 Hello, everyone. Thank you for taking your seats. You're in for a really wonderful experience this afternoon. I'm Michelle Jeffers with the San Francisco Public Library. Before we begin, we'd like to begin with a land acknowledgment. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramachishaloni peoples. We benefit from living and working on their traditional land. And as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights and we wish to pay our respects to the elders, ancestors, and relatives of the Ramachishaloni community. Thank you. Again, I'm Michelle Jeffers. I work at the library. I'm also on the board of Litquake, so I do want to acknowledge and thank Litquake for putting together, for sponsoring this event at the very last minute. And I hope some of you have enjoyed Litquake over the past two weeks. There's still a chance tonight to go to the Litcrawl and enjoy a full night of poetry and authors and reading, so please take advantage of that. I also want to thank my colleagues at the library for putting this, also working this event so quickly and the friends of the library for always supporting everything we do. I'm even more excited that I have such an amazing partner in Villa Albertine and Sabine here who is going to tell you a little bit more about what we'll have today. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming and joining the SF Public Library at such a nice weather today. My name is Sabine de Mosion. I'm the director of the Villa Albertine in California. The Villa Albertine is a network of French cultural services in the U.S. We have 10 chapters all around the United States, and I represent the California chapter. Mainly, we run art residencies, big events like the Night of Ideas that the SF Public Library will host early March and an online magazine. I would say that these kind of encounters are extremely symbolic to us. The encounter of a poet, Jack Hirschman, that we are giving tribute to today, who got invited by a celebrity in France, a poetry in the world of poetry, translation and politics. His name is Gilles Bernard Vachon. He invited for the first time, Jack Hirschman, to read his poetry at the Maison-Ronalp in Grenoble years ago. And from that invitation started a collaboration between Antoine Colonnaud, the musicians, Jvedron and Jack Hirschman. So it became as a performance, making dialoguing music and poetry. Jack gave his voice and his words for that performance. It is as well a moment of encounter with Céline Fredzard, the director of the French and label Jaring Effects. And as well a moment of cinema because there is a documentary on the tracks now that would be ready next year. So I would say that it's a full-fledged collaboration, performance, poetry, politics, because it's all about engaged poetry. And as well a documentary who's really, I mean, going back to the steps of this encounter. So it's a real pleasure to have you today. As Michel, I want to thank all our partners who wanted to be here tonight. Some of them have other events running. So the Lab SF, Lit Quake, City Lights Library, Modernism and et al. Thank you everyone. I want to, I will give the floor to Agneta who will give more details about the collaboration and what's going on today. And as well to make a very quick announcement about another event that will be running tonight at the Bisa Baobab featuring the Camronian author, Hemly Boom, who gave creative writing workshops the two past months and gave a moment of reading performance and music tonight at the Bisa Baobab. Thank you as well to all our donors and board members. Catherine de Villeneuve is here today. She's a very close board member of the Villa Albertine and without her and the other board members we wouldn't be able to process. So thank you everyone. Agneta? Hello everyone. I'm so pleased to see that the house is almost full. But the glass is almost half full or half empty, right? I think it's half full. Anyway, I have to say that I was invited to Lyon in March to work with Anduin and Celine on this continuing project. And we put together and they did make a selection actually of my poems and also we included some other poets in San Francisco, Devorah Major who hasn't arrived yet, I know she is, Scott Byrd, Gregory Pond. Yeah, Gregory Pond. And also Mauro Fortissimo who is in Rome. And together we worked for many days in Anduin's studio in Lyon and he's very, very meticulous about the timing and then Celine and I, Celine comes in with a beautiful French and we kind of free-willed a bit is particular with Devorah's poem. Anyway, I had a wonderful time in France. It was very memorable and this project is actually going to continue with other poets from San Francisco being represented in an anthology. And I think that's all I can say and just here they are. I just wish Devorah was here so I could, because her poem, we worked together in a particular way and I just told her that I hope she wouldn't slaughter us for what we have done with it. Okay. So, are we not, oh, excuse me. But before then, since this is a tribute to Jack Hirschman, we're going to start with Byron Spooner saying something, reading something to him. Byron Spooner. Good afternoon. Thanks for coming tonight today. There's always that moment of panic when you first look out across your audience and go, oh, I see this person and that person. I wrote this right after Jack died and I thought it'd be appropriate to read here. It's called The Last Time. I remember we were holding hands, just the two of us, his hand resting on top of mine, mine on his, then his on mine. I had seated myself on the chair next to him because he was alone there in his regular place at the big table, his back to the wall at Spex, a rare occasion indeed. He was generally surrounded on all sides by friends and others requiring his attention. Not that we had never had time together, far from it, but usually not in public like this, never at Spex. We've been working together, Jack Hirschman and I, for 15 years at that point and they become great friends. Like most men, especially old men like us, we didn't put much stock in intimate conversation. Too old to waste time belly aching about our feelings, our regrets, our mistakes. We tended toward books and politics and friends and culture. Oh, in baseball and talking dog jokes and staring off into the middle distance. Sometimes it seemed we were more comfortable drifting off into silence than anything else. So Byron, he said, in that deep baritone where he was used to save my name, you're publishing a book, a lifelong ambition fulfilled. There was joy in his voice and some pride. Yeah, I said, this fall looks like you should be proud. 10 years, I said, though it had been longer than that. I could tell he was about to move on to something else. Maybe his baseball played with dice game, each role of the dice representing a particular play which I suspected he changed with his whims, so he could always win. Wait a minute, Jack, wait a minute. I said, I got to tell you something. He raised an eyebrow. Listen, I want you to know how important you've been to that. Of course he did. He'd just been a few days before he'd given me a wonderful blurb for my forthcoming collection of stories. You, more than anybody else, with the exception of Judy, of course, inspired me to do it, that it could be done, that it could be done even, encouraged me to keep going. For example, your example, the example you said for others, including me, was just invaluable. You made this possible. You made me think I could do it. Ah, he says, it was you all the way, all the way. He waved off my sentiments with a flip of his hand. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I said, I'm not going to let you get away with that. I want you to get how important you were. You helped me believe I could do it. I want him to see how hard it was for me to say what I was saying. He nodded and our eyes caught his deep, his deep and patient, wise and old. He smiled and said, well, and looked down at our hands stacked there together on the table and padded my hand with his top hand. He looked back at me and said, thank you for that Byron, but always remembering the end. This was something you did, not me, not anyone else. That's as close as I can remember it anyway. Words into that effect. I have no idea that, I'm sorry, I have no idea what made either of us say any of this. It was not the way we normally spoke. Together we pulled off very complex international, three very complex international poetry festivals with that exchange as much as a high five. Six city-wide poetry competitions, countless poetry readings marked by nothing more than that was good, and yeah. Now he said, unstacking our hands and sitting back, relieved to finally be off this subject, how's Ulysses going? With his encouragement, I was taking yet another stab at Ulysses. He convinced me it was as readable as any other book, but I was making no more progress than I had on previous attempts. Even Jack's immense powers couldn't make it decipherable to me. I was not intellectual icebreaker enough to plow through it. Fine, I said, slow. There's nothing wrong with that. My friend, just read with the flow, follow the rhythms, the sounds. There's certainly no rush. It's best if read aloud, by the way. I was also grappling with my own book, reading it for what seemed like the hundredth time, proofing and editing, burnishing. There was no Ulysses, but I was still having trouble wrestling it to the ground. 10 days later, I sat at his bedside with Aggie and Judy, his lifeless body still with the covers tucked under his chin. In the kitchen, Rebecca and Francisco tried to restore order, where there had been no disorder. We waited for the funeral guys to show up. I'd missed my father's death by a few hours. The fucking plane just took too long. And I never had a final moment with him, the moment the rest of the family had and had held on to. I remember my last moments with Jack together there and Specs our hands together, and how rare and precious that was, and will always remain. I never did get all the way through Ulysses, but I will someday, and it will complete another thing that Jack and I started together. Thank you. Thank you, Byron. That was really good, hard work. Bonjour. Do you know, do you know that silence that rises louder than a scream, that hurts itself against the wall of indifference, that silence which has had its tongue cut out, but never ever stops screaming? A small hand on the windowsill looking out on the future, the curved sorrow, an imprint I hold. A whimsical thought grows to an ocean of blood, a glass of water, a glass of water. A glass of water. A glass of water. A glass of water. A glass of water. A glass of water. A whimsical thought grows to an ocean of bewilderment, a tender longing for fingers to interlace, helping each other find a light. Someone, something has dug its teeth into my heart. I can't reach it with my hand nor with my voice. It beats urgently inside. It's as afraid as I am. History's on repeat, spewing bombs across the globe. It's a sore dance to follow, a dance out of step. Give me a tear I cannot cry. Hand me a tool I can use to undo the hunger filled the ocean with fish. A guy on Green Street I always have a buck for tells me to go to hell. And no return. What else to do but smile. Smile that doesn't last past the thought of this homeless city full of cardboard beds. Still, the dreams go on, someone plays a violin on a corner, eats another's leftover lunch, chalk poems on the sidewalk and shout loudly into the night. Labor day afternoon, a falcon settles in a neighbor's tree, sits there majestically, very still looking on. Is that you? I think, before it takes off. I want to bring back so many who've died, continue the conversations, get answers to all the questions unasked, to be quiet even, to be quiet together, to touch. Elsewhere someone gets into a boat, crammed to the brim with people, fleeing for their lives, crossing dark waters in search of a home, arriving at closed borders, barbed wire, overcrowded camps. It's hard to climb over walls built of fear of other. It's hard to become a mere statistic, like a wind in vain chasing the weather. That small hand on the windowsill, my son, all our children, filling our shoes, following the footsteps we'd made, our choice, their future. I fall. I fall. I fall. Begin to fly. Alterity. It's not because I don't love you, that I can't see your face. It's just that I can't face your face without eliminating mine. When you look at me, I turn away. So I don't notice your eyes at all. If only I could look at you without you looking at me, I could then start to see you, discover the cross of your lips resembling mine, that on the slope of your cheeks a river so abyssal and dark, like the one I grew up in, so dry and a little deep, and maybe, if you dare to look at me and see your tears in my eyes, we could replace fear with love. Otherness. It's not because I don't love you, that I can't see your face. It's just that I can't face your face without eliminating mine. When you look at me, I turn away. So I don't quite notice your eyes. If I only could look at you without you looking back at me, I could begin to see you, discover the curve of your lips resembling mine, that on the slope of your cheek runs a river as deep and dark as one I grew up near, as shallow and dry. And maybe, if you dare to look back at me and see your tears filling my eyes, we could begin to replace fear with love. Anthology of happiness. I'm happy about not being happy. There's so much love in the world, shrouded in violence, the war, the rain, the rain, the war, and then there's a sun, you, with a big, warm palm on my back, rising out of all the cracks in our room. The body and soul I fall in and out of when I'm happy about not being happy. Anthology of happiness. I'm happy and not happy. There's so much love in the world, shrouded in violence, the war, the rain, the rain, the war, and then there's a sun, you, with a big, warm palm on my back, emerging out of all the cracks in our room. The body and soul I fall in and out of when I'm happy about not being happy. Anthology of happiness. What befalls you is the teasing of the ability of dark light. Your eyes are in my palms spinning, my joyous one, blessed breath, my glorious multicolored coat, who turns my heart inside out, swings it up on life's ragged edge, where it skips and laughs from deepest depth. The sky a-lark inside your moan, the earth a-silver lining in your mouth. Oh mouth, mouth, that never stops moving. I'm a God in yours. Homecoming. I hear you walking up the steps, your bag hitting the metal railing, the key searching for the lock in the door. You are home and the house is warm again. Some days I don't hear you at all. You just appear as from nowhere, the black hat obscuring your eyes and it's time to turn the heating on. Either way, there's no distance between you coming and going and if there is a draft in my feelings, it's because I left the door open, all day. He says he likes it and his heart goes down. Each ephemeral, a deepening on his cumigrapher. His breasts just formed. Do you understand? He likes it and she knows when she enters in the night, half dark, glistening from one car to another, her little body, a vacuum machine. Do you understand? He likes it. And she knows in the sound of a mish-tongue laughing at children disappearing in his throat. He found it in a pit. With mud in his hair, his epitaph says, out of the unknown trial, instead of the unknown trial, you understand. He likes it. You understand. She cries. Shivering mountain for young prostitutes. He tells her he loves her and beats her heart. Every bruise, a deepening on her skin, the breasts just form breasts. Do you understand? He loves her and she knows that as she steps into the dark, damned night, sliding in and out of cars, the tiny body, a slot machine. Do you understand? He loves her and she knows that to the sound of a punters sigh, a childhood laughter disappearing down her throat. They found her in a ditch, a sludge in her hair. Her epitaph reads, time of death unknown, place of death unknown. You understand. He loved her. You understand. She believed in me. Cold where it should be warm. The wind out there is banging around, bending everything furiously in its way. The weather, like people, is on the move. It's warm where it should be cold, wet where it should be dry and snow's piling up in place that never saw snow. But unlike these people, storms have names. Carla, Dora, Frederick Hattie Hortense, Ivan, Joan, Stan, Roxanne, Klaus and the formidable Katrina 2005. It took 25 years to tear down the Berlin Wall. Now pieces of that wall hang in deafening silence in museums around the world. No one knows the face of this war as it glides over the accelerating landscape, crushing everything in its way. The roads and seas follow people fleeing and who's fighting whom and who's who and where to and why did it happen there and not here and should I lock my door now before it's too late but isn't it already too late somebody's got a foot in my door and my door is no longer my door and no matter how many new walls go out people will keep on coming nothing can stop fear moving to safer land. Sing, I've watched the mountains let belly grow bare of ice, caps and snow and I've watched a river flow down to a trickle and I've watched a lumber pour carpenter faltering the streets and barter his last dime for a nickel and the little girl learned to paint before she learned to ride she taught me to see fish in the trees I've watched a little Navajo Gama dig her fingers well to slake the thirst of a dying flock of sheep then laid there with a symbol full of her red dirt throat to the mother redwood tree and the rather red wood tree told her children to sweat in their coats and with a spider woven nape of fire sweet the forest floor the little boy took his first dance and danced in the threshold of an open door I've watched the leaves of autumn give way to dry coal and the old man rode his last fad and dumped his two battlefold and the masses divide and the people hide the halls of justice flooded to their pillars with an unjust tide and the billionaires took a ride on a spaceship bound for Mars and when they screamed across the sky I heard the rejoicing stars I watched this wicked thing in his dying throes and through the brain trembles the broken heart didn't know that I watched all this unfold as a child watches the first of the falling snow and watches waiting I think I no longer watch and wait I think I no longer think from now on I think I'll just sing I sang I watched the belly of the mountain devour the glaciers and the snow and I watched the river flow until a line of water and I watched the sharp-nosed poor sharp-nosed vassal in the streets and took his last piece of five cents the little girl who learned to paint before learning to write she learned to see the fish in the trees I watched the little grandmother Navarro dig a puddle with her hands to stretch out the canvas of her golden wooden troupes and pick up a piece of wood when her throat was red the mother said to her children to wrap themselves in their coat when the tongue of fire shone the ground of the forest the little boy made his first steps I looked at the autumn leaves it was from the place to a dry cold and the old man rolled his last clop and threw his package over there and the masses were divided and the people were hiding the rooms of unknown justice until they were piled up by an unjust tide and the milliarders finally turned into a space ship in the action of Mars and they screamed in the sky so I heard the stars I looked at this bad thing in these last moments and although the brain trembles the broken hearts know that I saw all this rolling like a child looking at the first snow falling and looking waiting I don't think I'm going to look anymore and wait I don't think I would think anymore except for now I think I'm just going to sing poem only to find centuries down the line it's a struggle just to survive in a country where I still ain't free where doors are still closed and I'm always opposed when I command equality they don't want me to vote don't want me to breathe won't let me move my neck from under their knee can't make enough money to support my family still treated like number one menace to society though in the face of all that's been done to impede I continue to try strive and believe to work hard each day in search of Martin's dream but I live each year with the fear of my own vulnerability that they one day don't shoot to kill while I'm living black like me the universe hurts it never had a plan for me earthly lunar observer water over the shoulders harpist fingers are not mine the universe hurts howl songs screams malevolently robs rainbows from the sky nothing we can do but follow the path looking for falling leaves the gold of blinding sundries in mercury filled the way of comets and stars pain of meteorite the human sword continues crumbling of fired cannons sheds no light all for what to call this or that my country to weigh one's flag to keep the hordes away those unlike you and I the desperadoes at the borders the universe hurts and it does not care for our everlasting tragedies the stupidity of countries the travesty of governments senile senators octogenarian rulers when will the wise organ had come delivering us from cosmic storms war observed duo as death melts into the earth la guerre observée the livings are dressed with the spirits of the dead pressed into the heavy coats and thick solid shoes the men then but do not fall with the buildings around them there are moments when all tears are spent and all howls quiet and only one is it is and only the music of bombardment and crumbling houses can be heard and the death complicated or simply final grand mother now she sits in a corner she sits in a corner she sits in a corner she sits in a corner she sits in a corner she sits in a corner she sits in a corner missing one arm gone one leg crashed one husband buried one home demolished she does not name those who are responsible how true is that those who shoot those who shoot Her boss, her kill, do not fear God or seek justice. Only twisted revenge. Her lips are welded. Eyes never embracing or turning from the camera. Do not ask. Ask the widow who, the child, how. And the mother why or if there is a value to the dying for the dominion, for capital, for flags that wave above graveyards. Only soldiers can stop it. Soldiers cannot refuse to die. But they can refuse to kill. The solution lives in tears carried in smoke-filled wind above the silences that follow bombs' collisions. The solution lives in tears carried in smoke-filled wind above the silences that follow bombs' collisions. This land sees only tragedy. Her goal sees only tragedy. The crumbled kitchen. The kitchen in ruins. The hallowed bedroom. The living room. The little girl. The little girl. The baby. The baby. The mother. The mother. The son. The son. The eyes forever frozen into disc. Like the camera lens frigid with ice of terror. The eyes never freeze into discs like the lens of the camera, frozen with the ice of terror. It puts the camera down. It puts the camera down, finds water for this one, finds water for this one, lifts the body of that one, lifts the body of that one, seeks another way to hold back the war's tide. The world is a beautiful place. The world is a beautiful place to be born into. If you don't mind happiness not always being so very much fun. If you don't mind a touch of hell now and then. And just when everything is fine, because even in heaven they don't sing all the time. The world is a beautiful place to be born into. If you don't mind some people dying all the time, or maybe only starving some of the time, which isn't half bad if it isn't you. Oh, the world is a beautiful place to be born into. If you don't much mind a few dead minds in the higher places, or a bomb or two now and then, or a bomb or two now and then in your upturned faces, or such improprieties as you are name-brand society is played to. With its men of distinction, and its men of extinction, and its priests and other patrolmen, and its various segregation and congressional investigations, and other constipations that are full flesh is added. Yes, the world is the best place of all for a lot of such things as making the fun scene, making the love scene, and making the sad scene, and singing low songs and having inspirations, and walking around looking at everything, and smelling flowers, and gooseing statues, and even thinking and kissing people, and making babies, and wearing hats, and waiting hats, and dancing, and going swimming in rivers or picnics in the middle of the summer, and just generally living it up. Yes, but then, right in the middle of it, comes the smiling audition. The world is a beautiful place where you can't help but die all the time, or maybe you're just sick of it all the time, which is just as bad as it can be. Oh, the world is a beautiful place where you can't help but die by someone who doesn't think about the others, or by a good or two of you all the time on your arrogant faces, or by a bad one like our brand of society, in a cross between these men of distinction, and these men of extinction, and these priests and other patrouillers, and these various segregations and inquiries from Congress, and other occupations in our dear and land. Yes, the world is the best place for a lot of things like having fun, loving, saddening, singing, being inspired, walking, looking, feeling flowers and admiring statues and even thinking, and hugging people, making babies, wearing pants and taking hats off and dancing. And swimming in the rivers, picnicking in the middle of summer, and just generally living it up. Yes, but in the middle of all this, there's a big dead body. Pardon, go to your broken heart. If you think you don't have one, get one. To get one, be sincere. Learn since I'm intent by letting life enter because you're helpless really to do otherwise. Even as you try escaping, let it take you and tear you open like a letter sent, like a sentence inside. You waited for all your life though you have committed nothing. Let it send you out. Let it break your heart. Broken heartedness is the beginning of all real reception. Bearing of humility ears beyond the gates. See the gates opening. Feel your hands going a chamber on your hips. Your mouth opening like a room. Giving birth to your voice for the very first time. Go singing, whirling into the glory of being ecstatically simple. Write the poem. I'm going to say just two three words. I want to thank you Sabine. I want to thank you very much and to put it last minutes and have such good arguments. Sorry for my English, I'm a bit emotional, but yeah. And thank you the SF library really quick and everybody. And if I forgot someone and my new friend from San Francisco, David Scott, Elektra, Aggie of course. We've been here for Jack and we met a lot of people from here, from there. For that point, I mean, and it's a good, it's a good pass. And thank you for that. Bye bye.