[nbf06poetry-auyematsu]{.underline}

David Kipen:

Ladies and gentlemen, Amy Uyematsu.

\[applause\]

Amy Uyematsu:

I\'m a lot shorter than David \[Kipen\]. Thank you, David, for the
wonderful introduction. And thank you all for being here today. I\'d
like to thank the NEA and Library of Congress and, particularly, Dana
Gioia. I\'m not sure if he\'s out here in the audience, but thanks,
Dana, for inviting me. I\'d like to begin by reading a poem, which I
dedicate to all the poets here. So besides the poets on the podium with
me, I suspect there are quite a few of you out there that write poetry.
Am I right? No? At least you enjoy it, you read it. And I bet you
there\'s a lot of you that write poetry. So this poem is called, "On
Poets." Is that Chung Mi? Oh, Chung Mi. I\'m seeing people I know from
Los Angeles so it\'s sort of kind of tripping me out.

\[laughter\]

"On Poets"

>          --- after Frank Burnaby\
> \
> A poet carries the unseen seed for a long time.\
> A poet is both mother and father.\
> Collecting bones, leaves, and names with equal anticipation.\
> a poet is most amazed by the gift of countless\
> moments of amazement.\
> \
> A poet walks on a tightrope of syllables.\
> A poet keeps writing no matter how dangerous.\
> An advocate for the ordinary,\
> a poet can be no less than revolutionary.\
> Feared most by tyrants.\
> a poet cannot hide.\
> \
> A poet begins with nothing and ends with everything,\
> over and over again.\
> A poet inhabits the crowded country of dream and desire,\
> improvising her small portion of words\
> like a jazz musician.\
> \
> A poet sings because it\'s the only way she knows how.\
> A poet keeps giving birth to herself.

\[applause\]

Okay, as David said, I\'m a math teacher. So, a lot of people \--
usually the reaction is, "it doesn\'t go together, math and poetry." But
it really does. And one thing that mathematicians and poets both love, I
think, is the idea of infinity. Another thing I feel is that both of us
give shape to space through the use of numbers or words. So I\'m going
to read a poem about zero and infinity and it has a quote from one of my
favorite books by Pablo Neruda, "The Book of Questions," and that quote
is, "Is where space ends called death or infinity?"

The title of this poem is "The Meaning of Zero: A Love Poem."

A mere eyelid's distance between you and me.

It took us a long time to discover the number zero.

John's brother is afraid to go outside.

He claims he knows

the meaning of zero.

I want to kiss you.

A mathematician once told me you can add infinity

to infinity.

There is a zero vector, which starts and ends

at the same place, its force

and movement impossible

to record with

rays or maps or words.

It intersects yet runs parallel

with all others.

A young man I know

wants me to prove

the zero vector exists.

I tell him I can\'t,

but nothing in my world

makes sense without it.

\[applause\]

Okay, so that\'s sort of a more philosophical love poem. And now I think
I\'m going to give you one that\'s a little more, maybe something you
can grasp more. In that, if you\'re like me, I always get crushes on
certain jazz musicians, including the saxophone players, the pianists,
and maybe the acoustic bass players. And usually women in the audience,
I\'ll start seeing their heads going like this. They\'re nodding in
agreement.

This poem was written when I first met my husband Raul, who himself
plays the saxophone. So I\'m going to read the first part of a two-part
piece called "The Shape of One Man\'s Breathing." This part is called
"Saxophone Man."

> : Saxophone Man
>
> A woman who can\'t stop
>
> watching the grip of your hands,
>
> The fit of your lips and tongue
>
> on the small reed mouthpiece,
>
> wants you to play her
>
> like your sax \-- press lightly
>
> against chest, held
>
> in a low curl along belly
>
> and thighs, or tight
>
> as you reach all the way
>
> down, lift horn from hips,
>
> legs kicking to a quick pulse,
>
> fingers landing blindly
>
> groove to sweet groove.
>
> She can\'t help staring,
>
> and you keep wailing
>
> This last chance
>
> to blast your way back.

\[applause\]

So, maybe if you haven\'t thought that way about saxophone players
\[laughs\], you will when you go to jazz clubs.

\[laughter\]

I am a Japanese American. It\'s so interesting nowadays that even in the
crossword puzzles they have words like isei, nisei and sansei. It shows
how far awareness of Asian Americans has come since I was coming up. But
in case you don\'t know, I\'ll explain what it means. Isei is the first
generation of Japanese Americans. Nisei would be my parents' generation.
I'm a sansei-ichi-ni-san, so I\'m sansei. My son is a yonsei, fourth
generation. And I would say that, at least for the first three
generations of Japanese Americans, our lives have been very much
affected by the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
And so even though I was born after the camps, still, my growing up as a
child was so affected by the camp experience, by the fact that the
United States was fighting Japan during World War II.

So I\'d like to read a poem that\'s dedicated to the people that were
interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. First a little brief note on the
fact that I always find it ironic that some of the camps have such
beautiful names. My father\'s family was at Manzanar. "Manzanar" means
apple orchard. Another of the camps was called Topaz, so you think of
some beautiful jewel. And this poem is about Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

And it is based on a story, a true story, where they have found these, I
think, big vats or barrels full of stones, and each of the stones had
Japanese calligraphy writing on them. And up to now, no one really knows
the story behind the writing on the stones, how they got there. And as
many of us poets will do, we\'ll get little bits and pieces like that
and we\'ll come up with our own version of what\'s going on. So this is
entitled, "The Well."

> *Imagine a mountain whose name is heart.*
>
> At the throat of the mountain
>
> They fill a well
>
> with so many stones
>
> It can hold nothing more.
>
> They\'d never heard of
>
> the mountain named heart,
>
> Kokoro-yama, til they were taken
>
> as prisoners to Heart Mountain.
>
> *Imagine a mountain whose name is heart*
>
> A mound of stones,
>
> too many to count, remain\--
>
> Each inscribed
>
> by a different hand,
>
> Each crying out.
>
> Some simply reveal
>
> the writer\'s name\--
>
> Shizuko, a woman,
>
> or a family known as Osajima.
>
> Most of the handpainted
>
> rocks carry a single kanji\--
>
> snow wind cold sky
>
> shame home bird.
>
> \--for the 12,000 Japanese Americans
>
> Interned at Heart Mountain, Wyoming

\[applause\]

So I grew up in this little town called Sierra Madre. About 10,000
people that\'s right next door to Pasadena. And most of you know
Pasadena because of the Rose Parade. When I was growing up, this was the
'50s and '60s, civil rights was just starting to happen. So my little
town was incredibly racist, was just plain old racist, and but
incredibly beautiful, too, because Sierra Madre is nestled right against
the mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains. In this poem, I\'m trying to
describe some of the physical beauty of the town I grew up with, along
with some of the racial conditions. This is from a three-part poem.
I\'ll read the first part.

> "A REPEATING BASS LINE" 
>
> wisteria & jacaranda 
>
> grew wild
>
>          through our town, their
>
> lavender and blue blossoms
>
>          fell lightly, made
>
> a cool shade of fuji iro,
>
>          wisteria purple,
>
> but I felt the whispers
>
>          and men who won't smile
>
>          at the children we were,
>
> our grandfathers
>
>          tending the land
>
> long before the flight
>
>          of citydwellers
>
>          three bedroom families
>
> and artists who moved into
>
>          canyons of boulders and pine. 
>
> sierra madre used
>
>          its natural beauty
>
> tried to make us forget
>
>          lima avenue for jews,
>
> grove street
>
>          for mexicans and japs,
>
> wisteria & jacaranda
>
>          grew wild there too.
>
> and one night we watched
>
>          a flame burn
>
> blue purple
>
>          on the lawn down our street. 
>
> but the next day only
>
>          a scorched outline
>
>          that creeps into dreams
>
> and soon the grass
>
>          grew full again. 

\[applause\]

So I thought I would jump from that image of the cross burning to more
images of fire 30 years later in Los Angeles. Because what do you
associate with Los Angeles in the '90s? The riots? Right? But back in
the '60s when I\'m a teenager, you've got the Watts riots and then in
the '90s, we\'ve got a new set of riots. So, oops, this is called "The
Ten Million Flames of Los Angeles." And I actually wrote this New
Year's, 1994.

> \[\--a New Year's poem, 1994\]
>
> I\'ve always been afraid of death by fire,
>
> I am eight or nine when I see the remnants of a cross
>
> Burning on the Jacobs' front lawn,
>
> seventeen when Watts explodes in '65,
>
> Forty-four when Watts blazes again in 1992.
>
> For days the sky scatters soot and ash which cling to my skin,
>
> The smell of burning metal everywhere. And I recall
>
> James Baldwin\'s warning about the fire next time.
>
> *Fires keep burning in my city of angels.*
>
> *From South Central to Hollywood,*
>
> *Burn, baby, burn.*
>
> In '93, L.A.'s Santana winds incinerate Laguna in Malibu.
>
> Once the firestorm begins, wind and heat regenerate
>
> on their own, unleashing a fury so unforgiving
>
> It must be a warning from the gods.
>
> *Fires keep burning in my city of angels.*
>
> *How many does it take?*
>
> *burn, LA, burn.*
>
> Everybody says we are all going to hell.
>
> No home safe
>
> from any tagger, gangster, carjacker, neighbor.
>
> LA gets meaner by the minute
>
> As we turn our backs
>
> on another generation of young men,
>
> become too used to this condition
>
> of children killing children.
>
> I wonder who to fear more.
>
> *Fires keep burning in my city of angels.*
>
> *but I hear someone whisper,*
>
> *"Mi Angelita, come closer."*
>
> Though I ready myself for the next conflagration,
>
> I feel myself giving in to something I can\'t name.
>
> I smile more at strangers, leave big tips to waitresses,
>
> Laugh when I\'m stuck on the freeway, content
>
> just listening to B.B. King\'s, "Why I Sing the Blues."
>
> "*Mi angelita, mi angelita."*
>
> I\'m starting to believe in a flame
>
> which tries to breathe in each of us.
>
> I see young Chicanos fasting one more day
>
> in a hunger strike for education,
>
> read about gang members preaching peace in the 'hood,
>
> Here Reginald Denny forgiving the men
>
> who nearly beat him to death.
>
> I look at people I know. as if for the first time,
>
> sure that some are angels. I like the unlikeliness
>
> of this unhandsome crew\-- the men losing their hair
>
> needing a shave, those with dark shining
>
> eyes, and the gray-haired women, rage
>
> and grace in each sturdy step.
>
> What is this fire I feel, this fire which breathes freely
>
> inside without burning them alive?
>
> *Fires keep burning in my city of angels,*
>
> *but someone calls to me,*
>
> *"Angelita, do not run from the flame."*

\[applause\]

I\'ve been at three high schools in L.A. Oh, by the way, I reminded
myself, I\'m going to do a little plug for my school even though I guess
Dana did already \[laughs\]. But I teach at Venice High School in the
Los Angeles Unified School District, which is the second largest public
school district in the United States. And Venice High, if any of you
have ever been to Venice, California, any of you?

\[cheers\]

Okay! Well there\'s still a lot of surfers there. The surfers bring
skateboards to school and there are still hippies, or children of
hippies, at that school. You\'d imagine that in Venice, California. We
also have kids bused in from the inner cities. So it is a lot more
diverse probably than it used to be. We even have a big community of
immigrant kids from Oaxaca, Mexico, making it a very, very interesting
place. Anyway, one of my high schools, at a previous high school, there
was a member of the staff whose father was actually a poet. His name was
Mbembe Milton Smith, an African American poet. I was able to read some
of his work, and in one of his poems there was a line that I couldn\'t
get out of my head. That line was, "But if you want beauty, you\'ve got
to fight for it." I think that\'s what many artists do. We are fighting
for beauty. So, I\'m going to read a poem that has that quote at the
beginning. And it\'s sort of about writing in these difficult times,
because we are in very difficult times right now. This is a
three-parter, I\'m reading the first part. The poem is entitled, "The
Flowering Eye."

> You think these pretties come easy but you don\'t
>
> even want to know how tired the cry
>
> until there\'s so much
>
> craze and stark the world
>
> begins to bleed in places no one dares imagine
>
> not even stone
>
> or the one we call God
>
> can remember a more terrifying time.
>
> And maybe that\'s part of the secret
>
> this dangerous promise binding
>
> each of us who stumble into a moment
>
> so ravishing we become
>
> eternally intoxicated
>
> like the dumbstruck lover always
>
> longing for one more look
>
> no matter how fleeting just one
>
> last delicious gasp for
>
> the shimmer and hum we so stubbornly pursue.
>
> No killing field too big for our exquisite need
>
> we strum in the gorgeous looming
>
> so near the latest ragged assault
>
> and oh how incredible
>
> the beauty we'll win
>
> at such unforgiving cost.

\[applause\]

Ten minutes, okay. I\'m going to read you \-- this is something because
some of you \-- I know a lot of you are writers, and I\'m going to go
back to Neruda\'s "Book of Questions." Because if one day you\'re stuck,
you know, you just, nothing is coming to your head, why don\'t you try
writing questions? So a number of years ago, I was in a writing workshop
where that was really our assignment was to write a lot of questions. So
I wrote a piece that has many math terms in it, which maybe you\'ll
recognize, maybe you won\'t. And it\'s called "Unfinished Calculations."
And again, it\'s based on Neruda's book, "The Book of Questions." It\'s
got about two dozen questions and I won\'t \[laughs\], I won't put you
through all two dozen; I'll read about six.

"Unfinished Calculations" \[not the complete poem---six randomly
selected questions of the twelve questions in the complete poem.\]

> *How true is the line that keeps threading its way through,*
>
> *too thin to cipher and with no start or end*
>
> *when did I first hear a voice that keeps humming in my ear*
>
> *when does a kiss weigh more than a fist, the kiss outlasts the scar*
>
> *can anyone measure the diameter of want, the exponential distortion*
>
> *of the glutted or starving eye*
>
> *is forgiveness always less than the magnitude of rage*
>
> *what is the sound of a singular stone,*
>
> *spiraling into the center of the pond*
>
> *Where it ripples the surface in concentric circles,*
>
> *each one drawn into the water\'s stillness*
>
> *after so many days of walking, what roads does the foot remember*

\[applause\]

Okay, I\'m going to read two more pieces, both about getting older.
Where's David, well, David's wife is here. They just had children. Enjoy
them because it goes fast. So the next poem I\'m going to read was
written the first Mother\'s Day my son had come back East to go to
college. So he wasn\'t home \[laughs\]. My first Mother\'s Day he
wasn\'t home. This is called, very simply, "Mother\'s Day Poem to
Myself."

> Your cord took ten days to fall off,
>
> A tiny dry twig,
>
> you didn\'t feel it breaking
>
> away from your belly.
>
> I barely remember
>
> finding the shriveled stub,
>
> Almost unnoticed
>
> in your bath water,
>
> not knowing I\'d want
>
> to keep this as evidence,
>
> this thread of skin
>
> which grew in
>
> my body\--solely to feed you.
>
> I should have saved our cord
>
> in a small earthen jar,
>
> kept it with a lock
>
> of your hair,
>
> So straight and black,
>
> even at birth.
>
> Did anyone warn me
>
> there\'ll be weeks
>
> I never hear your voice,
>
> days even I no longer
>
> wonder what you\'re doing?
>
> How could I know that
>
> mothers like me have only
>
> eighteen years before we
>
> finally feel the cut.

\[applause\]

Okay, this last piece \-- I listen to oldies. And I got five minutes.
Okay, I can do it in less than five. I love Motown. I grew up listening
to Motown, R&B, James Brown, The Temptations, all those kinds of groups.
And so they do have these specialized stations now, FM stations, that
will just play that type of music.

So for my exercise, I used to jog, then my knees gave out. So, then I
started walking. So, while walking, I would listen to my favorite
station and I think they may have been playing, "What is Hip?" by Tower
of Power. Look at all the people that know Tower of Power. Yeah! Okay,
so they were playing "What is Hip?" So, you know, this whole thing
about, in our culture, about we want to stay cool? You know? I mean,
admit it, right? A lot of us want to stay cool. So I began to ask
myself, can you still be hip at 50? Because at the time I was walking, I
was 50. Daniel is smiling over there. Okay. So this is called, "Reply to
the Question, Can You Still Be Hip at 50? \[the title of the poem is
"Even Now."\]

> *\[\-- a reply to the question, *
>
> *   \"Can you still be hip at 50?\"\]*\
>  
>
> Hip out, girl
>
> curl a whistle
>
> in your strut
>
> make that riff
>
> a little rough
>
> hang out your flaunt
>
> flap and feather
>
> just a whiff
>
> this side of shy
>
> enough to atomize
>
> the breeze
>
> that eases you
>
> back in 
>
>    yeah
>
> it\'s easy still
>
> just rip, girl
>
> the same old
>
> hide and tease
>
> slide that squeeze
>
> into his shaker
>
> tweek a tender
>
> to his sigh
>
> and always
>
> let him
>
> woo the humm
>
> inside your tangle
>
> till you swoosh
>
> and wing him by 

Thank you very much.

\[applause\]

\[end of transcript\]