(John Keene, Tyehimba Jess, Alison Meyers, Tylias Moss, and Riley Atsuro) Poets Tyehimba Jess, John Keene, Thylias Moss, and Atsuro Riley read selections from their original work, including poems that earned them recognition as Whiting Award winners. Their presentation represents three decades of excellence and the diverse aesthetics that resonate with Cave Canem Foundation's mission and values.

Published Date: February 17, 2016

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:00:04):

Welcome to the A W P podcast series. This event was recorded at the 2015 A W P conference in Minneapolis. The recording features John Keen tba, Jess Thalia Moss, and at Soro Riley. You'll now hear a W p Board of Trustees member Jill Chrisman and Alison Myers, executive director of Kave KA, provide introductions.

Speaker 2 (00:00:33):

Hi, I am Jill Chrisman. I am a member of the A W P Board of Trustees and I am so happy that you are all here with us today for three decades, four poets with Kave ka. First of all, before I begin, I just want to say how grateful a W P is to Kave Khanum for hosting this event. And then I need to do a little scolding, not scolding, it's preparatory, scolding. If you've got your cell phone, make sure it's silenced. If you're a live tweeter, go ahead and tweet. Just do it subtly. We encourage that refrain from any flash photography during the presentation and I know after the event you'll be excited. You can buy books out by the information booth in the main lobby and we're going to have a signing table set up with all four of our poets outside the doors of this hall. Okay? But we want to give 'em a few minutes to get to the table so I know you'll be excited, but just go get in an orderly line and we will wait for the poets who for us are basically rock stars. I understand that. So thank you so much. And now please join me in welcoming the real introducer. Alison Myers, executive director of Kave ka.

Speaker 3 (00:01:53):

Thank you so much and welcome everyone. We're thrilled you're here today I want to thank a W P for our literary partnership. We love this relationship and plan on coming back year after year. On behalf of Cove Kum, it's my privilege to present four poets whose work is as stunning and revelatory as it is aesthetically diverse. What unites each of them at this event today is the common thread of having received a Whiting Award, a recognition that supports emerging writers of great promise and resonates with Kave K's longstanding commitment to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African-American poets. I now will introduce our poets who will read in chronological order of their Whiting Award year, beginning with the most recent at Sir O'Reilly's collection of poetry is Romy's order recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. In addition to a WHI award received in 2012, his work has been honored with a Pushkar prize, a Landin literary fellowship, and a Wiin Award from the Library of Congress.

Speaker 3 (00:03:09):

Ta Maes is the author of Leadbelly, a national poetry series selection, also named one of the best poetry books of 2005 by Library Journal as well as lio a collection of poems forthcoming in fall 2015, a recipient of a 2004 literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a Kave Kum fellow and associate professor of English at the College of Staten Island. He received a Whiting Award in 2006, Kave Kah fellow and longtime member of the Darkroom Writers Collective. John Keen has published the award-winning novel annotations. He also authored SE Osmosis, a book of poetry produced in collaboration with Christopher Stackhouse and the short fiction collection, counter narratives forthcoming from New Directions later this year, an associate professor of English and African-American African studies at Rutgers University Newark. He's a translator of Hilda Hilts novel letters from a seducer. He received a Whiting Award in 2005. Thalia Moss is the author of eight collections of poetry. Most recently Tokyo Butter. She has published two plays, a memoir and several books for children. Among her honors are a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Widow Binner award for poetry and a Whiting award received in 1991, the founder of Limited Fork Poetics. She's a professor of English and art and design at the University of Michigan. Please join me in welcoming our first poet at ro. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:05:01):

Hi everyone. Thank you Allison. This is a tremendous privilege to be here with you today and also to be with these three immense writers that I love. I'm happy to be in their company, happy to hear more of their tremendous work. I'm also very happy to be encircled like this the way we are today, encircled with you. Happy to be called into this ring if you think about it, it's a really old shape we're making in here today. An ancient shape in the mind. It's our very own green amfa. Glad right here in downtown Minneapolis. And so if I may, just a little lyric to start us off a bit of a benediction for our gathering and it's by way of a thank you to Kave Khanum to a W P and to the Whitings. And I want to thank them for being what lamps they've been for our art and for how lucerne they've been for our literary history.

Speaker 4 (00:06:13):

This called Plexus, what came to seem to him the core, the pulsing core is wafted warped, a lit meat mesh of herds. What tails he'd nod like seeds, like sparks live, ember words, lucer, core red, gold filaments, bloom and thrum. So the first poem I wanted to read is from the beginning of my book Romy's Order. The book's main shapes are a boy, his river, his languages, his fraught family, all in the low country of South Carolina. And in this poem he's making, he's working with that most originary of forms, a child's picture of a house picture.

Speaker 4 (00:07:28):

This is the house and jungle strangled yard I come from and carry the air out here is supper singed and bruised tinging and close from where I'm hid a perfect y crotch perch of medicine smelling sweet gum. I can belly worry this Welted branch and watch for swells and coming squalls along our elbow curve of river. Or I can hunker turn and brace my trunk and limbs and face my home. Our roof is crimp, ribbed and buckling tin and tar. Our in warped wooden porch door is kicks guard and splintering the hinges of it. Rust cry and rass in time with every tailspin wind and jam slap. And after slap and shutter our steps are slabs of cinder crush and temper. Tamped and cooled. See that funnel blur of color in the red gold glass mama, mainly boiling jelly. She's the apron. Yellow rick racked plaid in there and stove coil coral.

Speaker 4 (00:08:58):

The quick silver blade flash plus the magma brimming ladle splash. That's her behind the bramble berry purple sieved and stored out here. Crickets are cricking their legs turt lets are cringing in their bunker shells and burrows. Once bedded night crawling worms are nerving up through bean vine roots and moon vines and dew shining Now and cursive mama will pressure cook and scald and pan scorch and frizzle. Daddy will river drift down to the falling down dock. I myself will monkey shin so high no bark burns or tree wraps or tides or lava spit can reach me. I will hunt for after scraps and sparks and eat them all.

Speaker 4 (00:10:12):

So the boy Roy's mother is Japanese so very much a feer in these parts and in this poem he seems to be trying to make some kind of container for some memories. Box these twigs stand for clothesline pines. First thing, back when our lot was new, mama ax hacked them naked of their lower limbs and switches this scratch piece of very negated yarns in here for how she cats cradle rigged our trees with wire one hairy sprig of this packing twine could count for cracklings. Queasy carried, I mean pigs rinds threaded on my neck like beads. Mama crystal cut and fried crisp through the night and fine needle at them like a jewel kindler would or a spider Q. What did you learn at the super rat? A fret worked choker draws a crowd. Okra does too. These dry rattle bbb seeds are seeds of the time when her okra crop grew giant. She'd pounded fish heads into fertilizer cups and carved complicated water grooves and flooded us like a patty. Dark groves, roses like Vietnam. Bamboo cars came by to see the camouflage green stalks going high as the house and how the B bristly pointed finger pods were not like food but human people pointed at all. She'd raised and long wood sided neighbor wagons idled and lingered and one man leaned his whole self out and white flashed and popped and tossed his melting flash cube and mama lifted up this skirt to hide her eyes.

Speaker 4 (00:12:36):

Now southerners here, I'm sure there are some southerners here. Food lovers, home cooks are all going to know that a cast iron black skillet right is a sacred thing. We might even say it's a sacred living thing, right? A sacred living thing with its own natural history like the rest of us. And you also know that we never, ever, ever wash our black skillet ever for flavor reasons that ought to be obvious to everyone. So the natural history of a skillet, there are some mining words in here as you'd imagine since we're talking about iron and also there's a lovely old verb in here to kark, which is to fret or to worry. Skillet was mine. Drawn was pig. Iron is a cast heft fact choke damps in it born black, damp blood iron or stoke load lamps turn turbulate crumble, cof and barrows trace tastes of blast furnace. Harrow smelt and pour holds the heat hard re memories, flavors, no washing coss and plaques itself in layers like a pearl.

Speaker 4 (00:14:25):

Now in this poem called Clary, we'll all have to remember back to our Elizabeth Bishop probably the most recent obvious use of eyes, ANDAs eyes. ANDAs is a gelatinous substance taken from the swim bladders of fish. It's mostly used in beer making. It used to be used in certain kinds of windows. We care about it here today because of the grayish milky kind of opacity that color clary her cart like a dugout. Canoe had been an oak trunk cut young fire scoured what was bark, what was hartwood? Pure char hole ads hacked and gouged ever after, never not wheeling hollow there behind her up the hill toward Bennett yard, down through eight mile the narrows comes clary by here now body bent, past bent, intent upon horizon and carry her gna eye. Long since gone eyes and glassy opal, the potent brimming fluent one looks brown of course his clary sure is by you through here. Now bearing and born ahead by hall and hold behind her applies the dark whole night's most nights along the overpass over acabe crosses Clary bless her barrow up there now pausing and vowing there. The place where the girl fell after a while passing comes her cart like a whole note held

Speaker 4 (00:16:55):

Another very, very short little lyric called rhythm. Rhythm. The times she bent to eat our dirt. The cane pole threshed her spine. Times I was made to bend to eat red mud. Our dirt hurricane pole threshed my spine.

Speaker 4 (00:17:23):

This is an old tale of two brothers sunder, a last rock, skip hurl storm crazing river glass, the closest they ever were in right lock stitch snared and split some fire supper cooked on sticks. By dawn the older brother took to chucking what bottle rags he could find and crud oysters across the high pitched younger black hour waters with a owl lowered the sound such as rose from him carved into us clings hadn't they clung tooth and claw to branch and to bark came a man in truck to take them off. Diesel those boys off away. Some say somewheres up upcountry inland where it was they landed. Why nobody, not them knows no body, not them nose, just how they humped and grubbed home. What road they'd graved, what woods crisscrossed, which creeks, which trains they'd hopped. Who helped came safe home, sure but blank. As houses came safe, home as him, as him as evermore, not them. This little song has a croker sack in it, a rough burlap, very loosely woven tow sack and call in this poem is C a u l, foster Ling song, hadn't he come to us out from county home cleaved to a call swaddle cloth. Of course Croker sack weave. He all the time plucked and wrong.

Speaker 4 (00:20:06):

This poem bears a little head note. Can's stop up Highway 52. It's voiced by a speaker who has taken to calling herself candy moth. I've been candy since I came here young. My born name keeps, but I don't say to her who my mama was. I was pure millstone. Cumber child ain't but A to sack full of Bain. Well lit out right quick, hitched and so forth lagged. It was rid that could be at first then thick, it hid, then waah out to Nash's meat yard, obs juke at county home they had this jazz horn drumbeat, orphan band, them lambs.

Speaker 4 (00:21:15):

They let me bite and listen this grizzly man, he came, he buttered me, then took me off swore I was surely something. Let me ride in back some thing. Snared spat on thing being more like more so ever what he meant. No, I'd never sound what brunt he called me what he'd done had I a hundred mouths. How his mouth repeats on me down the years. Everlastingly rivaled looking like rot fruit, wasn't it hunched up like a grub. First chance, high inched off back through bindweed. I was gone. Nothing wrong with gone as a place for living whereby a spore eats air when she has to. Where I fairly much clung for peace came the day I came here young. I moed myself. I cleaved apart.

Speaker 4 (00:22:33):

A soul can hide like moth on bark. My born name keeps but I don't say. And finally this poem, thicket calls up a place where as writers and readers, this is a place I reckon we all know. Opin is a spiky kind of palmetto that you find in thick its and marshes and lumen you'll remember from light bulbs is a unit of light, a measure of light, but it's also the inner space, the central part of a cell. So there's the cell rim and then the inner part or the central cavity in say the pit of a plant. So this is thicket.

Speaker 4 (00:23:24):

We come nod by need on hands and knees as a creature. Nosing grub seeks a spring as bendy spine as bandy snakes through salt shrub LP and needle break for darkling green for thorn surround this absorbing quay cramped ground of briar canes inter volved with kudzu mesh and mold of these convoluted vines we grasp to suck to taste the pith, the lumen, the cell sap pulse to try to know some sour sharp, something about something lumen is as lumen does. A little room for turmoil to grow. Lucid in here where Clary set her cart, tongue down and dug and brailed in here where candy breathed, we grasped to suck to taste what light. Let loose the bail that bows us down. Bow down. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:25:18):

Good afternoon. I feel so genuinely blessed to be here in front of you good folks with Avi Kah representing and this guy who I met on the train to my first Kave Ka summer John King back in the day and to be sharing this space with you today. So thank you to a w p. Thank you for CC for giving me this opportunity to talk to y'all for a second. I'm going to read a few poems here and this first one, unfortunately I had to add a name to this poem, which I think you may have run across in your perusal of the news regarding incident in South Carolina, Walter Scott, the murder. I also have some names in here that are not from this country but also are similarly addressed by the police state of this country. And that is the names of children that were killed by drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. This

Speaker 5 (00:26:42):

Is against silence. My name is TBA Jess. I am a black poet. I have a silence to be righted. I have a silence after each shooting. I remain a nation un silenced. I am a poet murdering silence. My name is Eric. My name is Bell. My name is Eleanor. My name is Walter Scott. My name is Nation. My rights fit any murder description. My remains remained on the asphalt for four hours while the crowd screamed about my rights. Then the silence as I was shoved into an SS U V and carted to the morgue. My name is poetic Trayvon Diallo Uzman sing my blackness in the headlines my name once held all possibilities but now flies out from the mouth hauling anger and sorrow. I have a right to be angry. I have a morgue inside my silence. I have an arm against my throat and a bullet in my head.

Speaker 5 (00:28:07):

I have a wedding to go to, a graduation to walk a little brother to chill with. And now I'm a face on a placard in a sea of anger, a newspaper article. I'm a question passed from one generation to the next, a lesson in fear and all I really wanted is to go home. My name is Murder. My name is a silent snapshot. On the funeral program, the officer remained silent. He was programmed by a nation's anger, a moaning silence. Born in the chokehold of a slave ship. Ask if he's a drone, cruising the streets of the nation programmed to murder black. Ask a drone for the poetry of the names of the rightness it has murdered. Ask the silence about your rights. My name is Pearly Golden.

Speaker 5 (00:29:07):

My name is Tariq Aziz. My name is Kayla Moore. My name is Ana Stanley Jones. My name is Fal Wahad. My name is a nation of funerals. The silence after my name is murdered by the sound of the next. My name is Michael Brown. My name is Kimani Gray. Kendrick McDade Mauch, John Muhammad Yass Khan. The angry drone spotted me while I was home from the store on the way to work on the way to a wedding walking down the street, the drone looked down at me from its great height and power and the sky was full of its murder. My murder is a right. This nation angers for my name is a poem. My name is Not Silence. I am a black poem written into the silence left behind.

Speaker 6 (00:30:19):

I'm

Speaker 5 (00:30:23):

Going to read this one for all my Detroit folks in the house. Anybody here from the D? That's right, that's the way they be infernal. There's a riot. I fit into a place I fled called the motor city. It owns a story old and forsaken as the furnaces of Packard plant as creased as the palm of my hand. In a summer I was too young to remember. 1967, my father ran into the streets to claim a small part of my people's anger in his Kodak. A portrait of the flame that became our flag long enough to tell us there was no turning back, that we burned ourselves clean of all doubt. That's the proof I've witnessed. I've seen it up close and in headlines of felony sentence, spelling out the reasons my mother's house is now worth less than my sister's Honda. How my father's worthy rage is worth nothing at all.

Speaker 5 (00:31:44):

In the scheme of it all, though my kin came out lucky. We survived mostly by fleeing the flames, while sealing their heat in their minds. The way a bank holds a mortgage, the way a father holds his son's hand while his city burns around him. I almost forgot to mention the canary in Detroit's proverbial coal mine who sang for my parents when they fled the inferno of the South. Its song sweaty, sweet with promise. I'm singing myself right now. I'm singing the best way I know about the way I've run from one fire to another. I've got a head full of song boiling away I carry a portrait of my father.

Speaker 5 (00:32:44):

I'm going to read a couple poems that are from my upcoming book, Oleo, which is coming out in March next year. There's a lot of folks in it from the 19th century 19th to the 20th century who performers, et cetera. One of them was named sissy Reddit Jones. She was the first black performer to sing in Carnegie Hall and they used to call her black patty because there was another opera singer who was white who they thought that she lived up to her name, but Citta knew better and she knew that she was in her own class. But this one is entitled Citta Jones Ad Liam as an ad-lib, I sing this body ad Lido Europe scraped raw between my teeth until Presto ave. Maria floats to the surface from a chuah tributary of Suwanee until I'm a legato Darkling whole note, my voice shimmering up from the Atlantics hold until I'm a colder of sail song whipped, salted wind until my chorus swells like a lynched tongue until the NOC turns boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross. I sing this life in testimony to tempo rebato to time stolen body by body, by body, by body. From one passage to another I sing tremallo to the opus of loss. I sing this story staccato and stretto, A fugue of blackface and blew up arias. I sing with one hand. S smoldering in the steely cannon, the other lento, slow ous lingered in the fields of babylons falling.

Speaker 5 (00:34:48):

Citta used to tour with a crew called the black Patty Troubadours. She would sing opera and after she sang, the troop would kind of go into a minstrel show. Minstrel shows were extremely, extremely popular back in the turn of the century. So this one is entitled Forte. GSO Forte with force was the will that overtook me, that freed my throat and lit my mouth to music. Forte was each wave of song forte like my father's choir of freedmen, sometimes wavered and off key, sometimes pitched in more fear than light, but always forte hurling what voice was left to them into the cauldron of church air. After lifetimes singing their spirituals in secret, they sang Forte like the Steve do, shout from ship to shore. Crate after crate of cargo burdened into the holds. Their Gandhi opera bouncing off halls forte in the GSO of their motion, the altogether swing of arm and hand and rope and hoisted weight, GSO onto decks, all braced for storm, all blessed with prayer from each providence pulpit prayed over from bow to stern blessings from the communion.

Speaker 5 (00:36:16):

Cry of each church graso with hands raised in testimony. I hear them each night forte when I stand on our prow of stage from town to town, port to port. Captain of this ragtag ship of blackface, cakewalk, fools and ballers teaching crowds graso under spotlights with each ticket sold. Forte is the cry of the barker bundling each crowd with a smooth talk promise. Darky entertainment with a touch of high class classical forte is the finale each night. Graziosa is the closing curtain, the unmasking of painted faces, the darkened lamplight, the applause fading like the hush of receding surf that carries us on through the night. The ocean of audience rising and falling with each wave of season. Graziosa is the sail of our bodies in their wind.

Speaker 5 (00:37:18):

I'm going to roll with a couple more. Y'all with me? We good? We good? All right, just take a pulse. Alright quick. You know what I'm saying? There's another cat from the 19th century. He was born. He was born around, I want to say around late 1860s, early 1870s. His name was Blind Boone and he was out of Columbia, Missouri when he was born. Actually, I remember the date now. It was 1865 that he was born. His mother was an ex-slave. His father was a union bugler. Six months after he was born, he came down with encephalitis and encephalitis. Your brain has a fever. It's swelling. The medical treatment that the doctor came up with at that time in order to save his brain was removal of the eyes,

Speaker 5 (00:38:22):

Blind, boons blessings. Bless the fever in that night in the sixth month of my life, bless the fever for it gave me sight. It swo my brain to fit God's gift. It brought the hand that would lift each eye from my infant skull. Bless the sweat, my baby ball, bless the horse that hauled the surgeon through dusks, dark half drunk and swearing into mine. Bless the flame, it sterilized the metal of the spoon. Bless the path between lid and bone. Slipped and slid by that instrument of my deliverance from sight, bless the handling of the knife. Bless that night that gave me night, wrapped it around my bloody face, whispered how I could be grace notes arpeggios a piano roll of sound copying each note from everything around me. You see, I'm sure at first there was the hurt and the scalding pain, but then again, bless an infant's two short memory. All I know is what lies beyond light. I've learned this is what's right for this one right here. Yes, bless the fever then listen close spear an ear to this piano and shut your eyes closed.

Speaker 5 (00:40:08):

This next one is, this is my last one. This one. He lived until my dates are failing me right now. I want to say after 1911, and he died around 1920 something. Sorry, I don't have the exact date, but he had an extremely successful career playing all around the country, all around the world, and he had a really fruitful career. He could remember things like we had dinner with you five years ago. He could remember where you were, what you ate and what the conversation was about and how much money you owed him. All right? But towards the end of his career, he was asked to come in and make some piano rolls so that at the time one of the only ways of recording music was on the piano, the player piano. And so he was challenged during one such occasion, and this is blind boons pianola blues.

Speaker 5 (00:41:12):

They said I wasn't smooth enough to beat their shark machine, that my style was obsolete, that old rags had lost their gleam and lunge that all I had left was a sucker punch that couldn't touch their invisible piano man with his wind up gutless guts of paper rolls. And so I went and told them that before the night was through, I'd prove what the son of an ex-slave could do. I dared them to put on their most twisty tune to play it double time while I listened from another room past the traffic sounds of the avenue below to play it only once and then to let me show note for note how that scroll made its roll through Chopin or Bach or Beethoven's best. And if I failed to match my fingers and ears with the spinning gears of their invisible pneumatic piano scholar, I paid them the price of $1,000.

Speaker 5 (00:42:13):

And what was in it for Boone you might ask might be the same thing that drives men through mountains at heart. Attack pace might be just to prove some tasks. Ain't meant to be neatly played out on paper and into air, but rather should tear out from lung, heart and brain with a flare of flicked wrist and sly smile above the 80 eights. And of course, that ever human weight of pride that swallows us when a thing's done just right, but they were eager to prove me wrong. They chose their fastest machine with their trickiest song and stuck it in a room far down the hall from me. They didn't know how sharp I can see with these ears of mine. I caught every note even though they played it in triple time, and when I played it back to them even faster, I could feel the violent stares heard one mother lucky black bastard. And that was my cue to rise, to take a bow and their smoldering silence and say, not luck my friend, but the science of touch and sweat and stubborn old toil. I bet these 10 fingers against any coil of wire and parchment and pump. And I let them there to ponder the wonders of blindness as I walked out the door into the boiling eye of the sun.

Speaker 5 (00:43:49):

Thank you.

Speaker 5 (00:43:57):

How you follow Ty es and it O'Reilly. I'd like to thank everyone for coming out today and I would like to especially thank my beloved Kave Ka for organizing this reading. I think Tamba said he used the word something along the lines of a black poem against the silence by poems written against the silence. And that is what Kave Kum, since its founding, has provided a space for. I also wanted to say it's an incredible honor to read with these three writers. And so in tribute to writers and to our history, to Kave Kah, and of course let me thank the Whiting Foundation. I'm going to read the beginning of a story about two poets from my next book, which will be out in a little less than a month. And the story is called blues and it's very lyrical, so I'm going to say just two things.

Speaker 5 (00:44:54):

The first is that the two main figures in the story are Langston Hughes, who needs no introduction and the great Mexican 20th century poet, Javier Tia, who some of you may be familiar with. And the second thing I'll say is that the story is very lyrical. It's almost like a poem. So you'll hear that and it's written in the style of another figure from our tradition and even the opening words riff on him, and I'm talking about Richard Bruce Nugent blues. He wanted to say something, but the English words at first eluded him when they met earlier that year at a secret party after the dinner given by Raphael Losano at the German director. Augustines the noted poet had been staying briefly in Mexico even before then. A few of them had shared his poems like talismans reading them as if their lives depended upon it.

Speaker 5 (00:45:50):

He had translated three and published them in a local journal. The older poets had already dismissed this so-called literature, condemned it much like their peers in Harlem. All this pansy dust from the gutter passing for good writing. This only spurred them to read more, to talk about it more, write more unforgettable as his verse each thought to himself. And the American entered the living room a compact beauty T brown highbrow kept by wavy black hair. After receiving his drink, he stood at the center of their circle, smile flashing. Each was vying to get his attention. To his surprise, he spoke decent, vigorous Spanish and his soft melodic voice all strained to hear him. Maybe he was a ano who had grown up among gringos, a Mexican as the new star of American Negro literature. Someone whispered this in laughter. He mentioned his friend Jose Fernandez de Castro, the Cuban writer.

Speaker 5 (00:46:49):

Carlos corrected that he was from Missouri, wherever that was. His father, he told him, had managed an electric plant, run a ranch in Toluca. He had spent part of his adolescent years here. He had come to wrap up the estate. He was staying with family friends on the de Alfonso though grieving, he still appeared gay. Something nevertheless held and reserved by that insistent grin so as not to keep him standing. Augustine invited him to sit the American recited lines by Lopez, ley and Jimenez. As he walked to the couch, they scrambled to place his beside him. Augustine as usual, sung his leg up over the easy chair's arm to show off his ample package. Roberto, who already had a boyfriend nevertheless perched on the edge of his seat, Antonio Etta, the lone woman among them, took it all in stride. He winked at her several times as he spoke and she leaned forward too.

Speaker 5 (00:47:42):

His English name was not so easy to pronounce Long Stone as how they all kept saying it. He had no problem with any of theirs. Forgetting not a single one complimenting the German on the furniture, his modern taste. He Javier sipped his punch and observed those lips polishing each syllable. The erum rose incarnate of that mouth. He hated comparing things to flowers, but in that moment there was no other metaphor. The houseboy brought in canapes and nuts and the American's eyes trailed his low broad shoulders. Aha. Some of them thought campesinos are what he goes for. The German could unrefined his touch as needed. He unbuttoned his shirt, collar, his fingers combing his chest. The poet offered his observation on the city's literary scene, who he asked were the politically radical, the experimental writers. He spoke of the visual arts, his love of bull fighting El los Eros.

Speaker 5 (00:48:36):

That's what he likes to fighting daredevils. There were going to take him to a party at a painter's house. He agreed and after several more rounds of drinks, they headed out the German's hand on the American's waist. Elias's clasping his left elbow. He Javier followed a few steps behind chatting with Antonio eta, studying the visitors' solid back thick buttocks. Their piles into two cars spared through the night to the painter's house. After five knocks a man with a scar from his right eye to his chin, ushered them in. Friends were already there. Everyone wanted to meet the American. A cross-dresser emerged from a stairwell, broke a conversation in mid-sentence. He Javier had another drink and then another, a man named Rodolfo he had never met before, whispering something in his ear. The American disappeared into the darkness and suddenly Long Stone is at Javier's side, smiling, saying, I will be staying in the city for a little while longer.

Speaker 5 (00:49:32):

Javier mentioning his fellowship to study drama at Yale. If you get to New York, sin, word will meet up in Harlem. He gives him several contexts in order to reach him. Before Javier can answer, A bull fighter's expert hand spear the visitor's arm from behind his eyes saying, this one is mine. Tonight, the two of them gliding away into the writhing hive. He sent a telegram from New Haven to the address on St. Nicholas Avenue where Langston was saying he had heard through the grapevine about the Guggenheim, the journey out to Los Angeles to write scripts. He jots in his notebook that he enjoyed the train ride down along the coast. He sat on the south side as his classmate had recommended observing the scenery of autumnal New York sound. The water indifferent in its blue undulations, vanishing intermittently behind screens of greening trees and warehouses. He slipped down for the holiday.

Speaker 5 (00:50:27):

The Americans celebrate to honor the genoese Columbus. He would not miss a single lecture, but we'll be able to catch at least a weekend matinee. He has told no one. Louis Mason, Salvador and Elias. Each a letter. He paused the photographs, the great vault of Grand Central tunnel. From the taxi to the New Yorker hotel, he stared up into the midday sky. The height of the towers astonished him. He imagined the shadow sleeping in the caverns between them, the pace, so more further than Mexico City. At lunchtime, all the colors of these people, their vivid hungry faces. Some made him forget that there was a depression. Others eyes scored their suffering right unto him. He saw through to their inner solitude. You should not stay up in Harlem. A friend had written they rioted in March, another warrant attacking every white person. Another said it was fine.

Speaker 5 (00:51:18):

Spend a night at the Theresa. No problem for Mexicans, but Negroes are forbidden there. He wanted to explore that in other neighborhoods. Perhaps he would venture up there before meeting with Langston. After a nap that first evening, he wandered the streets, then took the subway down to the West Village, ambulance solely around Washington Square, avoiding the beggars cars and buses. He happened upon the Italian district, a meal of pasta with red wine and a little tavern. He downed a few drinks, his eyes lingering on the men, but he said nothing. No one to help or leave his loneliness. He knew there were places nearby a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes. He would trace his steps back to Times Square, the doorman's gaze, tracking him inside. He sat at his desk and worked on several drafts of poems. Smoking a cigarette. He pinned a new one.

Speaker 5 (00:52:05):

Then the meal and train right hit him and he laid down, stretched across his bed, atop the covers, studying the sliver of midnight skies, scarred with stars. He wondered how well or if the poet even remembered him. No messages at the front desk. He will call the number he is tomorrow. Friends that sent him the names of several countrymen and other Latin Americans to meet new Yale friends, provided him with others. There are other writers he would love to encounter. His intention during his return after the new year, he thinks the Salvador of his a Augustine lasso, not the German and falls fast asleep. He appears at the telegram and tries to recall the poet's face remains an empty screen. He met so many people in Mexico City. He should consult his notebooks. Carbons so much he will never put into print. He ponders. Which one could this one be?

Speaker 5 (00:52:55):

The party after Raphael's at that apartment, not the movie director, not Salvador, but Javier. Slowly they lu into view the immense eyes, hawkish, nose wide, mouth glass, vase, complexion, a tiny, beautiful thing. Almost ine. He's trying to figure out if he will even have a minute to respond. Should he call anyone else or meet this man alone? The premier of the play is just over a week away. Everything that could go wrong already has, but because of the rich Ofay producer director whose changes have warped his vision into something monstrous, a mess on stage, who keeps demanding more of his royalties, silence from his drama agent Rumsey. Despite his constant appeals, maybe he should let Max handle this too. He sips his coffee and smiles at toy his second mother, his father, his own mother sent a brief letter from Cleveland, wishing him well. Her sincerity and false confidence is evident as her shaky hand.

Speaker 5 (00:53:54):

The tumor cannibalizing her insides. How can he be here and there always a need for more cash. How can he even think to write that novel poems keep grinding themselves out of him. The trip to Minnesota days ago feels like it took place last century. All those students cheering in his words how to bring that world more frequently interviewed. Maybe he has mixed this poet up with someone else. So many there such beauty. If only he had a beauty now to listen to him lean on lie beside as he barely slept black Mexican. It wouldn't matter. The sunlight crept in though he had only just halted a nightmare. The cast on stage performing in the theater empty Jones refusing altogether to pay him. Critics writing reviews condemning the language and structure he could use the air in light of Central Avenue. Now the beach and orange groves, those California negroes, even the tenement and singsong patter of his Cleveland and Chicago neighbors.

Speaker 5 (00:54:49):

He hugs toy goodbye and heads out more battles at the theater. Await him. He knots his scarf against the October chill fuels The telegram folded into fourth, the top cards in his jacket pocket, the subway platform, not so busy at midday. The train whining its swift approach. He finds a seat in the middle of the car exchanges glances with a silver-haired man who winks, slyly shall I made a record of your beauty. He extracts a poem tucked inside the script from his portfolio and his pen begins to mark it up. He realizes only as a train summers into 34th street that he has missed. He spent all of yesterday touring Manhattan first thing after breakfast, the ultra mater Chrysler Building and the Empire State forres both a Bri stroll from the hotel, the independent subway line to bookstore row in the village, wall Street, bowling Green, the aquarium at the little Ford at the island Southern tip.

Speaker 5 (00:55:47):

He walked to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge imagining crane steps. Whitman's Ferry Crossing rang his hotel from a nearby booth to find out if anyone had rung him A cab then trained to the public library's main branch of Fifth Avenue trucked up to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Rockefeller Center snapped photographs, ate a late lunch at an auto mat sipping a cola and polishing off a bowl of soda crackers and chicken noodle soup. Watching the Patricia's and penniless stream past the window on the street, he struck up a conversation with a Puerto Rican who gave him the names of restaurants to visit in East Harlem, A walk east to Madison's Haha shops where he brought handkerchiefs and scarf in the interborough up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He could only manage the exhibits of Hogarth's Prints so exhausted, he stumbled out into the Violet Street.

Speaker 5 (00:56:32):

No time left to visit Harlem. No messages waiting at his return in the hotel lobby, he called a painter friend of Carlos's to meet for a meal tomorrow. He had dinner in his room, began reading through his gathering poems. He pinned a letter to Salvador but crumbled it. Thought he might see what lurked out in the darkness. Signs stars. Blue tattooed letters, but slumber gripped him and he was out. He returned to his hotel the next day after leaving the chatty Guadalajara and a Broadway matinee of Porgy and best. He was searching for the right words to describe it. The songs kept peeling deep inside him, silence vast and frozen. A message from Langston awaited.

Speaker 5 (00:57:11):

He called the number and a woman answered. She would pass on his message for this evening. At 7:30 PM he set the clock and laid down. At seven, he rose and washed up, changed into fresh underwear, skirt the socks he had hung to dry. A pale lavender tie purchased in a store on College Street. At 7 25, he headed downstairs, expecting to see the American standing there. He sat in a comfortable chair and waited. He had brought a copy of LAN's poems. He flipped through, barely reading as his watch. Hand spun at 8 0 4. Langston walked in poems, extended in greeting his face, gay and Fuller, sporting a mustache. He spoke in Spanish almost formally. At first, Javier replied in casual English. Apologies upon apologies. They were, there were issues at the theater. A dramatic piece beginning in a week. Too much to explain right now. Did the visitor want to dine near the hotel?

Speaker 5 (00:58:03):

Go downtown to the village. Javier suggested Harlem. Langston mentioned it was 60 blocks north, but they would take the train. There were restaurants still open. He had one in mind in particular, if Javier was game, the visitor urges that they take a taxi cab. He had a little stipend. He would pick up the fair. The doorman hailed one for them. They climbed in and pitched right into conversation. Langston asking about the various people he had met last spring, the writers, painters, theater, the social and political conditions in Mexico. He offered some gossip about the celebrities he met in Los Angeles during his stay in Carmel, like the heart throb, Ramon Novarro. Javier describes the experience of Gershwin's musical. He's one of the finest composers. Langston says, not a colored man, but he has something of us in his soul. In no time, they reach Harlem where the building shrink and the face is brown. Thank you.

Speaker 7 (00:59:12):

Hello. Thank you for being here. I appreciate that and thank you Kabi Khanum for inviting me. This is the reason I came. I would not have come without that invitation, so thank you again. I'm only going to read two pieces. One from the year that I won the Whiting, and that is interpretation of a poem by Frost. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about the genesis of that piece. And the other piece is a children's story. I want to be now interpretation of a poem by Frost was written when I was a teacher at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. And I was assigned the class, the history and literature of Afro-Americans, which sounds fine, but I thought I would seize that opportunity to make a point. And some of the students had indicated that they took that class to avoid certain kinds of writing. And I thought, well, I would order one book for the class, the complete works of Robert Frost. And so that's what I did. The students were very upset with me because many of them had hoped to avoid the works of frost by taking that class. But I wanted to make the point that it wasn't who wrote it that made the difference. It was how well you could apply what was written to your own experience. And so I wanted to take a well-known poem like Stopping by Woods in a snowy evening, and I wanted to show them how this too could be a poem of the black experience.

Speaker 7 (01:01:03):

And their reaction was similar to yours. And so I set about having to write a poem to show them what I meant. How to interpret a poem by frost. And that's what this is. Please bear with me. Oh, it's also of note that the last person to read is the only woman. You may have noticed that I did Interpretation of a poem by Frost. A young black girl stopped by the woods so young. She knew only one man, Jim Crow, but she wasn't allowed to call him Mr. The Woods were his. And she respected his boundaries. Even in the absence of fits. I'm respecting the boundaries myself. Of course, she delighted in the filling up of his woods. She so accustomed to emptiness to being taken at face value this face, her face eternally, the brown of declining autumn. Watch the snow, enter the grass, clinging to bark, making it seem indecisive about race. Preference a fast to melt idealism. We still have that idealism. Some of us turn the grass clinging to bark, making it seem indecisive about race. Preference a fast to melt idealism with the grass covered. Black and white are the only options. Polarity is the only reality. Corners aren't neutral but are on edge. She shakes off snow, defiance wasted in this limited audience of horse, the snow does not hypnotize her as it wants to, as the blonde son does. In making too many preferred daylight, she has promises to keep the promise that she bear. Jim, no bastards, the promise that she ride the horse only as long as it is willing to accept writers. The promise that she begged him, no bastards.

Speaker 7 (01:03:55):

The promise to her face that it not be mistaken as shadow and miles to go, miles to go. More than the distance between Africa and Andover, more than the distance from black to white before she sleeps with Jim. Interpretation of a poem by frost.

Speaker 7 (01:04:27):

Now there's a question that my son was always asked much too early in his life. What do you want to be? And I can't answer that yet. I still don't know as long as I'm something. And so I wrote this book to help provide an answer. What do you want to be? Now it is a picture book, and so we're going to do a little experiment here. I'm going to read a few lines and then I'm going to show you the picture. But I have to hold a picture still so that it can be, I don't know. You can see it. Alright now. Alright. Today, a lady, a man, another lady, another man, and my friend asked me, what do I want to be? I thought, and I thought they were tired of waiting. So I said, I'll tell you tomorrow. The illustrator is

Speaker 6 (01:05:22):

Jerry Pickney.

Speaker 7 (01:05:25):

I walked home slowly. I kicked up rocks and dirt that filled the air like butterflies. I held a handful of river water that I let go of it above my head like rain. I lick a patch of sunlight on my arm. I played hopscotch in footprints. After I made them, I made a grass mustache and a dandelion and beard and a bird nest. Topa. The wind was a magician and it turned me into a dancer. Then I danced until I was dizzy and the sky turned into a lake. So I stood on my head and with a fish swimming in it.

Speaker 7 (01:06:11):

It's worth noting that the illustrator at first said that he didn't think he could illustrate this pictures and we're soon coming to the part that he wanted eliminated because he couldn't think of something to draw for it. But anyway, I double dutched with strands of rainbow. Then I fastened the strands to my hair and my toes and became a fiddle That sunbeam played. Then I sang with the oxygen choir at sunset, I was a firefighter and I squirted water at the sun into it. Turned into the moon and until it was so dark, all stars, all the stars couldn't play hide and seek anymore, all home free. I said, by the time I got home, I knew what I wanted to be. I want to be big, but not so big that a mountain or a mosque or a synagogue seems small. I want to be strong, but not so strong that a kite seems weak. I want to be old. Not really.

Speaker 6 (01:07:22):

I'm old

Speaker 7 (01:07:22):

Enough. Okay, I'm sorry, but not so old that Mars and Jupiter and Redwood seem young. I want to be fast, but not so fast that lightning seems slow. I want to be wise, but not so wise that I can't learn anything.

Speaker 6 (01:07:47):

Oh, this next picture is

Speaker 7 (01:07:48):

The one that they wanted to eliminate. Okay. But after he drew it, he said it was his favorite part.

Speaker 6 (01:07:53):

Okay,

Speaker 7 (01:07:55):

I want to be beautiful. Okay, that's true, but not so beautiful that a train moving in the sun like a metal peak has going. Feather on tracks that are still a thousand miles long, laid down like a ladder up a flat mountain. Wow, seems dull. I want to be green, but not so green that I can't also be purple. I want to be tall.

Speaker 6 (01:08:31):

Yes, yes,

Speaker 7 (01:08:36):

But not so tall that nothing is above me up, but still be somewhere with clouds and sky. I want to be quiet, but not so quiet that nobody can hear me. I also want to be sound, a whole orchestra with two bassoons and an army of cellos. Sometimes I want to be just the triangle, a tinkle. That sounds like an itch. I want to be still, but not so still that I turn into a mannequin or get mistaken for a tree. I want to be motion, but I also want the answer my pants to sometimes take a vacation. Sometimes I want to be slow, but not so slow that everything passes me by. Sometimes I want to be small. I got

Speaker 6 (01:09:39):

That,

Speaker 7 (01:09:40):

But not so small that I am easy to miss about the size of the thought of a bud before it opens and becomes a universe of which bees orbit, like planets. Sometimes I want to be invisible but not gone. Sometimes I want to be weightless and floating on air, able to fly when I want to, and able to stay on the ground when I feel like it. I want to be a leaf

Speaker 6 (01:10:15):

That

Speaker 7 (01:10:16):

Is part canoe, riding the water as if it's a liquid horse. I want to be comfortable in all the elements. I want to be a language, a way to share thoughts. What my grandmother says when she speaks in tongues. That's also music. I want to be my other grandmother's hands when she signs, when she seems to be blessing everything. I want to be all the people I know. Then I want to know more people so that I can be them too. Then they can all be me. I want to be a new kind of earthquake. Rocking the world as it is a baby in a cradle. That's what I want. I want to be eyes looking everywhere. I want to be ears, hearing everything. I want to be mouth tasting, tasting everything. I want to be heart feeling, feeling everything I want to be life doing everything. That's all. Thank you very much. You have been a great audience for the only woman. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (01:11:50):

Thank you. A w p. Thank you. Our kind audience for your at