WEBVTT

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Is there some way to make
this a little louder?

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Someone controlling the sound?

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No.

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I could put it closer to
my mouth without eating it.

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[LAUGHING]

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It has been, you know.

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Right here?

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OK, thank you.

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I'm going to read some
poems from The Errancy

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and then, if I have time, poems
from a new book that will be

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out this summer, titled Swarm.

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I'm going to try to--

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what is it?

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Did I do that?

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[LAUGHING]

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I'm going to try to read
some poems I haven't

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read before from this book.

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They're a little bleaker than
some of the others in the book

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and will therefore lead
effortlessly into the new book.

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This book was based on a sort
of idea I had of the Baroque

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as it came to me from both
philosophy and the visual arts.

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In terms of its
structure, well, I

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imagined I was questioning the
status of the speaker, which,

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of course, is just one
way of just writing poems.

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But I did write poems from
three different vantage

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points in this book.

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Can you hear me in the back?

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And the vantage
points, if you just

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imagine any Baroque
Italian painting,

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the sort of vertigo-ridden
different points of view.

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One of the sets of
speakers in the book

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is a series of guardian
angels who speak.

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They seem to be
speaking from somewhere

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above the ordinary human
speaker in the book.

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And they are
creatures that still

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have a certain amount of power.

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I think of them as
victims of downsizing.

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And so they have the power
to witness and not really

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the power to help or provide
even anything other than almost

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inaudible admonition.

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The other point of
view is the point

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of view of a series
of lovers in the book.

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And they're all in motel
rooms or hotel rooms.

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And they're
desperately, I think,

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reading what's left
of literature to them

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and foraging through each
other's bodies trying

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to figure out where
utopia might still reside.

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And the third speaker
is the poet in the book.

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So I'm going to read one of
the guardian angel poems.

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This is "The Guardian
Angel of Self-Knowledge."

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"How razor-clean was
it supposed to become,

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the zero at the core of
each of these, mingling with

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leaves as they fork up in wind,
bright yellow, distillations

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of uprising, evidence of this
one world's gigantic curvature.

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How clean, how denuded
of their foliage

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these desperate aimless ones and
twos along the built-up paths,

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and ones in corridors,
these ones so skillfully

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grouped up in liquid
clutches of impermanence

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now taking the long way
back along the lake,

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now in the auditorium
beating upon by wind

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and then a little rain.

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They look in their envelopes.

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They look on their paper
calendars under their tongues.

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Stare at the shadows
their bodies cast.

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Stare at the shadows
they're folding chairs cast.

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With each glance, something
like a leaf let loose.

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I watch it float, each eyelash
lurching forward, each horse

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and giddy self-appraisal.

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I watch them let it go, each
owner standing so stilly now

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behind his words as they
are given up on lunch break

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beside the phone booth where
one's crying softly now

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into the glistening receiver
beside the bookseller.

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The fruit seller,
where one comes

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right to the warm
brink of a yellow pear.

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Oh, from here, it looks so
like a dream of shelter,

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the way that reaching
hand mimics the eye,

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romancing, the way it quickens
at its root, desiring.

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The other one now rooting
in a pocket for some change.

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The other one's now touching
a chin, a lip, an index finger

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rough on a cheek as if
to wipe away a glance.

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Down there, oh, how
much must I see?

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How clean did they
want to become,

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shedding each possibility with
gusts of self-exposure bubbling

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up into gesture, their
quaint notions of perfection?

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Then letting each thought,
each resting place

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get swept away, because
that was not what I meant,

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was not at all.

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And since the future
isn't real, is just

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an alarm clock where the
last domino can finally

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drop wearing a street address
around its medicated neck.

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Oh, that, of course, the
wound we cannot medicate.

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You know, the room of
icons so preserved--

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we move them round to fit the
furniture, opinions nestling

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in them.

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Down in the folds--

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the inlays, opinions,
and calculations and bits

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of stardom right down in there
in the grain of the icons,

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some truth in there too
now maybe in the form.

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Who can tell?

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Maybe even some ecstasy,
some little monstrosity,

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though it doesn't matter, since
we can't tell the difference,

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since it's all prerecorded
or something like that.

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Who will they be when they
get to the bottom of it,

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when they've stripped away
the retrospect, when they've

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peeled away the orphan hood,
the shimmering merriments

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of consolation?

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How will they feel the
erasures erase them?

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Who will they resemble when
they're done with resemblance?"

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[APPLAUSE]

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