:middle line:90% and New Jersey combined. 00:23:00.955 --> 00:23:04.630 align:middle line:90% 00:23:04.630 --> 00:23:09.520 align:middle line:84% Laugh for the eucalyptus as an object of pity. 00:23:09.520 --> 00:23:15.910 align:middle line:84% The truth of a Georgia is not to be found here in sushi dinners, 00:23:15.910 --> 00:23:18.460 align:middle line:84% but there is also the dirt bike parade, 00:23:18.460 --> 00:23:23.920 align:middle line:84% and the mud behind subdivision A3, Santa Maria, Camarillo 00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:25.120 align:middle line:90% and so on. 00:23:25.120 --> 00:23:28.750 align:middle line:84% Near the lemon grove is both beautiful and useful behind 00:23:28.750 --> 00:23:32.670 align:middle line:84% the funny farm, and more lemon groves. 00:23:32.670 --> 00:23:35.490 align:middle line:84% My grandmother's ranch was a small pit stop 00:23:35.490 --> 00:23:37.050 align:middle line:90% inside a lemon seed. 00:23:37.050 --> 00:23:41.220 align:middle line:84% My grandmother's gas station was two concrete slabs laid out 00:23:41.220 --> 00:23:45.420 align:middle line:84% in the Mojave, her hair a tumbleweed sprayed 00:23:45.420 --> 00:23:49.140 align:middle line:84% in the shape of a kelp limpet-gilded turban, 00:23:49.140 --> 00:23:51.960 align:middle line:84% and the lemon leaves will brush one's head, 00:23:51.960 --> 00:23:54.780 align:middle line:84% and the spider webs are fresh and dewy. 00:23:54.780 --> 00:23:58.080 align:middle line:84% The mouse turds can be found under the chaparral. 00:23:58.080 --> 00:24:01.530 align:middle line:84% My grandmother spends weekends in ghost towns looking 00:24:01.530 --> 00:24:04.335 align:middle line:90% for scorpions to cast in lucite. 00:24:04.335 --> 00:24:07.230 align:middle line:90% 00:24:07.230 --> 00:24:12.180 align:middle line:84% In the dead yard, at Dolores crumbling into dust and light 00:24:12.180 --> 00:24:16.410 align:middle line:84% is California, and California's variegated surface 00:24:16.410 --> 00:24:21.930 align:middle line:84% forgets that dust which came to bequeath them, space and light, 00:24:21.930 --> 00:24:23.100 align:middle line:90% nudibranchs. 00:24:23.100 --> 00:24:26.760 align:middle line:84% Did I say Cachuma's footprints in the ashy mud 00:24:26.760 --> 00:24:30.510 align:middle line:84% of the bones of our forefathers, ground up like pellets? 00:24:30.510 --> 00:24:33.510 align:middle line:84% Did I turn to the bones of mice bones, 00:24:33.510 --> 00:24:38.430 align:middle line:90% and the coyote, fox, eagle shit? 00:24:38.430 --> 00:24:42.870 align:middle line:84% At 13 I acquired a good tan in California 00:24:42.870 --> 00:24:46.050 align:middle line:84% to brush with the gods and god-squeezers, 00:24:46.050 --> 00:24:49.710 align:middle line:84% and boring and smiling compliments, so much 00:24:49.710 --> 00:24:53.640 align:middle line:84% less to rake and scratch the character on, 00:24:53.640 --> 00:24:58.350 align:middle line:84% as I too was raked along the bottom feeders and surface 00:24:58.350 --> 00:25:03.210 align:middle line:84% waters, like El Niño doing a brody through our air hair. 00:25:03.210 --> 00:25:05.550 align:middle line:84% At the Sunday meeting I was myself 00:25:05.550 --> 00:25:09.690 align:middle line:84% a dumb dog who could not bark at the sadness 00:25:09.690 --> 00:25:11.670 align:middle line:90% of early California. 00:25:11.670 --> 00:25:16.440 align:middle line:84% The sado-masos down from the hills and Sadducees, 00:25:16.440 --> 00:25:20.520 align:middle line:84% their desire, denial of everything dead, 00:25:20.520 --> 00:25:22.425 align:middle line:90% and existence of angels. 00:25:22.425 --> 00:25:25.230 align:middle line:90% 00:25:25.230 --> 00:25:29.310 align:middle line:84% And the echinoderms give up their radial symmetry, 00:25:29.310 --> 00:25:34.260 align:middle line:84% the laughable echinoderms moving back toward bilaterality 00:25:34.260 --> 00:25:37.020 align:middle line:90% like drunken teens. 00:25:37.020 --> 00:25:41.790 align:middle line:84% California, and the lights of the trees, my hedon Eden. 00:25:41.790 --> 00:25:45.510 align:middle line:84% I rushed to California with my eyes closed. 00:25:45.510 --> 00:25:47.880 align:middle line:90% Bill, our president, was there. 00:25:47.880 --> 00:25:51.600 align:middle line:84% Fire rushed down his snout like a dining rage, 00:25:51.600 --> 00:25:54.570 align:middle line:84% and through the pinelands of banana road 00:25:54.570 --> 00:25:58.320 align:middle line:84% like three light fingers making waste across the ice 00:25:58.320 --> 00:26:00.930 align:middle line:90% lakes of Jupiter's moon, Io." 00:26:00.930 --> 00:26:05.060 align:middle line:90% 00:26:05.060 --> 00:26:06.215 align:middle line:90% Guys are making me thirsty. 00:26:06.215 --> 00:26:13.240 align:middle line:90% 00:26:13.240 --> 00:26:16.780 align:middle line:84% "Sidewinders and autumn churrascos, 00:26:16.780 --> 00:26:20.860 align:middle line:84% winos tell stories in the back with their hands. 00:26:20.860 --> 00:26:24.340 align:middle line:84% The son comes home from a long trip. 00:26:24.340 --> 00:26:27.340 align:middle line:84% The wino opens the car trunk, and there 00:26:27.340 --> 00:26:31.150 align:middle line:84% is the girlfriend, dead, and the man gets in the car 00:26:31.150 --> 00:26:32.620 align:middle line:90% and he drives. 00:26:32.620 --> 00:26:35.620 align:middle line:90% He buys a shovel and he drives. 00:26:35.620 --> 00:26:39.880 align:middle line:84% He buries her deep in the desert and he never says where. 00:26:39.880 --> 00:26:43.720 align:middle line:84% This he does not say to the son, but maybe he 00:26:43.720 --> 00:26:47.020 align:middle line:84% buries her somewhere near Soda or Cadiz, 00:26:47.020 --> 00:26:50.770 align:middle line:84% under the scurry and rasp of things in the desert. 00:26:50.770 --> 00:26:55.180 align:middle line:90% 00:26:55.180 --> 00:27:00.820 align:middle line:84% There is laced coral below laced coral on the hem of a dress. 00:27:00.820 --> 00:27:05.410 align:middle line:84% A skirt skirted in poison coral cyanide. 00:27:05.410 --> 00:27:08.860 align:middle line:84% The colonial animals fasten themselves 00:27:08.860 --> 00:27:13.030 align:middle line:84% to the bottom of the sea where hair waves. 00:27:13.030 --> 00:27:17.740 align:middle line:84% I have not remembered to mention the darkest of series, 00:27:17.740 --> 00:27:21.250 align:middle line:84% the place where I was thinking, California, 00:27:21.250 --> 00:27:24.340 align:middle line:84% or the almonds at Mycenae, sleeping 00:27:24.340 --> 00:27:29.290 align:middle line:84% trees under the sleepy ground, their light strings, dangling, 00:27:29.290 --> 00:27:34.240 align:middle line:84% dream of the fixed trees of all Mars, and all marine. 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:37.300 align:middle line:84% Mariner, my voice is tangled there 00:27:37.300 --> 00:27:42.014 align:middle line:84% where the phone lines tangle with the sea." 00:27:42.014 --> 00:27:43.200 align:middle line:90% I think I'll stop there. 00:27:43.200 --> 00:27:46.250 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:27:46.250 --> 00:27:53.000 align:middle line:90%