>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [ Silence ] >> [Background buzzing sound] Welcome to the Library of Congress and our Coolidge Auditorium. My name is Rob Casper and I am the head of the Poetry and Literature Center here at the Library. It's a thrill to see you here today on such a beautiful May Day, Happy May Day, for this landmark reading featuring Marilyn Chin, Brenda Shaughnessy, Patricia Smith, Brian Turner, and Kevin Young. First of all, I'm sure many of you heard the telephone ring as I was getting up here. Let me ask you to do what I'm going to do, check your cell phones. Make sure they're off and any other electronic devices that you have. And second, I need to know -- I need to let you know that this program is going to be recorded, and by participating in it you give us permission for future use of this recording. The Poetry and Literature Center here at the Library of Congress is home to the Poet Consultant in Poetry, and we've presented programs such as this one for 75 years. We are celebrating our great anniversary this year with a packed season of readings, panels, and lectures. Please visit the table out in the foyer to sign up for email notifications about our future events and to pick up one of our brochures. Also, there are flyers out on the table about our Poet Laureate's final lecture tonight which serves as a complement to this reading. So I hope you all -- you're willing to have an afternoon and evening of poetry. Let me tell you a little bit about today's program. Each poet who will be reading today was selected by Poet Laureate, Natasha Tretheweya, to read to the theme "Necessary Utterance: Poetry As a Cultural Force." They will read in alphabetical order, and following the reading we will have a book signing with all of our authors up in the foyer. And you can follow along in your program and you can read bios of all of our readers inside. Now I would like to introduce Jon Peede, publisher of Virginia Quarterly Review," our collaborating presenter in today's program, to say a few words about the magazine and about our Poet Laureate who serves a crucial function on his masthead. Jon was named publisher of VQR in 2011. Previously to that he served as Director of Literature for the National Endowment for the Arts here in D.C. In addition to directing the NEA's Big Read Program for two years, Jon served as Counselor to NEA Chairman, Dana Gioia, from 2003 to 2007. Jon was the Founding Director of the NEA's Operation Homecoming program which resulted in the largest archive of U.S. troop writing from Iraq and Afghanistan and an acclaimed anthology and two award-winning documentaries. He has led literary programs in Bahrain, Mexico, Northern Ireland, and other countries. Jon is also co-editor of an essay collection "Inside the Church of Flannery O'Connor, Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in her Fiction." Please join me in welcoming Jon Peede. [ Audience Applause ] >> Thank you, Rob. And I also want to thank the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. The Center is not only home to the Poets Laureate. It is really home, as is this Library as a whole, to American letters, and so it's a great privilege for the Virginia Quarterly Review, for my colleagues to co-sponsor this wonderful poetry reading, and I could not think of a more apt subject and a finer person to bring it to us than Natasha Tretheweya. She has, for VQR she is contributing editor to us and she's a great sounding board for ideas. Just a great enthusiast for other artists. She is a fine poet. She is a fine essayist. She writes profound and heartbreaking memoirs of her experience which is in so many ways the American Experience. So it is our deep honor and our deep pleasure to be a part of this evening and not just this session but we look forward to Natasha's remarks. And I know enough to get out of the way of the real talent, so I'm going to turn this over to Natasha Tretheweya, the Poet Laureate of the United States. [ Audience Applause ] >> Thank you. It is not often that I get to follow another Mississippian up to the platform. It's really a pleasure and an honor to get to welcome you to this last event of the literary season: Necessary Utterance: Poetry as Cultural Force. As a poet in the world I find that I am asked frequently to describe the ways that poetry has or can have relevance in our daily lives, both what it means to readers as well as to writers. Over 20 years ago, when I sat in a workshop offered by poet Margaret Gibson, I listened as she discussed Poetry as Necessary Utterance, the written and voiced words speaking indispensably into the silences or back to the noise of everyday. At the same time that I was beginning to see beyond my love for the sonic pleasures of a poem, how poetry has the power to influence us, to affect us deeply by touching not only the intellect but also the heart. For this conference I have asked five poets whose work I deeply admire to give a reading with commentary that addresses the theme "Necessary Utterance: Poetry as Cultural Force", Marilyn Chin, Brenda Shaughnessy, Patricia Smith, Brian Tuner and Kevin Young. Their bios are in the programs you have. As poets with various aesthetics, they approach the making and appreciation of poems in rich and diverse ways. Today we will hear the cultural force of their work, the necessity and vitality of it, what it is that they are compelled to speak back to, to voice. Please join me in welcoming them. [ Audience Applause ] [ Buzzing Sound ] >> [Background buzzing sound] I guess I'm longitudinally challenged, so -- can you see me? Okay [laughter]. Okay. I want to thank Natasha and Rob for -- and the posse -- the posse for putting this together. And thank you for coming on this beautiful May Day. I believe that our poems -- I guess I could speak for all of us that our poems are not just decorative embroidery or academic luxuries. They are -- yes, we do write beautiful poems, but they are necessary utterances. And I want to begin with this poem that was somehow historicized in the 20th century, and it's called How I Got That Name in Essay on Assimilation. . I am Marilyn Mei Ling Chin. Oh, how I love the resoluteness of that first person singular followed by that stalwart indicative of "be," without the uncertain i-n-g of "becoming." Of course, the name had been changed somewhere between Angel Island and the sea, when my father the paperson in the late 1950s obsessed with a bombshell blond transliterated "Mei Ling" to "Marilyn." And nobody dared question his initial impulse, for we all know lust drove men to greatness, not goodness, not decency. And there I was, a wayward pink baby, named after some tragic white woman swollen with gin and Nembutal. My mother couldn't pronounce the "r." She dubbed me "Numba one female offshoot" for brevity. Henceforth she will live and die in sublime ignorance, flanked by loving children and the "kitchen deity." While my father dithers, a tomcat in Hong Kong trash, a gambler, a petty thug, who bought a chain of chopsuey joints in Piss River, Oregon, with bootlegged Gucci cash. Nobody dared question his integrity given his nice, devout daughters and his bright, industrious sons as if filial piety were the standard by which all earthly men are measured. Oh, how trustworthy our daughters, how thrifty our sons. How we've managed to fool the experts in education, statistic, and demography. We're not very creative but not adverse to rote-learning, rote learning, rote learning. Indeed, they can use us. But the "Model Minority" is a tease. We know you are watching now and we refuse to give you any. Oh, bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots. The further west we go, we'll hit east; the deeper down we dig, we'll find China. History has turned its stomach on a black polluted beach where life doesn't hinge on that red, red wheelbarrow, but whether or not our new lover in that final episode of "Santa Barbara" will lean over a scented candle and call us a bitch. Oh, lord, where have we gone wrong? We have no inner resources. Then, one redolent spring morning the Great Patriarch Chin peered down from his kiosk in heaven and saw that his descendants were ugly. One had a squarish head, a nose without a bridge; another's profile, long and knobbed as a gourd. A third, the sad, brutish one may never, never marry. And I, his least favorite, not quite boiled, not quite cooked, a plump pomme frites simmering in my juices, too listless to fight for my people's destiny. "To kill without resistance is not slaughter," says the proverb. So, I wait for imminent death. The fact that this death is also metaphorical is testament to my lethargy. So here lies Marilyn Mei Ling Chin, married once, twice to so-and-so, a Lee and a Wong, granddaughter of Jack, the patriarch, and the brooding Suilin Fong, daughter of the virtuous Yuet Kuen Wong and G.G. Chin the infamous, sister of a dozen, cousin of a million, survived by everybody and forgotten by all. She was neither black nor white, neither cherished nor vanquished, just another squatter in her own bamboo grove minding her poetry, when one day heaven was unmerciful and a chasm opened where she stood. Like the jaws of a mighty white whale or the maw of a metaphysical Godzilla, it swallowed her whole. She did not flinch nor writhe, nor fret about the afterlife, but stayed, solid as wood, happily, a little gnawed, tattered, mesmerized by all that was lavished upon her and all that was taken away. [ Audience Applause ] Can you hear me back there? >> Yeah. >> Okay. A little brown girl was very loud, you know. Okay. How shall we speak? We shall speak as loud as possible. That's one way to write an immigrant anthem. There are many ways to write immigrant anthems. And another way is to write a blues poem. This poem is inspired by Bessie Smith, and it's called "Blues on Yellow." The canary died in the gold mine, her dreams got lost in the sieve. The canary died in the gold mine, her dreams got lost in the sieve. Her husband the crow killed under the railroad, the spokes hath shorn his wings. Something's cooking in Chin's kitchen. 10,000 yellow-bellied sapsuckers baked in a pie. Something's cooking in Chin's kitchen, ten thousand yellow-bellied sapsuckers baked in a pie. Something's cooking in Chin's kitchen. Die die yellow bird, die, die. Oh crack an egg on the griddle, yellow will ooze into white. Oh crack an egg on the griddle, yellow will ooze into white. Run, run, sweet little puritan, yellow will ooze into white. If you cut my yellow wrists, I'll teach my yellow toes to write. If you cut my yellow wrists, I'll teach my yellow toes to write. If you cut my yellow fists, I'll teach my yellow feet to fight. Do not be afraid to perish, my mother. Buddha's compassion is nigh. Do not be afraid to perish, my mother, our boat will sail tonight. Your babies will reach the Promised Land; the stars will be their guide. I am so mellow yellow, mellow yellow, Buddha sings in my veins. I am so mellow yellow, mellow yellow, Buddha sings in my veins. Oh take me to the land of the unreborn, there's no life on earth without pain. [ Audience Applause ] [Background applause] Thank you. So I'm going to finish by reading a few pieces from my new book which -- it's called Hard Love Province, and it will come out in 2014. I've been working on High Bridge Chinese Quatrains, and these are just classical Chinese quatrains mixed with Emily Dickenson, mixed with Fifty Shades of Grey, and mixed with a much maligned form, the limerick. So I want to read this series for a special majority group, a traditionally underrepresented majority group, that of hock strong, powerful, feisty women over 40, okay? Okay. And this series is called "Cougar Synonymous." I'll just read a few. You'll have to buy the book to read the really nasty stuff, right? "Cougar Synonymous." My grandpa was 80; my grandma was 20. She cried for years for the good life she was missing. She faced a wall until he finished his dying; then she polished his bones for all of eternity. Such entitlement, my prickly little prince, waving a pistol and a crumpled Ben Franklin. Don't you know I'm a citizen of my own bed? I paid for my passage. I owe you nothing. Throw my girl into the river, she won't drown. Like her mother before her and her mother's mother. Stubborn reed, hollow at both ends, she'll whistle and hum and float into dawn. The man from Wooster wants to eat my sister. She bends her backward, coats her in rice flour, pinches her corners, calls her "sweet dumpling," fries her in deep oil, then serves her on porcelain. How sweet somebody else's husband, looking around the girls' gymnasium. How sweet somebody else's student, tanned and arrogant, reciting bad poems. Hold on to your boy soldier on the moonlight path. I'm an urban cougar on the sunset prowl. Once I take his nape in my bloody mouth, he'll beg and moan and succumb to his god. My cousin calls him Allah. My sister calls him Jesus. My brother calls him Krishna. My mother calls him Gutchma. I call him, call him on his cell phone but he does not answer [audience laughter]. I climb the Acropolis, swim the Aegean, flirt with Korus, but don't give him my name. Drink tea at high noon, eat octopus at dusk. A woman at 40 is proud of her lust. Thank you [audience applause]. Thank you. [ Audience Applause ] >> [Background buzzing sound] That was awesome. I'm so delighted to be here. Thank you so much to Natasha and to Rob and to everybody. I think you are, and everybody who made it possible. I've been thinking about Necessary Utterance and I think poetry always already is necessary utterance. If it weren't necessary why say it that way? Why say it in poetry? Why not just say it in prose or at the dinner table or on Facebook for that matter. I'm going to start with a poem by Lucille Clifton that I think really addresses why poetry is necessary utterance by definition. This is "Sorrows" by Lucille Clifton. Who would believe them winged? Who would believe they could be beautiful? Who would believe they could fall so in love with mortals that they would attach themselves as scars attach and ride the skin? Sometimes we hear them in our dreams rattling their skulls, clicking their bony fingers, envying our crackling hair, our spice-filled flesh. They have heard me beseeching as I whispered into my own cupped hands; enough not me again, enough. But who can distinguish one human voice amid such choruses of desire? So who can distinguish one human voice amid such choruses of desire? I feel like sometimes one human voice is the only thing we can distinguish from the miasma of great pain of collective suffering in the world. This poem is my own. It's called "Miracles." I spent the whole day crying and writing, until they became the same, as when the planet covers the sun with all its might and still I can see it; or when one dead body gives its heart to a name on a list. A match. A light. Sailing a signal flare behind me for another to find. A scratch on the page is a supernatural act, one twisting fire out of water, blood out of stone. We can read us. We are not alone. [ Audience Applause ] I think one of the ways that I handle trauma or crisis or pain in poetry is to sort of imagine another world, sort of this kind of -- conveniently create some other place to be. I have one sister, just one. And sometimes when we talk on the phone I wish we had better conversations. So when I hang up the phone I wish there was another sister I could call. This is called, "I Wish I Had More Sisters," enough to fight with and still have plenty more to confess to, embellishing the fight so that I look like I'm right and then turn all my sisters, one by one, against my sister. One sister will be so bad the rest of us will have a purpose in bringing her back to where it's good with us and we'll feel useful, and she will feel loved. Then another sister will have a tragedy, and again we will unite in our grief, judging her much less that we did the bad sister. This time it was not our sister's fault. This time it could have happened to any of us and in a way it did. We'll know she wasn't the only sister to suffer. We all suffer with our choices, and we all have our choice of sisters. My sisters will seem like a bunch of alternate me, all the ways I could have gone. I could see how things pan out without having to do the things myself. The abortions, the divorces, the arson, swindles, poison jelly. I could choose to be a fisherman's wife, since I'd be able to visit my sister in her mansion, sipping bubbly for once, braying to the others who weren't invited. I could be a traveler, a seer, a poet, a potter, a flyswatter. None of those choices would be as desperate as they seem now. My life would be like one finger on a hand, a beautiful, usable, ringed, wrung, piano-and-dishpan hand. There would be both more and less of me to have to bear. None of us would be forced to be stronger than we could be. Each of us could be all of us, the pretty one, the smart one, the bitter one, the unaccountably-happy-for-no-reason one. I could be, for example, the hopeless one, and the next day my sister would take my place, and I would hold her up until my arms gave way and another sister would relieve me." So I want to sort of end that with this thought about how we're not really satisfied with what we have. We're kind of always wanting something else to come along, as in this haiku by Basho. "First day of spring -- I keep thinking about the end of autumn. What's interesting is that we don't know whether Basho is thinking ahead or remembering. "The World's Arm." A strong, pale wind on the thighs, it was no sea spray, no AC, but cold mnemonic, a breath of spotless decision, a kind of bulk, a true surface thickened by foreign pears as if winter brought its fruit first to me for approval before it let December fill its basket to capacity. I spoke too calmly for one who didn't believe in anything. Mouth full of pears, full of promises I'd no way to speak, much less keep, I tended to gesture toward a Universal Field of Grass, hoping to break as many blades as my wide self could in one pass, one pass. But we're wasted with feeling, breathing funny and stuck rough like an IV into a paralyzed arm. And that's the World's Arm that can't write anymore, or sign its name, or pick the thickness from the trees. My fingerprints transform into proboscis, by degrees. This is "All Possible Pain," because I thought if I just gathered it all up in one poem, it wouldn't get on everything. "All Possible Pain." Feelings seem like made-up things, though I know they're not. I don't understand why they lead me around, why I can't explain to the cop how the pot got in my car or how my relationship with god resembled that of a prisoner and firing squad and how I felt after I was shot. Because then, the way I felt was feelingless. I had no further problems with authority. I was free from the sharp tongue of the boot of life, from its scuffed leather toe, my heart broken like a green bottle in a parking lot, my life a parking lot, ninety-eight degrees in the shade. But there is no shade, never even a sliver. What if all possible pain was only the grief of truth? The throb lingering only in the exit wounds though the entries were the ones that couldn't close. As if either of those was the most real of an assortment of realities, existing, documented, hanging like the sentenced under one sky's roof. But my feelings, well, they had no such proof. Kaja Silverman wrote a great book called Flesh of my Flesh. It dealt with almost entirely with Freud's concept of Nachtraglichkeit which is another way of talking about post traumatic stress disorder, really. So it sort of loosely translated into the second act or when trauma comes back. This poem's called "Nachtraglichkeit." I'm having slashed myself from throat to instep in one unbroken line. I suppose it was a re-enactment for its Nachtraglichkeit. The second act. The past presses so hard on the present, the present is badly bruised. Blood brims under the skin. That was the situation I was in, wearing a jacket of blood from an earlier crime which was also mine. A curving zipper with misaligned teeth open to show red lipstick, meat, and a stage smile, have a seat. Normally I'm much more careful. Naturally, something like this would only ever happen in a dream. But even dreams have their dreams of finding their dreamer awake, silent within earshot, carving knife in hand. Did you know that anguish thins the blood and thickens the vessel? It was like cutting a rare steak, a minotaur glittering with rubies and pink candles. My hands hung like electrical wires off a building on the edge of collapse, everyone of my gestures symbolic, ruined of magic. For there is no miraculous beast and there never was. Standing on the golden field of frozen honey clover, each leaf strong enough to bend under everything's weight. Strong because it bends, because it's already been crushed. But its cells know that blight, one massive cut will slit each tiny skin surgically in order to save the field from itself. I cannot suffer the same fate twice, force my own hand or stay it. Can't repeat or unrepeat. This finitude is infinite and infinitely expanding. This is a haiku by Kobayashi Issa. In my old home which I forsook the cherries are in bloom. And this always reminds me of Dickinson's "After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes." In my old home which I forsook the cherries are in bloom. Even though I'm not there, even though I lost that home, still something beautiful is happening there. Artless is my heart. A stranger berry there never was, tartless, gone sour in the sun, in the sunroom or moon roof, roofless, no poetry. Plain. No fresh special recipe to bless. All I've ever made with these hands, less substance, more rind. Mostly rim and trim, meatless, but making much smoke in the old smokehouse no less. Fatted from the day, overripe, and even toxic at eve. Nonetheless in the end if you must know, if I must bend, waistless, to that excruciation. No marvel, no harvest left me speechless, yet I find myself somehow with heart, aloneless. With heart, fighting fire with fire, flightless. That loud hub of us, meat stub of us, beating us senseless. Spectacular in its way, its way of not seeing, congealing dayless but an everydayness in that hopeful haunting, a lesser way of saying in darkness, there is silencelessness for the pressing question. Heart, what art you? War, star, part? Or less, playing a part, saying a part from the one who loves, loveless. [ Silence ] And I'll finish with one more haiku and one final poem. The haiku is also by Kobayashi Issa, and it goes like this: A lovely thing to see through the papers windows. I'm sorry, a lovely thing to see, through the paper windows hole, the Galaxy. And this poem is called "Nemesis." The sun has its nemesis, evil twin star, not the opposite but not it's opposite but its spirit. Undead angel, extra life. Another version. The Andromeda Galaxy bears children who become us year after ancient ridiculous year. Perhaps the Andromedans are such early versions of us we can't hate them yet. Ghosts of our pre-living cells, earliest babies. Perhaps they're only life-like, like a robot cook or a motion detector, not like a dog we loves and know and claim to know, who nonetheless attacks grandma somehow. We say so, said so, told you so. That's what you get for believing in aliens. We're replacing our ear horn of plenty with a megaphone of corpse dust. Listen, it's moving closer, the Andromedan Galaxy, this other us, this museum of mucus and keyboards and keyboard fingertip records that their governments are already optimized to keep post-digitally. All of which looks much like a craps game to us, a hinky life-killer, life-filler, time-killer. The best selection of credit card pill extensions with rapid-release hypo-air that no one but Abix [assumed spelling] can tolerate. Only 2.5 million light-years away, lessening daily, and that's collapsible space, of course, made of light. Just flip the switch and poof, we're there. Slip on a glossy patch of anti-matter and I've inhaled my unutterable opposite potential self. Smeared out the tracing of my nemesis, Olympic gymnast team me o seventh grade best friend, Shannon, or the cricket-eating self sister with the spiny belled name. I dream at night and call out but can't ever know in this world. Such a thing is called a soul? Oh, funny other self, how I long to know you. You were ingested so easily, absorbed like a lotion in the desert, even in the evening, for there are no light years. Years are heavy. There is only light. It never bends. That's the property it mortgaged in order to pick up speed. But parallel lives can meet just like that if someone breaks the rules. Some criminal sharing my name or an alien name sharing my crime. The rules are there are no rules. Lingua-franca. Isn't this space between what is and what coulda, woulda, buda been? That same space between short skull and long face, that oiled jaw hinged for supple expression, for saying and blaming and braying and allaying and naming, what your mother tells you over and over to shut, to smile, first to not talk to strangers and then be kind to them. To sponsor the tail of another winner's horse, to go for it, to become something in this life. But once the gardenias are floating in seawater for the seemed gala of your body, this special night, they are dying, bacteria or no bacteria, life against life, this world butted up against the next. Simultaneity aside, we are all next, all those at the light. Heavily with our childhoods we go. I'll go with my stars and my sorry body, stranger to myself, will say go. Thank you. [ Audience Applause ] [ Noises ] >> I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. Thank you, Natasha, for the invitation. I -- not too long ago, I did a workshop for some sixth graders in Miami. And the area that I went into had a high incidence of drug use, so while the kids had lost parents or brothers or sisters to AIDS, and I came bounding in saying, "I'm here to teach you poetry," and they're like, "How are you going to make our lives better?" And there was a little girl there named Nicole. Her mother had died the week before and she was already back in school. So I did this poem first in all of my readings for years, and tried to figure out -- well, everyone who's seen me has heard this poem. Why do I keep doing this? And I finally figured it out. It's because it says something about how language has the power to move you from one place in your head to a safer place, which is what the little girl, Nicole, who asked me to write a poem about her mother. That's what she was asking me to help her do. So this is dedicated to the sixth grade class at Lily Savings Elementary School in Dade County, Miami. I was there 15 years ago and I still -- you know, they made me promise to say that every time I do the poem. I am astonished at their mouthful names: Lakinishia, Chevellanie, Delayo, Fumilayo, their ragged rebellions and lip-glossed pouts, and all those pants drooped as drapery. I rejoice when they kiss my face, whisper wet and urgent in my ear, make me their obsession because I have brought them poetry. They shout me raw, bruise my wrists with their pulling, and brashly claim me as mama as they cradle my head in their little laps, waiting for new words to grow in my mouth. You. You. You. Angry, jubilant, weeping poets, we are all saviors, reluctant hosannas in the limelight, but you knew that, didn't you? So let us bless this sixth grade class -- 40 cracking voices, 40 nappy heads, and all of them raise their hands when I ask. They have all seen the Reaper, grim in his heavy robe, pushing the button for the dead project elevator, begging for a break at the corner pawnshop, cackling wildly in the back pew of the Baptist church. I ask the death question and 40 fists punch the air, me!, me! And O'Neal, matchstick crack child, watched his mother's body become a claw, and nine-year-old Tiko Jefferson, barely big enough to lift the gun, fired a bullet into his throat when Mama bended his back with a lead pipe. Tamika cried into a sofa pillow when Daddy blasted Mama into the north wall of their cluttered one-room apartment. Donya's cousin, gone in a drive-by. Dark window, click, click, click, gone, says Donya, her tiny finger a barrel, the thumb a hammer. I am astonished at their losses -- and yet when I read a poem about my own hard-eyed teenager, Jeffrey asks, 'is he is dead yet?' It cannot be comprehended, my 18-year-old still pushing and pulling his own breath. And 40 faces pity me, knowing that I will soon be as they are, numb to our bloodied histories, favoring the Reaper with a thumbs-up and a wink, hearing the question and shouting, me, me, Ms. Smith, I know somebody dead. Can poetry hurt us, they ask me before crawling into my words to sleep. I love you, Nicole says. Nicole wearing my face, pimples peppering her nose, and she is as black as angels are. Nicole's braids, kissed with a match flame to seal them, and Can you teach me to write a poem about my mama, Ms. Smith? I mean, you write about your daddy and he's dead. Can you teach me to remember my mama? A teacher tells me this is the first time Nicole has admitted that her mother is gone, murdered by slim silver needles and a stranger rifling through her blood, the virus pushing her skeleton through for Nicole to see. And now this child with rusty knees and mismatched shoes sees poetry as her scream and asks me for the words to build her mother again -- replacing the voice. Stitching on the lost flesh. So poets, as we take the stage, as we flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphones, remember Nicole. She knows that we are here now, and she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And she is waiting. And she's waiting. And she waits. [ Audience Applause ] Thank you. [Background applause] I was sitting there thinking there was a poem that -- a found poem I had a while ago. It was written by a prisoner who had worked for a couple of weeks. They have this intricate system of passing things from one cell to another. And he'd worked for a couple of weeks, and someone had passed him a poem that I had written. And, you know, and he said, "Well, I'm going to be here for a long, long time," and he says, "I need to find other ways to breathe, and poetry is doing that for me." So I wanted to read a short poem by my friend, an amazing poet, Reginald Dwayne Betts. It's called "Prison." Prison, the sinner's bouquet, house of shredded & torn Dear John letters, upended grave of names, moon black kiss of a pistol's flat side, time blue born and threaded into a curse, Lazarus of hustlers, the picayune spinning into beatdowns; breath of a thief stilled by fluorescent lights, a system of 40 blocks, and empty vials, a hand full of purple cranesbills, memories of crates suspended from stairs, tied in knots around street lamps, the hours of unending push-ups, wheel-barrels and walking 20s, the daughters chasing their father's shadows, sons that upset the wind with their secrets, the paraphrase of fractured, scarred wings flying through smoke, each wild hour of lockdown, hunger time, There are poems about black children who are lost and discarded metaphorically. My new manuscript, at the center of it, I'm working on a story of two young black children who were discarded, literally. In February 2010, a 21-year-old student, Samsheedy Abdur Raheem, abducted his three-month-old daughter, Zahra, who was being cared for by her grandmother. He placed her in a knapsack, drove to a bridge on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, and pushed out of the passenger's side window of the car. She drowned in the Rariton River more than 100 feet below. On November 22nd of last year, also in New Jersey, Arthur Morgan picked up his two-year-old daughter, Tiara, telling the girl's mother that he planned to take her to the movies. Later, Tiara was found a frigid stream beneath a park overpass, strapped into a carseat that her father had weighed down with a carjack. It was unclear whether she was thrown from the overpass or whether she was carried into the park and placed in the water. "The Five Stages of Drowning. One: Surprise. In this stage the victim recognizes danger and becomes afraid. The victim assumes a near-vertical position in the water with little or no leg movement. The arms will be at or near the water's surface making random grasping or flipping motions. The head will be tilted back with the face turned up. Victims rarely make any sounds. They are struggling just to breathe. There is no drunk like the drunk of milk sleep. Drizzling white floods our bodies and weighs down everywhere we knew about awake. Zahra's fresh clockwork was staggered with it when her daddy, grizzle and wild-eye, lobbed her like a bag of trash over the rusting rail. Inside the sack the wriggling child did not know the words fly, plummet, or descend. She did not realize the peculiar questions she posed for the pigeons or how dim and a little bit stupid with milk, she was all the unravel the sky could fathom. Babies accept what they are given. The trickling breast does what it does. They don't question the morning's crazed deluge of light, the blare of kitchen, or the huge, hovering, grinning, or snarling faces of fathers. So even after a swollen wind cried her eyes open in the seconds it took for the fevered discarding of a daughter , baby didn't expect the slow sun spiraling into the sack to offer her coo or direction. Zahra Malani Lin Abdur Reheem, little not bird, had been jettisoned, ditched, unloaded. Her final first body rode the smallest of howl on the air. The trashed, luminous surface of the Rariton smacked her blunt but not before her new mouth made a toothless and tiniest oh; not before language broke its promise to wait for her. All during the fall, her snared arms had fought and failed to find a rhyme for the word wing. If you know no word for word, no word for the dawning of a hurt, should you be surprised when that hurt casually strolls away with your breath? Can this daddy's girl, stuffed briskly inside a down, down, down that reeks so wildly of him, grieve the absence of love when she has no word for love? Two, involuntary breath holding. The victim has now dropped below the static waterline and the body, in an attempt to protect itself initiates involuntary breath-holding. This occurs because the water has entered the mouth, and the airway closes. Though a victim may continue to struggle, he or she will not usually make any sounds as he or she cannot breathe. Without oxygen, the victim will lose consciousness. Imagine filling your body with everything you are and then holding it there. Imagine your body being small, your life consisting of nothing primary colors, and food finger-smushed, and the stumbling possibilities of dance. Imagine not knowing that whether or not you can contain all of you in tiny ballooned cheeks decides whether or not you will continue. Imagine not knowing the word continue. Whisk of fish nibbling warily at those cheeks fall into irreparable love with you and decide to make your religion. Hallelujah, you are now a religion. You are now a church of mud and slither, while daddy roars his muted glee into noontime traffic, thinking not about you but about your mother, and screeching "the hell with that bitch. I bet this is going to fix her ass now. And you, Tiara, are the fix for her ass now. You are the fix for your mother's ass now. You are the blameless bystander in a going to be right now revenge that cannot be retracted. Baby girl, you are drowning. And your father, now miles away from your plunging, does a sloppy parking job and ambles into a smoky [inaudible] room populated by other men without daughters. He lifts a fat shot of fluid gold and toasts his one accomplishment, the sweet uncomplicated removal of a complication. As that first swig convinces him of triumph, your cheek deflates and the door to your next minute closes. You were alive when this dream first lapped its way around you, and the duh sound comes easy to the mouth of a baby who wants it. You laughed daddy, daddy, until even the giddy fish began to reexamine their worship of you. You sang daddy, daddy, daddy, until daddy, daddy, daddy stopped meaning anything. And when the tide pushed the weighted carseat forward, you spat dah, dah, duh into the mud. And when the quiet finally came the fish loved you again and they kissed the space where you had been. Three: Hypoxic Convulsions. Due to the lack of oxygen in the brain, the victim may look as if he or she is having a convulsion, which is why this stage is called the "Hypoxic Convulsion Stage." The victim's skin turns blue especially in the lips and fingernail beds, and the body may appear rigid. There may be violent jerking of the body and frothing in the mouth. What looks like a convulsion could simply be a dance move. Good dancing hits the body like an annoyance that must whipped away, but this is not dancing. This is how we colored answers a wet rhythm that seeks to rearrange her. The drums are injected and baby girl thrash and snapdragon fights for her life back. The meaning of downbeat alludes her. Baby is the battery that black women build their bodies around until they're old enough to be officially romanced by some version of Jesus. Zahra has never felt the full hand press of the Jesus voice, but she's flirting with the big daddy for all she's worth. Look at that iddy biddy jerk in bugaloo that snap and revolve with hips she doesn't have, that runaway rim-shot in an unfinished chest. Look at her rearing back and opening wide for the indigo flood, her mouth and finger pushing out air, filling with river, filling with river, filling with river, filling. And she wasn't born to strain toward that kind of blue. Y'all know that nasty music was going to define that girl sooner or later. It's like that pinch of old food trapped like a boulder beneath the tongue. It's that heart crack so contrary it shifts the spine and that shifting spine, if one is not careful, could be mistaken for dancing. More to control the arms and ankles involve the neck. It says, baby save the last dance for me. And never, ever is there a threat in that asking. When it comes to what a girl is meant to do with her body, that rollicking blue twirl is customarily introduced by the father, of course. That man is the architect of that baby's roll and rock. He teaches her to negotiate the slink; sits her down to council her and the engine of the beckoning body. If Zahra lives, which she will most definitely not, some daddy will teach her that gone, jerk that stiff shimmy and make your own ways, baby girl. Go ahead, get down. You are not drowning, you are dancing. You are not drowning, you are dancing. Your partner is majorly amused that the slut that you have become, he is wearing a shroud. Unconsciousness, because the victim has been without oxygen, the body shuts itself down as unconsciousness results. In this stage the victim will be motionless. Because breathing has stopped, he or she is in respiratory arrest. There is no chest movement or breathing sounds. At this point the victim sinks to the bottom of the water, either slowly or rapidly, depending on factors such as the amount of air trapped in the lungs, body weight, and muscle mass. The victim will remain unconscious and die unless breathing is reestablished. The river is sluggish and cagey and a bitch sometimes. She has not yet decided to accept the child. The river is a diva crafted of choke blossom and the caressed diver. She is a master at the revision of skin. Never has she slapped a name on her arrogance, but she is seldom in a mood to have her swerve interrupted. She pries the sack open with flow, examines the puckered contents. She is not entertained. She wants to add the carjack to her baubles; cannot lift it; is not entertained. She toys with the baby until she is bored, and the little brown not-fish thing is so flaccid, so un-fun. Dressed in its soppy knitted pink, its black little done-up crown keeps trapping things that need to breathe. The river's most industrious feeders are already done with this breathless trinket. The eyes are popped loose and, damn it, it won't praise her. It won't properly say anything. The river catches sight of her own body, vibing [assumed spelling] silver. She is so beautiful, so plumped with everyone's breath, so easily distracted. And she is so over this thing, whatever it is. Clinical Death. The final stage in the drowning process is death. Clinical death occurs when both breathing and circulation stop. The victim is in cardiac arrest. The heart stops pumping blood. The vital organs are no longer receiving oxygen-enriched blood. The lack of oxygen causes the skin to turn blue [buzzing sound], blue. [ Noises ] Thank you. [ Audience Applause ] [ Noises ] >> I'm just going to start with a poem. How are you guys doing today, you know what I mean? [Inaudible]. Everybody's doing good? I mean, I was thinking about -- there's a pretty large building across the street, and I was wondering -- I see some empty seats, so maybe the, the ghost of some of their better selves are here with us as well [audience laughter]. I want to read a poem from Yehuda Amichai which I love this poem. So if you've heard me read this before, I hope you'll enjoy it again. But it's a phenomenal thing. And I think for me it helps -- it's one of the things that poetry does that's necessary. It's helped us find some of the connections and the way things are connected with each other. And this poem's so short and brilliant. I hope you'll enjoy it. It's called, "The Diameter of the Bomb." The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded. And around these, in a larger circle of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered and one graveyard. But the young woman who was buried in the city she came from, at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably, and the solitary man mourning her death at the distant shores of a country far across the sea includes the entire world in the circle. And I won't even mention the howling of orphans that rises up to the throne of God and beyond, making a circle with no end and no God. So Yehuda Amichai, you know [audience applause]. Thank you. [ Audience Applause ] I was in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 as an infantry sergeant with the 3rd Stryker Brigade out of Fort Lewis, Washington, and this poem is the last poem I wrote while I was in Iraq. It's called "Night in Blue." At seven thousand feet and looking back, running lights blacked out under the wings and America waiting, a year of my life disappears at midnight, the sky a deep viridian, the houselights below small as match heads burned down to embers. Has this year made me a better lover? Will I understand something of hardship, of loss? And will a lover sense this in my kiss or touch? What do I know of redemption or sacrifice? What will I have to say of the dead -- that it was worth it, that any of it made sense? I have no words to speak of war. I never dug the graves in Tal Afar. I never held a mother crying in Ramadi. I never lifted my friend's body when they carried him home. I have only the shadows under the leaves to take with me, the quiet of the desert, the low fog of Balad, orange groves with ice forming on the rinds of fruit. I have a woman crying in my ear late at night when the stars go dim, moonlight and sand as a resonance of the dust of bones, and nothing more. Is that how our soldiers come home? Is that your perception? I don't know, you know? It's -- one of the things I think poetry can do, too, is help the -- when we see a group of people and they seem the way it's in -- and they become stereotypes like the uniform. The word uniform itself strips the humanity from those that are within it and masks them over with all types of perceptions and I hope that some of these poems might in some way bring those human beings back out from the uniform that they wear. The waves of veterans coming home -- how do we help them to take off the uniform and remove their warrior name, Sgt. Turner or whoever they might be, and become Brian again or Denise or Philippe or whoever they are? How do we help them do that? Maybe the ghosts here are different ghosts, actually. This poem is for the Iraqi people and in some way it speaks to May Day, May 1st, today, right? International Labor Day, hmm? It's called "Mohammed Trains for the Beijing Olympics 2008." In the 69-kilogram weight class, the Bulgarian, Boevski, is the world- record holder. He cannot be beaten -- at least, not by Sawara Mohammed. Mohammed, at 26, has shoveled cement longer than he cares to remember. In Arbil, in Kurdish northern Iraq, he strains hard to lift the barbell with its heavy plates, round as the wheels of chariots. Then, muscles give and the wheels bounce in dust before him. No, he cannot defeat the Bulgarian. The problem is in lifting weight over distance [noise]. It isn't a matter of iron or will. In Beijing, Boevski's records will go unnoticed, because Mohammed is training now to lift the city of Arbil, with its people; his quadriceps and posterior chain straining, the muscles tremoring to lift the Euphrates and Tigris both, mountains of the north, deserts of the west, Basra, Karbala, Ramadi, Tikrit, Mosul, three decades of war and the constant suffering of millions. This is what Sawara lifts, and no matter what effort he makes, he will fail completely, and the people will love him for it. [ Audience Applause ] You know, there are millions of Iraqi and Afghan people who just -- I'm sure they want a life for their children, so I talk about -- I mentioned waves of maybe -- many times I talk about waves of veterans coming home and how can we help them, but if we're going to stay attuned to the responsibilities we've begun, it seems to me that we need to continue to create bridges to places like Karbala and Kabul and to see if -- I guess my point is and not to be offensive in any way, but just to be kind of real. I come from Fresno and I would say, you know, I love painting, but now is maybe not a time to be painting dogs, you know? Maybe we have a lot of work to do. And if we're going to start a war, or wars, maybe we need to be attentive to them, not when the historians say they're over and they put them in their little parentheses as if they were on a tombstone, in a history book. Maybe we could recognize that the wars actually last much longer. And we have much work to do. How can we help them [sigh]? One in three female soldiers will experience sexual assault while serving in the military. This is what I heard on the news one night. One in three, all right? This poem is called "Insignia." And for those of you who haven't been in the military, the three stripes on a certain uniform is a sergeant; and a rocker of yellow hung below is a staff sergeant for certain uniforms. So this poem is called "Insignia." She hides under a deuce n' half this time, sleeping on a roll of foam draped in mosquito netting. Sand flies hover throughout the night. She sleeps under a vehicle exhaust in heat, dreaming of mortars buried beside her, three stripes painted on each cold tube, a rocker of yellow hung below. It's you she's dreaming of, Sergeant. She'll dream of you for years to come if she makes it out of this country alive, which she probably will. You'll be the fire and the hovering breath -- not the sniper, not the bomber in the streets. You. So I'm here to ask for this one night's reprieve. Let her sleep tonight; let her sleep. Pause a moment under the gibbous moon, smoke. The gin your wife sent from New Jersey, colored mint-green with food dye, disguised in a bottle of mouthwash -- take a long swig of it. Take the edge out of your knuckles. Let it blur your vision into a tremor of lights. The explosions in the distance are not your own. In these long hours before dawn on the banks of the Tigris River, let her sleep. In her dream, your eyes are pools of rifle oil. You unsheathe the bayonet from its scabbard while she waits. On a mattress of sand and foam there in the motor pool, she waits to kiss bullets into your mouth. [ Audience Applause ] So I guess what I'm hearing with many of the poems today -- it was one of the themes is that there's much to be done in this world. I read that poem at the Academy of West Point last weekend, I think, and they had a really wonderful poetry and art festival, and I felt honored to be able to challenge the future Officer Corps of America in part. I'm going to read one last piece, but I want to say, Natasha, I don't envy the choices you had to make looking across the wide landscape of America which is so rich with amazing writers and poets to choose from today. And I'm so honored to be among those you chose, because I'm the part of the fan club of all these guys, you know, so -- I also want to thank you for allowing my voice to be a part of this national conversation and on a more personal note, thank you for the work you've done both previously and what you continue to do for art and literature in this country. Yeah. [ Audience Applause ] And on that note, I'm just going to steal from Rick Moody now. This is after Rick Moody's -- he did a wonderful piece called "Boys" if you get a chance, if you haven't read it before. This is called "Soldiers." The soldiers enter the house -- the soldiers enter the house. Soldiers determined and bored and fueled with adrenalin enter the house with shouting and curses and muzzle-flash, det cord and 5.56-ball ammunition. The soldiers enter the house with pixilated camouflage, flex cuffs, kem lights, door markings, duct tape. The soldiers enter the house with ghillie suits and sniper rifles, Phoenix beacons, and night-vision goggles, lasers invisible to the naked eye, rotor blades, hellfire missiles, bandoliers strapped across their chests. They bring two infantry platoons and they fight brutal, dirty, nasty; the only way to fight. The soldiers enter the house with a flag of their nation sewn under the sleeves of their uniforms. The soldiers bring in the heavy-weapons squad in the motor platoon with sealed crates of high-explosive rounds, illumination rounds, grenade rounds linked for the Mark 19 Automatic Grenade Launcher other squads will bring in later. They enter the house with Toledo and Baton Rouge imprinted on the rubber soles of their desert combat boots. They enter the house and shout, "Honey, I'm home, and here's Johnny." The soldiers enter the house with conversations of Monday night football and Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. The soldiers enter the house with obscenities rolling off their tongues. The soldiers enter the house with paper bats in their cargo pockets, starship troopers and Blackhawk down and we were soldiers once and young. The soldiers enter the house straight out of Compton with the Wu Tang Clan and a rapper's delight, M and M saying, "look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity," while they move past the blown-out windows and work their way up the stairs. The soldiers enter the house with their left foot. They enter the house the way one enters cemeteries or unclean places. The soldiers enter the house with their life insurance policies filled out and beneficiaries named. The soldiers enter the house with their last will and testament sealed in a manila envelope half a world away. They enter having just ordered a new set of chrome mufflers on e-bay for the Mustang stored under blankets in a garage north of San Francisco. They enter with only nine credits earned toward an Associate's Degree in History from the University of Maryland. They kick in the door and enter the house with a memory of backyard barbecues on their minds. They kick in the door while cradling their little sisters in their arms. They kick in the door and pull in the toboggans and canoes from the hillsides and lakes of Minnesota. They kick in the door and bring the horses from the barn, hitching them to the kitchen table inside. They enter the house with Mrs. Ingram from the second grade at Vineland Elementary School. They enter the house with Mrs. Garuppa from AP English at Madera High. The soldiers kick in the door and enter the house with their arms filled with all the homework they ever did, sitting down to consider the quadratic equation, the Socratic Method. The soldiers enter the house to sit cross legged on the floor as the family inside watches on, watches how the soldiers interrogate them, saying "how do you say the word for friend in Arabic? How do you say the word for love? How do I tell you that Private Miller is dead, that Private Miller has holes in the top of his head? And what is the word for ghosts in Arabic? And how many live here? And are the goats BAF Party supports? Are the ghosts in favor of the coalition forces? Are the ghosts here with us now? Can you tell us where the ghosts are hiding? Where their weapons cached and where they sleep at night? And can you tell us about Ali Baba? Is there an Ali Baba in the neighborhood?" The soldiers enter the house and take off their dusty combat boots and pull out an anthology of poetry from an assault pack, "Iraqi Poetry Today," and commence reading poems aloud. The soldiers recite the poems aloud, saying, "This is war, then. All is well." They say, "The missiles bomb the cities and the airplanes bid the clouds farewell." The soldiers remove their flak vests and turn off their radios. They smile and stretch their arms, one of them yawning, another asking for a second cup of Chai. The soldiers give chocolates to little frightened little children in the shadows of the house. The soldiers give little chocolates to the frightened little children and teach them how to say "fuck you" and how to flip off the world. The soldiers recite poetry as trays of Chai and tea and cigarettes are brought into the room for all. The soldiers there in the candlelight of the front room, where the Iraqi men of military age zip-tied with flex-cuffs kneeling, sandbags on their heads, read verses from "Iraqi Poetry Today." Soldiers switch off their night-vision goggles and set their padded helmets on the floor while the frightened little children pretend to eat the chocolates they've been given, their mothers shushing them when they begin to cry. And the soldiers, men from Kansas and California, Cleveland and College Station, these soldiers remove the black gloves from their hands to show the frightened little children how they mean them no harm, how American they are, how they might bring in a pitcher of water for the bound and blinded men to drink from soon, perhaps, if there's time. And how they read poetry for them, their own poetry, in English, from the Iraqi poetry they've carried from so far, from over the oceans far, saying between time and time, between blood and blood, all is well. "All is well," the soldiers say. The soldiers kick in the doors and enter the house and zip-tie the men of military age, and shush the women and the frightened little children, and drink the spoon sugar stirred into the hot Chai and remove their stinking boots, and take off their flak vests and stack the weapons and turn off their night-vision goggles and say to the frightened little children, softly, with their palms held out in the most tender of gestures they can offer, their eyes as brown as the hills that lead to the mountains or as blue as the river that leads to the sea, saying, "All is well, little ones. All is well." [ Audience Applause ] >> Hello. It's a real treat to be here; a pleasure to read with some of my favorite poets and, of course, my favorite Poet Laureate. >> Love it. >> And I want to thank Rob for everything and also John and Allison for making this happen. Someone once asked me what my themes were. You don't get asked that often, but -- and I said music, silence, and noise. This was 10 years ago but I still believe that. But tonight I thought that sort of translated into the blues, elegy, and belief. Noise can be joyful after all. So I thought I'd read, sort of with that in mind. This first poem is by Langston Hughes who, of course, was the first person to write a poem in the blues form or regularly to do so. Carl Sandburg might have beaten him by five minutes. This is called "Too Blue." I got those sad old weary blues. I don't know where to turn. I don't know where to go. Nobody cares about you when you sink so low. What shall I do? What shall I say? Shall I take a gun and put myself away? I wonder if one bullet would do. As hard as my head is, it would probably take two. But I ain't got neither bullet nor gun, and I'm too blue to look for one. I love some of the [audience applause]. That's Langston Hughes. I love some of the definitions of the blues. The blues is poor man's heart disease. I heard one recently -- I found a record and this person -- this bluesman said, "The blues is like being black twice," which I thought was [audience laughter] was particularly good. So I thought I'd read a few of my own blues poems. This is a poem called "Black Cat Blues." [ Noises ] I showed up for jury duty. It turns out the one on trial was me. Paid me for my time and still I couldn't make bail. Judge that showed up was my ex-wife. Now that was some hard time. She sentenced me to remarry. I chose firing squad instead [audience laughter]. Wouldn't you know it -- plenty of volunteers to take the first shot but no one wanted to spring for the bullets. Governor commuted my term to life in a cell more comfortable than this here skin I been living in [audience applause]. Thanks. "Flashflood Blues." I'm the African-American sheep of the family. I got my Master's Degree in Slavery. Immigrants to the American dream evacuee, I seen the water ladder its way above me. Swam to the savings and loan. No one home. I've steered hardship so long, even my wages of sin been garnished. Wolf tickets half off, collect, call and response whenever we pass on the street, Death pretends not to know me, though the grapevines say he's my daddy. I thought I'd read another blues poem by someone else. I did a book of blues poems, an anthology, and this is a poem that technically wasn't a blues poem but it -- if it doesn't have the spirit of the blues, I don't know what does. And we have to remember that the blues are also nothing but a good man feeling bad, but also nothing but a bad woman feeling good [audience laughter]. This is called "Hard Luck Resume." It's by Catherine Bowman. "Hard luck Resume." 13 persons once sat at my table. The year before last I heard thunder in winter. Often I take the last piece of cake and leave knife and fork crosswise on my plate. I wear old clothes on Easter Sunday. I put on my left shoe ahead of my right. I walk in the front door and leave by the back. I sneeze on request between midnight and noon. I take off the ring from my best friend's finger. I married three times. It was always in May. I stumble in the morning, and when beginning a journey. [ Silence ] I've been writing these odes to everyday things. I thought I'd read a couple. This is "Ode to Chicken [audience laughter]. You are everything to me: frog legs, rattlesnake. Almost anything I put my mouth to reminds me of you. Folks always try getting you to act like you someone else. Nuggets, sore tenders, fingers you don't have [audience laughter]. But even your unmanicured feet taste sweet. Too loud in the yard. Segregated dark and light. You are like a day self-contained. Your sunset skin puckers like a kiss. Let others put on air. Pigs graduate to pork; bread become toast; even beef was once just bull before it got them degrees. But even dead, you keep your name and head. You can make anything of yourself, you know, but prefer to wake me early in the cold, fix me breakfast, and dinner, too. Leave me to fly for you. >> That's good. >> Thanks. [ Audience Applause ] I wrote a whole host of poems -- oh, it's to -- sort of food stuffs. And, you know, I sometimes say they're soul food but as my father would say, we just called it food when he was growing up. My family's from Louisiana and I actually starting writing them as a way of sort of reconnecting after his death. He died very suddenly and so in a way they're about hunger, they're about wanting something that's not quite there. This is poem is probably more explicitly about that. It's a prayer for black-eyed peas. "Prayer for Black Eyed Peas." Humbly I come to you now, oh, bruised lord, beautiful wounded legume, in this time of plague in my very need. Ugly angel, for years I have forsaken you come New Year's Day. I meant to meet you where you live and not manage to. I gave you up like an unfaithful lover. But still you nag me like a mother. Like the brother I don't have, I need you now to confide in, my eyes and yours darkened by worry, my baby shoes bronzed and lost. Awkward antidote, bring me luck and whatever else you choose, and I'll bend low to shore you up. Part of me misses you. Part knows you'll never leave. The rest wants you to hear my every unproud prayer. Wounded god of the ground, our lady of perpetual toil and dark luck, harbor me and I pledge each inch of my waist not to waste you, to clean my plate each January, and like you, not look back. You are like the rice and gravy my great aunt could have cooked. You need and I with you, nothing else, holy sister. You are my father, planted along the road, one mile from where he was born, brought full circle almost. You, the visitation I pray for, and what vision I got. Not quite my father's second sight. My grandmother saying she dreams of me and he every night, every night, every night. Small Book of Hours, quiet captain, you are our future born blind, eyes swoll [assumed spelling] shut or sewn. [ Audience Applause ] Let's just read a few more. This is a poem called "Bereavement." My new book will be out in the spring. It's called Book of Hours, and as you know, a book of hours are those small little devotionals. They're so beautiful, and often illuminated [noise]. This is "Bereavement." Behind his house, my father's dogs sleep in kennels, beautiful, he built just for them. They do not bark. Do they know he is dead? They wag their tails and head. They beg and are fed. Their grief is colossal and forgetful. Each day they wake seeking his voice, their names. By dusk they seem to unremember everything. To them even hunger is a game. For that I envy. For that I cannot bear to watch them pacing their cage. I try to remember they love best confined space to feel safe. Each day a saint comes by to feed the pair and I draw closer the shades. I've begun to think of them as my father's other sons, as kin, brothers-in-paw. My eyes each day thaw. One day the water cuts off. Then back on. They are outside dogs, which is to say, healthy and victorious, purposeful and one giant muscle like the heart. Dad taught them not to bark, to point out their prey, to stay. Were they there that day? They call me like witnesses and will not say. I ask for their care and their carelessness, wish of them forgiveness. I must give them away. I must find for them homes, sleep restless in his. All night I expect they pace as I do, each dog like an eye roaming with the dead beneath an unlocked lid [audience applause]. I'll end with this poem which is a poem called "Crowning." It's about my son being born, or should I say my wife giving birth to my son -- so, active process [audience laughter]. And she's especially the hero because he was nine pounds, 13 ounces [background talking]. So, you know. "Crowning." Now that knowing means nothing, now that you are more born than being, more awake than awaited, since I've seen your hair deep inside mother, a glimpse, grass in late winter, early spring, watching your mother's pursed, purpled, throbbing power, her pushing you for one whole hour, two, almost three, almost out, maybe never, animal smell and peat, breath and sweat and mulch-matter, and at once you descend, or drive, are driven by mother's body, by her will and brilliance, by bowel, by wanting and your hair peering as if it could see, and I saw you storming forth, taproot, your cap of hair half in, half out, and wait, hold it there, the doctors say, and she squeezing my hand, her face full of fire, then groaning your face out like a flower, blood-bloom, crocussed into air, shoulders and the long cord still rooting you to each other, to the other world, into this afterlife among us living, the cord I cut like an iris, pulsing, then you wet against mother's chest still purple, not blue, not yet red, no cry, warming now, now opening your eyes midnight blue in the blue-black dawn. Thank you. [ Audience Applause ] >> I think you do all of our readers for a remarkable and a remarkably varied reading. Thank you to the Virginia Quarterly Review and to Jon Peede and publisher of VQR for making today possible and thanks, of course, to you for coming out. Books for our readers are for sale in the foyer upstairs. I hope you go buy some of them and get them signed. Also, we hope you come back here in just an hour and a half to hear our Poet Laureate and Consultant in Poetry, Natasha Tretheweya give her concluding lecture of her term. It should be wonderful, and I think if you've had the great joy of hearing this reading, you'll be able to connect it to her lecture and, you know, walk away floating on air. So, thanks so much. I hope to see you in just an hour and a half [audience applause]. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at llc.gov. [ Silence ]