Judul : core power yoga st louis park
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core power yoga st louis park
[music playing] - hello, good afternoon. so welcome to this event, to apoetry reading and discussion with major jackson underthe title of urban renewal. so apart from its ownworth as a wonderful event,
core power yoga st louis park, it's also related toradcliffe's urbanism theme for this entire academic year. which we've exploredin all kinds of ways-- one was a big public lectureby garth risk hallberg,
who wrote city onfire, a debut novel about new york in the 1970s. and we have a verylarge public conference that's been a longtime in the planning, coming up on april 28th. it's called intersections--understanding urbanism in the global age. and it's three panelsand a keynote speaker, and it should be verylively and interesting.
but on to the matter at hand. i am especiallypleased to welcome major jackson, because we wereradcliffe fellows together almost 10 years ago. so it's nice to meetagain at radcliffe. major jackson is the authorof four collections of poetry. the most recent one isroll deep from 2015. he's the winner of thecave canem poetry prize and a finalist for thenational book critics circle
award in poetry. he's published hispoems and essays in many different venues,including the american poetry review, the boston review,the new yorker, poetry, tin house, and otherliterary publications. he's also won avery large number of important fellowships-- a guggenheim fellowship, apushcart prize, a whiting writer's award,and also he's been
honored by a pewfellowship in the arts, and the witter bynnerfoundation in conjunction with the library of congress. he lives in vermont insouth burlington, where he is the richard a. dennisuniversity distinguished professor at theuniversity of vermont. he serves as the poetryeditor at the harvard review. and he has also donewriter-in-residence stints at university ofmassachusetts in lowell
and at baruch college. so i'm really delightedto welcome major jackson. and i hope you'll join meright now in welcoming him. [inaudible] [applause] - good afternoon,late afternoon. this is somewhat of ahomecoming of sorts. it's such a pleasureto be back on the yard, the radcliffe yard.
and it's also daunting,because i'm reading poems. and i know some of youhave heard these before. so i'm going to readsome new poems as well. and i want to thank julie andradcliffe and sean and becky for getting me here. as you can hear, i'm alsolacking some vocal cords from late night coughing. but i'll speak uploud and hopefully gravitate towards thistheme of urban renewal.
when sean asked fora title, i should have just said poetry reading. now i have to frame myreading around this theme. and i'm not sure-- i'm not sure how closei'll get to that. well, i'm going to startoff with a new poem that's not in any collection. it appeared in thevirginia quarterly review. it's called "the flaneur tendsa well-liked summer cocktail."
"curbside on an arp-like table. he's alone of course, in thearts district as it were, legs folded, swaying afoot so that his body seems to summon some deep immensityfrom all that surrounds-- dusk shadows inching near alate-thirtyish couple debating the post-galactic abyssof sex with strangers, tourists ambling byonly to disappear into the street's gloomy mouth, a young italian womanbending to retrieve a
dropped metrocard, its blackmagnetic strip facing up, a lone speckledbrown pigeon breaking from a flock of rockdoves, then landing near a crushedfast-food wrapper newly tossed by a bike messenger,the man chortling after a sip offlaxen-colored beer, remembering that, inthe gospel of john the body and glory convergelinked to incarnation and so, perhaps, we manifesteach other, a tiny shower
of sparks erupting fromthe knife sharpener's truck who daily leans ablade into stone, a cloudscape reflected in therear windshield of a halted taxi where inside a transwoman applies auburn lipstick, the warlike insigniaon the lapel jacket of a white-gloved doormanwho opening a glass door gets a whiff of adowager's thick perfume and recalls baling timothyhay as a boy in albania, the woman distractedlywatching a mother debate
robert colescott'slurid appropriations of modernist artover nicoise salad, suddenly frees her leftbreast from its cup where awaits the blossomingmouth of an infant wildly reaching for a galaxy ofmilk behind her dark areola, the sharp coughs of a studentcarrying a yoga mat, the day's last light edginghigh-rises on the west side so that they seem rimmed byfire just when the man says, and yet,
immense the wageswe pay boarding the great carousel of flesh." - [inaudible] - it happens. thank you. so what i was sayingwas, to some extent, i think the work of the poethas been to kind of tease out among the great morassof details of our lives, very simply tonotice and observe.
and i think that when ifirst started writing poetry, it was very much centeredaround my experiences growing up in philadelphia. and so on maybemuch to my chagrin, but it definitelyset up this challenge of me writing about the city. and i instantly wastagged this urban poet, which felt confiningin a lot of ways. and maybe even more confiningwhen one critic compared me
to langston hughes. he died 40 years ago, like-- anyway. right [laughter] here is the veryfirst "urban renewal." i guess i gave sean that title. because "urban renewal"is a series of poems that appeared in my firstbook and second book,
not in my third, butin my fourth book. and i very muchhave been somewhat-- i find myself growinginside this poem that is actually growing. my concerns are not theconcerns of when i first started in graduateschool 20 years ago. but there seems to bethe consistency of form that allows this to be a kindof stone that i chip away at. in my first book thereare 12 "urban renewals,"
and over the past 20years, i'm up to almost 50. my aim when i firststarted writing it was to write a whole book. this was going to be my firstbook, the ambitions of youth. it was going to be 120"urban renewals," 200, it was going to be a tome. it was going to this kind ofbildungsroman coming of age about my life. yeah.
it requires great discipline. here's the very first one. "night museum." "by lamplight my steadyhand brushes a canvas-- faint arcs of swallowsflapping over rooftops swiftly fly into view,and a radiant backdrop of veined lilac dwindlingto a dazzling cerise evokes that lostsummer dusk i watched a mother straddlea stoop of brushes,
combs, a jar of royal crown. she was fingering rows dark asalleys on a young girl's head cocked to one sidelike a modigliani i pledged my life right thento braiding her lines to mine, to anointing streets i lovewith all my mind's wit. the boy in me perched on thecurb of this page calls back between blue-sky popsicle licksthat festive night the whole block set out onrooftops, in doorways, on the hoods of cars--
a speaker blared stevie abovebullock's corner store awash in fluorescence as thebuoyant shouts of children sugared a wall of hide-and-seek. because some patron,fearing she's stumbled into thewrong part of town, will likely clutch herpurse and quicken pace, i funnel all thelight spreading across that young girl's lustroushead with hopes we lift out downturned eyes,stroll more leisurely,
pour over these sights. you are almost invisiblein all this plain decay. children's laughter echoingan arcs of hydrant water-spray knots the heart-- those black batherslike cezannes could soon petrify to silence. a chorus of power lineshums a melancholic hymn, tenements' aching pyrrhics,doorways and row-homes crumbling to gutted relics--
this one exposinga nude staircase, that one a second-floorceiling where swings a lightbulblike your chipped soul suspended from athread of nerves. you have neverimagined a paradise, nor made a countryof your ghetto, only suffered the casket avessel for the human shadow, feared, longing forother stones to worship. the sun dreams the crownsof trees behind skyscrapers.
here the heart is its ownlight; a pigeon's gurgle sings the earth. the eyes of the deadto float around us-- muraled polaroids, street-cornerbillboards whose slogans read, 'aching humans. prosperous gardens.'" with both hoops androll deep, i open up with a long, somewhat longpoem, not really long poem, but a medium-sized poemthat has a narrative.
in this particularnarrative, and i should say that alot of the poems that are kind of story-based poems,there's a lot of embellishment and then there'salways something in it that's at the coreof the experience that i'm trying to get at. but this is definitelybased on true story. not all of it is true, though. it's about that two weeksi worked at mcdonald's.
"selling out." "off from a double atmcdonald's, no autumnal pinata, no dying leavescrumbling to bits of colored paper on thesidewalks only yesterday, just each breathbursting to explosive fog in a dead-end alley nearfifth, where on my knees my fingers laced on my headand the square barrel prodding a temple, i thought ofme in the afterlife. moments ago, chriswilder and i jogged down
girard lost in thepromise of two girls who winked past pitchlanes of burgers and squared chips of fish, at usreigning over grills and vats. moments ago, a barrageof beepers and timers smeared the lengthsof our chests, a swarm of hard-hatted dayworkers coded in white dust, mothers on relief, the minimumwage poor from the fast-food joints lining broadstreet inched us closer in the check cashingline towards the window
of our dreams, all of anxious toenact the power of our riches. me in the afterlife,what did it matter? chris and i still inour polyester uniforms caked with day-oldbatter, setting out for evening of passion marks? we wore gazelles, matchingsheepskins, the ushanka miles from leningrad. chris said, let's cop some blow. despite my schoolboy jitters,a loose spread of dealers
preserved corners. then a kid largefor the chrome huffy he pedaled, said hehad the white stuff, and led us to an alleyfronted by an iron gate on a gentrified streetedging northern liberties. i turned to tell chris how thenight air dissolved like soil, how jangling keys made my neckitch, how maybe this wasn't so good an idea, when thecold opening of gun barrel still poked my headand chris's eyes
widened like two waterspills before he bound away to a future of headphonesand release parties. me? the afterlife? had i ever welcomed backthe old neighborhood? might a longing, persistentas the seedcorn maggot, tunnel through me? all i know, a single dogbarked his own vapor, and emptiness echoed throughblasted shells of row homes
rising above. and i heard deliverance inthe bare branches fingering a series of power lines andsilhouette to the moon's hushed excursion across thebatter fields of our lives that endless night ofricocheting fear and shame. no one survives, no oneunclasps his few strands of gold chains orhums amazing grace or pours all hismeasly bills and coins into the trembling free handof his brother and survives.
no one is forced face downand weights 40 minutes to rise and begin again his marchpass the ice-crusted dirt, without friendship, who barelyknew why the cry of the earth set him running even fromthe season's string of lights flashing its patheticshot at cheer-- to arrive here where thepage is blank, an afterlife." so many of those poems inthe first book really do-- i really can't see you, so-- there you are-- they very muchhad to do with what i felt
as though was a kind of-- i say billboard. but i guess whati want to say is that, i felt like my poemswhich dealt with my youth, was writing againstsome of what i felt was some of the kindof cliched narratives around black menand black bodies. and what i wanted my poems todo is give texture to that, to create some sort,at least in my poems,
a kind of aninteriority that we can think about when wecome across nightly news or when we come acrossmovies that tout and glorify a certain image anda certain lifestyle. so that's what occupied me. and then, of course, yougrow up, you read books. you get all literary,and then that passion starts to kind of turnin other directions. but what i will sayis that i'm still
haunted by some of thereal life stories of people that i grew upwith, and inspired. so roll deep waskind of a way for me to return to some of the poemsthat i had written and put aside, or to write new poems. and there was alsopart of the reason why i also put those poems asideis because many of my friends who write and are veryconscious about race work as it relates toart work, often will
get into conversationsaround representing, how poems represented. which felt at that time,now that i think about it, felt like the pressure thatthe early poets of the harlem renaissance hadto face when they went to writeabout folk culture, or write, as langstonhughes did, write poems based on a blues aesthetic. and a lot of what we'retalking about, to some extent,
is the politics ofboth art and race, but also thinkingabout not wanting to focus too much forfear that people turn some of the narratives intoemblematic narratives of all black people. so there's a certainkind of politics that i did want to engagein by writing these. so that was one of thechallenges i want to say, what we callrespectability politics.
i'll use that phrase. that was popularthere for a minute. yeah, so my friends wouldtalk about other poets performing blackness or howthe dominant culture sees blackness. and so i put those poems aside. even though they'rethere, even though they're based on real people. i decided i did notwant to engage in that.
but here is a poem. i'm happy i've pushed that,leapt over that hurdle. here is a poem called"mighty pawns," which is based on a group of,at least the portrait, is based on some young men thati grew up with in philadelphia who played chess. but to encounter them on thestreet, you wouldn't think-- most of you would notthink they had the capacity to engage in sucha difficult art.
and yet they weregrandmaster chess players who lived in this very poorneighborhood in philadelphia and they traveled, theytraveled the world. and i don't know whereany of them are today. but they had a great mathteacher who taught them. he's named in here. and hollywood madea movie about them, if you're interestedin looking it up. they were calledthe bad bishops,
that was the name of the team. but the movie iscalled "mighty pawns" if you want to look at it. it's a bad '80s film, b rated. but has some historical valence. "mighty pawns." "if i told youearl, the toughest kid on my block innorth philadelphia, could beat any man or womanin ten moves playing white,
or that he traveled toyugoslavia to frustrate the bearded masters at thebelgrade chess association, you'd think i wasgiven to hyperbole, and if, atdinnertime, i took you into the faint lightof his section 8 home, wreaking of onions, liver, andgravy, his six little brothers fighting on a brokenlove-seat for room in front of a cracked flatscreen, one whose diaper sags, it's a wonder it hasn't fallento his ankles, the walls
behind doors exposing sheetrock the perfect o of a handle, and the slats of stairsmissing where baby-boy gets stuck trying to ascendto a dominion foreign to you and me with its loudtimbales and drums blasting down, blasting down from theclosed room of his cousin whose mother stands on a corneron the other side of town all times of day and night,except when her relief check arrives at thebeginning of the month, you'd get a betterpicture of earl's ferocity
after class on the boardin mr. sherman's class, but not necessarilywhen he stands near you at a downtown bus-stopin a jacket a size too small, hunching his shouldersaround his ears, as you imagine the checkeredsquares of his poverty and anger, and pray he doesnot return his precise gaze too long in yourdirection for fear he blames you and proceedsto take your queen." so that poem iswhat i realized when
i wrote it was in theprocess of attempting to dignified lives thatin the public imagination did not have a certainkind of richness, i felt like i realizedsome of what i was doing was creating portraits ofpeople that i grew up with. and all the attendantkind of challenges that arise from that. some of the-- remember i saidnot everything that i write is true?
just remember that. "blunts." "the first time igot high, i stood in a circle of boysat 23rd and ridge tucked inside a doorwaythat smelled of urine. it was march. the cold rains allbut blurred our sight as we feignedsophistication, passing a bullet-shaped bottleof malt. johnny cash
had a love fortranscendental numbers and explained between puffsresembling little gasps of air, the link to all creationwas the mathematician. malik, the smartest of thecrew, counterargued and cited the holy life or prayer as agateway to the islamic faith that was, for allintents, the true path for the righteous black man. no one disputed. malik cocked his head, pinchedthe joint and pulled so hard,
we imagined his lips crazyglued into stiff o's. it was long agreed thatlefty would inherit his father's used carbusiness, thus destined for a life of wrecks. then, amid a fit of coughing,i broke the silence. i want to be a poet. it was nearing dinnertime. jesus lived here. his sister was yellingat their siblings
over the eveningnews and game shows. the stench of hotdogs and sauerkraut drifted down the dank hallway. a pre-spring wind flappedthe plastic covering of a junkman's shopping cart,as eddie hardwick licked left to right the thin strip of glueat the edge of a rolling paper, then uttered, 'so, youwant the tongue of god?' i bent double in the blade ofsmoke and looked up for help. it was too late.
we were tragically hip." so you grow up, youhave adult experiences. and you write aboutthat hopefully. or you move to vermont,and you go, oh, i didn't think i was a nature poet. but this landscape isdoing something to me. this is a poem that-- it's more associative. i realize so much of my stylewas changing over the years
when i unburdened myself tryingto write a certain kind of way and experiment. and i guess for me, there'sso much of writing poetry that i enjoy. i enjoy collaging images. i enjoy making sounds. i enjoy attempting,at least, to create some sort of authentic utterancethat strikes your ear, even though it may not onthe surface offer up
in the way of literalcognitive meaning, my hope is that the wordsare felt in the body. so that was a kind of verydeliberate choice of mine. some of my friends thought iwas going for the anarchist's effect, the toss meaningout the window altogether, but that's not true. "enchanters ofaddison county," which is just south of where i livein burlington in chittenden county.
they say all of vermont,there's more cows than people, but definitely in addisoncounty, that is true. "enchanters of addison county." "we were more thangestural, close-listening, the scent of manure writingits waft on the leaves off route 22a. by nightfall, ourgaze flecked like loon cries, but no one was upfor turnips nor other roots, not least of which the clergy.
romanticism has itsdetractors, which is why we lined the roadwith tea-lit luminaries and fresh-cut lemons. we called it making magic, thenstormed the corners and porches of general stores,kissing whenever cars idled at fourway stop signs or sought grade a maplesyrup in tin containers with painted scenes ofhorse-drawn farmers plowing through snow.
the silhouetted, rusted farmequipment gave us the laidback heaven we so often wished,and fireflies bequeathed earth stars, such blink andblank and bunk-a-bunk-bunk. and of course wewondered if we existed, and also too, thecows in the ancient pastures, and the white milkinside our heads like church spires and ice cream cones,even after all that cha-cha-cha, we still came out of swimmingholes shivering our hearts out. here's an "ode to mt.
philo." i won't read that. these two graduate studentstoday talked to me about a poem that i'd written that'spublished online as part of the "urban renewal" series. it's called "urbanrenewal number 28," subtitled "vermont." i want to read this anddedicate it to them. because i oftendon't read this poem,
but they had some great insight. i have a rhododendron bushjust outside my office window where i write. and a very heavywinter just turned. i'm not sure if you'veseen it, but the leaves will wilt into thesetight brown curls. and for many years thatbush was doing fine. and then i kept waiting foreither those leaves to drop and new blooms come up,and nothing happened.
so i'm sittingthere, and i think i start associating very quicklythat image of those wilted leaves. and as we talkedabout in class, i think so much of theartist's imagination is about almostdoing a very swift, some would say timetravel, but really is what bly calls leaps,these leaps of images came to me in this poem, was anattempt to capture that moment.
"number 28, vermont." "outside my window,a brutal winter burn has curled rhododendronleaves to clusters of tight brown wilts. tobacco-colored, they hangwhere white lilacs and pink azaleas blush to spring'smyth of resurrection. a maple sapling sprouts erectamidst a snarling tangle of bare branches as i waitfor the droops to uncoil. why this hopefulness?
soft tinted postcardsof sagging corpses lynched by mobs in elk's arch,pritchard, springfield, waco, texas, mix and crossfademy sight in broad daylight like scenes from america'spowerpoint show of perversity. at duke, an undergrad tweetsan obscene noose to friends, seen by millions to 'comeand hang out with us.' spooked while drivingin virginia, a friend once swore the roadsidelitter in oaks and pines flapping white plasticbags were coded messages
marking a new race war. whiteness is never having toquestion the history of trees. when i search this morning"how to revive a dying rhododendron," youtuberecommends the speeches of reverend louis farrakhan,holiday's "black bodies swinging." so more of a vermont poem. my son plays soccer andlacrosse, and he's ok. he's pretty good.
but it means yougot to go to games. and on this oneparticular autumn day, i was really enjoyingthe change of seasons. i thought by-- and this isalso from the "urban renewal" series, but it's notin any of the books. "i thought by now myreverence would have waned. matured to the temperatesilence of the bookish or revealed how blasei've grown with age. but the unrestrained joy i fillwhen the black skein of geese
voyage like adropstring from god, slowly shifting and soaring. when the decayedapples of an orchard amass beneath its trees,like eve's first party. when driving in the road,vanna whites its crops of corn whose stalks will soon giveway to a harvester's blade and turn the land toa man's unruly face. makes me believe i'll neversooth the pagan in me, nor exhibit thepropriety of the polite.
after a few whiskeys,i'm loud this time of year, unseemly asa chevron of hulking. i'm fire in the leaves,obstreporous as a drunk new england farmer. i see fear in theeyes of his children. they walk home fromschool and evening falls like an advancingtrickle of bats, the sky pungent asbounty and chimney smoke. i read the scowl beneaththe smiles of parents
at my son's soccer game. their agitation, which isthe figure the yellow leaves make of a quaking aspen." [papers rustling] ok. just a few more, andthank you for being here. did i do that already? every poet does that. thank you for coming.
this is "my children'sinheritance." "a fancy for highgreen hills by a sea. baggy spaces in the day. a knack for gunpowderthinking, a library humming like a swarm ofgnats, the intrigue of a woman with apitch perfect mind, blinking eyes whose silenceis ancient and naked, a grave that is not a grave buta ruin to visit in middle age." i laughed at thatwhen i wrote that.
i was like mychildren, they're not going to visit mygrave like when i die. it's like later when they'regoing through their own crises. they're going to comethrough the grave, but it will be ruined. "a grave that is not a grave buta ruin to visit in middle age. a chifforobe of halfempty cologne bottles in various colorsand dried flowers more dignified indeath, both evidence
that i once cherishedbouquets and timelessness. bullet casings, a bowlof sea shells, fine pens. one, the aurora diamante withits two-toned rhodium plating that glitters when my righthand rages towards heaven. a love of big plates ofpasta, argentinian folk music, african rainforest and thespeeches of lincoln that missed the pages of mybooks more than my doorways, a habit for dancingwhen beats drop like existential stones, adisregard for the enemies
of linnets and macaws, fearsthat match the hawk haunted buttes out west, a harddesire for justice, the habit of lip-bitingwhen trouble nears, the way my mouth opens likea flower, my quiver of arrows that outweighs the world,leaving the animals to bear witness. memories of laughter that wasbread and water, stylus hats, wasted time travel, theconsequences of mistakes and second thoughts gone to thefuture, collection of radios,
stacks of vinyl, thelimitations of secrets, long nights thatcascaded like waterfalls, my madness, granularand complex, sealed like a foot fall. my son and me at the bar inotto's near fifth avenue, both off from work,the heavy foot traffic of silhouettedcommuters hastening home outside and us here, two drinks in. the conversation has justramped up, and he wants to know
why i did it, how could ihave betrayed our family? the bartender is in nightschool, we learn for law, but meanwhile, he can name allthe great vineyards in sonoma and how many laborerswork the field and how many at the crush padlast planting season, which incidentally he said, gave ussome of the best varietals, he's told, in years. but it's all reallyjust a racket though, like anythingelse in life, he says.
i want to tell my son about thegreat poems i've taught today. yet careful to avoid thesad lives of the poets. but he has long beenexhausted of lines i recited to him since achild, my eyes carrying the exuberance of art. and so would onlyagitate and call up his condemnation of myfriends as phonies parading their pseudointelligence. instead, i reach for is handacross the varnished oak top.
i was dying i say, livinga country of lives. to which he shakes his head. i swirl my glass, looking downavidly, churning the air so as to deliver oxygen and open upthe wine, wishing to release its veiled bouquet." i'm going to end with two poems. this is called "you reader." and it was fun writing thispoem because, again, i often go for a particular sound.
"you reader." "so often i dream of thesecrets of satellites and so often i want the mooseto step from the shadows and reveal his transgressions,and so often i come to her body as though she werelookout mountain. but give me a farmer's marketto park my [? martyred ?] mass and i will nameall the dirt roads that dead end at the cubistsculpture called my infinity. for i no longer light bonfiresin the city of adulterers
and no longer smudgethe cheeks of debutantes currently floating acrossthe high fruit of night. and yes, i knowthere is only one notable death in any small town,and that is the pig farmer. but listen, at all timesthe proud rivers mourn my absence, especially whenlike a full moon, you reader, hidden behind a spray ofnight blooming serious, drift in and out of scattered clouds,above lighthouses producing there artificial calm justto sweep a chalk of light
over distant waters." and my last poem iscalled "on disappearing." "on disappearing." "i have not disappeared. the boulevard isfull of my steps. the sky is full of my thinking. and archbishopprays for my soul, even then he was busywaving at a congregation. the ticking clocks invermont sway back and forth,
as those sweeping up my eyesand my tattoos and my metaphors and what comes up are the greatparagraphs of dust, which also carry motes of my existence. i have not disappeared. my wife quivers inside a kiss. my pulse was given to hermany times in many countries. the chunks of breadwe dip in olive oil is communion with our ancestors,who also have not disappeared. their delicate songsi wear on my eyelids.
their smiles havegiven me freedom, which is a crater i keep falling in. when i bite into the twohalves of an orange, whose cross section resembles mylungs, a delta of juices burst down my chin andlike magic, makes me appear to those whothink i've disappeared. it's too bad warmakes people disappear like chess pieces, that prisonsterm prisoners into movie endings.
when i fade into themountains on a forest trail, i still have not disappeared. even though it's greenfacade turns my arms and legs into branches of oak. it is then i belong toa southerly wind, which by now you have mistakenas me nodding back and forth like a hasid in prayeror a mother who's just lost her son to gunfire in detroit. in my children, i see mybulging face pressing further
into the mysteries. in a library in tucson, onthe plane above buenos aires, on a field where nearbyburns a controlled fire, i'm held by a professor, ageneral, and a photographer. one burns a finelywrapped cigar, then sniffs the scentedpages of my books, scouring for the bittersmell of control. i hold him in mymind like a chalice. i swish the amber hueof lager on my tongue
and ponder the drilling rigsin the gulf of alaska and all the oil-painted plovers. when we talk aboutlimits, we disappear. in jasper, texas you candisappear on a strip of gravel. i'm a life in secret language. termites toil overa grave and my mind is a routine of yesterdays. at a glance fromacross the room, i wear september on myface, which is eternal,
and does not disappear evenif you close your eyes once and for all simultaneouslylike two coffins." you're going tohave to make a tea. - ok, so i'll get us startedwith a few questions, and then we'll letyou ask questions. so i won't takeup too much time. so thank you verymuch for that reading. it was wonderful. i wanted to ask, so urbanrenewal is a series of poems,
but it extends across threeof your four books of poetry. and then you also referred toone that was published online, and you also read us somepoems that were clearly-- that were set invermont that were part so several questionscome to mind. one is, when did you realizeyou were writing a series? and how do youfeel about the fact that your series isdispersed and not kind of collected and presented as such?
- well, that youthful dreamof that tome of a book is still deep inside me. i still want themto come together. and my hope is that i'llwrite enough of them that even the onesthat are dispersed will find a home all together. what i wanted to readwere the poems of travel that also are written inthis particular form, poems that take place in italy, inkenya, greece, spain, jamaica.
and what i'm realizingis that it's not so much a poem of placeas it is me trying to inhabit differentlandscapes and grow inside this particular form. if you look at themon the page, they're all kinds of singleblocks of text. and there's a formalismthat either you hear or you don't hear. and there's alternatingrhymes and internal rhyme
and these kind oflong, lush sentences that accrete, hopefullyempowerment through images. so i have been consistentin that regard. it's just that the lens haswidened to include my life not just in philadelphia. so this poem isgrowing along with me. - and the term renewal,"urban renewal." - even back then i read justa little bit about richard nixon's urban policy torebuild cities post the riots,
post-1960s, 1970s. and knew even then when ifirst started that i wanted to appropriate that term. because so much ofwhat i wanted to get at is that my young life wasenriched by the presence of art in my life and people. and so the renewal-- it's supposed to signifyon that social policy, but it's more if you likelook at the poems and some
of the themes that comethrough, many of them kind of narrate my encounterswith people in my neighborhood or works of art, music. the musician sun ra lived twoor three blocks away from me in germantown. i visited-- i've saidthis in other views, but i grew up in thephiladelphia museum of art. so "urban renewal" was, again,to get at certain narratives that you wouldn'tknow if you relied
on popular cultureor the evening news. - yeah, that makes sense. i also wanted to askyou about the flaneur. - ah, yes. - because you mentioned it. this famous conceptintroduced in the 19th century by charles baudelaire, the poet. and the flaneur is astroller, an urban stroller, probably a bourgeoissubject with a lot
of time on his hands,and probably a he. and it's kind of a wayof taking in the scene, but also kind of being amaster of it, i suppose. so yours was alonein an arts district, sitting at a tableand drinking beer. and so i just, imean i just would like to ask how you thinkthe persona of the flaneur, that's so kind ofcharged for us. - yes, it is.
- how it works in your poetry. - well, you're absolutelyright to talk about or allude to class andprivilege, but again, i think what i take away fromthat figure is the imperative to enter into whatis being seen. and what i was trying to sayearlier, i think writers, i won't say poets, althoughwe're the superior [? form-- ?] everyone knows we're superiorat this than anyone else. but poets, particularlyi think the best of us,
going back to russianformalism, they defamiliarize whatis seen around us. and i think part of whati've long been trying to do is kind of teaseout what strikes me as not terriblyremarkable on the surface, but to kind of delvea little bit further. and i really do thinkit's what we often say is contextualization. and so the guy who's deliveringa package in new york
city, where that poemtook place actually, who's eating at the sametime he's navigating traffic, and tosses his wrapper. you know, that's adetail that could quickly go by, but if you think aboutthat bird, the series of images that came to me. sometimes, and iwonder if there's writers in the roomthat feel this way, it can be overwhelming,the kind of flood.
and so there's somepart of the flaneur that is almost compulsory, i think. the strolling part, however, iwish i could do more of that. - you can sit and havea beer, right, and still consider yourself a flaneur. - it's more of anemblematic figure than an actualtheoretical figure for me. so i'll ask one morequestion, and then we'll open it up to the floor.
the question i wantedto ask was what for you personally is theconnection between the urban and poetry, specifically? - i knew you weregoing to ask that. i almost wrote ananswer down because-- - how could i not? - i recently have beenacquainting my youngest son with the harlem renaissance. and i was thinking about themigration of african americans
who brought withthem to the north a whole set of values,but also a culture. and how wonderful thatparticular moment was captured in the literature specifically. i think during thatparticular period, i'm thinking abouthow a life gets recorded and almost archived. and so i see the poet as kindof archiving rich experiences in our lives, just to kind ofgo back to that a little bit.
also, if i think aboutpoetry, i was saying this to some studentstoday, i can hear-- believe it or not, i can hear1920s in the poetry of elliott. i can hear the rhythmof that particular age. and i think finding the rhythmicequivalents and language to a particular age, suchthat it enters our body, particularly in urban spaceswhen so much of it is-- my house in vermontis totally very chill. and i get here, andit's like hop in a taxi.
go get to where you're going. jump out. someone's rushing in. get your coffee. someone's in line behind you. someone's in front of you. so i think that art helpsto slow us down in a way, while it's recording, i thinkwhile the poet is recording. there's somethingabout the pacing
of a poem that forces youto acclimate to its rhythms. and that holds true, too,for rural areas as well. i think part of, if you listento country music and blues, bluegrass, you can hear thekind of languidness of time that exists in rural spaces. so i think poems recordon many different levels. - thank you. all right, so i'm sure thatsome of you have questions that you'd like toask major jackson.
and maybe i'll justlet you recognize people who have their hands up. be sure to maybe standup and ask your question with some volume. - [inaudible] and i amfascinated by two things that happened tonight. i had a conversationwith someone from india, and my thing is,i have the sense that my spiritualhome is in india,
even though i'm not from there. i've never been to indiaor anything like that. but you have mentionedtwice argentina. flying over buenos aires,my friend is from argentina, and we were thinkingabout [inaudible]. and flying over buenosaires and [inaudible] of recorded music from argentinaas part of [inaudible] legacy. what's up with that? - what's up withme and argentina?
i have this belief that ifyou put the energy in poems, it will happen. so i'm trying to get there. let's talk. well, south americanculture, i mean, where there'speruvian culture, i'm really fascinated, interestedin the presence of, and the lasting culturallegacy of africa there. and so if i do gothere, it would probably
be more research. but i love the culture. and i love the food. and a friend of mine, i wasvery jealous of a friend of mine who got to spend threeor four years there. and there's a veryvibrant art scene as well. so i think-- and the music,i mentioned the folk music, particularly, has beenreally important to me. i don't listen to too much musicwhen i write, but when i do,
that's among the musicthat's in rotation. hello, sir. yes? - i'm interested in yourrelationship to the political. specifically, how do politicalpressures from your communities and also internal pressuresthat you place upon yourself affect your relationshipwith a blank page? meaning how-- itseems like you have this very distilled, definedrelationship with your lens.
could you expound on that? - what i was speaking earlierabout respectability politics. i think that at some pointbecame a kind of a lock on my imagination. and it became very important. that was the only pressure,let me just say, that i felt. because my mentors were veryliterally both black and white people who came fromprogressive communities. in my life therewas a jesuit priest
who worked with danberrigan and his brother. there were activists fromthe '60s and '70s, teachers, writers, who were mentors. and so i inherited thiscontinuum i would say, of consciousness aroundart that was functional, art that made a difference,art that protested. and then at some point,and i don't know, i can't figure out whennecessarily, there's a certain demand thatyou have for you art
to be art, to elevate to therealm of art and not sloganary. however, that's notme at all announcing myself as apolitical. and in fact, ifirmly believe it's the mark of an artist's orwriter's maturation when they realize that theirwriting should be beholden and responsibleto us as a larger community of human beings whoare trying to navigate shifts in regimes, politicalregimes, and decency.
and i want to add tothat particular decency. the thing is i want itto be on my own terms. i don't want it tobe programmatic. and i want it to be artful. so i think there's been sometremendous, wonderful poems that have been written thatprotest conditions here in america and mygreat regret is that we do notcelebrate and teach that tradition in this country.
and it's not just protestpoems or vietnam war poems. there are forms that arefar more quiet than that but have great politicalvalence and resonance. that should be anaward that we give, much like the poetryfoundation gives an award to, i think it's the mark twainaward for humorous poetry. i think we need to comeup with an award that announces the politicaldimensions of our work. anyway, how does itimpact my relationship
to the page and my art? i think it's awonderful challenge. i think it forces me to-- i said it was a chain ora lock on my imagination. but i'd like the challengeof writing something that will hopefullyhave an impact and that furthers the causeof social, political justice. sometimes there's beenseveral poems of mine that someone hasbrought up to me
and said, hey, this one guywas like, oh, your poem, "how to listen." i go, you're a poet? he goes, no, no, buti really like it. i open this groupmeeting that i have for men that batter their wiveswith your poem "how to listen." and i'm like, if youtold me to write a poem about a group of guys who-- i probably would have frozen up.
but who knows how poemsexist and find their readers in the world, andhow people are going to take it in and hold it closeand use it and pass it on? that's a mystery to me. but i think it's just enoughto pay close attention to language, thedemands of form, the desire to make a new sound. those are all noble. hello.
how long had youlived in vermont before you foundvermont-based imagery creeping into your poetry? and maybe you could talka little bit about-- - yeah, i resistedit for awhile. i resisted writingabout ice fishing. there's moose signs everywhere. i haven't seen one yet. i've read about them.
it took me aboutclose to 12 years to finally decidethat ok, i'm going to write about this place. it's startling, beautiful. i drove cross country to oregonto go to graduate school. and i camped along theway with a girlfriend who wasn't so keen on camping. so we had to go into thesemotels and hotels occasionally. but what happened for me wasthis very deep appreciation
for landscapes andvarieties of landscapes and really how stunninglybeautiful this country is. but when i got tothe cascade mountains and northwest and hit thecoast, the pacific coast, something inside me just broke. and so i realized that i wasgravitating towards landscapes of this particular sort. everyone will tell you,african-americans make up less than 0.1% of vermont.
and we joke that weall know each other. and if someone leaves,even temporarily, half the population decreases. fortunately for me, though,i travel quite a bit. and i still have family upand down the east coast. so i never really feltfirmly in vermont, because i was traveling so much. but a couple years agoi decided that this will be home for awhile, imight as well contribute.
there was a greatnumber of writers who have come through there,ashberry and ron padgett is a great poet whohas come through there. and vermont has no shortageof writers and poets, a great tradition of writing. so i'm reading a lotof grace paley now, who wrote aboutthetford, vermont. everyone knows shewrote about new york, but she lives in thetford.
galway kinnell,wonderful tradition. - microphone? - hi. - i was getting in a dreamystate listening to your color that you're bringing intoyour poetry, particularly just descriptive aspectswhich becomes almost painterly in some aspects. but i wonder-- maybe inconnection to the philadelphia museum of art-- how you escapedthe really decimating aspect
of urban renewal in philadelphiaduring the '60s and '70s, which largely attributed to thedestruction of the inner city. basically, the whites movedout into suburban areas. and that was not uncommonin american cities. and it left acertain income, which was the middle class whiteincome, which somewhat sustained the city fromcompletely breaking down into pockets of really,really extreme poverty. which didn't have any money,unless it was supported
by, say, antipovertyprogram, which was actually a way ofkeeping you in poverty. so can you contrast thatto moving to vermont, which is sort of an antithesisto that kind of environment. and maybe draw itfrom your poetry from the standpoint of yourmuseum experiences as a kid. well, i would neveruse the word escape. people have used thatword in the past. and i understand, from theoutside, what it looks like.
i was going to use some visualstonight to get at that contrast that you're talking about. but i'll say this. it was such a rich experiencegrowing up where i grew up. the people around mehad great dimensions. evenings were full offun and music and play. and then crack cocaine came. and that was the bombthat had people compromise long held valuesthat sustained them
for a long time andtheir communities. i had like a lot of people who-- if you read richardrodriguez and others, there's someone who mentoredyou or took a special interest in you, someone whosaid, apply here. i was assistant nancy pusheda summer math camp at-- not exeter, what'sthe other one? andover. my mom was like, no, idon't know no andover.
right? it was people like that. and i wouldn't say escapeas much as i was fortunate. my therapist askedthe same question. how did you escape? no, i was quite fortunate. and i had intereststhat kind of made me stand out a little bit-- books.
i shouldn't say that. that's wrong. i had friends who read. and there was a groupof us, group of kids. to some extent, you'reright to ask that question. i very much appreciate it. one of things that i'mtaking up now as a project is the amount of ruralpoverty in new england. and i want to do a photoexhibit and write poems.
i want to take thephotos and write poems. i think the label that-- and this is part of reasonwhy i started writing-- i wanted to dignifythe lives of people that we kind of writeoff in urban areas because they're poor. and one of the thingsthat this election showed us is that we have to challengethose particular terms because the level of povertyin rural environments
outstrips some of what weare accustomed to seeing on the screen. it's profound to find yourselfin certain places, whoa. and then you really realizethat the narrative here isn't about race or who's a racist. it really boilsdown to who has it and who doesn't haveit, very simply that. i've traveled quitea bit over the years, and i've seen thatdynamic in kenya.
i've seen it inparts of paris, who has it, who doesn't have it. there's certainparts of paris that look like where i grew upright around the corner. the crazy thing is a younglady that i recently met, she teaches art attemple university. so you go oh, where do you live? 26 and thompson. i was like, you wouldhave been robbed,
like what are you doing? the area's so gentrified now. i haven't been to my oldneighborhood in many years. but what you're talkingabout, white flight and social policiesdefinitely had an impact. but i think tally'scorner or any other study you want to point to, theydon't give the rich narrative that i feel like poemsand stories can give us. hey, y'all.
thank you for coming-- - wait, wait, wait, - no? there's one more? - i was just going to ask sinceyou brought up tally's corner. there's this like greatralph ellison quote about him not seeing harlemin the sociology that he was reading about it. and as a sort ofurban sociologist,
i'm curious if you can sortof impart any advice on how to sort of describe in ways thatfeel authentic, urban places, beyond the form of poetry. - yeah, so repeatthat last part again. so what's the coreof the question? - how to describe-- what youwant to call authentic or rich urban places beyondthe form of poetry. - that's where i feel like ioften push my students away from cliched thinkingand to kind of cultivate
a restlessness with words. and that's where ifeel like figuration starts to create greatnuance and maybe gets to a greater precision. i wrote an essay about the factthat white people don't write about race in this country. now we do because somethings have happened. but at that time the poemsthat i looked at, for example, the popular term for whitepoets writing about race
was always big and black. it's amazing, icouldn't believe it. every time i openeda poem it was like why do we have to putthose two words together? are there no black dwarves? no one that you're not likeafraid of, that's not scary? but that's theinherited language. or the young menwho wear clothes that's not tight-fitting also.
how do you describe that in away that isn't about your fear? you know what i'm saying? so i think findingthe language really has to come from some genuinespace that is generous and that is humane. i think i hate tosay it, but i think journalists are very lazy. and they help tocontribute, unfortunately. - well if i'm notmistaken, i think
there's a small receptionjust outside the room. so if you want to speakdirectly with major jackson, then that's where you cando it for a little while, if he holds up. - yeah, i'm doing good. - thank you very, very much.
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