 Hi there It's almost it's 12 10 now. We'll give another minute or so for people to filter in but I want to just first welcome you to the Resumption of in-person readings for lunch bumps, which we're really so thrilled about My name is Noah Warren. I'm gonna be directing the lunch pump series this year And I want to first I also just thank everyone who's been showing up these past two years on zoom Kept this community kind of vibrant and bringing really some remarkable poetry to Berkeley That said it is to be back in Morrison Such a privilege such a delight And to be able to experience the kind of energy that poetry can fill a room with I think is It's been something that's been sorely missed So we'll take all right. It looks like we got the door closing So, yeah, welcome and thank you all. It's my Before we get started, please silence your phones We'll read Alex will read for about half an hour after the introduction unfortunately our friends at Moe's could not make it today, so If you are engaged make sure to seek out Alex's books on your own time. They're really worth the time All right, who is Alex Dimitrov There's a perverse logic in contemporary American poetry that suggests It's sometimes deleterious for poets to morph and change as they write their way into the future This is said to detract from the affirmation all important of developing an instantly recognizable style The result is a landscape that sometimes Looks strewn with promising beginnings that have turned stale As people reiterate the discoveries they made at 25 In counterpoint I present Alex Dimitrov Style he clearly has just look at him and he's developed a voice on the page That's vivid and pressing like none other No other poet writing today And I'm here to marvel just for a second At the mastery that underlies that style and that presence and To also just remark at how many voices he's explored in the ten years. He's been writing His resting stance I think is a semi-social semi lyric Around 25 lines that emerges in the penumbra of intimacy Going or leaving on an app or addressed to someone who may just be someone 2017's book together and by ourselves Pushed this mode a little longer and more sinister to poems that kept moving Till they found their haunting ends in the curdle of Tom Moore Love and other poems his most recent book Metabolizes Franco-Hara who's been there all along in Dimitrov's poetry It's become the style has become breezier intensely charismatic and at once more impersonal and more vulnerable Recently he said on what sounds like if I dare say it a Wisdom literature albeit a very sexy one We'll see Much is said about tenderness vulnerability and pain these days in poetry These are demanded on the surface Dimitrov's poems serve precisely the opposite They're cool their polish their brisk motion through the world and through people Takes on pathos as we begin to sense beneath these qualities what they defend against need sorrow But lightly even as the poems affecting blasé sometimes sigh about parties or men They as often pivot in the next moment to celebrate these rituals They look levelly at the continuance of change and they celebrate parties and men And of course New York I Love finally How Dimitrov has broken down the boundaries between the poem life and the mediation of these two on the internet Calling to us the listener or the reader directly Hello or Look at the sky Kiss anyone you can for sure He asks us to double our lived experience and our pleasure with our experience of the poem He writes from a cab many cabs and make sure we know how real those journeys are even as they become a metaphysical state and In the title poem of love and other poems the anaphora. I love Spills boundlessly beyond the page and has continued on to the internet day by day As it praises and mourns the world I'm delighted to welcome to Berkeley into the space one of the best and most interesting poets writing today Alex Dimitrov That was the most considered introduction I've ever gotten no you should read the poems for me actually Who is Alex Dimitrov? I'm really happy to be here. I've never Been to Berkeley and it's a beautiful campus though. I walked for about three minutes. I was really hot Clearly I'm wearing the wrong attire. I always am but Thank you for coming. I didn't know who would come Noah told me that this was the first event after two years or something like that So this is also the earliest I've ever read poems. I usually wake up around this time. So Let's see how this goes Sunset on 14th Street. I don't want to sound unreasonable, but I need to be in love immediately I can't watch this sunset on 14th Street by myself Everyone is walking fast right after therapy texting back their lovers orange hearts and unicorns. It's insane to me They're missing this free sunset willingly or even worse. They're going home to cook and read this sad poem online Let me tell you something people have quit smoking. They don't get drinks, but they juice They're a way too many photos and most all of us look better in them than we do in life What happened? This is truly so embarrassing. I want to make a case for 1,440 minutes every day where we stop whatever else is going on and look each other in the eyes like dogs Like morning newspapers and evening light so long so much for this short drama We will die one day and our cheap headlines won't apply to anything The internet will be forgotten all the praise and pandering. I'd really rather take a hike and by the way I'm gay the sunset too is homosexual At least today between the buildings which are moody and the trees which honestly they look a bit unhealthy here They're anxious. They're concerned. They're wondering why I'm broke and lonely in Manhattan though, of course I'll never say it and Besides it's almost spring. It's fine. It's goth. Hello. The truth is No one will remember us. We're only specks of dust or one one speck of dust Some brutes who screamed for everything to look at us. Well, look at us still terrible and awful Awful and pretending. We're not terrible such righteous Saints repeating easy lines performing our great politics It's just so very boring. The real mystery in fact is how we managed to make room for love at all Punk rock of on guard cinema. I love you reader, but you should know the sunsets over now I'm standing right in front of nowhere bar Dehydrated and quite scared but absolutely willing to keep going it makes sense. You do the same It's far too late for crying and quite useless too. You can be sad and still look so good You can say New York is beautiful and it wouldn't be a headline and it wouldn't be a lie Just take a cab and not the six. It's never once in ten years been on time It's orbiting some other world where there are sunsets every hour and no money and no us That's luck the way to get there clearly wasn't written down. Don't let that stop you though Look at the sky kiss everyone you can for sure Someone said this book was optimistic when I came out and I thought that was a very kind of post-covid reaction to it It's nice though, you know, I'm happy if people feel good reading these poems In fact, I kind of wanted to design them for the first time so people would perhaps feel Good instead of bad. I mean I wrote two books before that where I was just thinking of knowing about myself So and I was not feeling good, you know, it's really funny I was broke when I wrote this book quite literally and I didn't have health care for two years because I was adjuncting and I was happier than I've ever been. Isn't that weird? I don't want to glamorize it or anything, but You know now that I have health care. I'm like, do I really want to be here? I'm just kidding. This is not This is not gonna turn into one of those readings No one mentioned Frank O'Hara who is of course a ghost in this book a ghost and kind of my life in New York Someone before the reading came up to you mentioned John Ashbury people who are very important to me The New York school is very important to me. And so when I wrote this poem originally, I this next poem I Thought, you know, well, you could just make fun of yourself, you know with the title and It's called having a Diet Coke with you Obviously after the Frank poem and also when when the book came out I got in trouble because someone said like Why not a regular coke? Why a diet coke? I think someone called me a body Nazi and I was like Sweetie, I am not drinking a regular coke. I do not care what the politics are. There is no way Having a Diet Coke with you having a Diet Coke with you is even better than a regular Coke because in New York The streets are so skinny. I'm always worried about my hair walking down Lex in the morning Where if we'll ever get universal health care and I can be assured I'm dying in all the regular ways nothing unusual By a professional who touches me lightly on the chest the first time I've been touched in months So I consider falling in love after oh God Alex what's wrong with you? I can't believe this is the title of your poem If you look up the billboards are sexy and American letting you forget all the cruel things you've said to your boy friends There are other things I need you to remember like please stop taking calves So you won't have to take out a loan or become a lawyer and please stop having sex with men who are terrified of looking at your face When you cry one day your choices will be limited and you'll wear the same outfit into the beyond into the gold sea I'm going to bury you in a white suit infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive as Plath wrote as you are as you've been even on bad days This is the love poem no one gave you and thank God they couldn't do it like this Not only will we drink diet coke in this poem? I'm also taking us to Barney's so you can flirt with the tall boy selling sneakers and talking very slowly about his gentle sword tattoo People of the world don't stop don't give up style irony or Manhattan's don't apologize for wanting to fuck someone new because you need to feel Live I get it. I've been there I'm imagining you reading this with a phone in your hand in your room by a desk on a train or a platform Don't wait to do what you want. This is what I've wanted to say from the first line Don't wait because people don't have the answer I've written this ending before in a book called American boys But I'll write it again for anyone who wasn't paying attention or talking shit about me on the internet I'll never get over the fact that the buildings all light up at night and the night comes every night and without regret We let it go we sleep a little and we live. That's what we do I always write down what I'm gonna read cuz if I don't I like to jump around and then just read poems I had you know, it's so funny. Someone asked me a student asked me the other day because school has started again How do you order a book which is a really hard question because it's really there's no right answer. It's just style, right? However, you want to My had one guiding principle for this book is that just don't write any bad poems. So then when you're So then when you're here sort of reading anywhere, you can just flip to whatever and read it I don't know if I succeeded, but I'll tell you I feel easier flipping through this one than the last one The last one really gave me anxiety and this one's just sort of Wow, I wasn't really in a good mood when I wrote it Can you believe June There will never be more of summer than there is now walking alone through Union Square I am carrying flowers in the first rosé to a party where I'm expected It's Sunday and the trains run on time, but today death feels so far. It's impossible to go underground. I Would like to say something to everyone. I see an entire city, but I'm unsure what it is yet Each time I leave my apartment. There's at least one person crying Reading or shouting after a stranger anywhere along my commute. It's possible to be happy alone I say out loud and to no one so it's obvious and now here in the middle of this poem Rarely have I felt more charmed than a 9th Street Watching a woman stop in the middle of the sidewalk to pull up her hair like it's an emergency and it is People do know they're alive. They hardly know what to do with themselves I almost want to invite her with me, but I've passed and yes it'd be crazy like trying to be a poet trying to be anyone here How do you continue to love New York my friend who left for California asked me It's awful in the summer and winter and spring and fall last maybe two weeks. This is true It's all true, of course like my preference for difficult men, which I had until recently Because at last for one summer the only difficulty I'm willing to imagine is walking through this first human day with my hands full Not at all peaceful, but entirely possible and real The friend in that poem is Morgan Parker. She was moving to Los Angeles when I was writing this book And she was really trying to take me with her not hard. You know, it's she's a she's a good friend to move with but um And I was like, I don't know if I want to do movies yet. I Don't know You know LA seems fun, but not yet. Not yet. It's been like two decades like that in New York. Not yet July I promise you I know we're in September, but at last it's impossible to think of anything as I swim through the heat on Broadway and disappear on the strand nobody on these shelves knows who I am, but I feel so seen It's easy to be aimless not having written a line for weeks Outside New York continues to be New York. I was half expecting it to be LA, but no luck No luck with the guy I'm seeing no luck with money. No luck with becoming a saint. I do not want you perfect life I decided to stay a poet long ago. I know what I'm in for and Still the free space of the sky lures me back out. Not even canonical beauty can keep me inside and beauty I'm done with you too. I Guess after all I'll take love Sweeping all-consuming grandiose love. Don't just call or ask to go to a movie. That's off my list, too I want absolutely everything on this Friday afternoon when not one person is looking for me I'm crazy and lonely. I've never been boring and believe it or not. I'm all I want She made my tinder profile, right? You know, I'm done with tinder talking about things. I'm done with now. I'm on Raya whoo Let me tell you This is another poem that's riffing on Frank O'Hara Hmm what to say, you know when the when the like first big review for this book came out I didn't know if it was like positive thing or not, but the guy said I don't know I think he I should be careful what I say since this is recorded But um, he said something about like how I almost Sound like myself after Frank O'Hara. This is like also like in the time So I thought well, I wonder if people will like that and it turns out people did but I was kind of offended by it but um That's okay because I steal all of his titles in this This is a true account of talking to the moon at fire island his poem is a true account of talking to the sun at Fire Island so I knew what I was doing and still I felt a little bitchy about it, you know The moon woke me up last night loud and clear saying hey I've been trying to wake you up for 15 minutes. Don't be so rude. You're only the second poet I've ever chosen to speak to personally Well, I couldn't believe it. It didn't matter anymore that my books have never been nominated for anything Or that I've wasted so much time talking to men who don't understand me This was the moon talking to me flirting even the moon was proving every single grant organization wrong The total of grants I've received my life being zero and Here it was my time to shine literally I didn't even have to climb a mountain or have an epiphany I'm not athletic in the least I said to the moon I can barely run the reservoir in Central Park and the only reason I like that is because I can't tell if anyone's emailed me Well, I'm running I'm a very gay runner. You see always checking out dads and listening to Brittany and repeat I like to wear purple and black. I like to feel sexy What in the actual fucks of the moon you need so much help You need an NEA a Guggenheim a national book award. No, I said to the moon. I only need you, baby Or a rich lawyer who will pay who will play with my hair and pay for dinners at the Odeon Seriously Alex the moon looked at me in a very stern way kind of a bitch if you ask me Go to bed immediately in the morning. I want you to get up and write 300 poems I want you to keep writing poems no matter what don't think about anything else not even lawyers Okay, I said okay moon who knew you were such a top. I was practically shaking And even though nothing good had happened to me in the last year and I was so sad about my life and my poems I went to bed feeling loved and appreciated how many other poets have talked to the moon not even Frank O'Hara All he got was the Sun and here. I was the center of all beauty writing these poems imagine I Also stole that ending from Frank O'Hara, too It's good to steal from the dead. I mean, what are they gonna do? It's a little cute short poem that I snuck in there I don't think my editor really wanted this one in there, but it's it's nice, you know, it's called for the critics No, you never got me no I don't think that you ever did when I walk into a bodega and buy cigarettes and ice cream blueberries and Diet Coke Also, I can cry with real enthusiasm and with feeling just as soon as I can make it home That's called performance art. That's performance art you Fox Never gotten a review that I actually liked let me tell you This poem is called New York and No one mentioned the cab poem. I love the cab poem. I never read it. It's somehow like way too It's like way too vulnerable but That poem sort of was inspired by by the fact that I was taking cabs everywhere and like I said I was also broke and people are like, what are you doing? And so then out of like this sort of working-class guilt I was like, you know, I'm just gonna pull up my iPhone and just pretend that I'm writing and at first It was really kind of pretending and then I was like, okay. I'm stuck in traffic again. Okay. I'm late again I'm always late. So my friends always know this. I'm always late and I just started, you know, writing lines in the cabs and Then I started looking back at them and I'm like, you know, these are decent they sound kind of like talking to people and I became sort of the Aesthetic parameters of the book that it would sound like I'm meeting someone at a bar telling them a story or I'm sort of, you know And a cab with a friend or walking down the street with a friend and kind of trying to tell them what I'm feeling Those are weird parameters because they just feel very close to life, right? And a poem is not life. It's still an aesthetic object So I guess in some ways I was trying to break that with that poem, a poem written in a cab Which I won't read and also this poem called New York This is a poem sort of chronicling all the places I've cried in in New York. So get ready It's a lot New York is the best city to cry in I've cried on the corner of spring and green smoking one cigarette after another Taking two-hour lunch breaks in 2006 at my first internship at interview magazine I cried in Washington Square Park the other night thinking about healthcare and how I quit my job to write poetry and how even a job in Poetry prevents you from writing it I've cried so many times in front of the Fountain at Lincoln Center Then watched the cars drive by in Columbus without reason to cry and I've cried even more than the one year I lived on St. Mark's place I was in grad school and cried a cafe or land with one drink for a million hours Until I'd write a poem and immediately send it to the New Yorker feeling entirely justified because why wouldn't they want it? It was terrible all of it, but I miss those days most the sixth train is my favorite train to cry on It's always late and full of other people's fathers No one really looks at you because they're so glad they're not you and of course because they know that the that being anyone is a tragedy Like the MTA itself Yeah, some New Yorkers in the crowd. I'm sure There's something productive about crying in New York It's almost like crying alone in your apartment, but you can cruise strangers in one errands at the same time Once I was so exhausted I started crying in the middle of a drink with my friend Rachel at the Beagle which is closed now But I was telling her how people always ask poets to do things for free is if we don't have to pay rent or attend to our loneliness I've also cried when I was happy in a cab on the FDR listening to Patty Smith the day My first book got taken and again that night when my parents asked how much money I'd make and what I would do next You know after this poetry thing It turns out that next there's more crying and so many gay bars I'm going to list them boiler room Eastern block nowhere Metropolitan and I could go on but this poem isn't about gay crying Just crying in general no identity politics in this poem Not here that reminds me how I used to cry and raise pizza also on St. Mark's place And how one time a guy asked if I had cocaine and if we would go somewhere more chill to do it I was so confused. I pretended to stop crying and said no Can't you fucking see that I'm crying then I went to Cooper Union across the street and continued crying there but less convincingly Believe it or not, I've never cried in a man's apartment a man I was sleeping with or about to their they've all thought I was too detached and should cry more They've all been emotionally bankrupt to say the least especially the lawyers Clearly none of them could picture me crying in front of the Bowery hotel when I lost my wallet the same day I had three poems rejected and went on an awful date the kind that makes you wonder if you should stop talking to people and Just max at your credit card at opening ceremony Great store I've also cried in the sunshine on Houston all of its theaters and the lobby and each time I remember how someone once told me It was a bathhouse, which is delightful and makes me feel incredibly safe The sunshine is also closed now by the way like opening ceremony and that's what happens in New York when you finally find a good spot to Cry in it's more or less gone in a flash of Course there's been times when I wanted to cry and couldn't moving waiting for test results finding out someone I used to date is now married to a dancer with a nice face and no talent. Good luck with that I don't think I should count the times. I've cried at home who could anyway I've only had three apartments St. Mark's place house in an Allen and 75th and first I got that last one being lucky one night on the A train when I ran into a guy who was on the same call sheet for a Photoshoot we once did for out magazine He told me he had a friend who had a friend who wanted to pass the apartment down to a friend Because the rent was good in a nice area. I'm not friend. I said that's me And I'm still live still living there still gay the last time I cried being two hours ago Sometimes I cry walking down Prince Street pretending. I have allergies It's my favorite street in the city and my favorite street in the world Especially the red bricks surrounding the church where on many weekends in summer vendors set up their stands and sell mostly odd things A woman almost sold me a crucifix there in 2010 But I couldn't afford it so we talked about past lives and steven x and how tusk is certainly better than rumors By the end of our talk. She just gave it to me. She was a painter and had great energy and I'm sorry I know this isn't la but that word just does something for me It might be like counting the wars america's been in if I had to tell you all the restaurants I've cried in most of them are in the east village But I do love throwing a tantrum on the west side where people are slightly more scandalized because there may be a million Dollars richer. I have no idea. I have $574 in my bank account right now Which I did at the time I've also cried in front of delivery people and I never feel bad because there's so many reasons to cry here I know that they get it besides I tip 30 percent sometimes 35 if I'm feeling emotional And I like to take the time to remind people to tip. Well, it says everything about you especially on a date Naturally when I see someone crying in new york, it's like an invitation Like I should get to work and join them like we're about to do something important together I do feel lucky. I live here since growing up. I wasn't allowed to cry and if I have kids I'll definitely tell them how useful it is and how it costs only nothing You're free to cry all the time. Please cry everybody. Please use your freedom Until one day you realize you're not free at all. You never were to begin with You're just another person crying on 10th street again Anyone cried in new york show hands. Yeah Yeah, all right feels good, right sometimes Like everything sometimes Where was I this is a long poem. Thank you for making it through three more Okay, we're gonna get a little bit dark I was like, am I gonna throw a curveball in? I think I will keep it in new york though Places I've contemplated suicide or sent nudes from My bed The bathrooms at the Frederick hotel cabs The 7-eleven on 74th and first The museum of modern art the museum of modern arts robert gober opening in 2014 My writing desk the stairwells of so many buildings An elevator once my favorite wine bar, which I won't actually name A few times at a friend's place a friend I used to sleep with a friend who used to be a friend Central park the marlton hotel the plaza the starbucks on 75th and first my bathtub My bathroom my very sad kitchen In which I never cook and look how this is no longer a list poem I wonder if anyone can tell what I am I wonder why it is they keep looking I wonder why they keep looking and asking me to disappear at the same time Everyone's alone on mars tonight and love sex death have left for earth Part of me is still on a beach where I lost something years ago Part of me on a beach and life's playing from the beginning Nine hawks dividing the dusk Wild light through each tunnel in time The day I met you never ended for me I'm a control freak. I know it's hard to tell or maybe you can tell but uh So, uh, it's probably one of the reasons why we write poems some of us It's kind of a false sense of control like everything else. But um You know, uh, when I was writing this book, uh, you know, I sort of was thinking about, uh Well, I was happy like I said, but then at the end of it covet happened or like right before and I was like, hmm So we were in the editing stages of this and I thought, um, I would love to just tell people what to do one last time So then I wrote this poem notes for my funeral This is the last one. Thank you for coming No one's allowed to tell their sad story at my funeral No one's allowed to tell my sad story at my funeral There must be cocaine Talk shit about all the people I hate it. I'll still hate them probably even more when I'm dead Play lu reads perfect day on repeat Don't cry. Don't be embarrassing It's not a good song to do drugs to so after play fleetwood and take a xanax Rent a room overlooking central park and get more drugs Invite strangers up don't return desperate texts from people who hound you because they're boring Just think about me Think of new york how the people who never liked me never liked me because they always assumed I was having too much fun And you know what I was I loved being alive Thank you Thank you. Alex. That was remarkable Um Yeah, this room was buzzing And thank you all for coming and joining us today. Uh, it's really good to be back here And we hope we'll see you again next month october 3rd for jake skates Um a couple notes of thanks and uh an injunction There should be a sign-up sheet for our email lists, uh over by the desk there. So if you're compelled put your email down Alex's reading as all the readings before are up on you will be up on youtube shortly. Uh, we can just find us on lunch pumps Our sponsors and patrons make this all possible First of all the library. Thank you amber as the living representative, but this space, uh, is a great gift and all the resources behind it Um, also the arts research center whom we're partnering with this year um By books when you get home, uh, and if you're in a little red chair Maybe you could fold it up and take it to the exit as you're leaving that would be helpful. I think Thank you