>> Laura Green: All
right, welcome.
Thank you all.
Thank you all for
coming tonight.
We so appreciate it.
Just a couple reminders, just
to get through them before we go
on to our wonderful program,
to silence your cell
phones, of course.
It's always -- to say, and also,
East City Books will be
selling Willie's works
after the program.
So they're over here, and
Willie be signing after that.
So just something to be
aware of after the program,
and I will just go ahead
and introduce Rob Casper,
who will be -- say a little
bit more about the speaker.
And he is the head of the
poetry and literature office.
>> Robert Casper: Thank you.
Suddenly, I feel like
I'm doing a stand-up,
with this mike stand.
Oh, that's -- exciting times
here on the Hill Center stage.
Yes, hi. I'm Rob Casper.
I'm the head of the poetry
and literature office.
Thanks to Laura, and to Diane
Ingram, and Charlotte Harper,
[assumed spelling], and
everyone here at the Hill Center
for continuing to host this
series, "Life of a Poet,"
and thanks to all of you
for coming out at a time
when we are told not to
congregate in large groups.
Luckily, we are an intimate
gathering, and we're not going
to get in any trouble.
Ron, thank you for
continuing to do this series.
I'll say more about
your greatness
in a little bit [laughter].
>> Ron Charles: I'm on the
edge of my seat [laughter].
>> Robert Casper: Are
you getting the idea
of how the series
goes [laughter]?
Before we begin, I would
like to tell you a little bit
about the poetry and
literature office
at the Library of Congress.
We put events like this
one on throughout the year.
I should not that on April
30th, we'll have Joy Harjo,
our 23rd Poet Laureate -- poetry
in town for her closing event.
We hope you come to that.
To learn more about
the events that we put
on throughout the year,
you can visit our website,
loc.gov/poetry.
We'd also like to know
more about what you think
about this series, so to that
end, you should have a survey
on your seat, if you
wouldn't mind filling that out
and just leaving it on
your seat afterwards.
We'll collect them.
I'm excited to let you know that
we are pairing tonight's event,
for the very first time,
with an educator webinar
with our featured poet.
This webinar, which
is co-sponsored
by the Library's learning and
innovation office, and presented
in partnership with the National
Council of Teachers of English,
will take place tomorrow at
4:00 p.m. eastern standard time.
It is free and open
to educators.
You must register online
by 12:00 p.m. EST
tomorrow to participate.
The best way to register is
to go to our events page,
loc.gov/poetry/events, and
go to the event listing,
and click on the link.
I also want to thank the
National Council of Teachers
of English, or NCTE,
specifically executive
director Emily Kirkpatrick,
and ReadWriteThink Org project
manager Lisa Storm Fink.
NCTE is the professional
home of English and literacy,
and through the expertise of
its members, it has served
at the forefront of every
major improvement in teaching
and learning of English and
the language arts since 1911.
To learn more about
the organization --
and you should learn more about
it -- you can visit NCTE.org.
And to learn more
about the Library
of Congress's educational
resources,
you can visit our
website, loc.gov/education.
And now, finally,
let me tell you
about tonight's featured
poet, Willie Perdomo.
Perdomo is the author of
four poetry collections,
including "The Crazy Bunch,"
published by Penguin Press
and named one of New York Public
Library's Best Books of 2019.
He is also the author
of two children's books,
including "Clemente," published
by Henry Holt, and the recipient
of the 2011 Americas
Award for Children's
and Young Adult Literature.
Ron will also have
a little surprise
about a forthcoming book.
His other honors include the
International Latino Book Award,
the Penn Open Book
Award, and fellowships
from Columbia University,
Lucas Arts Program,
Lower Manhattan Community
Council,
and the New York
Foundation for the Arts.
Perdomo is currently a Lucas
Arts Program literary fellow,
and teaches English at
Phillips Exeter Academy.
I was going to quote
"The Washington Post,"
in which a certain
well-regarded critic wrote
that Perdomo's poetry is,
quote, "so irrepressible,
it's hard to imagine any of his
books sitting still on a shelf,"
end quote, but I don't have to
imagine that same critic sitting
down for the next 75
life-changing minutes
of conversation with our poet.
And with that, please join me
in welcoming Willie
Perdomo to "Life of a Poet."
[ Applause ]
>> Ron Casper: Thank
you so much for coming.
>> Willie Perdomo: Thank you.
>> Ron Casper: This is our
24th interview in this series.
Yes. This is quite informal.
I mean, only I can talk,
but otherwise, it's quite --
otherwise, it's quite informal.
If you can't hear, you know,
if we start to drift away,
or if the mikes don't work,
just raise your hand
and call that out.
There's no reason for you to sit
there and be irritated for 10
or 15 minutes while
we get things fixed,
so just let us know, would you?
I have just read all your work.
I am dazzled and amazed, and I
want to know about the childhood
that would produce
such a storyteller.
Were there a lot of
storytellers in your early life?
>> Willie Perdomo: I think so.
I think, you know, the primary
storyteller would probably be my
mom, and when it comes to, say,
a book like "The Essential Hits
of Shorty Bon Bon," she's
probably all over that book,
because it was she that kind
of initiated my curiosity
about my uncle.
And whenever we listened
to salsa music together,
she would start telling
stories about my uncle.
My uncle could've
been one of the best.
That night, he played with Tito
Puente, and so on, and so forth.
But I had never met my uncle.
>> Ron Casper: He'd
already died?
>> Willie Perdomo: He
had died by that point.
So he took up a lot of
space, narrative space
in the living room,
especially when music came on.
So every time I heard salsa, I
would imagine my uncle playing.
And I finally discovered
that he had played
with Eddie Palmieri's brother,
Charlie Palmieri, in '76,
in a group called
the Cesta All Stars,
and two volumes of that album.
And what was unique about these
bands is they were big bands.
>> Ron Casper: Eight, 12?
>> Willie Perdomo: I would
say maybe like 14, right?
So in other words, it was a
democratic space to begin with,
and everyone got to play.
So you heard everyone's
voice, if you will.
But the real storytellers,
I think, for me were --
you know, I grew up in East
Harlem, spent a lot of time
as a young person
sitting on the stoop.
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: And
that's where you would start
to hear epics, really
[laughter].
You would hear the legends of
playground basketball players.
You would hear stories that
were really like cowboy movies.
>> Ron Casper: These were things
that had been sort of worn over,
and perfected over time?
>> Willie Perdomo: I suppose so.
I think what I finally
discovered is
that I was surrounded
by a group --
a collective of top-notch
liars, basically [laughter].
And they were good liars,
though, I mean, really,
really good liars who
could plot a story,
who could sectionalize a story,
and could actually leave you
begging for more, you know.
And then, those stories
started changing.
So you'd go from this stoop,
and then you'd go
down to the corner.
I live in the city, and
then you go from the corner
to the front of a store.
And then the front of a store
down to the subway station,
and by the time the
story that you heard
on the stoop reached the
subway station, it was nothing
like the story that
you had heard.
Because everyone had
chipped in along the way.
>> Ron Casper: Perfecting it.
>> Willie Perdomo:
Yeah, to the story.
So what I learned primarily
about the storytelling
process was
that it was not an
individual sitting at a desk
by themselves telling the story.
It was someone who had
absorbed a whole bunch
of other people telling stories.
>> Ron Casper: That is epic.
That's the way that
stories began.
>> Willie Perdomo: You know, I
suppose so, but you'd never want
to pretend to be epic
that way, you know.
You don't want to
say, "Well, you know,
I'm telling an epic
tale right now," but --
and not deliver the goods.
But -- and then, the
storytelling kind of picked
up once I arrived at school.
And so then, the relationship
to storytelling became more
of the relationship that
I had with the books
that I was reading
at that point.
So those were all the kind of
resources I had for narrative.
>> Ron Casper: This
sounds like it's jumping
out of what you're saying.
>> Willie Perdomo:
Not for nothing?
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: Oh, yeah.
So this was a -- this was a --
the title of this poem is called
"Not For Nothing,
Honestly and Truthfully."
And I had a friend who would --
he would preface all his stories
with, "not for nothing, honestly
and truthfully," and that's
how we knew that he was lying
at that point, right [laughter]?
So he would -- oh,
boy, here he goes.
He's going to tell one.
So -- "like jewel thieves, we
put everything to the light.
Whenever Brother Lo preambled
stories with 'not for nothing,
honestly and truthfully,
we knew he was lying
his way into history.
Stories started their
premises on the stoop,
broke arcs by the time they
reached the uptown express,
and the real was
played and buried
by the time it got directions.
He said, 'It was like Petey had
a lit birthday candle sticking
out his right ass cheek.
The negus ran all the
way to North General.'
Shameka said she saw a wisp of
smoke flirting with the heat,
a graph of blood followed
west all the way to triage.
She started telling stories,
and hasn't stopped since.
Petey jetted to the hospital
with a slug below his heart,
a skin shot near his
calf, a cap in his ass,
and 'don't call it symbolic,'
Brother Lo told Skinicky.
'A man gots to know his wrong
even when he's turning blue.
You just can't call
on the wrong witch.'
Before Petey went blank --
before Petey went black,
he saw Nestor's mother
cry into a blanket,
a calendar with a photo
of the White Mountains,
a body bent in a
wheelchair, a waterfall,
and an empty plastic cup.
And then, the next thing
you know, you prayed hard,
but you never made promises."
>> Ron Casper: The
emotional range of that story,
the way we started out
laughing, and then, pretty soon,
we're all genuinely,
emotionally concerned --
>> Willie Perdomo: Right.
>> Ron Casper: -- and alarmed.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: That's the
range that the stories --
>> Willie Perdomo: I think so.
I mean -- I mean, that was a
poem that was actually based
on a -- and, you know, I
hate to start off the kind
of narrative background of the
poems with a dude who got shot
and ran all the way to the
hospital, but it was true.
And you didn't believe it.
When someone said, "Yeah,
man, I heard, you know,
he got a shot few times
and ran all the way
to the emergency
room," and here I am
on the stoop trying
to picture that.
>> Ron Casper: -- yeah.
>> Willie Perdomo: That
doesn't sound right.
>> Ron Casper: Doesn't
sound possible.
>> Willie Perdomo: But it was
quite regular during those
years, and that's the reality
that I kind of didn't understand
until I grew older, that
somehow, what I was writing
about had already
been normalized
without casting a kind of
general net on what it was
like to be African-American
and Puerto Rican at that time.
Because it was a specific place,
but you never wanted to say
that this spoke to a
larger experience, you know.
It was a very specific
experience.
>> Ron Casper: It was yours.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: It was yours.
You mentioned your mother.
I think this poem's
inspired by her,
but if I'm wrong,
you can recast it.
>> Willie Perdomo:
Oh, man, look at that.
So you're going back over here.
This is -- you know,
these are poems I wrote
when I was in Ithaca College.
I went to Ithaca College
for, like, my first two --
my first attempt at college.
I went to Ithaca College, and --
>> Ron Casper: Well, it' snot
like I took them
out of the trash.
I mean, you got them
published in a book [laughter].
>> Willie Perdomo:
-- basically, yeah.
Well, I dropped out
to go be a writer,
so mission accomplished,
right [laughter]?
But -- so most of the poems --
this is from a collection called
"Where A Nickel Costs A Dime,"
and it came out when I was 28.
But the poems were
really written
between 19, and say, 22, 23.
And I wrote this as a
kind of tribute to my mom.
So it's called "Unemployed
Mami."
"Even though she don't have
a job, Mami still works hard.
The last 23 years of her life
have been spent teaching a poet
and killing generations
of cockroaches
with sky-blue plastic slippers,
TV guides, and pink tissues.
She prays for the poet as he
runs into the street looking
for images of Boricua sweetness
to explode in his face.
The young roaches escape
in the dark while my
unemployed mami goes
to sleep cursing at them.
Even though she don't have a
job, Mami still works hard.
She walked behind my
drunken father in the rain
as he stumbled into
manhood and oblivion
in America wearing his
phony mambo king pinky ring.
He beat my mami.
He beat my mami.
Stop beating my Mami
with the black umbrella,
the one with the fake
ivory horse head handle.
I still hear the same salsa
blaring out the same social club
where I used to fall asleep
and dream happy lives.
Even though she don't have a
job, Mami still works hard.
Every year, she prays for my
abuela who died in a sweet bed
of holy water and Bengay while
the poet was kicking his mother
inside her stomach.
Mami looks at Miss
America, Miss Universe,
Miss Everything every year, and
then she runs into her bedroom
to dig out her high
school yearbook
from underneath her pile
of 'important papers.'
'Look, Papo, look at your mother
when she was 18 years old.
She was pretty like
those girls on TV.'
You still are, I say.
Even though she don't have a
job, Mami still works hard.
Lately, she plays slow
songs of lost love
over and over and over.
She looks out the window
only when it rains,
measuring tear drops
against the rain drops.
Where is that man, I wonder,
as I sit in my room writing
and rewriting a poem for her.
I catch her peeking at me
from the corner of her eye,
wondering if I do, 'I
really do love you,
and 'that's not the
record, that's me,' I say,
hugging her with a kiss.
Don't cry, Mami.
Even though you don't
have a job,
I know you still
be working hard."
>> Ron Casper: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Is your mother still alive.
>> Willie Perdomo: She is.
>> Ron Casper: She's
heard you perform?
>> Willie Perdomo: Oh,
it's -- you know, I --
what I can tell you is that
I read this poem one summer
in Lincoln Center, and there's
a moment when I say she's --
the line says "I used to be
beautiful like those girls
on TV," and then from
the audience you hear,
"I still am, right?"
So -- [laughter] so it was a
long time before I could not --
I stopped -- I kind of
dis-invited my mom from coming
to the readings,
so [laughter] --
because she took
up a lot of space,
you know, at the readings.
And -- but, you know, again,
her level of emotional reaction
to the poetry was something
not to go unnoticed.
>> Ron Casper: And your
understanding and willingness
to acknowledge her education of
you in that poem is, of course,
so sweet, and so
moving, and your ability
to see how hard she
worked had nothing to do
with whether she was
employed or not --
>> Willie Perdomo: Right.
>> Ron Casper: -- is very
touching and effective there.
Who encouraged you
eventually to,
you know, actually write poems?
What people in your -- it
wasn't your parents, wasn't --
>> Willie Perdomo:
Well, I think, I mean,
the act of writing, the
literal act of writing, again --
my mother's a journal --
an avid journal-keeper.
>> Ron Casper: -- oh, okay.
>> Willie Perdomo: She
can tell you the weather,
the number that came out,
what was playing on TV
on the day that my son was born.
So I noticed that she was
starting to kind of record life
as it was happening, you know.
As a young, young,
young child, though,
I remember the writing going
from the left margin
to the right margin.
She had this -- she has
this very beautiful,
elegant cursive writing.
>> Ron Casper: Before
you could write?
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
And it would just fill up the
page, all the way to the bottom,
and then she'd flip the
page over, and do it again.
So I recall going to -- I
think I was in first grade,
and I took a sheaf of
drawing paper, I think.
And with a pencil, I just drew
these zigzag lines all the way
from left to right, all
the way from left to right.
And I'd do it for a few pages,
you know, and I'd go through it.
I'm like, damn, look at
all this stuff I wrote.
You know what I mean [laughter]?
But there wasn't one
word there, you know.
So that was the first part.
I think by the time
I got to school --
I started going to
school downtown.
I went to a school
called Friends Seminary,
and there was a receptionist
there whose name is Ed Randolph.
They called him the
Mad Poet of Harlem.
He was a -- I later discovered
that he was a contemporary
of Saku Sendiaga
[assumed spelling].
And so, you know, I
was struggling kind
of navigating these two worlds,
right, the kind of uptown,
East Harlem, black and
Puerto Rican world,
with this primarily
white Quaker school.
And he saw that.
He saw that I was kind of
getting into these conflicts,
one that kind of
culminated in a fight,
and he kind of grabbed
me to the side.
And he said, "Look, you
have to do something else
with this energy
right now, you know.
There's ways that
you can reroute it."
And so, I was in,
like, eighth grade.
So I had no sense of abstraction
when it came to positive
and negative flows of energy.
I didn't know what that meant.
Two weeks later, we
had an assembly period,
and he reads this poem.
It was for a friend of
his who had just got back
from the Vietnam War,
and there's this image
of his friend running
under a bench,
because he heard a helicopter.
And I just -- I remember
just crying.
I was like, what is
going on right now?
And I was probably crying for
a whole bunch of other reasons
that I wasn't really aware of,
but when he did that, I said,
"That's what he does
with his energy.
This is what I want to do."
Now, mind you, before
that, I wanted to be, like,
a corporate banker, or a doctor,
or, like, a lawyer, you know.
I wanted my little
house on Shelter Island,
and that didn't work out.
But I said, "I want
to be a writer,"
and it was a whole confluence
of all these beautiful
things happening.
My ninth-grade teacher
had a sign,
"Down These Mean
Streets" by Piri Thomas.
I was in Barnes and Nobles,
the old -- I think --
I don't know if it's still there
on Fifth Avenue and 18th Street,
not there anymore,
shopping for my books.
I had a financial aid voucher,
and I see this mass-market-sized
paperback
of "The Selected Poems
of Langston Hughes."
And it's the one where
he's on the cover.
It's a publicity shot.
He's in front of the typewriter.
He's kind of looking
at the camera
like a -- somewhat quizzically.
You know, he's just like,
you're all right, go ahead
and take the picture, right?
So I open the book,
and I see Harlem.
I see jazz.
I see "Rent."
I see Lennox Avenue,
and I was like,
this book is for me, right?
So I just put it on my
financial aid voucher,
even though it wasn't
assigned reading.
Read the book in a night.
So all these things
happening -- so I come to Ed.
I said, "Look, I think
I want to write poems."
He says, "Okay."
And the next day, or some
-- a few days after that,
he says, "Read these."
And he gives me -- I don't know
why, but he gave me "The World
of Apples" by John
Cheever, and "Leaf Storm"
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
two different writers.
A few weeks after that,
he says, "Listen to this,"
and this was Jerry
Gonzalez's old band,
Experimental Nuevayorkino,
the --
"Concepts in Unity,"
it's called, yeah.
>> Ron Casper: He
gave you an album?
>> Willie Perdomo: An album.
He said, "Listen to this."
So what I'm telling you,
Ron, is that basically --
that my apprenticeship
started --
and it wasn't about just
reading, but now it was
about music, and then it was
about art, and then it was
about poetry, and
so on, and so forth.
So he started me, I think,
on my path to writing poetry.
>> Ron Casper: Wow, that's
-- you've told him, I assume.
>> Willie Perdomo: Oh, yeah,
I tell him pretty much --
at least once a year, for sure.
>> Ron Casper: That
is a great story.
I want you to read,
if you don't mind,
just the first page
of this poem.
>> Willie Perdomo: Okay.
>> Ron Casper: I hate
to cut the poems up,
but sometimes I have to.
>> Willie Perdomo: So this
is a poem called "Spotlight
at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe."
"Finally fixed, I get to the
cafe in time for my spotlight.
I ask Julio the bouncer if
he's going to stay inside
to hear me read tonight.
He says only if I
read something happy,
none of that dark ghetto shit,
because tonight's
crowd got him pissed.
He is the best random
judge in the house
as he soothes a low-scoring
slam poet.
'Come on, you know you can't
take this shit too seriously.'
Julio strengthens my aesthetic
as I walk through the door
and spot the spoken word
racketeers who get close enough
to dig into my pockets
when I fall asleep.
I just spent my last $10,
and they look at me stupid
when I ask if they can
spare some real change.
I was just a poet wanting
to read a poem the
first night I came here.
Since then, I have
become a street poet,
then somebody's favorite
urban poet,
a new jack hip-hop rap
poet, a spoken word artist,
a born-again Langston Hughes,
a downtown performance poet.
But you won't catch
me rehearsing.
My spit is ready-made real."
>> Ron Casper: Thank you.
Tell us about that cafe, and
its influence on your career.
>> Willie Perdomo:
Oh, man, the cafe --
>> Ron Casper: Other
people's careers, too.
>> Willie Perdomo: --
you know, again, I was --
this story also kind of
starts out in Ithaca.
Ithaca is kind of famous --
or at least used to be --
for having -- for being
a haven for writers.
I didn't know that,
again, until later.
And they had these
great used bookstores,
and I was in one
of them one day.
And I look up, and at the
very top is the original
"Nuyorican Anthology"
that was put together
by Miguel Algarin
and Miguel Pinero.
And it was almost as
if I had, like, wings.
I just flew up [laughter],
and I picked it out.
Of course, I say, "I
need that book up there."
And again, it's that
experience of finding that book
that you really have needed
for a very long time, you know.
That was in '87, I think.
By '91, I was in front of
the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe,
reading poems out loud,
and my favorite moment
of that whole experience --
beyond the travel, because I got
to see a lot of the world
and a lot of the country
as a young poet,
which was pretty cool.
One night, I was reading.
I was on stage, and
I looked to my left.
And at the bar, you could
see basically the vanguard
of Nuyorican poetry.
It was Pedro Pietri, Miguel
Algarin, and then Bimbo Rivas.
And they were all
looking at me like that.
I was reading, and I was
like, oh, wow, that's them.
These are the poets
who I read about.
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: And
my favorite moment was
when Pedro came up to me.
He says, "You're
one of us, man."
I was like, yeah, I am, right.
So it was a good
moment, I think.
I think the Nuyorican really --
what it did for me was, again,
it expanded my sense
of language.
It made the New York
experience real for me,
in terms of how I was going
to approach it with my poetry.
Most of the poets
who were coming
out of the Nuyorican movement
understood the role of poetry
as it relates to an
audience, a live audience,
and reading it out loud.
They understood the
role of poetry as it --
how it connected as a tool for
the community, and refreshingly,
too, there was a sense of how to
navigate one being Puerto Rican,
but also being black
at the same time.
And so, what you see
is the language is kind
of flowing into these poems.
I think Amy Tan [assumed
spelling] calls them her
Englishes [laughter], and
I was using all of them.
And that's what the Nuyorican
kind of gave me, and that,
and the kind of presence
in front of an audience
that could be kind of
dangerous, too, right?
>> Ron Casper: You
once described --
several times, you
described writing poems
as walking along a ledge
high off the ground.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah,
it's a lot like that,
except reading them out loud
is like falling off that ledge,
basically [laughter],
you know, and I've done
that quite a few times.
Rest in peace.
There was a -- there
used to be a poet.
His name was Steve
Cannon, and you couldn't --
and this is something
that Ed taught me.
You couldn't really
preamble too much,
in terms of giving
the poem away.
You see a lot of poets giving
the background to a poem,
and sometimes, the story
ends up being a little better
than the poem, right [laughter]?
So Ed says, "You
never want to do
that when you get
up to read a poem."
And then I understood why when
I got to Nuyorican Poets' Cafe,
because Steve Cannon,
who was blind,
would sit in the
back of the bar.
And if you were one of those
poets who liked to kind
of pontificate, and get up
there and talk about what went
into the poem, and
its connection
to the New York school of
this, and New York school
of the other, all you heard was,
"Read the goddamn poem already!"
And that was it [laughter],
and you had to read it.
So that, again, is good kind
of practice, to be outside
of yourself, and to
understand that writing poems,
like the storytelling process,
is not an individual process.
It's a community process.
It's a space where
it's no longer about I.
It's about we, because we are
in it together at this point.
>> Ron Casper: And you get a
kind of immediate reaction back.
>> Willie Perdomo: Very
immediate [laughter].
Very, very immediate.
Because back in those
days, you know,
it was very underground thing.
So there wasn't -- it wasn't
uncommon for folks to just get
up and start cursing --
>> Ron Casper: Yeah.
>> Willie Perdomo: -- while
you were reading a poem.
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: Once it got
popular, then you had to --
you know, there was
a little bit of --
I suppose respectability
that came with it,
but when it was underground,
it was a little different,
reading those poems out loud.
It was still a whisper
in New York, you know.
No one really knew about it.
>> Ron Casper: Do
you have a sense
that certain poems
should be performed,
and certain poems
should be read silently,
or is that an artificial
distinction?
>> Willie Perdomo:
No, no, I think --
I think all my poems
start out quiet.
They start out with that
moment of me being silenced,
or choosing to be quiet.
That's where they start.
They start with me
walking down the street,
and kind of noticing
an image, you know.
I saw a hat the other day
about -- it was yesterday.
I saw a hat on the street.
It was a Scally cap,
and the brim said NY,
but it was on the street.
I'm like, how did
that hat get here?
Now, clearly, someone could've
dropped it, but for me,
I'm going to run with that
a little bit more, right,
like how that hat got there.
So -- and then, once
I write the poem,
that's when I'm starting
to read it out loud.
>> Ron Casper: To
hear it yourself.
>> Willie Perdomo: That's right,
just to see how it
sounds coming back,
if I'm being a little
bit too wordy,
where I might be repeating
myself a little bit.
So I think they go hand in hand.
I can't afford, as a poet in
the world, to force a binary
into the process,
where it actually --
either it has to be written,
or it has to be read aloud.
For me, they exist together.
They have to, you know.
>> Ron Casper: I see that as
I read them silently, and --
very effective, and
then hear you read them,
and also effective
in other ways.
In that first book, "Where
A Nickel Costs A Dime,"
early in that collection --
which is funny, and caustic,
and challenging -- there's
a line about your identity.
"Hey, Willie, what
are you, man?"
>> Willie Perdomo: Oh, man.
>> Ron Casper: Remember
that, that line?
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: How has your
answer to that question evolved?
What are you, man?
>> Willie Perdomo: I contain
multitudes, right [laughter]?
So I --
>> Ron Casper: Wait, I
want to write that down.
>> Willie Perdomo: -- yeah,
I [laughter] -- yeah, I --
I'm not just one thing, right?
That's the beautiful part
about it, no matter how --
>> Ron Casper: You've
come to this.
>> Willie Perdomo: -- right.
No matter how the forces
at play, be they education,
correctional, medical
even, circumscribe you
to these specific
identities whereby, you know,
you're allotted a certain
amount of resources --
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: -- that
poem, again, started in Ithaca.
And now, I can't -- I
can't read this poem aloud.
It has a really good
story behind the poem,
because I use the N-word in it.
>> Ron Casper: It's
in the title, I think.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah, it's in
the title -- away with it, yeah.
I could not get away with it.
And there was --
there was a sister
who was a grade below
me in Ithaca.
Her name was Tonya, Tonya
Euan [assumed spelling],
and I came out of a dorm.
And she said, "Willie
Perdomo, my N-Rican brother."
I was like, oh.
Her perception of
me at that point was
that I was not only
Puerto Rican,
but I was African-American.
But how that word is tied into
those identities became complex.
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: Piri Thomas
has struggled with this.
He didn't know he was black
until he went down south.
That, I was already
in tune with.
The beautiful part
about this poem is
that it had become
benchmark by the time I was --
I wrote it when I was 19, and
it's still making the rounds.
I was about 22 years
old, if I recall,
and Suhair Hamad
[assumed spelling] says,
"You need to come down
to Hunter College,
because Piri Thomas is here."
I was working at a delivery
agency at that point,
and I remember I
had a jacket on.
I think I was going
to some event.
I had a shirt, and my tie.
I was ready to meet Piri.
So I get to Hunter College,
and he's up on stage.
Now, here I am.
I'm, like, 22, and this is my
hero, at least one of them.
And he says, "I'm going to read
a poem by a young poet who's
in the crowd tonight."
>> Ron Casper: Wow.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
But before he read that,
he read Pedro's poem,
"Puerto Rican Obituary,"
which is iconic,
and then he read my poem.
And I'm dumbstruck.
I'm like, here's my
hero reading my poem,
and he's doing a terrible
job of doing the poem,
by the way [laughter].
I mean, he's really messing the
poem up, but I sit through it.
Now, Ron, for the next 40 -- no,
for the next 30-some-odd years,
I'm having problems with
this poem, real problems.
I'm also having some conflict
about where Piri's
heading in his writing.
I had been -- by this point,
I had been to his house
for dinner a few times,
and hung out with him.
So we flash forward,
man, 30 years later,
and I'm in his living
room in El Cerrito.
And he has dementia, and
he has sunglasses on.
And he's sitting on a
reading chair with a cane,
and he's looking out
toward the mountains.
And he says -- he used
to call me Negrito.
He said, "Negrito" -- he
says, "read that poem to me,
the one -- the one about you
being black and Puerto Rican."
So now, that means that, in
this world, in this poet life,
that means that a poem
has a natural life cycle.
Because when he read it to me,
when I was 22, I read it back
to him 30 years later,
in the living room.
And then, at that point, I
was at peace with the poem,
and I was at peace with him.
Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Wow.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: How do you
describe yourself now?
>> Willie Perdomo: Well,
I'm definitely Puerto Rican.
I'm definitely black.
I'm a man.
I'm a husband.
I'm a father.
I'm a teacher.
I'm a writer.
I'm a poet.
My identity really started
becoming a little bit more --
I would say fluid ethnically
when I started traveling
to Europe for the poems,
when I started traveling
outside of America.
And people really didn't
understand what it meant --
if I said I was Puerto Rican,
they couldn't tell you what
that meant, because
I was being mistaken
for being Middle Eastern.
I was being mistaken -- I think
someone thought I was Sicilian
at that point, given
my last name.
All that to say, again, that
where you are, you know,
who you are sometimes can be
dictated by where you are.
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: And what
you ultimately discover is
that you have to take control
of how you are defined,
and that's a powerful moment.
Because you don't give
someone else that control.
>> Ron Casper: That's
a life's work.
>> Willie Perdomo: That's right.
And so, I would say I'm
embracing all my identities
at this point, and again,
they're not really separate.
They inform each other,
I think, in many ways.
>> Ron Casper: You would --
and you have no objection
to being identified
with a particular place,
with Spanish Harlem.
>> Willie Perdomo: Oh,
hell, no, man, no, no, no,
not at all, not at all.
>> Ron Casper: The
way Eudora Welty
and Faulkner are identified
with particular places.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah, I live
in New Hampshire right now,
but I'm still from
East Harlem, right?
Like, I -- you know,
and that never stops.
I think, you know
-- I don't know
if you know the percussionist
Pancho Sanchez [assumed
spelling] -- no?
We were at a -- he was playing
at Yoshi's, the old Yoshi's
in Fillmore, which
is no longer there.
And he was playing a set
-- they played a whole set.
My friend and I went for a
drink at a place next door.
Pancho is there with his band.
We send him a drink.
He says, "Thank you."
I was like, yo, man, your
set was dope tonight.
It was the bomb,
blah, blah, blah.
I keep -- I tell him --
this is a percussionist now.
He hears me talking to him.
He says, "You from
East Harlem, ain't you?
You know what I'm saying?
You're from East Harlem.
I can hear it.
You are" --
>> Ron Casper: The
accent, or the vocabulary?
>> Willie Perdomo: -- yeah,
the accent, the vocabulary,
the way I was talking
with my hands, all of it.
He was like -- he was like,
you're from East Harlem.
And that right there
told me that it was --
it was something specific.
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: Because
this is a drummer who's hearing
a block.
>> Ron Casper: Like
Henry Higgins [laughter].
>> Willie Perdomo:
Right [laughter].
So at that point, it felt
like, no, I have no problems
at all being identified with a
certain place in New York, yeah.
So this is a poem
that's often used now
in the -- is a writing prompt.
It's the "where I'm
from" prompt,
and this started in Ithaca, too.
I had a roommate --
no, I had a floor-mate.
I lived on the fourth
floor of The Towers,
they used to call them, right?
And I had my own room, and there
was a kid there from Louisville
who had an affinity
for calling me Wilbur.
>> Ron Casper: Wilbur?
>> Willie Perdomo:
Yeah, I don't know why.
I was like, my man,
my name is not Wilbur.
It's Willie, you know?
So he got that.
Like, Wilbur -- he
says, "Where you from?"
So the only decoration that
I had in my room was a poster
of the New York City
subway at the time,
and I pointed to 125th Street.
I said, "That's where
I'm from," so that's
where the poem started.
"Where I'm From -- because
she liked the "kind of music"
that I played, and she
liked the way I walked,
as well as the way I
talked, she always wanted
to know where I was from.
I'm from New York.
Where in New York?
Manhattan.
Where in Manhattan?
Spanish Harlem.
Spanish Harlem?
If I said that I was from 110th
Street and Lexington Avenue,
right in the heart of a
transported Puerto Rican town,
where the hodedores live
and night turns to day
without sleep, do you think then
she might know where I was from?
Where I'm from, Puerto
Rico stays on our minds
when the fresh breeze of café
con leche y pan con mantequilla
comes through our
half-open windows
and under our doors while
the sun starts to rise.
Where I'm from, babies
fall asleep to the bark
of a German shepherd
named Tarzan.
We hear his wandering
footsteps under a midnight sun.
Tarzan has learned
quickly to ignore the woman
who begs her man to stop
slapping her with his fist.
"Please, baby!
Please, papi!
Por favor!
I swear it wasn't me.
I swear to my mother!
Mami!" Her dead mother told her
that this would happen one day.
Where I'm from, Independence
Day is celebrated every day.
The final gunshot from last
night's murder is followed
by the officious knock
of a warrant squad coming
to take your bread,
coffee and freedom away.
Where I'm from, the police come
into your house without
knocking.
They throw us off rooftops
and say we slipped.
They shoot my father
and say he was crazy.
They put a bullet in my head
and say they found me that way.
Where I'm from, you run to
the hospital emergency room
because some little boy spit
a razor out of his mouth
and carved a crescent into
your face, but you have
to understand, where I'm from,
even the dead have to wait
until their number is called.
Where I'm from, you can listen
to Big Daddy retelling
stories on his corner.
He passes a pint
of light Bacardi,
pouring the dead's tributary
swig unto the street.
His philosophy is quite simple.
I'm the God when I put
a gun to your head.
I'm the judge, and
you in my courtroom.
We laugh when he makes us
the hero in his stories,
and some of us wait until no
one is looking so we can cry,
because the price we paid for
manhood was too expensive.
Where I'm from, it's the
late-night scratch of rats' feet
that explains what my mother
means when she says slowly,
"Bueno, mijo, eso es
la vida del pobre."
Well, son, that is
the life of the poor.
Don't get scared.
Where I'm from, it's sweet
like my grandmother reciting
a quick prayer over a pot
of hot rice and beans.
Where I'm from, it's pretty
like my niece stopping me
in the middle of the
street and telling me
to notice all the
stars in the sky."
>> Ron Casper: That is
a lot more beautiful
and a lot more horrible
than most
of us would expect
anyplace to be.
>> Willie Perdomo: Right.
>> Ron Casper: There are some
terrible things described
in that poem --
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: -- but some
really wonderful things, too.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: You're trying
to expand our sense of what
that place is in the
most powerful way.
I think that's so beautiful.
You talk about yourself in
your most recent collection.
You say, "Poems were
falling from the rooftops,
flailing out of windows.
Sometimes, you'd pick
up the corner payphone,
and a poem would be
calling collect [laughter]."
It is funny, and it is
only true if you're a poet.
I mean, the rest
of us walk around,
and we don't see the
poems falling out.
>> Willie Perdomo: And that
was in the day of, like,
where you actually had
payphones on the street, too.
>> Ron Casper: Yes,
that too [laughter].
That too.
>> Willie Perdomo: Right.
>> Ron Casper: But I
mean, you see these poems.
I mean, they may be
there, but we're not --
I mean, most of us don't
have that kind of perception.
You've talked about yourself
as a keeper of dreams,
as bringing these sometimes
dead friends back to life.
I mean, there is a strong
nostalgic impulse running
through your poems.
Would you acknowledge that?
>> Willie Perdomo: I think so.
I am quite comfortable
with that.
You know, there's that moment
where -- I had a friend --
a friend of mine just
said that it's a book
that he keeps nearby, I think
on the bed stand, night table,
so that he can keep -- if
ever he ever wanted to recall
that time in our lives,
the book is there, right?
So what does that mean?
That means that the book becomes
a kind of living document.
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: It becomes
a history, and the way I looked
at being a poet in the
world is that there was --
there had to be room
for truth and beauty,
that it could not be
one tone, that like me,
it is a lot of things.
You can't just point at and
say it's just a single thing.
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: But this last
book came to me in a kind of --
in a kind of heat,
and I remember watching
this Nas documentary called
"Time is Illmatic."
I think it was on HBO.
>> Ron Casper: Time is what?
>> Willie Perdomo: Illmatic.
>> Ron Casper: What's that word?
>> Willie Perdomo: It's --
his album was "Illmatic."
It came out right around the
same time, I remember, that --
was dying, came out
about '96 or so.
>> Ron Casper: Okay.
>> Willie Perdomo: So here I am
in this house in New Hampshire.
It's the first house
I ever lived in,
and I'm sitting next to my wife.
And we're watching it, and
I get up at the end of it.
And the credits are
rolling, and I'm in tears.
And I say -- I said, "Baby,"
I said, "I'm back," and I ran
to my study [laughter].
And I wrote "You remember,
that was the summer of up rock,
quarter water, Jesus pieces,
two for five, and Bambu.
Some would've said that the
science was dropped on --
some of the -- the Willie
Boba was turned up to 10,
and some would've said that
the science was dropped
on our summer."
The lines came out like that.
I mean, it was just fluid,
and what that told me is
that there was someone on the
other side that was asking me,
"Yo, when you going to write
that book about the crew?"
>> Ron Casper: Someone -- you
mean the other side of death?
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
Well, that, and the other
side of New Hampshire,
somewhere in New York,
right [laughter].
You know what I'm
saying [laughter]?
Like -- window, right
[laughter]?
Right, because dig it.
Like, the -- it's funny to
be -- you know, here you are.
You're looking out your study.
You're looking at the trees.
There's a cupola there.
The birds are flowing.
The crows are cawing,
and it's like --
but you're still on
123rd Street somewhere.
So now, the poem's become
a kind of transportation,
and so it was someone asking
me, "When are you going
to write about the crew?"
The lines came out just like
that, and it never stopped.
Because I knew that every line
that came after that had to have
that same pitch, had to have
the same syntax, diction.
All of it had to come into
play, and it had to --
there had to be music there.
It got so bad, Ron, that I was
up in Montalvo, which is the --
where I do my Lucas Arts
literary fellowship,
and here again is --
the Montalvo Arts Center is in
a villa in northern California.
And they have these studios
that are kind of devoted
to artists -- couple of
literary artists, musicians,
painters, sculptors, and so on.
There's only about
eight of them.
So here I am in my studio.
Again, there's no
city to be found.
There's no metropolis
to be found,
and I'm working on my book.
I have a little gin as well,
and now, I'm listening to music.
And I'm dancing with my book,
and I'm rewriting
as I'm dancing.
And I'm -- next thing I know,
it's like 6:00 in the morning,
7:00 in the morning, and I
broke night with my book.
I hung out with my
book [laughter].
It was the most beautiful
thing ever.
Of course, I can't
do that every day.
I'd be dead at this
point, right [laughter]?
Be like -- but I had to tap
into that kind of energy
when I was working on that
book to tap into the memory.
>> Ron Casper: Yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: And the
memory -- the more I wrote it,
the more real it became.
>> Ron Casper: I'll
get back to that point.
I want you all to stand
up, and then sit back down,
just resettle yourselves.
We've all gotten
too comfortable.
This is not an intermission.
Now sit back down.
The people you're writing
about -- some of them are dead.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: But
more than that,
the place is just not the same.
I mean, you go back to Spanish
Harlem, it looks nothing
like what it was like
when you grew up, right?
>> Willie Perdomo: Uh-unh.
>> Ron Casper: It's all
million-dollar condos,
and fancy salad restaurants.
So you're really going back to
people and place in a way --
it's kind of a -- it's
refurbishing, a reverse --
well, you're recollecting
a place that's gone.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah,
I think what's interesting
about the recollection
is the role
that imagination takes place --
that takes place in
that process, right?
Because you are remembering
a set of specific images,
events that actually happened,
but then they're
starting to expand.
Because, again, as you're
hanging out with the book,
you're also hanging out
with the people in the book.
And they're telling you, "Oh,
no, it didn't happen that way.
You remember that he was walking
down the street," and suddenly,
again, you're not by yourself
kind of writing the book, right?
And it's -- you almost forget
that the East Harlem you
knew is no longer there,
until you come back from New
Hampshire to visit and be like,
oh, wow, my block
is no longer here.
It's gone.
What remains are the skeletons
in the form of buildings,
you know, and it reminds
me of kind of Lorca walking
down the street when he
was a student at Columbia.
You know, he liked -- he loved
to walk uptown, and suddenly,
these monsters -- I mean,
these buildings start to turn
into kind of these monsters,
and living things, you know.
And you sort of get
the same feeling,
but I can still catch moments
of that time in East Harlem,
generally after midnight,
generally north of 96th Street,
generally in some social
club where they serve rum
in plastic cups,
basically, you know,
and where they still play
music that you can dance to.
>> Ron Casper: Mm-hmm.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Want
to read "Come Back"?
>> Willie Perdomo: "Come Back
-- when you come back home,
you expect welcome mats
of damn, where you been?
You look good.
Is there something
I can do for you?
Is there anything you need?
But these are the same
mats you stepped on before.
When you come back home, you
expect the spotlight to be
as bright as the last
time you left the stage,
but the page has turned, and you
got left out the next chapter.
Some doors are still left
open, with loved ones
who never gave up, knowing that
one day you would get it right.
They are scared to
give you too many hugs,
because they don't want
to enable you again.
But they want to stay
informed, so they ask questions
about your steps, and
all you can say is
that you closed your
eyes, took one giant step,
and never looked back.
When you finish getting the
love you dreamed of getting,
you come home and
clean your closets,
making sure to keep the phone
nearby just in case you bump
into half of something
that will bring you back
and hit you where it hurts."
>> Ron Casper: How did you get
the sound of the language right,
when you go back not just
in time, but in geography?
How do you make -- how do
you recollect the rhythm
of those characters?
>> Willie Perdomo: Because I
know who I'm talking to, right?
I know who I'm talking
to in the poems.
I know who's there when I'm
reading the poems out loud.
I know who's there when
I'm writing the poems.
I know who's asking
me to remember.
If I'm specific enough --
the beautiful thing about
being a part of a community,
even if you're the
poet in the crew --
>> Ron Casper: And that
was your role at the time.
>> Willie Perdomo:
-- that was my role.
Have you ever seen the
movie "Cooley High"?
I was Preach in the role.
I was there.
>> Ron Casper: Where
were the other guys?
>> Willie Perdomo: There was
the basketball player, Cochise.
There was the kid who
had all the lies down.
He was the Romeo dude.
I forget his name, but he had
-- you know, he was a Lothario.
He was -- of the crew.
He -- there was the younger kids
who always wanted to hang out.
There were -- and then
the common-sense kids,
who were like, I'm not
going anywhere near
that car right now [laughter].
I'm chilling here.
And so, I became, you
know, the poet in the crew.
And the beautiful thing about
being the poet in a group,
that when you're making these
references in the poems,
you know that there's someone
in the crew who reads a lot,
but they won't tell
you [laughter].
And they know all the references
that you're making, all of them.
And there's also
someone who's starting --
who's studying to be a Ph.D.,
but they still want
to hang out, right?
So there's -- again, that's
the general kind of makeup
of your audience at that point.
So that's why the language is
very specific, and the risk
that you take in that process is
that you know that there was --
there'll be some readers
that might be left out.
But that's okay.
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: Because
you probably won't get all the
readers --
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo:
-- at that point.
So that speaks to the
concrete level of the language,
how it's influenced by the
music of the time, and again,
who is on the other
side of the story.
>> Ron Casper: And
this was written
to capture a single weekend --
>> Willie Perdomo: It was.
>> Ron Casper: --
in the late '90s?
>> Willie Perdomo:
In the late '90s.
>> Ron Casper: When
one of you died.
>> Willie Perdomo: There
was a couple who died
in that weekend in
the book, yeah.
>> Ron Casper: And if you'd
read number 12, "In the Face
of What You Remember."
>> Willie Perdomo:
Right, so this is --
the first stanza is the
stanza that actually came
out when I first
started writing the book.
"In the Face of What
You Remember,"
which of course is taken
from a Langston Hughes poem,
"When you look into the
face of what you remember."
I remember that line.
I forget the poem, but -- "In
the Face of What You Remember.
You remember, that was
the summer of Up Rock,
quarter water, speed knots,
pillow bags, two-for-five,
Jesus pieces, and Bambú.
The Willie Bobo was turned up
to ten, and some would've said
that a science was
dropped on our summer.
The summer that was lit
with whispers of wild style,
Rock Steady battles and white
party plates made all kinds
of moons on the playground foam.
The summer the burner was
used to eat and mandate.
Inspired Sunday sermons
became a literary influence
with humming climaxes,
a bribable tale,
a dub tied to a string, and
squashing beef wasn't an option.
The summer of fresh shrills,
and a future somersaulting
off a monkey bar:
a future placing bets
that all us old heads,
desperate to find a new
cool, could not flip pure.
That was the summer
that our grills dropped
to below freezing.
Back then, Palo Viejo
was thermal and therapy.
Bones were smoked in the cut,
and you had to expect
jungle gym giggle
to be accompanied by buckshot.
That was the summer Charlie
Chase hijacked megawatts
from Rosa's kitchenette,
found gems in a milk crate,
spun his one and twos below
rims that still vibrated
with undocumented double-dunks.
The same summer we became
pundits and philosophers,
poets and pushers: that
we all tried to fly,
but only one of us succeeded.
The summer that Papu
turned up to extra status.
The only one in the crew who had
reduced fame's window by a fifth
when the camera panned
his Cazal-laced Up Rock
in the Roxy scene
of Beat Street.
One could say we gave the block
gasp and gossip, body and bag,
a folktale worth its morphology.
That was the season we had
reason to rock capes and wings,
chains and rings, some of
us flew higher than most,
and tricks were hardly
ever pulled from a hat.
All that, and a bag of BBQ Bon
Tons was enough for at least one
of us to say, 'I'm straight.'"
>> Ron Casper: That
just jumps off the page.
I mean, that's just
some great writing.
The first stanza came to you
in a moment of inspiration,
but then to try and make
all the other stanzas match
that in both tone and immediacy
is the work of real effort,
self-conscious effort.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
Yeah. Right.
So it didn't seem as hard,
which was puzzling to me.
Like, again, it came -- some
people think that it comes --
you know, the common
image is that it was
like a -- the floodgates --
>> Ron Casper: Right,
like Kublai Khan --
>> Willie Perdomo: -- opening.
>> Ron Casper: -- yes.
>> Willie Perdomo: All you
need is enough buckets,
and sometimes, you just
don't have enough, right.
>> Ron Casper: Yeah.
>> Willie Perdomo: This
one came more like a fire
through a building,
basically, you know,
and you were like,
all right, take me.
I'm ready to burn at this point,
and that's what it felt like.
I knew that it was
crackling at that point.
>> Ron Casper: Right?
>> Willie Perdomo: I
knew that it was hot,
and I knew that that summer
weekend was a summer weekend
that was really going
to be the one
that changed these
kids in the book.
And it wasn't just -- it was a
culmination of all these summers
that we had experienced
condensed into this one weekend.
>> Ron Casper: The book
is made up of many poems,
but the poems -- I mean,
they work as a whole, as a --
like a novel, even
more than a collection
of short stories would.
>> Willie Perdomo:
That's the whole, yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Yeah.
I mean, you think of the way
iTunes has destroyed albums.
These poems -- they
work by themselves,
but they're great together.
>> Willie Perdomo: You
have to read them together.
>> Ron Casper: Yeah,
as an album, like.
But what about the poetry cops?
I mean, that is weird.
>> Willie Perdomo:
I know, right?
Where they came from?
Again, the interview with a
writer is a fascinating thing,
I think, right, for me, right,
which is why I was
looking forward to this.
Because I heard you
were thorough.
>> Ron Casper: They don't
know what they're --
were talking about.
>> Willie Perdomo: Right,
right, right, right [laughter].
>> Ron Casper: They don't
know what we're talking about.
>> Willie Perdomo:
Right, right, so, but --
>> Ron Casper: He's got,
like, these dialogues in here.
>> Willie Perdomo: -- so there's
these dialogues that happen.
>> Ron Casper: The poetry cops
-- and he's being interrogated.
>> Willie Perdomo: Right.
The poetry cops stand
for consolidated poetry
systems [laughter].
And there's this outfit
that talks to Papo.
>> Ron Casper: The poet.
>> Willie Perdomo:
The poet in the group.
And they're looking
at a photo album,
and the first question is,
"Who's there in that picture?"
>> Ron Casper: Yeah,
what's wrong with his eyes?
>> Willie Perdomo: Right.
And so, they keep going back
and forth, where they try --
and this was something
that I noticed had happened
with the Central Park Five.
That moment where there's
a body, a collective
that is trying to force
a narrative onto you,
but they're so far
from the truth.
Because they need the narrative
for their own purposes,
whether it's to feel
comfortable or convict, right?
At that moment, it felt
like there was a
similar process going on,
in that the poetry cops were
trying to tell me what happened.
And Papo is telling them,
"Look, even if I knew,
I couldn't tell you, but I'm
going to try my best right now
to kind of recall
in bits and pieces.
Because my tradition
as a writer is
to put all those
broken pieces together."
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: So when they
start asking these questions,
I'm starting to think, all
right, what can I tell them
that will not give it away?
I can't tell you how
this one perished.
I can't tell you who did it.
But this is what I remember,
in the face of what I remember.
>> Ron Casper: That's a
brilliant and daring thing
to do, to interrupt the flow of
these poems with these little --
>> Willie Perdomo: I
was taking all kinds
of risks with the book.
I didn't care anymore at
that point [laughter].
It felt good.
It felt -- I felt free.
>> Ron Casper: -- it's
a real innovation,
to interrupt the
flow of these poems.
I mean, that appears, what,
six times in this book?
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: The poetry
cops' dialogues interrupt,
little pages of interrogation.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Contentious,
but not violently contentious.
>> Willie Perdomo: No.
>> Ron Casper: It's
incredibly clever,
and you just have
to read it yourself.
It just came out
last year, right?
Yeah. I want you to read
another one of these poems.
To get more sense
of the language
of this book, "Dapper Dan."
>> Willie Perdomo: "Dapper Dan."
So -- so, you know, Dapper Dan
is this iconic figure in Harlem,
and I knew -- I don't
know him personally,
but I remember his
shop on 125th Street.
And it would be busy throughout
the day, the morning, and so on,
and it was basically folks
who were in the culture.
They were celebrity, hip-hop
culture, some big-time hustlers
that would come through,
and they would get these
outfits custom-made
to their specifications.
And Dapper Dan was the only
one, and is the only one
in New York City who
could pull it off.
So one night -- it was on
Lexington, and there was --
it was Dapper Dan
coming through,
and there was a big dice game.
And Dapper Dan pulled
out a knot of money,
and the game just got bigger,
and bigger, and bigger.
It was like a spectator
sport, almost.
And so, this is called
"Dapper Dan Meets Petey
Shooting Cee-Lo."
"The forecast calls for the
rawness, a litany of daps
and pounds, denim
two-pieces, bucket hats,
and velour tracksuits.
This is before the
world went 2.0.
You used the word money like
Pretty Tony, 'I got money.
I got money.'
Or Tony Rome, 'I want my money.'
Or Kizack Wizack,
'What's good, money?'
Or like Rehab Roger, who upon
dishing a concept would say,
'I'm giving you good
money, man.'
Having just finished shooting
trips, Petey gripped a palmful
of Grants and Benjamins,
and his pupils were dilated
to the riches.
Street games fade one
dream into another.
You bet on your best hope, and
what you going to do with all
that scrilla fluttering
in the oval.
Angel sorted his ducats, kept
the faces on his bills skyward.
Phat Phil's inside pocket was
packed with penny candies.
You always knew where there
was a price for head cracks.
A legion of old-schoolers
flanked the bank --
Black Rob, Hollywood from "A
Bunch of Grapes," Krip and Spy,
Kong and Papo, steady flashing
knots, still opening spots.
By that time, Hollywood's
total net
in dirty money had
reached short of a million,
were it not for the million
and one shorts he took.
You had to be laced to shoot.
The clack of die, shoot.
You stir-fry -- shoot.
Hollywood said, "I
would if I could."
Dapper Dan was just
walking down Lexington,
on his way to his shop on 125th
Street, a fresh LV stitched
into his Stacy's, a
clutch to match, and asked,
"Who got the bank" on a whim.
Because the day always comes
when you have to put the past
up for grabs, where really,
you learn that sometimes you
get dressed up just to lose.
>> Ron Casper: The
whole book's like this.
You got to buy this book.
You -- the book runs through,
what, like, 78 hours, I guess?
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
It goes from a Friday to
a Sunday, Sunday night.
>> Ron Casper: Seeing different
characters, they come and go.
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah,
they go to a sweet 16.
>> Ron Casper: Right.
>> Willie Perdomo: They
go to the old time square.
>> Ron Casper: Does it rain?
>> Willie Perdomo: They watch --
>> Ron Casper: It rains.
>> Willie Perdomo: --
oh, there's rain there.
On Friday, there's rain where
they go to a -- they go get a --
what we call [foreign language],
basically where the elders
in the community, if they
found out that you were
in a little bit of trouble,
they would prepare you.
And that preparation
basically was a mix of Catholic
and Yoruban traditions
that really went
on in living rooms all over East
Harlem around that time, yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Trying to
get you back in the --
>> Willie Perdomo: At least some
protection while you go back out
and do whatever it is you
have to do [laughter].
But, you know, you feel
somewhat looked over.
There's nothing like
feeling like there's someone
on the block outside of your
family members who care for you,
who are invested in you.
>> Ron Casper: -- so these --
there are these moments
of comedy.
>> Willie Perdomo:
There would have to be.
>> Ron Casper: Yeah,
and sweet moments.
>> Willie Perdomo: There
would have to be, yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Just
shockingly violent moments,
and tragic moments.
>> Willie Perdomo:
It was part of it.
It was part of it.
I think that was what, I think,
brought me to tears at the end
of the movie, that -- that
movie, that the idea of --
the possible trauma that my
generation have experienced
behind it.
>> Ron Casper: You spoke of --
I can't remember the
right term you used --
traumatic hood disorder?
>> Willie Perdomo:
Post-traumatic hood disorder,
but that's from a book by a
poet named David Tomas Martinez.
So I kind of --
>> Ron Casper: Drew
-- that's from him.
>> Willie Perdomo: --
lifted that from him, yeah.
>> Ron Casper: What
does it mean?
>> Willie Perdomo: I suppose
that, you know, how one comes
into one's personhood, how
one becomes a human being
without going through hell,
how is one exposed to a level
of violence without falling
into the trap of normalizing it,
and to understand that there are
much, much larger forces at play
that are kind of making
the violence happen.
Everything from not being able
to read, to not being able
to have a job -- but again,
the schools are underfunded,
so you can't get the textbooks.
You can't get the
special tutors.
You know, the whole idea
of the industrial complex,
the prison industrial
complex, and how there's a kind
of straight, bright line
from school to the prison.
That's been established already.
So these are forces that I think
would have to be recognized
to kind of contextualize a
conversation about a book
like this, and where the
violence is stemming from.
>> Ron Casper: Would
you close by reading
"They Won't Find Us in Books"?
>> Willie Perdomo: Yeah.
>> Ron Casper: Because
we found them in books.
>> Willie Perdomo: We
found -- we sure did.
Thank you.
So this is toward
the end of the book,
and it's called "They
Won't Find Us in Books."
And there's a profanity --
>> Ron Casper: We can take it.
We're all adults.
>> Willie Perdomo: Cool.
So -- it wouldn't
work without it, so --
but "They Won't Find
Us in Books.
And after we officially gained
entry into the Brotherhood
of Bad Motherfuckers, what could
our mothers do but lose sleep,
wake into prayer, prepare herbs
and apples, cursive the names
of our enemies on loose leaf,
and let their names
dust in the sunlight.
Now everything is
clean, rezoned and paved,
tenements abandoned
like whack parties.
What is left for us to
do but summon bullies
from their graves, and liberate
ourselves from influence?
Gone are the old spots
near the takeout,
old flames where we
used to make out,
the spots where the
light used to fade out,
and the letters we wrote
from burning buildings.
Our shoulders were
made of stone.
Our evil was translucent.
Turn us into mortals, so we
can cry without judgment,
surrender our cool, and
watch us morph into men.
Let it be known that we chased
Killer Dillers before the cans
got kicked for good.
We were made from
repeating blocks.
Holler if you hear us.
There was never a
once upon time,
because all it takes is one
person to get away with it,
to get away and get over,
to get some and get up,
here we go, come on, here we go.
You our history, you said.
If being free means
burning a few things,
then play that number
for us straight.
The corner was between us
and the world, and sometimes,
you just needed to be
okay with not telling.
If anyone asks you about
your destiny, don't explain.
Maybe this is the story we need
to turn ourselves into music,
bass and bully, a string
pulling at both ends.
They won't find us in
books, you used to say.
Everybody say, 'Yeah,'
and you don't stop.
We practice our lives in lobbies
and layaway, ganders and goofs,
boosting lines from the radio,
breaking dynamite styles.
We were god bodies.
We had god in our bodies.
That's what Brother
Lo used to say.
He used to say, 'A man can
stand on the corner long enough
to see a dream etched
on a Herb's forehead;
to see desperation exit
from a subway station;
to see a tragic hero come
back to reclaim his city.'
So we downloaded his bars
and gems, and, no doubt,
when it was time
to tell our story,
out would come fire and spit.
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
>> Ron Casper: Such a
pleasure to have you.
>> Willie Perdomo:
Thank you, Ron.
>> Ron Casper: Really,
really enjoyed it.