Thank you, Elise.
Thank you.
Rob, are you ready?
Are you ready?
Are you sure?
[LAUGHTER]
We can rejigger it around.
You want to go tomorrow?
No?
OK.
[LAUGHTER]
OK.
Rob Arnold is a CHamoru poet, essayist, arts leader,
and author of To the Unnamed, forthcoming from Graywolf Press.
[APPLAUSE]
His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Hyphen,
Gettysburg Review, Poetry Northwest, RED INK, Yes Poetry,
The Ocean State Review, Peripheries, The Volta,
and Solstice, among others, and has been anthologized in New
CHamoru Literature and Na'huyong: An Anthology
of CHamoru Literature.
His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize
and have received support from the Somerville Arts
Council, the Jack Straw Cultural Center, and Artist Trust.
He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York,
where he is Executive Director of Poets House.
Please welcome Rob Arnold.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm tall.
[LAUGHTER]
Håfa Adai, håfa tatamanu hao?
Nå'ån-hu si Rob Arnold.
Hi, Chris.
Hi, Christopher.
So nice to see both of you.
Yeah, I'm Rob Arnold.
I'm really pleased to be here.
Si Yu'os Ma'åse' for being here and saina ma'åse' to all
the Fellows for your wonderful work.
I've learned so much this week with all of you,
and I'm looking forward to continue learning with you.
Kind of inspired by Chris, I have
picked three poems that are water
haunted from my manuscript, which should be coming out
next summer.
They also deal with family.
And also I just want to recognize the tenderness
and vulnerability that we've seen tonight
and want to offer some back as well.
So this first poem is called Psalm.
Praise be sun.
Praise be moon shivered saw grass channeled
surf pattern cut glass.
Praise your feet at the seething shore, siphoned sand.
Praise delta churn.
Praise bracken strand.
Praise your stolen name.
The state's mistake.
Praise thunder cloud and sun break.
Praise the Earth.
Praise the sea.
Praise this sharpened edge gutted night.
Your arm plunged elbow deep in the scripted water, all
that it keeps.
Bless the unforeseen.
Bless this eroded life.
How water flowing past a rock slowly excavates the rock.
Slowly eviscerates the shoreline.
Makes, then unmakes these tidal tributaries.
This insecticide laced channel.
Your dogs splashed along six months
before he died of lymphoma.
Drainage ditch number one.
The map will tell you later.
Bless all hindsight.
Bless regrets.
Bless those meaningless paths you walked.
Thirsting towards home.
Beauty and nightfall, beauty and striated dawn,
and the detached wing of a crane left by the roadside.
Otherworldly storm of feathers orbiting like a halo.
The Holy Spirit, you were told.
Ablutions of light and gold leaf laid by Renaissance artisans.
Sacred light, divine wisdom.
The spirit colors that flashed as your brother's arm
crushed your carotid as he squeezed until you convulsed
and passed out, speaking in tongues while blood
flowered in your brain.
Was that a kind of death or a kind of living at the periphery?
Was it a kind of love, the tightening headlock?
A stain on the soul.
Beauty in, beauty out.
What you consume becomes you.
Bless this beautiful bruise.
Spreading just under the skin.