 We're hosting our first poem city event, and glad that you all could join us tonight. We are hosting this event as part of many events that happen now at the wood. We're gearing up and doing more. We've got a pastel art class tomorrow. We have an opening reception next Thursday night from 5 to 7 for the Vermont Artist exhibit that's out in our hallway. Andrew Klein, who's a photographer, will be doing a book signing discussion and exhibit of his works here in this room for Art Walk on Friday, May 6th, from 5.30 to 7. And if you're interested in any of those events and want to hear about them regularly, I'll pass around the sign-up sheet. And if you put down your email address, you'll get an occasional email. I promise not to share your name or bombard you too much with email. So I want to welcome you all, and I'm going to have Tom come up next from the Kellogg-Covered Library, and he's going to introduce George. Thank you. Thank you, Ginny. I'm Tom McCone, Executive Director of the Kellogg-Covered Library. This is the seventh year that the library has hosted the poem city event. The idea came from Rachel Sinichal, our program director, and she has developed this, and it's grown every year. We have 35 events this month, and we've posted almost 400 poems written by the Vermont poets around town. So it's really a large undertaking, and it's not something we would be able to do without sponsors and partners. So on the financial side, we have a lot of support from the National Life Group Foundation, from the Vermont Humanities Council, from the Vermont Food Co-op, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Goddard College, so we're grateful to all of them. We're also grateful to our partners like the T.W. Wood Art Gallery who helped to make this possible, so thank you, Ginny. So tonight I have the privilege and the honor of introducing George Longenacker. I've known George for a long time. I really admire his poetry. I'm a former English teacher, and I'm pretty critical of poetry. So I wouldn't tell you that I admired his poetry, but it really wasn't true. His poetry is really high quality. George recently retired as professor from the Department of English Humanities and Social Studies at Vermont Technical College. He also in the past taught at Norwich University. And George has been a, I've a list of a couple things, and I don't want to leave anything out here. So he's been a Pushkart nominee, he's won a prize from Memoir, has been the City Works Literary Journal's national award winner, and he's won an honorable mention in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. George's poems have appeared in Patterson Literary Review, Vermont Literary Review, and Atlantic Review, as well as the anthology, Drawing to Marvel, Poems from the Comic Books. Excuse me, call me from the Comic Books. Let me paint you a picture, George says of his poetry. Would you please welcome George Longenacker. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you, Tom. And thanks so much to the Kellogg Hubbard Library, Rachel and Tom for organizing this event. And when you have time, walk around town and read all the poems. And this year we also have poems at bus stops in town and at the interstate rest areas. So if you're going through Williston or in Guilford going north, stop. You can read poems, including one of mine. So it's really a great event, and I'm so grateful to all of our sponsors. I said I'd do something on ecstastic poetry, and a lot of people stopped me on the street or in other events and said, what does ecstastic mean? I can't find it in my dictionary. Ecstastic poetry is the poetry of art and how appropriate to have the poetry of art here. And I wanted to do something that would look at racial issues in the poetry of art. Natasha Trethewey is former poet laureate of the United States. She served from 2012 to 2014. She was born in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1966, at a time when her parents' marriage was illegal there under miscegnation laws in Mississippi. Her father was a white Canadian poet, and her mother was African-American. Here's Natasha. This is to her right is Rita Dove, another past poet laureate and a couple of other writers. Here she is signing my book at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in 2014. Great poet and a gracious writer. Skip the cover of the book. Here it is. Her newest book is Thrall, and in this book she looks at historical issues of race and the quote-unquote mulatto and the biracial person. And I'm going to start with one of her poems based on this painting. De Español y Negra, Mulatto after the painting by Miguel Cabera. What holds me first is the stem fruit in the child's small hand, center of the painting, then the word Texacotes, a tiny inscription on the mother's basket, the vessel from which the scene suggests the fruit has been plucked, read exotic, bounty of the new world, basket, fruit, womb, child, and still what looks to be tenderness, the father caressing his daughter's cheek, the painter's light finding him, his profile glowing as if lit beneath the skin. Then the dominion of his touch, with one hand he holds the long stem gingerly, pressing it against her face, his gesture at once possessing both, flanked by her parents. The child in half-light looks out as if toward you, her left arm disappearing behind her mother's cloak. Such contrast, how not to see it in the lush depths of paint, the mother's flat outline, the black cloak making her blacker still, the moon-white crescent of her eye, the only light in her face. In the foreground, she gestures a dark signal in the air, her body advancing toward them like spilled ink, spreading on a page, a great pendulum escaping the light. I could do a whole reading just from this book and Natasha has, but I'll read one more. Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright undisecting the white negro, stripped from the flesh the specious skin, to weigh in the brain-pan seeds of white pepper, to find in the body its own diminishment, blood-deep and definite, to measure the heft of lack, to make of the work of faith the work of science, evidence the word of God, Canaan, be the servant of servants, thus to know the truth of this, this derelict corpus, a dark compendium, this atavistic assemblage flatter feet, bowed legs, a shorter neck, so deep the tincture, see it, we still know white from not. Another poet who has looked at art and racial issues in his work is Derek Wolcott. He's 86 years old. He's a Nobel laureate. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Wolcott was born in St. Lucia, which was then part of the British West Indies today as an independent nation. He's also a painter himself. His book, Tiepolo's Hound, is not just a book of poetry, but an album of his paintings. In the book, he looks at the art of Camille Passaro, who was also born in the West Indies. He was born in St. Thomas, which was then the British Virgin Islands. And so the book is really a novella in poetry illustrated by Wolcott's art. They stroll on Sundays down Dronegan Street, passing the bank and the small island shops, quiet as drawings, keeping from the heat through Danish arches, until the street stops at the blue gusting harbor where, like commas in a shop, ledgergalls tick the lined waves. See light on the cod barrels, writes St. Thomas. The sea salt breeze brings the sound of mission slaves, chanting deliverance from all their sins in tidal couplets of lament and answer. The horizon underlies their origins. Passaro is from the ghetto of Braganza, who fled the white hoods of the Inquisition for the bay's whitecaps, for the folding cross of a white herring gull over the mission, droning its passages from the exodus. Before the family warehouse near the customs, his uncle jerks the locks, rattling their chains, and lifts his beard to where morning comes across wide water to gentile mountains. Out of the cobalt bay, her blunt bow cleaving, the rising swell, the racing bittern skip. The male boat moans. They feel their bodies leaving the gliding island, not the blowing ship. A mongrel follows them, black as its shadow, nosing their shadows, scuttling when the bells exult with pardon. Young Camille Passaro studies the schooners and their stagnant smells. He and his starched, Sephardic family, followed from a nervous distance by the hound, retrace their stroll through Charlotte Amelie, in silence as its Christian bells resound. Through repetitions of the oval shade of Danish arches to their high wooden house, the synagogue of blessing and peace and loving deeds is shut for this sabre. The mongrel cowers through a park's railing. The bells recede. The afternoon is marked by cedar flowers. Their street of letters fades. This page of print in the bleached light of the last century recalls with sharp memory, days of cane carts, the palms high parasol. There's Passaro. That's fine. This is the one I want. Thanks. Thank you. There is something luxurious in Passaro's landscapes, as if his brush had made a decorous marriage with Earth's fecundity. Her seasons and gates, the snow-streaked mud of fabrics, whose soft cage held Vulliard and Bernard in the speckled interiors of the bourgeois, sublime wine, linen, bread, and flowers. Every framed lambscape that he loves is framed by an open window in its book of hours. Compared to the anger in his friend Cézanne, whose canvas rants at the subject it has chosen, a rage that builds, grown private and morose with the obsession of a diary on every page, the brush muttering even to a still life that develops a distance from his body that makes a flower vase no less than his wife. Stroke, next to stroke, narrative excess, has made theatrical melodrama of great art. Wolcott also, he's one of the very few poets, perhaps the only one who has both been in the anthologies of American poetry and in anthologies of, including Rita Dove's Penguin anthology that came out a couple of years ago, and in anthologies of world poetry. I thought because this has a racial theme tonight, why are we still talking about racial issues in the 21st century, by the way? Because we have to. Thank you. Why do we still have to? The poem is a far cry from Africa. A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt. Thank you. Of Africa. Kikiu, quick as flies, batten upon the bloodstream of the veld, corpses are scattered through a paradise, only the worm, kernel of carrion cries, waste no compassion on these separate dead. Statistics justify and scholars seize the salience of colonial policy. What is that to the white child hacked in bed, to savages expendable as Jews, thrust out by beaters, the long rushes break in a white dust of ibises, whose cries of wield since civilizations dawn, from the parched river or beast teeming plain, the violence of beast on beast is read as natural law. But upright man seeks his divinity by inflicting pain, delirious as these worried beasts his wars dance to the heightened carcass of a drum, while he calls courage, still that native dread of the white piece contracted by the dead, again, brutish necessity wipes its hands upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again a waste of our compassion as with Spain, the guerrilla wrestles with the Superman, I who am poisoned with the blood of both, where shall I turn divided to the vein, I who have cursed the drunken officer of British rule, how choose between this Africa and the English tongue I love, betray them both, or give back what they give? How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live? I thought I'd go to one of my own at Frastic Paintings, then we'll go from art to memoir in the second half of this reading, Portrait of a Brother. In his self-portrait, visiting Florida this winter, Van Gogh gazes forever left. He's painted his hair and beard red, eyes blue. He looks a little like his brother Theo. When Vincent painted this, he had only a year left to live, and Theo would be gone the following year, having lived so his brother could paint. We never know. If Vincent stepped out of his frame into Florida, what would he paint? I'd offer him pink grapefruit. We'd paint on the beach together. The day would dawn red, turn hazy and hot. Maybe we'd paint rippled scallops and let our olives on the sand. Perhaps we'd float into the swamp to paint alligators and herons. There's a point at which we realize we'll die, but we can't know when. What if we could bring our brothers back and say, paint this now. You have only a year left. But today it's just Vincent and me. We paddle out, paint an alligator basking by the loxahatchee, then a tricolored heron. It flies off, and a feather drifts slowly down. I keep the heron's feather. I can't forget my brother's last year. He drifted like a feather through air and was gone. The heron circles and calls. Vincent and I drift. If only he and Theo could have known. If only Keith and I could have known. Mixing color from his palette. Vincent fills in water and sky. Paints red. The heron's eye. It's funny how things come together when we're planning one of these readings. I was looking at the March issue of Poetry Magazine, and they had a whole section on ecstastic poetry. So I'm going to go to someone else's poem. This is Lorna de Cervantes. And the poem is Night Magic, Blue Jester. Blue that I love you. Blue that I hate you. Fat blue in the face. Disgraced blue that I erase. You lone blue. Blue of an alien race. Strong blue eternally graced. Blue that I know you. Blue that I choose. You crust blue. Chunky blue. Moon blue glows that despise you. Idolize you. Blue in the band disappears. Blue of the single left dog. Blue of the eminent red fog. Blue that I glue you to me. You again and again blue. Blue blue of the helium. Blue of the love loss. Blue of the whirlwind. The blue being again. Blue of the endless rain. Blue that I paint you. Blue that I knew you. Blue of the blinking lights. Blue of the landing at full tilt. Blue of the wilt. Flower of the nightfall. Blue of the shadow and yellowed windows. Blue of the blown and broken glass. Blue of the blue line. Underlines in blue. Blue of the ascending nude. Blue before the blackness of new blue of our winsome bedlam blue of the blue. Bed alone. Blue of the one who looks on blue of what remains of cement flail. Blue of the vague crescent ship sailing. Blue of the rainbow. Of weight blue that I whore you. Blue that I adore you. Blue of the bluest door. Blue my painted city. In blue it blew. Pause after that. So as I was saying one thing leads to another when you're planning these things. The next poem of mine wasn't really planned as an ecstatic poem but then I was looking up blue online and I found red. This is Lara Evans red painting 2010 and I thought it would go well with one of my poems. So my poem as you guessed it. Red. How red the sunrise glowing red coals red hot stove burned red skin emergency exit sign stop sign red scare red army red star reds in our beds red hot sex better dead than red Indian head penny red man tobacco red necks black necks and nooses blood of Emmett Till sun reflecting red in the Tallahatchie apple petals floating fruit dangling red embers of rosewood red alert red eyed and drunk red face screaming red with rage red dripping from crucifix cardinals sing in red cherries red headed woodpeckers swoop over the river into sun so red my heart beats how red the day how red the sunset an ecstatic poem can also be of a photograph and a news event sultan sorrow a kitchen and a residence in Aleppo Syria damaged sunday and fighting walls are blackened there's a refrigerator with rust at its bottom stickers of yellow butterflies and blackbirds on its door a dish towel hangs on the door handle and a top sits a vase of purple paper flowers on shells jars of spices still stand upright we can't see what's upright in the rest of the home if its power is on earth walls and windows are intact charred ceiling plaster covers the floor no mortar shells are shrapnel though a jar of beans lies unbroken and a tiny drawer maybe for salt we don't know but nobody can live without salt or sorrow no matter where on a lower shelf rest three small pairs of sneakers we can't see the children their parents or the photographer they must all be somewhere outside but outside is not in the picture we can't hear if there are explosions and artillery fire on the wall hangs pans a strainer and measuring spoons why do some things fall and not others all the utensils are blackened we can't tell whether from cooking or just war in a dish strainer cups dry they'll need to be washed again if the family returns if they live their blackened kitchen sent naked around the world so that's all of the art poems the ecstatic poems i'll read you a few more of my poems of memoir hands after 60 years its hands still keep time circling the rectangular face at noon and midnight the hour and minute hands come together then pass each other my father's hands were careful and steady as he diagrammed an electrical circuit when we wired the vermont house we were cable around timber frame then carefully connected wires tested the switch and made a circle of light he wore this watch when i was a child and we'd walk in a small woods behind our house his hands so large i still hear the notes of a chickadee there the hands keep moving come together twice a day pointing the way to sun or stars the lights we wired come on each evening sometimes it's like we passed and barely met sometimes i feel my father's hand on mine i wear his watch but have no idea what time is nor how long know only that the hands make time make the hands mark what's inevitable the last time i saw my father his hands shook as he tried to hold a spoon for him time had already moved on white circles the day a chickadee calls it dawn and my father's watch keeps time indeed i still have the watch distorted glass where we lived then some of our old window panes were rippled we looked through blue green water at lilacs and cosmos in winter we looked through ice everything white gray and frozen we had a baby then some days winter sun low in the south made rainbows on wide worn floorboards our daughter crawled to catch colors then there were dark days ice upon ice we looked at each other from either side of distorted glass neither one really seeing the other it was dark by four windows leak cold air on windy nights thumb latches rattled answering mice in the laws some things have to be fixed if you want to survive winter not hide with your child under quilts it took us three years but we replaced the windows clear glass with no icy drafts but sometimes i wish i'd kept one of the window panes in the morning i'd look at fragmented iris their purple scattered scattered here in there or an icy rain or even at you in a different light not that i'd really want to go back except maybe to see our child crawling after rainbows on the floor nothing ice two clear whistles notes rising in pitch different than their daily dd their spring song as daylight comes earlier though it's still january below zero at dawn air icy on my face it's not that i'm more sentimental with age for i remember chickadee's late winter whistles when i was five two long notes deep in the woods a nest lined with feathers and memory chickadee's called the day bobby and i walked onto melting ice the pond so far in the woods behind the house that our parents would never have known we were drowning that april day until it was too late we'd have slipped beneath rotten ice only to be found when they dragged the muck two blue five-year-olds with glazed eyes how we survived i'll never know but bobby and i each went home to lunch don't we all wonder sometimes why we sit down to eat still alive why we're given many years not just five two chickadee's whistle in frigid air long before any hope of melting ice and nests maple table it's been in our family since my parents wedding in massachusetts everything burned that year in dresden and amiens beds tables chairs books but finally the fires and guns stopped a year after the war ended i sat in my high chair at that table it's still with me several houses later i sit there and write poems not so many about wars now more about pine trees finches chickadee's everything i see from my table coffee two eggs each and muffins often i read a poem at breakfast but close my book so we can talk or watch birds in the maples outside our windows my father sat at the furthest end my mother nearest the stove i to her right my brother and sister to her left for years it sat in the basement replaced by fermica i rescued it when i moved the only piece of furniture in my apartment on the table daisies in a jar in a jar books by wolf and keats cheap chicken pot pies later i found a home and a love that lasted we fed our daughter in our high chair where she spelled oatmeal on to the table as she watched finches at the bird feeder we've refinished it three times its maple will outlive me in a vase on the table your bouquet of dried bee balm and hydrangea good day for birds it's been a good day for birds piliated woodpecker and pines this morning later on the lake a loon we heard a call and a great blue heron who flew so low we heard air ruffle its feathers then a bald eagle high in a dead birch we watched each other a long time we have wine and chevrolet cheese robin sing on the lawn as shadows elongate kids splash in the water sun fades and on a red umbrella i could die today if i had to and not regret a thing but not yet please please let me see one more bald eagle laszlo's afternoon he lies on a raft which drifts on the pond first east then west defying its anchor the boy peers over the edge watches brook trout fins shimmering once in a while a fish swims to the surface eats a floating fly he wants to cut this rope float free from his anchor but for now he watches fish dragon flies hover over daring the trout afternoon sun pierces water shines on fish magnifying them tricking us into thinking they're bigger than they are and laszlo wants to be larger to swim away first ask what you'll do with that freedom will it be better than a summer afternoon sun drifting on a raft here's a new one that i just finished yesterday angelica yoga class she says to imagine earth below us i think of a stone slab a top mount hunger where i napped in a warm sun she says to look for balance in life i think of the stone balancing for thousands of years but then i think of hunger remember my dream last night a hotel i can't get out of a dining room i can't find a pile of student papers that grows forever larger but i want to think of birds yellow throat warblers how they balance on tiny branches branch out she says then we chat ohm i hear warblers sing think inside your body she says as we breathe deeply i think of my heart think of electrical resistance hear ohm feel my heartbeat imagine myself a warbler heartbeat five times as fast we go into tree hose and i balance feel my heart pump think of silly cliches heartache heart sick dear heart i imagine balancing on the top most branch of a pine imagine resting on warm stone my heart beats so slowly so perfectly i'm barely aware i'm here and two from florida which i'll close with 14 pelicans out east with yachts trawlers and tankers 14 pelicans fly so low over the sea their wings seem to touch water one bird dips her beak and surfaces with a large flopping whiting which almost slips from her bill we gather shells of scallops cockles and arcs while turns dance at tides edge pelicans dive closer now and i worry whether her fish has slipped from her bill i tell myself it's one pelican one fish the tide goes out and i see how everything can slip away but she has her fish and joins other pelicans as they swoop past their feathers touch the sea breathing in moonlight we sit on the stern of a sail fish on the beach one boat and a row of rentals whose mass pierced the dusk the moon has sliced the sea ships lights float low on the horizon from down the beach a fisherman's headlamp cuts the dark as he climbs hauling a cart with his rods and catch 15 fish sorry about the light he says i'm not sorry about the light or anything tonight sitting here on a beach sailing skiff with 15 fish pulled in moonlight from the sea florida moonlight pulls us in back to salt water from which we came though we couldn't breathe under sea anymore than those fish could use gills on land there will come a night when i'll no longer breathe next to you but not tonight let's sit on the sailboat stern until the moon touches her mass so it's been lovely being with you tonight we can just take questions and comments informally over refreshments up back so thanks again thank you to the thank you to the Kellogg hover library poem city and the wood art gallery let's give them another hand