[APPLAUSE]
Let's read a few more poems.
So I'm going to shift a little bit.
I've been talking about language a lot over the last two days
with students, both community folks as well as students today.
And so in the spirit of language and the beauty and joy
of language, I want to read a poem for which--
where I'm really thinking about how do we take hip hop
and play with citationality that hip hop brings to us.
I think about this line from a DMX song.
Right, DMX has this moment where he says,
I like a girl with 5411, size 7 in girls.
The reason 5411, you would have to know that these--
what he's saying is there was a type of Reebok that cost $49.99
in the late '80s, early '90s.
And with the New York sales tax, it would have been $54.11.
[LAUGHTER]
So and it became a way of knowing this type of Reebok.
Like, oh, she got the 5411s on.
And he's saying size 7 in girl.
That's his idea.
And I always love this bit of elusiveness.
You don't have to know what 5411s are,
but you understand that that's like saying something about
the type of woman he's interested in.
And so I always think of that elusive practice in relationship
to being a poet who has a PhD.
And people, sometimes, my students
are always like, this poem is throwing me outside of itself
because of its elusiveness.
And I'll be like, but y'all be listening to hip hop.
Y'all don't understand every allusion happening in hip hop.
I don't understand every Bob Seger allusion.
You know what I mean?
We don't understand every allusion,
but we can just rock with it because of the sound.
And so what I wanted to do was play in the spirit of sound,
letting sound move.
Like what happens if we just give ourselves over
to sound as a poet in the poem?
And so there's this line that is the sort of mechanism
of the poem where there's a rapper.
Is this on YouTube?
Are we streaming?
OK.
Cuss words is all right?
We going to bleep it out later?
OK.
And so there is a rapper named Future.
Y'all may have heard of Future.
Some people may have heard of him,
southern rapper out of Atlanta.
And he has this song that was like a club banger, which means
it was played a lot in clubs.
And there's a line where he says,
we're about to fuck up some commas, yeah.
Fuck up some commas, yeah.
And it's all about--
the hook really is about learning
how to take a little bit of money and make a lot of money.
So you buy a little bit.
You buy a little pack of something.
And you resell that.
And you get more.
It's about drugs.
I'm trying to say it nicely.
But I was thinking about this moment where he says,
we're going to fuck up some commas.
Particularly because I think this idea of fucking up commas
is really interesting.
If we think of-- like, I think it could be subversive.
Here's what I mean.
How did Black folks come to the Americas?
On the bottom of ships, huddled spoon fashion.
So we came over as commodities.
So we came as commas.
So what would we think about fucking up commas?
Like, to me, I was like, oh, I think
I could flip that differently.
I think I could turn--
So there's that allusion.
And I only do this because I always think about this moment
where e e cummings had to teach his audience how to read him.
I'm not teaching you how to read me.
I'm just playing with y'all.
I'm trying to just say there's a method to the madness.
There's another moment that I have
to give an elusive allusion explaining the allusion,
not because you need to know it.
You actually don't need this.
You could read the poem, be fine without it.
But I just think it's fun.
We had a reading.
We get to do some different shit.
So there's a moment where Jack Johnson, famous boxer, Arizona,
right?
Didn't he get arrested?
I think it was Arizona.
McCain was the Senator out here, right?
OK, yes.
He was arrested here.
Yes, OK.
This is the first time I get to tell this.
This is awesome.
So Jack Johnson was arrested in the 1920s quote unquote,
"for trafficking white women across state lines."
Because he was married to a white woman in the 1920s when it
was illegal for interracial marriages.
And so he was eventually exonerated, actually,
by John McCain.
John McCain abdicated the sentence later
because he was arrested out here.
So that's a little Arizona history for you.
But Jack Johnson once was asked by a reporter
a very stupid question.
Why do white women love Black men so much?
That's a dumb ass question.
And so his answer was, because we eat cold eels
and think distant thoughts, which is not an answer.
[LAUGHTER]
It's a perfect way of saying fuck you.
And so I love that.
To me, that's a nascent moment of hip hop.
We might say that's very bluesy.
And so that is in the poem.
There's other allusions.
But I just thought, I don't want y'all to think I came up with
that line.
That's Jack Johnson.
It's a great line.
"Future, from Beyond the Voice of God."
What shall be done with the demand for more selfies?
Selfies of the crow in the wheat
And the wheat knocking against the window.
Selfies of my daughter hooting like an owl
And beating the back of her cage, the back of her bones.
Selfies of Wittgenstein's eyes
Settling on the back of a crow,
Which is the shadow of a boy
Delivering milk to the door of his mother
Where language began, begins
Gertrude Stein over the Steinbauerggasse
Eating salt fish and conk fritters with Aimé Césaire.
More selfies of Negroes from Niger and New Orleans,
Blue-black and the blue-black buck and canter of summer.
In Yves Saint Laurent glasses
And pinafores of light pinned to the eyes.
No church in the wild,
But more selfies of Susie Asado buck-dancing
On balustrades near the nigger cemeteries
Where the chariot swung so low,
We just called them commas.
We 'bout to fuck up some commas, yeah
Gerrymander and Jack Johnson the shit out of shit.
Why do white women love Black men?
Because we eat cold eels and think distant thoughts.
Jack Johnson, we need more selfies,
Selfies of Frederick Douglass' pen
Removed from the gashes in his feet
And writing hot checks for Rolexes and rivers
Our bodies just can't cash.
Wade in the water, wade in the water, children.
We 'bout to fuck up some trauma, yeah.
Selfie and holler, yeah.
Instagram at the ashram with Lil' Weezy and Wardell Curry,
Junior
Not Senior, busting 3-pointers, yeah.
On behalf of a local charity that sends
a mosquito nets to children
In Africa, the Sudan, Niger, I don't know.
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
Tyger, Tyger hanging from the streetlight.
Distant thought, I'm so in time, I'm out of time.
So selfie, I'm healthy.
I mean, I'm saying though,
You know what I'm saying?
[APPLAUSE]