WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.140 align:middle line:84% So I'll give you the two-poem warning so that-- 00:00:03.140 --> 00:00:04.550 align:middle line:90% you have to give you all that. 00:00:04.550 --> 00:00:06.410 align:middle line:84% We're getting that towards the end of that-- 00:00:06.410 --> 00:00:10.190 align:middle line:84% one, thank you all for bearing with me and bearing this coat. 00:00:10.190 --> 00:00:12.390 align:middle line:84% Like y'all, because I heard it was 9 degrees. 00:00:12.390 --> 00:00:14.085 align:middle line:90% Wasn't it 9 degrees recently? 00:00:14.085 --> 00:00:15.960 align:middle line:84% We've had this similar thing happen in Texas. 00:00:15.960 --> 00:00:17.085 align:middle line:90% It was hot through October. 00:00:17.085 --> 00:00:21.530 align:middle line:84% And all of a sudden, it decided not to be hot. 00:00:21.530 --> 00:00:24.950 align:middle line:90% So I want to-- yeah. 00:00:24.950 --> 00:00:27.063 align:middle line:84% In this book, I was really trying to-- 00:00:27.063 --> 00:00:28.480 align:middle line:84% this book, being Best Barbarian, I 00:00:28.480 --> 00:00:32.150 align:middle line:84% was really trying to think about love poems 00:00:32.150 --> 00:00:37.550 align:middle line:84% and writing poems that really, really directly 00:00:37.550 --> 00:00:44.490 align:middle line:84% grapple with love and ecstasy very, very overtly. 00:00:44.490 --> 00:00:48.920 align:middle line:84% And so because my partner, she's always like, 00:00:48.920 --> 00:00:50.610 align:middle line:90% you don't write me love poems. 00:00:50.610 --> 00:00:53.930 align:middle line:84% I'd be like, girl, come on, I'm an elegiac poet. 00:00:53.930 --> 00:00:55.480 align:middle line:90% We don't do love poems. 00:00:55.480 --> 00:00:56.730 align:middle line:90% But I was like, you know what? 00:00:56.730 --> 00:00:57.920 align:middle line:90% That's a good challenge. 00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:01.970 align:middle line:84% It's so funny because I wrote this poem, and I'm like, 00:01:01.970 --> 00:01:04.620 align:middle line:84% I think this might be a love poem. 00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:09.300 align:middle line:84% So if y'all don't mind, I'm going to read y'all. 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:15.630 align:middle line:90% My version of a love poem. 00:01:15.630 --> 00:01:16.660 align:middle line:90% I hope it is one. 00:01:16.660 --> 00:01:17.925 align:middle line:90% Y'all tell me if it is. 00:01:17.925 --> 00:01:21.024 align:middle line:90% 00:01:21.024 --> 00:01:23.090 align:middle line:90% "Into the West." 00:01:23.090 --> 00:01:25.310 align:middle line:84% It seemed clear that no one can call 00:01:25.310 --> 00:01:27.330 align:middle line:90% upon thee without knowing thee. 00:01:27.330 --> 00:01:31.860 align:middle line:84% Though Augustine writes of God here, notorious for his absence, 00:01:31.860 --> 00:01:35.250 align:middle line:84% He could also be speaking of desire, pleasure. 00:01:35.250 --> 00:01:37.980 align:middle line:84% The tick of snow against the dry leaves, 00:01:37.980 --> 00:01:40.280 align:middle line:84% Which sends my daughter spinning on her heel. 00:01:40.280 --> 00:01:42.920 align:middle line:84% The sound of it, that, daddy, that. 00:01:42.920 --> 00:01:47.100 align:middle line:84% Sometimes the world, its loitering joy is just a that, 00:01:47.100 --> 00:01:50.660 align:middle line:84% An absence that calls, demonstrates its over thereness. 00:01:50.660 --> 00:01:54.470 align:middle line:84% Its being but without a proper name, so a silence sounded 00:01:54.470 --> 00:01:56.340 align:middle line:90% As when I enter the clearing 00:01:56.340 --> 00:01:59.510 align:middle line:84% I once begged for, you, at an instant, 00:01:59.510 --> 00:02:01.700 align:middle line:90% Absolute and looking back at me 00:02:01.700 --> 00:02:03.930 align:middle line:90% As if witnessing a calendar or 00:02:03.930 --> 00:02:06.420 align:middle line:84% A road you've already passed through. 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:09.740 align:middle line:84% So my face now in whatever wolf, vulture, 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:12.950 align:middle line:84% Or golden horn of pleasure a that, 00:02:12.950 --> 00:02:16.370 align:middle line:84% A ticking of snow against the wet road, nameless, 00:02:16.370 --> 00:02:20.610 align:middle line:84% Thee, where you've been and left the body of that being. 00:02:20.610 --> 00:02:24.240 align:middle line:84% So I hurry and press into your leaving 00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:27.180 align:middle line:84% Like a leaf scuttling after the dream of itself 00:02:27.180 --> 00:02:29.580 align:middle line:84% Into the sharp wet of snow against the skin 00:02:29.580 --> 00:02:31.270 align:middle line:90% on into the west, 00:02:31.270 --> 00:02:34.950 align:middle line:84% Where desire and sometimes pleasure is a type of faith, 00:02:34.950 --> 00:02:39.010 align:middle line:84% What you call me to in this spilling, this motion of night. 00:02:39.010 --> 00:02:41.260 align:middle line:84% Your hair loose in the water of your back. 00:02:41.260 --> 00:02:45.190 align:middle line:84% Your spine has become the eye you wish for me to see through. 00:02:45.190 --> 00:02:47.320 align:middle line:84% But I must close my two good eyes, 00:02:47.320 --> 00:02:50.440 align:middle line:84% Which is the beginning of any apocalypse or rapture. 00:02:50.440 --> 00:02:52.380 align:middle line:90% Our daughter or the day, 00:02:52.380 --> 00:02:55.380 align:middle line:84% Us touching the north and south of each other 00:02:55.380 --> 00:02:57.510 align:middle line:90% Without compass or rose. 00:02:57.510 --> 00:03:00.900 align:middle line:84% This stumbling, a type of faith, too. 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:03.810 align:middle line:84% A seeing, but without the dependence on sight 00:03:03.810 --> 00:03:08.140 align:middle line:84% Or some heavenly ruin as signal of an end. 00:03:08.140 --> 00:03:12.010 align:middle line:84% It was like the deer outside gathering at the window, 00:03:12.010 --> 00:03:14.850 align:middle line:90% Licking the cold glass to smoke. 00:03:14.850 --> 00:03:18.200 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:18.200 --> 00:03:20.000 align:middle line:90%