I'll maybe read one or two others from this text.
But Watch Your Language has these sort
of sketches of writers, poets, favorite poets really.
So I thought I would do Ai because she's
connected to Arizona.
And so, it's a biographical sketch,
but it's also me just doing whatever.
So it's A-I, But it sounds like I.
So every time it sounds like I'm saying, I, I'm saying her name.
And these are details from her life and quotes
from her, from her poems.
So, "Ai, born 1947."
"Ai kept cats because she could be lonely.
Ai rode the feathers of a comet into the world.
Wearing a wedding dress, Ai buried Mama in a wedding dress,
and delivered her eulogy, crying in her dream.
Ai could be Japanese, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Black
because of a streetcar stop.
Ai could be Irish, Southern Cheyenne, Comanche, and Black.
Ai was the child of a scandalous affair.
Ai was Tuscan at a crossroads.
Ai was Florence Anthony in Texas.
Carolyn Wright said, Ai bought a turquoise necklace.
Ai was a moonshine stained with the twilight of June
in Oklahoma.
Ai was disguised as a poem in the pocket of a Catholic school
girl in California.
Ai could be Miguel Hernández, Gabriel García Márquez.
Ai could be César Vallejo predicting death in "Black Stone
on a White Stone."
Ai could be Yasunari Kawabata, talking to his reflection
in a shallow pond.
In the blues, the singer is always guilty.
In opera, there is often murder in the song.
Wearing a kimono, Ai buried her father wearing a kimono
and delivered his eulogy, crying in a dream.
Ai absorbed you through my skin.
It's not that Ai wouldn't buy you a tiara
because she was mean.
She wouldn't buy it for you because she
watched her money carefully.
Ai wrote Cruelty in 1973 and Sin in '86.
Ai wrote Fate in 1981 and Greed in '93.
Ai said, Jesus walked on his mother's body
to be the king of heaven.
Ai could be the blackest soul in the Bible,
the bride of the prophet, the least remembered disciple.
Ai lived it.
Ai could be within earshot of a catcall
or eyeballing another poet's boondoggle, bromides,
pretending to be wise.
Ai on a shoebox on the brown leather high back chair.
Ai in a cracked glass on a cluttered counter.
Ai on Earth.
Ai on a magic carpet.
Ai parked an old maroon Ford in a field outside El Reno.
Ai was wing up on the sideboard of the old car.
Ai was side saddle to the headstrong odor of a ghost.
I'm on my way to work.
When you run off, I start after you."
[APPLAUSE]