So the second half of the poem seems to be the second ode. The first ode is the uptown ode. And now it ends. In fact, more than 50% of becomes an ode to the machete. So, it begins with that powerful line that I think Connie referred to. Allow me to translate. And a quickly paraphrase is that this is difficult allow me to translate what's being said there. >> He's trying to, I see in this book like kind of connection ends in with a return from the previous. What we all just did was trying to translate. We are all trying to get home, but now he's going to do that for us. Not by literally saying, this is what Willie meant. >> Okay, that was a fancy read, and you do that. >> Sorry. >> No, I depend on it. That's why I wake up in the morning, so you can do the fancy reading. But you suggested at the end of what you said, the simpler reading When somebody says to you like you've just gone on and somebody says, let me tell you what Kamara is saying. Let me translate. >> In other words. >> In other words, but it has a tone to it. Anybody help me out, am I the only one thinking this, Lilly? >> I think he's very clearly signaling who he expects his audience to be, meaning someone to whom this >> Expanse from the first section would not be familiar at all. >> Right, so Brother Will has said this to me, and now I turn to you in this ode, at the second ode and say, I think I want to explain what this means. >> But actually I think it's complicated and I don't know that's super clear from reading the second section at first, whether he's translating >> All of only what Will said. We are all trying to get home. Or if he's translating the entire first paragraph, like which part of the first stanza are we supposed to be able to graph onto the second part? >> So that is a key ambiguity. Am I translating what Bill just told me or am I translating this entire scene, and to do so, I need to go somewhere else. So we don't have time to do a close reading of the whole second section, but I'd like each of you in terms just to say something about what you encounter. In fact I give you license to say anything you want up until the last section which is not identified by a stands of breaks but it begins when I was young. Let's just not talk about that yet and I want you to be free to talk about anything else in that. In that long section which seems to entail a pilgrimage back to where machete, where men forged by hand, the machetes of the Philippines. So you didn't know I was going to do this, but Connie, you're first, say anything about this section that you think would be helpful. >> Sure, well I think one of the first things to notice about it, defers so much in the first section in tempo and also in the syntax, I guess, I mean allowing translators some sort of implicit didacticism. But then also, you have images that- >> [CROSSTALK] next line they are neighborhood in the America sample like a mini lecture. >> Right, and the images come much more slowly. The ocean, the weeping, the weathers, I really love that part about the equal weathers sort of equating in a way. Monsoon and gossip both things specific to and important to maybe in the Philippines that there's something about a hush and excitement and something that's seasonal and a reason to convene maybe which come back to. The convening what we did in the first section. >> Good and Connie did the nice thing of referring to the passage that's at the beginning of the section but I invite you to go anywhere you want. Carlos do you want to do it next? What do you have? >> Sure. I really sort of like, maybe this is too long a section to pick but I like, Summoning disgruntled angels, and then, armed with cutlasses that could teach you to make anything with that simple blade. That comes later because I like summoning disgruntled angels because it sort of referencing to the top part, talking about these drunks that are back home and planting a tree so they wouldn't forget your pain. It made me think of the people that you're leaving behind. Sort of this split between those who leave the country for whatever reason and those who remain. And maybe so many disgruntled angels is a comment about drinking as well, but it was funny to me, because it's here, he's summoning disgruntled angels, these drunks are like disgruntled angels being summoned. >> Yes. >> And then he's armed with cutlasses, this completely opposite image of like almost like the jungle conquistador or like this working- >> Or insurrectionists, armed and cutlass which is rough synonym for machete. But cutlass suggests the Spanish armed, or the resistance to Spanish, or the American armed after 1898. >> Be eight. >> Yeah. >> And or the resistance to it armed with cutlasses. So this is a very traditionally dangerous place. >> Yes. >> But what happens after the comma is they could teach you to make things and it turns out one of the things they make is how to cook a hog over a fire, so it's not just Marshal and Military, there's something about the machete that is a tool that is not only violent yes? >> Yes. >> Yeah it's very, because you can use it for so many different things, it becomes a very complex image that >> Both references and many different users and then many different cultures in the poem. >> Good. Okay, let's go over to Lilly. Anything to add from this section? >> Yeah. I think that to me what would maybe sort of think that this second section is actually a translation of the entire first section is the way that these >> Which is by the way, only positive, really interesting idea. >> Thank you. >> No, but can you say a little more about that? >> Sure, [LAUGH] Thank you >> What is the second ode? Is it a kind of mirror track >> Well what made me think it is two things. One is he mentioned the law of moving bodies which is what I thought was like Newton's laws of [CROSSTALK] It's a pun on physics and diaspora. >> I thought- >> Moving bodies. >> Famously, that law is for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. I thought, maybe he was intending to say, even though he is describing dancing. [CROSSTALK] >> [INAUDIBLE] dance floor. >> An idea of here is this section and maybe presented in this environment it's got an equal but opposite translation. >> That's really brilliant. Brilliant, I mean I think the motley flock in the first section is a bunch of Latin to use a phrase, Latin guys dancing, but the motley flock of the second stanza is are the moving bodies of the diaspora. And especially going back home, so that the machetes many meanings and purposes has the same motley quality. Like a Swiss Army knife. It gets to be used for all kinds of things. That the intercultural integration of the first part, in its celebration of the ritual of male dancing. So that was great. >> Thanks. >> But now you wanted to say something else. >> No, just a quick thing. You have mentioned that definitely the poem takes a turn with the section you mentioned earlier with what when I was young towards the bottom. >> Yes. >> But I actually when I was reading it I marked a turn at bless you in here sad secrets comma, but I. So that's just. >> The but. >> Yeah. >> Because that's when we actually go the Philippines. >> The bless you, but I Mirror that allow me to translate break to me. >> It's also the first instance to get I think. >> Yeah, I think. >> Is it the first I? There's one in the first section. >> [CROSSTALK] Yeah, it sounds like a 1978 gremlin. That's a 1978 gremlin dragging its tail pipe, what an image [LAUGH] >> An image of sound. Anna what do you want to add something about this second part? The second ode? >> Yeah, I love what Lily just said about the whole second section being kind of a translation of the first. because I think that there is something, there's a real shift to me in kind of the groundedness of the first section which has this kind of, it has the objects we talked about. The artifacts, it has people, it's got names, it has directions, it has like movement that we can sort [INAUDIBLE] okay they went from here to here. But the second section has like an almost kind of magical realistic sort of quality to it. We know he's going back to a real place. He's making a pilgrimage, he's looking at the process by which some of these things are made, but there is a kind of, almost, a dreamier quality to it. >> It's an origin story, right? >> Yeah. >> To the exact place where, right? And then, you have fire, and embers, and making things. This is the machete, not as a symbol but as an actual tool, this is where it's forged. >> It's like looking at something that's really elemental. >> Elemental is the word. >> Sometimes the elementals are the hardest to define. >> Fire. >> Yeah, Carlos, we're going to talk to Camara, but you look like you had something to add. >> I just thought that was great. It's such a myth that it's being created and enacted. The fire, the making, the feeding, the creating of food. Sustaining. And then the coming of age, when I was young I thought this, I thought this. And then now, back to the future. >> Interesting what it does to translate. This is a kind of, in conventional terms, thought of perhaps as a reverse translation. Even though the second section is in English. What's happening is that this American experience of diasporic men getting together to dance can be translated from an original. It can be translated from the mythology of the machete. Kamara, your thoughts on this second Yeah. So, I really like when they were talking about mythology. I wanted to talk about religion and rights and traditions in this passage because I think that's the biggest content change for me is that after this first section of kind of fun and dancing and like city life of New York City, we get back to this origin story that is rooted in diablos and rights and weeping and black saints. I mean disgruntled angels which for me says something about if this part is a translation of this, then there must be something also holy or devilish in this as well, right? >> Mm-hm. And so I think that's really powerful and beautiful. >> So well put. And to add to your religious references, they chanted low. There's a chanting, and the use of mallets that are presumably forging Machete that are creating quick cut time. They're creating the origins of what becomes the rhythm that Tito Puente and others get to bring to the United States. >> Quick cut time >> Quick cut time in itself, right? What an amazing phrase. So, I'm feeling excited about discovering yet again, from Patrick Rossau, what we know about American music. Let's say from New Orleans, for instance to take a different mode, which is that all American music is essentially created from the diaspora. From horrific, forced diasporic bodies moving through the middle passage and other methods but also from the essential annexation of the Philippines by the United States, its only colony. Technically its only colony I don't think Hawaii quite counts. The Philippines was our colony, we conquered it from the Spanish in 1898. And this was our this is our this democracy's colonial experience, right? But what happens is you get this rhythm and tradition and religion and write that happens to American society and we what we do is we get the first we get this first American scene and then we get the origin and we look at the we get the backstory in a way. Okay so now let's look turn to the last section which I will read and I'll invite each of you to say something about. It's now we are so we are not in Franco O'Hara's New York anymore Toto. We are- >> [LAUGH] >> Not in that style here. We are not in that present tense. And now he's becoming a little more formalistic in creating a try ad of what hard is. All right. There's I thought hard was this, I thought hard was that, and in some neighbourhoods hard is. So I'll read it and you can come in and what you think is doing when I was young, I thought hard was the mad dog you could send across the crowded bar. I thought hard was, how deep you roll, or how nasty the steel you bring. In some neighborhoods of America, hard is turning down the fire just enough so you can kiss the knife. And make it great. Okay, Connie you want to start? You don't have to do the whole thing because you'll have help from the rest of us. >> Yeah I think the way that this section is set up with the when I was young I thought I thought and then the now in a way this retranslating of hard sort of forgives the youth or forgives the youthful definition of what hardness and, >> What is the youthful definition of hard? Just macho, havoc, like bearing a weapon or- >> Yeah, cut, cutting and knifing and military. >> Right, and there's a sense, I think, of Tenderness now in the present tense or even of abiding guilt. I think that speaks to something of the experience of needing to assimilate to what like a different kind of masculinity or what an American kind of masculinity is and this is sort of revisiting that. >> In a way he's saying, when I was young I thought this, and when I was young I thought that. But now I've learned. So there's a change. Lily, I'm just going to throw you a little curveball and ask you to try to give us some meanings of Horace Here, can you spin off a few? >> Yeah, I think hard, in the sense of preferring to masculinity, as Connie brought up, means hard as in you have an exterior that doesn't allow you to become vulnerable, or open to something else. >> When I was a young man, or a boy, we called hard guy, it was a hard guy. Tough guy. >> Tough guy. Yeah, so hard, meaning It can mean hardened against the world to like you are self contained and strong. >> That's one. Another one? >> It can mean unbreakable like it's hard and as opposed to soft. >> Another one? >> Stiff, so not malleable. >> Yes, and that refers back to the forging of the, right? It's all about making The metal not hard during the forging so that you can create something that is very hard. >> Okay and there's one more. >> Difficult like hard to parse. >> Yeah, difficult. I thought this was difficult and I thought that was difficult. Okay, thank you, Lily. Kumara, thoughts about this last section? Something good is happening to the speaker in my opinion, I feel good about what he learns. Helps us with the reading. Hard is turning down the fire, what's he saying? >> So I think in part he's saying that fire can symbolize and represent so many different things, like rage, anger, hardness even. Turning that down in some sense, turning down that machismo in some sense, can bring- >> The violence, fire as in violence. >> Yeah, fire as in violence can create or lead to something, I take it as a musical reference at the end, a rhythmic reference at the end, like making it rain. >> Making it rain, like really making it work. >> Making it like, a ring can be such a perfect in tune everlasting sound. Who did the ringing of the bell's thing? >> Williams, Carl Williams, ring, ring, ring. >> Yeah, that sort of thing. Like an everlasting sort of sow, and how you do that is not by being the biggest fire in the room. >> I think what you learn, or what he learned, what this speaker learns by going back to the very spot in the Philippines where the machetes were forged by hand, is that it's not all about the heat of the fire, the hottest, hottest, hottest, hardest guy. It's about tempering that's the word isn't it? Tempering, heat so that the forging creates a knife that makes food, that can handle fire, that can be peaceful, that is for teaching culture rather than simply chopping people down, either through insurrection or defense. And that that results in something that you can kiss and make ring. It is not so hot that you can't kiss it. And the kissing really takes me back to the first section of that homosociality there's willing dappling of Orlando. That is a kind of, that's not a hard guide breeding it turns out to be a kind of kissing in a way. Okay, well. >> It's complicated, right? Let's not just take this thing that we know for one use. Let's give it all of it's other uses. Not to get weirdly personal here, but I went to a trip to Costa Rica where all the guys in my group wanted to bring home machetes. And like leaving aside who actually wants their kid to come home with a machete. A 17-year-old. >> I'm not sure that the airlines would like that too. >> Yeah, That's it, that's it. >> How do they even get on the plane, but anyway. >> But they all wanted it for that use, to go home and threaten their little brothers with. Or to show, look what I got. >> That attitude is helpful because I think this poem ultimately is about a complicated history of machismo, complicating it, tempering it, turning down the fire. So that when we see these guys dancing in Spanish Harlem, we think maybe something that is more complicated going on among this male ritualizing. Carlos? >> Yeah, I was going to say much of what everyone has talked about. >> That's good then. >> Yeah, I guess so. But that it's kind of a shift from sort of an enacting into to a making. Instead of using the tool to enact violence or to sort of royal your way across the room like a mad dog, it's a shift towards focusing on the making of that tool. >> [CROSSTALK] >> Of fire, and steel, and earth, and, sort of, the human, coming together to make these things, and, kind of, the connectivity of that making, rather than the use. >> Terrific. Okay, quick final words. Anything about the poem, or about this kind of poetry, or, maybe, what he does with the, I do this, I do that? Anything at all. Connie, you've had a few seconds to think about what you might add. >> Yeah, I think the interesting excerpt from that poetic tradition, but then changing it so quickly. Even at the beginning, where you're dancing and then it's not even half past midnight and you're already tired and you already want to get home, and that sort of section is already cut off and then you have to go somewhere else. >> Terrific. Lily, final word? >> I think based on the concept of translating, and what we talked about before about how it seems to signal that he expects his audience to be one that's not familiar with this particular experience. I think we're kind of, at least I took that to mean he's asking us to, if we see this scene in our own lives, to read this complicated journey of masculinity. A complicated like identity in the people that we see and not to just assume that's just some guys having a night out. He, like what Kumara was saying, there's a right and a ritual and something really important to what these guys, that you might cast aside or walk by and not think about what they're doing. >> There's something very strong in saying at the end, there are some neighborhoods in America in which the guys are not just seeing how nasty the steel that they bring is. There are some neighborhoods and it begins the second out with there are neighborhoods in America. So he's really making a claim for a complex reading just as you say. Carlos, final word? >> Sure, I'd just like to say that he has such a command of pace. Such an incredible command of pace moving from the first long stanza, with very few periods and punctuations, and it just kind of runs through densely together. And then it's tempered again in the second one sort of shortening itself down into these more declarative sentences that kind of echo off each other. Especially, the last three into like a kind of ringing for me instead I just thought he did really well. >> It sounds like that you as a poet might be learning a thing or two about this. >> Yeah, great pace. >> Great. Anna, final thought? >> I would say that I am absolutely all for a poetry that seeks to complicate any of these notions of masculinity, diaspora, machetes. Enter all of the above. That's what I'm looking for especially when I'm the audience that needs these things translated for me because this hasn't been my experience. Like what Lily said sort of a while back about how maybe that word translates sort of gestures towards the audience of those who haven't had the experience at diaspora life. And also in a way I think also to those who have had immigrant experience, and who are kind of hobbling together the origins with the let's go uptown. >> Good, I mean we said it various ways but it's worth repeating. The next time I see someone named G BO spitting one ill cut, notice the cut there because this is about the machete, the cutlass One ill cut after another. I'm not going to think simply that's someone I should be afraid of, that's someone who is inherently violent. Well, there's probably a complicated cultural story about this ill cut dance. Kamara, follow on? >> Yeah! You almost took the words out of my mouth. >> Good! >> I was just going to say that, going back to the title >> An Uptown Ode that ends on an Ode to the Machete. If you looked at that title without reading the rest of the poem you would think this poem would be about violence. Yeah, you would see some relations between New York and someplace else but you would think violent, but learning about origins and learning about diasporic histories. Things like that. You can find some kind of peace in that. >> Yeah. >> And, yeah. I could talk about We Are All Trying To Get Home forever. [LAUGH] >> Want to say one more thing about We Are All Trying To Get Home? What does that mean to you? >> I think it talks a lot about the experience of not only immigrants but people who don't necessarily know where their original home may be and know it's not in America. And why I think it's like so beautiful is that it's this like constant process and even though like this the second half seems like a origin story, seems like a beginning you know that it's not. And like you can't find the beginning of this section where they're actually making the steal. Where is that part? So yeah, it's just a constant consistent process that. >> Thank you. That's my final word which is that the only real violence in the poem that we encounter is the physics of the diaspora. The first and last law of moving bodies. All right, that's what's happening here. That's what's happened. That's how America, he uses the word America, not United States, that's how America is constituted. The law of moving bodies. And that the best sanctuary for such moving bodies, bodies that had been moved, is the dance floor. That's what he says. That the dance floor is a sanctuary, and that makes me deeply moved by the experience of the first section, in retrospect, when I reread it. So the book is about Patrick Rosal. R-O-S-A-L, and it's called Brooklyn Antediluvian and I think everyone at this table is going to buy it as soon as it's available. Thank you very much all of you
