>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 [ Pause ] ^M00:00:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:00:31 >> James H. Billington: Good evening and welcome to the Library of Congress for this evening's opening reading by the new poet laureate of the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera. Since this is the last time that I will be both choosing and introducing a poet laureate, let me begin by expressing my, and the Library's, and I think many of you here's admiration for the inspiring and energetic way that Rob Casper has been leading the Library's Poetry and Literature Center. ^M00:01:10 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:19 >> James H. Billington: The poet laureateship is chosen by the Library of Congress and is the only literary prize the United States established statutorily. Over the course of my own 28 years as Librarian of Congress, I've appointed 19 of the poet laureates, each with his or her own voice, and opinion, and vision. And together they have shown me, at least, how essential poetry is to our nation. Getting to know them has been one of the real joys of my position. I have seen how committed they are to the responsibility of this office of laureateship and how much they support this institution as well with its charge to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people. Tonight we celebrate our newest poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, a man who seemed destined for this position and whose strengths complement those who preceded him. Herrera is the second U.S. laureate also to have served as poet laureate in his home state. He was California's poet laureate for the past three years. There he launched i-Promise -- i-Promise Joanna, actually -- which is about a bullying awareness problem, and another one called "The Most Incredible and Biggest Poem on Unity in the World." It was a poem of almost 10,000 words in length with contributions by Californians of all ages. Herrera is bringing the same energy and a similar idea to his new role in launching "La Casa de Colores," "The House of Color," on the Library's website in the next few days. He will put out a call for contributions to an epic poem about the American experience, and I hope many of you will be contributors. My first experience with Juan Felipe Herrera was at the gala for the 213 National Book Festival. There he read his poem, "Half Mexican," a kind of alchemy of words that only the best poets can create. The poem ends by celebrating the complexity of identity and what we must all do to continue to find our sense of who we are ourselves. I'm quoting him now, he said, "All this becomes your lifelong project, that is you are Mexican, one half Mexican, the other half Mexican, then the half against itself, the other half." I did not know that Herrera wrote "Half Mexican" in one sitting or that he often writes poems at a moment's notice. His great body of work spans more than four decades. ^M00:05:01 Much of this work extends the lineage of Walt Whitman, Carl Sandberg, Allen Ginsburg. One needs only to read Herrera's poems "Blood on the Wheel" or "187 Reasons Mexicans Can't Cross the Border" to see how he re-imagined [inaudible] with a kind of incantational power because his is a poetry of freedom, the freedom to experiment beautifully, to speak a wealth of different registers, and in English and Spanish, and with a sense of joy and reverence throughout. He is able to imagine, cover what -- no, rather using, the imagination to cover whatever ground it needs to. At the National Book Festival when he read from his book ^ITSenegal Taxi^NO with a cast of voices that included such figures as the village aunt, the Kalashnikov AK-47, and television box in the east village hut, comparisons, they are the core of Herrera's poetry and an appeal to counter the injustices that it divide and beset us all in so many ways. As Herrera writes in "Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings," a poem is, and I quote him, "a way to attain a life without boundaries." So I should like to think of the poet laureateships that I've selected over these years, how they have validated their signature projects, which they themselves invent. It's not a requirement, but fortunately the laureates have mostly chosen to have an important project. Robert Pinsky's favorite poem, project gathering in favorite poems for ordinary people around the country, all over America. Robert Pinsky's favorite poems project that I mentioned. Billy Collins' ^ITPoetry 180^NO, which is poems for high schools -- still widely used today. Kay Ryan bringing something like the voice of Emily Dickinson in your community colleges in her project with the beautiful name of ^ITPoetry for the Mind's Joy^NO. Community colleges don't have professors of poetry, but Kay Ryan assumed that wrong. And then you had Ted Kooser of Nebraska writing a newspaper column about poetry for small and medium-sized communities all over the country. That was called "American Life in Poetry". And most recently Natasha Trethewey's project Where Poetry Lives, taking poetry a variety of places around the country, ranging from a juvenile prison to an Alzheimer's home, together with Jeffrey Brown for a memorable series of news hour segments on National Public Television. Now, I can think of laureates that I have selected doing these wonderful things. One Felipe Herrera will add to the ways we can and should enjoy and champion poetry throughout this country. Herrera is an American original and his poems will delight and challenge generations to come. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the twenty-first poet laureate of the United States, the poet laureate consultant in poetry, Juan Felipe Herrera. ^M00:09:49 [ Applause ] ^M00:10:04 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: [Foreign language], thank you everybody. Thank you everybody, [foreign language]. [Foreign language], thank you, Dr. Billington. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for coming over. [Foreign language]. Casa de Colores, [foreign language], everybody. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, [foreign language]. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Billington. Thank you, [foreign language]. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, this is beautiful, this is beautiful. I think that was the poem. I think that was the poem. Thank you so much. The poem was short; it was beautiful. And it was full of love, that's what made it beautiful. And that's why it was short, too, because, you know, love is so powerful. Thank you, Dr. Billington. Thank you, Dr. Billington. I really appreciate your invitation, and I appreciate all the things you have given me in one short sentence, "Are you willing to serve as the poet laureate of the United States?" Thank you so much. And I said, "Yes." I said, "Yes." I said, "I'm honored." I said, "I'm humbled." And then you said, "Any questions?" And I said, "No, I think that's it right there." I think that's it right there. It was such a big moment I had to kind of hold onto the table at the University of Washington. I was there at the moment. A beautiful place, a beautiful department, American Ethnic Studies. And I was holding onto the table and it really took time for me to -- it took me a long time, it took me a long time. I think tonight is when I'm really feeling the beauty, and the obligations, and the responsibility, and the vision rolling out through your own eyes, through the people I'm meeting at this very moment. Dr. Billington, thank you so much. A big hand for Dr. Billington [foreign language]. ^M00:12:12 [ Applause ] ^M00:12:19 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's right. That's right. That's right. Thank you. And Rob Casper and the whole staff at the Poetry Center. They've been working day in, day out, minute by minute lining up all the poems. I said, "Rob, I never do this. What are you doing? You're lining everything up. Everything's in sequence. Everything makes sense. What am I going to do?" And Rob, my son, too, he said, "You better put a playlist together, Juan, you know? You need to have a playlist." I go, "All right, okay." A playlist, okay. Playlist poetry. And I want to thank Rob Casper and the whole department of poetry department, literature department. [Foreign language], a big hand. ^M00:13:06 [ Applause ] ^M00:13:13 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Rob says, "I think you -- why don't you read this one?" I go, "Rob, you got to be kidding. I'm not going to read that poem. I have to read gentlemanly poems." And he says, "Go ahead. Come on." Really, Rob Casper is a great visionary, and the department, and Anya, and Matt fall right in. And that's what it takes. You know? It takes a group with a united vision. And when we say poetry, it's really the vision for all voices. That's really what it means. People ask me, "What is poetry, Juan Felipe?" I go, "It is freedom." That's what it is. That's what everybody has. And when you use your own voice, your own personal voice freely, the real you, then we're all united. ^M00:14:11 [ Applause ] ^M00:14:18 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you. I want to thank my wife, Margarita, who's right here. ^M00:14:26 [ Applause ] ^M00:14:32 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: She's right there. ^M00:14:35 [ Applause ] ^M00:14:39 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Day in, day out, day in, day out she works, she works. She writes poetry. And I just kind of take over the entire house with my stuff, I really do. And she deserves her own space and place. And she makes room for me. She doesn't have to. She doesn't have to. And she's a poet, and she writes, and she's a performance artist. And tonight I want to give her the total full hundred thousand percent credit for all she does. ^M00:15:13 [ Applause ] ^M00:15:21 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And she's made out of love. And my whole familia that's here, my whole family that's here, they drove, and my friends that are here, who drove many miles, who's been with me all along, and who supported me all along, and who have become who they are all along. Beautiful human beings. I want to thank them, too. [Foreign language], dear family. Please stand up, [inaudible]. Please stand up. Stand up. ^M00:15:50 [ Applause ] ^M00:16:00 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So we're all in this together. We're all in this together. And I have a very beautiful special guest with us tonight. We have a very beautiful special guest with us tonight. First grade I was punished for speaking in English. I only spoke Spanish. So I had to deal with it. I had to deal with it and it kind of -- I had to figure out what to do, which is what we all have done in our lives. And second grade, it was kind of a brutal grade. Second grade was a brutal grade, one of those brutal grades. So that was a brutal grade. ^M00:16:41 [ Laughter ] ^M00:16:42 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And I'm glad it happened early. You got to get it out of the way. Get those brutal grades out of the way. And in third grade I was kind of wondering what to do, you know? I was -- we had Lowell Elementary School, San Diego, a green barracks. It was like an army barracks before, military barracks. It was just a plain, old, ordinary, cool barracks. And there I was. I had gone to the wrong school. I had stayed in Burbank Elementary, but we had moved and one of the professors drove me to Lowell. And I went into third grade and it was Mrs. Sampson who was the one who said, "Juan, John, can you come up in front of the class and sing a song?" To Miguel, "Miguel, what did she say? What did she say?" "Get up there and sing a song. Come on, sing a song, Juan. Sing a song." "Okay, Mrs. Sampson, okay." "And what are you going to sing?" "I'm going to sing -- I'm going to sing 'Three Blind Mice.'" So I sang "Three Blind Mice," and then she said to me, "You have a beautiful voice." And I asked one of my friends [foreign language]? "[Foreign language] beautiful." And from then on, from that third grade day, from there on I had to figure out what that meant, and I had to figure out what it meant in my life. And when I began to figure it out, I began to express myself, I began to sing, and then I began to say that to my students, and to my family, and to the people that I meet. And I want to say that to you tonight. You have a beautiful voice. And Mrs. Sampson, who's right here, let's give her a hand. ^M00:18:45 [ Applause ] ^M00:19:06 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And her family is right here, too. Her family is right here, too. ^M00:19:11 [ Applause ] ^M00:19:20 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So thank you so much, Mrs. Sampson. Thank you so much. It was your words that made it all happen for me. That's all it took was five words. And by the end of the year I was singing a solo in front of the whole school. That's Mrs. Sampson. That's Mrs. Sampson. And she still encourages everybody. And we were talking about this on the phone. I said, "I remember Dana Jones. She was so smart. She was the president of the class." And she said, "You were smart, too." I said, "There you go again, Mrs. Sampson." And that's a real teacher. That's a real teacher. That's right. A maker of teachers. So let's begin in 1970. Let's begin in that great moment right after the fever and the fire of the Civil Rights. Let's begin right there. And let's begin with what we all were doing back there. We were all reaching for our culture. We were all celebrating who we were. We were all looking for ourselves, and we were so excited about the Civil Rights Movement, and we were making it continue. And one of the ways we did that was to write poetry. And one of the ways we did that was to put all our languages, and styles, and voices into that poetry. And here is perhaps one of the first poems I wrote, and it's called "Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way." Let us gather in a flourishing way with sunluz grain sunlight abriendo opening the songs, [foreign language] that we carry everyday [foreign language]. All those green glass braids and blades [foreign language] to give perlas, pearls of corn flowing [foreign language] trees of life in the four corners [foreign language]. Let us gather in a flourishing way, contentos, filled with happiness filled with strength [foreign language] giving nacimientos, birth and rebirth to fragrant rios, to fragrant rivers, dulces sweet, frescos fresh, verdes turquoise, strong [foreign language] rainbows. Let us gather in a flourishing way. [Foreign language] in the light of our flesh, of our heart of our heart to toil in peace. Tranquilos in fields of blossoms, juntos to stretch los brazos together, tranquilos in peace with the rain in the morning. [Foreign language] on our forehead, that star on our forehead, that early daybreak star, cielo sky of heat, de calor, and wisdom to meet us where we toil, siempre, always in the garden of our struggle and joy. Let us offer our hearts [foreign language] rising, freedom to greet it, to celebrate, a celebrar, woven brazos, branches, [foreign language] stones, and cactus, and feathers, and plumas piercing and bursting. Figs, and aguacates, and avocados, and ripe mariposa, butterfly fields, and mares claros, and clear oceans and streams of our face to breathe todos, all of us, en el camino, on the road, on the path, blessing seeds to give, to grow maiztlan, that vision, that land, that our land en las manos, in the hands de nuestro amor. ^M00:23:26 [ Applause ] ^M00:23:34 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you. And you know how we did it, how I did it? I just had that phrase, "Let us gather in a flourishing way." And sometimes a phrase has so much in it, and that's just such a pretty word, "flourishing." And let us gather sounds so good, too, in a flourishing way -- a way, a way of life. So if you want to write that poem yourself, that's all you go to do. That's all you got to do. My son, Robert, says, "Come on now. You got to read how you do with 'That New American Thing'." I said, "Robert, I just don't, I just don't recite that poem anymore." And then, Rob -- the two Roberts -- Rob said, "You got to do that poem, Juan Felipe." "Oh," I said, "oh, come on, Rob." I said, "Okay. Okay." This is perhaps -- this is the late 1970s. "Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way" was 1970. So this is around nine years later. And I kind of wanted to do something different, and this came to my mind. And it was kind of a very spoken style. Kind of a spoken style, and I do this a lot with my great friend, Felix [inaudible], who's here tonight. And we kind of kicked off a band called Troka [assumed spelling], big truck, and with percussion, and rhythm, and congos, and timbales, and anything you can put together with seeds and gourds around it. It's called "Are You Doing That New American Thing." [Inaudible] I was coming in and before I came in, I was putting on my coat, and somebody says, "Wait a minute, Juan Felipe, I got to ask you, are you doing that new American thing? Are you doing that new American Thing, sweet thing, handsome thing, you know, that thing about coming out, all the way out, about telling her, telling him, telling us, telling them that we must kill the revolutionary soul because -- because it was a magical thing, a momentary thing, a Civil Rights thing, a thing outside of time, a sixties thing, a sacred thing, a brown beret thing, a grass root thing, a loud thing, a spontaneous thing, a Vietnam thing, a white radical thing, and a slung sacred homeland thing, a [foreign language] zoot suit thing, a nationalist thing, a [foreign language] thing, a college thing, August 29th, 1970 thing. A thing, an outdated thing, a primitive thing, sweet thing, handsome thing, that thing about coming out, all the way out, about a communist scary thing, a red thing, a let's go back to war thing because we must stop El Salvador thing because it could lead to another Nicaragua thing because we need Regan and order and the America's thing. ^M00:26:20 [ Applause ] ^M00:26:30 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: You know, you know, that American thing, that chains, pants and leather thing, the aluminum thing, the plastic underwear thing, the lonely boulevard thing, the hopeless existentialist thing, the "I just finished reading the chapter of Jean Paul Sartre," a neo-Paris melancholy thing, a nightmare thing, an urban artist thing, a laughing thing, a serious suicide thing, oh, a new American Chicano thing, the end of the world thing, a victim thing, [foreign language], a enlightened quasi-political thing, a university hustle for the pastel, that apple pie, that cranberry pie, that whatever kind of pie it is thing. Wow, the community thing, you know, we are, the you know what I mean, the we are, you know what I mean, the we are the, you know what I mean, the community thing? Are you doing that new American thing? Let's see, in Spanish how would it go? [Foreign language], I'll take care of you, Sandra, I'll take care of you thing, the [foreign language]. What's going on? [Foreign language], you know, something's happening in the world, [foreign language]. You know, you got to stand up and speak about what's really going on. [Foreign language], are you doing the [foreign language] thing, the [foreign language], you know, the cool thing. Hey, what's going on? [Foreign language], you know, you got to get up and you know be active. [Foreign language], sir, I wish I could be, you know, one day I'm going to be because you know I could be. Are you doing that particular thing? The [foreign language] the really cool, I mean, really super, I mean, the really super, super, I mean, super extra triple plus iPhone 7 thing. ^M00:28:19 [ Laughter ] ^M00:28:22 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Are you doing that new American thing? And you could hear that thing [inaudible]. Are you in the be clean, be seen, be clean, be seen by the right people thing? Are you doing the be macho again because women liked it anyway thing? I mean, are you doing the look out for number one because, I mean, really, you tried the group thing thing? Of course, right? Are you doing the be submissive again because, after all, a woman needs a man thing? A whole lot of things. You know what I mean, come on. Are you doing the Army thing because it really pays more than hanging around the barrio thing, you know? [Inaudible], come on. Are you doing the women's draft thing because you can do it better than the man thing? Come on, you got to say something here. All right, what was that? Come on, give me help. See what I mean? Are you doing the purity thing because no one got to be president by eating greasy tacos thing? Are you doing the -- you know, the spa thing because you will meet the right tall and dark and blonde and tender thing? Come on. Are you doing the homophobic thing because you've got yourself lusting at an aberration thing? Yeah, I know. Are you doing the new American thing, sweet thing, handsome thing, you know, that thing about coming out, all the way out? Everybody say, "About telling her." >> About telling her. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: About telling him. >> About telling him. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: About telling us. >> About telling us. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: About telling them. >> About telling them. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That we must kill the revolutionary soul? >> That we must kill the revolutionary soul? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Wow, you need a big [inaudible] for that one. ^M00:29:56 [ Applause ] ^M00:29:59 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I'm telling you. Spoken Word, 1979. And that's the piece that I wrote back then. And then we started doing it in -- with percussion, with congas, and it kind of turns into another kind of poem. I want to put this in this little bank deposit section right there. ^M00:30:27 [ Laughter ] ^M00:30:30 [ Pause ] ^M00:30:33 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I think we lost a page, but that's the way things go a little bit. That's the way things go. Wow. It was a nice one. ^M00:30:43 [ Laughter ] ^M00:30:46 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's one good thing about being a poet, is you can go with the flow, you know? Go with the flow. This is called "Exile." It's after around 1982. And I wanted -- we had -- you know, we had so many things going on in the United States and the world. And a lot of people were being displaced, and many more than before, perhaps, because of the revolutions taking place and the great turmoil in Central America and throughout the world. And so I had thought about the notion of being in exile. I thought about the notion of being in exile and about being in exile also in our own land in many ways -- of not having a place, of not having a territory, of not having a space. So I didn't know how -- I wanted to deal with that. This is called "Exiles." At the Greyhound bus stations, at airports, at silent wharfs the bodies exit the crafts. Women, men, children; cast out from the new paradise. They are not there in the homeland, in Argentina; not there in Santiago, Chile; never there in Montevideo, Uruguay; and they are not here in America. They are in exile: A slow scream across a yellow bridge, the jaws stretched, widening. The eyes multiplied into blood orbits, torn, whirling, spilling between two slopes. The sea, black, swallowing all prayers, shadeless. Only tall faceless figures of pain flutter across the bridge. They pace in charred suits, and the hands lift, point, and ache, and fly at sunset as cold, dark birds. They will hover over the dead ones: A family shattered by military, buried by hunger, asleep now with the eyes burning, echoes calling Joaquin, Maria, Andrea, Joaquin, Joaquin, Andrea en exilio. From here we see them, we the ones from here, not there or across, only here, without the bridge, without the arms as blue liquid quenching, the secret thirst of unmarked graves, without our flesh journeying refuge or pilgrimage; not passengers on imaginary ships sailing between reef and sky. We that die here awake on Harrison Street, on Excelsior Avenue, clutching the tenderness of chrome radios, whispering to the saints in supermarkets, motionless in the chasms of playgrounds, searching at 9 a.m. from our third floor cells, bowing mute, shoving the curtains with trembling, speckled brown hands. Alone, we look out to the wires, the summer, to the newspaper wound in knots as matches for tenements. We look out from our miniature vestibules, peering out from our old clothes, the father's well-sewn plaid shirt pocket, an old woman's oversized wool sweater, peering out from the makeshift kitchen. We peer out to the streets, to the parades. We, the ones from here, not there or across, from here, only here. Where is our exile? Who has taken it? ^M00:34:56 [ Pause ] ^M00:35:08 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: This piece is called "Quentino." I had written bilingual poetry. I had written this particular manuscript, "Exiles of Desire," in English. And I had worked with that phenomenon of exile and desire. And I thought it was time to write in Spanish. So I wrote a book called ^ITAcrilica^NO, acrylic. And having spoken with my good friends, and poets, and the university, and just bumming around North Beach and hanging out in San Francisco -- when we first got to San Francisco in 1978, we stood really tall and we said, "You know what? We're going to conquer the poetry scene." And it was beautiful because we didn't conquer anything. ^M00:36:01 [ Laughter ] ^M00:36:03 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That really was cool because that means we kind of just made a lot of friends. So we made a lot of friends -- Jack Hirschman, the poets from the Castro District, from North Beach, from south of Market, from the Mission District, from all over the Bay Area -- San Jose, East Bay, and of course, all our friends of all our friends. So the whole notion in Spanish, you can blend and burst tenses. And as Juan Diaz was saying in today's [foreign language] workshop, there's -- you can interconnect sounds with words. This is called "Quentino." I'm going to do it in English. I'm going to do it in English. I'm writing you on this ocean table a paragraph between the sand tablets, a pilgrimage of eyes, from the chasm to the voice, here outside. When someone screams, the branches moisten with gray lips and veils, words fly up from the thunder, slave salt, beams of shoulders and bellies like startled gulls, bellies of prisoner thunder, slave salt. It's Friday Quentino, your 18 years beat in the cell like little boy fists. Here, too, there is an iron tuberculosis, the spider's smile, daggers springing from the nipples of the administrators, secretaries naked in a chain link shorthand. It's Friday when the old men are rocking in big, dark armchairs and now and then look at their trembling hands. The jawbones groaning in the pasture, and then your eyebrows remembered, and your guitar fists that used to play sun and moon. When we asked only for earth, we're in June somewhere between the first and the thirtieth, Quentino. An infinite petal between two imaginary padlocks. Quentino. And the assemblage of an M-16 stuck in Somoza's face. 45 years of smoke and blood exploded in the street; what changes, Quentino? Yesterday your father died under the insecure hospital makeup; today I walk the streets. I look for eyes and look for them. I look when it's lighter, but the people get used to the eternal bars between their eyes and summer. ^M00:38:51 [ Applause ] ^M00:39:00 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you so much. Well, I mentioned corrido. I'd like to bring Juan Diaz, our corrido master, that gave a beautiful corrido Mexican ballad workshop today to the stage. And the ballad is a beautiful ballad. ^M00:39:32 [ Applause ] ^M00:39:42 [ Pause ] ^M00:39:48 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And we're going to do -- we're going to do this together. It's Juan's mastery and great knowledge of the corrido he studied all his life and the beautiful, amazing workshop he gave this afternoon that created the ballad he's going to present and sing. And I'm going to translate. Yes. >> Well, thank you for inviting me to this great, great night for you. And I'm very happy for you. Thank you. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you, Juan. >> This afternoon we wrote a tragic ballad. We went around the room and asked for different ideas. And the room -- the consensus was that we would do a corrido about what happened to Sandra Bland. ^M00:40:41 [ Applause ] ^M00:40:44 [ Pause ] ^M00:40:52 [ Music ] ^M00:41:24 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:41:40 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I'm going to sing a ballad about a woman who died. Her name was Sandra Bland. They say she committed suicide. ^M00:41:52 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:42:07 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It was the tenth of July in Texas. The police arrested her just because she didn't blink the lights right and took her to jail. ^M00:42:19 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:42:34 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: She was a brave African-American. She knew her rights. She was a great activist, and she stood up against the police. ^M00:42:44 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:42:58 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Brian was a mean man. He thought too much of himself, and he abused Sandra Bland. And now everybody knows. ^M00:43:09 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:43:24 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Sandra knew about all the dangers of discrimination. She shouted out, "Black lives matter," and that was her doom. ^M00:43:35 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:43:50 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: When Brian told Sandra "Put out that cigarette," she said, "No, sir, I know my rights." ^M00:43:59 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:44:13 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Brian was so upset he just yanked her out of the car. And with violence and with pushes, by force he arrested her. ^M00:44:23 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:44:36 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: She was in jail for three days. No one knew what happened to her. With a plastic bag, they say, she committed suicide. ^M00:44:48 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:45:02 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Please, everybody, you know, violence is going to continue. Think about it. Even though you have a video, it may not save you. ^M00:45:15 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M00:45:28 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Fly, fly, little dove. This isn't our last stand. Right here the verse ends of that great Sandra Bland. ^M00:45:38 [ Applause ] ^M00:46:09 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And, you know, the whole class -- he led the class in such a way that everybody put up the themes they wanted to talk about, the issues they wanted to talk about on the wall, on paper. And they chose the story and the tragedy of Sandra Bland. And then they started working with a meter, with the lines, with the verses, with the rhyming pattern, with the changes in tone and tragedy all in one workshop. ^M00:46:37 [ Applause ] ^M00:46:44 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I grew up with corridos. My mother sang corridos when I was a tiny little kid and child. And the first corridos were about the borderlands and the issue of being legal or not being legal, issues of migration and immigration. And that's how I grew up with this sound and this -- those rhymes and that feeling, that feeling. That beautiful feeling of people talking about the people, about our experiences and -- in this beautiful form called the corrido, the ballad. And I'm so happy that we have Juan Diaz and the beautiful workshop here at the Library of Congress. This is a poem called "Blood on the Wheel." And it opens up with a phrase from a gospel song, which is "Ezekiel saw the wheel way up in the middle of the air." And it begins like this. "Blood on the Wheel." ^M00:48:06 [ Pause ] ^M00:48:19 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Blood on the night soil, man en route to the country prison. Blood on the sullen chair, the one that holds you with its pleasure. Blood inside the quartz, the beauty watch, the eye of the guard. Blood on the slope of names and tattoos hidden. Blood on the Virgin, behind the veils, behind -- in the moon angel's gold oracle hair. What blood is this, is it the blood of the worker rat? Is it the blood of the clone governor, the city maid? Why does it course in S's and X's? Blood on the couch, made for viewing automobiles and face cream. Blood on the pin, this one going through you without any pain. Blood on the screen, the green torso, queen of slavering hearts. Blood on the grandmother's wish, her tawdry stick of Texas. Blood on the daughter's breast who sews roses. Blood on the father, who does not remember anyone, bluish. Blood from a kitchen fresco, in thick amber strokes. Blood from the baby's right ear, from his ochre nose. What blood is this? Blood on the fender, in the sender's shoe, in his liquor sack. Blood on the street, call it Milagro Boulevard, Mercy Lanes, number 9. Blood on the alien in the alligator jacket, teen boy, Juan. "There is blood there," he says. "Blood here too, down here," she says. Only blood, the Blood Mother sings. Blood driving miniature American queens stamped into rage. Blood driving rappers in Mercedes blackened and whitened in news. Blood driving the snare-eyed professor. Blood driving the championship husband bent in extreme unction. Blood of the orphan weasel in heat, the Calvinist father in wheat. Blood in the lettuce, rebellion on the rise, the cannery worker's prize. Blood of the painted donkey forced into prostitute zebra. Blood of a Tijuana tourist finally awake and forced into pimp sleep again. It is blood time, Sir Terminator weighs. It is blood time, Sir Simpson winks. It is blood time, Sir McVeigh weighs. Her nuclear blood watch soaked, will it dry? His whitish blood ring smoked, will it foam? My groin blood leather roped, will it marry? My wife's peasant blood spoked, will it ride again? Blood in the tin, in the coffee bean, in the maquila oracion. Blood in the language, in the wise text of the market sausage. Blood in the border web, the penal colony shed, in the bilingual yard. Crow blood blues perched on nothingness again. Fly over my field, yellow-green and opal. Dog blood crawl and swish through my sheets. Who will eat this speckled corn? Who will be born on this Wednesday war bed? Blood in the acid theater, again, in the box office smash hit. Blood in the Corvette tank, in the crack talk crank below. Blood boat, Navy blood, glove, Army, ventricle, Marines in the cookie sex jar. Camouflaged rape whalers rumble and roam, investigate my Mexican hoodlum blood. Tiny blood behind my Cuban ear, wine colored and hushed. Tiny blood in the death row tool, in the middle-aged corset. Tiny blood sampler, tiny blood, you hush up again, so tiny. Blood in the Groove Shopping Center. In blue Appalachia river, in Detroit harness spleen. Blood in the Groove Virus machine. In low ocean tide, in Iowa soy bean. Blood in the Groove Lynch mob orchestra. South of Herzegovina, south, I said. Blood marching for the Immigration Patrol, prized and arrogant. Blood spawning in the dawn break of African Blood Tribes, grimacing and multiple -- multiple, I said. Blood on the Macho Hat, the one used for proper genuflections. Blood on the faithful knee, the one readied for erotic negation. Blood on the willing nerve terminal, the one open for suicide. Blood at the age of seventeen. Blood at the age of one, dumped in Greyhound bus. Blood mute, and autistic, and cauterized, and smuggled, Mayan, and burned in border smelter tar. Could this be yours? Could this item belong to you? Could this ticket be what you ordered? Could it? Blood on the wheel, blood on the reel. Bronze dead gold and diamond deep. Blood be fast. ^M00:53:18 [ Applause ] ^M00:53:31 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: When I started reading the post-war Polish poets, I fell in love with them because they went through such incredible, unimaginable ordeals -- the holocaust. And, for example, today, as Rosa [inaudible] said, "I don't want to ornamentalize my poetry. I don't want to make it pretty. I don't want to make it fancy. I don't want all those images flying all over the place. I don't want that. That's not what happened here." So I'm going to tell you what it is and what it was. Wislawa Szymborska, the Nobel Prize winner, has another way of writing, yet she's writing about similar things. And so this is after one of her poems. It's called "We Are All Saying the Same Thing." ^M00:54:39 [ Pause ] ^M00:54:45 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And she speaks of yeti, that snowman, that mythical legendary, who knows, still there, snowman. Yeti, come down. The escape is over. The earthquake mixes the leaves into an erotic pattern. You slide down the precipice and split. You chew on a Tibetan prayer wheel. This is our city with the bridge in flames. Call it desire. This is our mountain. Hear its omber harness shiver. Call it time. And this old woman beading a bluish rag with her shredded hands, call her now. Call her with your honey-like voices. She is the sky you were after, that immeasurable breath in every one of us. We are all saying the same thing, yeti. We left our breasts and speak of fire and then ice. We press into our little knotted wounds, wonder about our ends, then our beginnings. ^M00:56:26 [ Applause ] ^M00:56:35 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And the time -- the time -- I guess the time came when there I was at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga -- in Saratoga or Saratoga. And it was wonderful. It was great, you know? To be there, to have a whole month to write. And cool houses, you know, in the roofs are, like, 45-degrees angles and light comes at you. And there are deer outside. I fed them carrots and enchiladas. They go, "Oh, Felipe, what you doing? We like apples, okay? Manzanas. Get it right, Felipe. Apple, manzanas." So somehow I had taken a lot of art supplies and I bought them in Fresno at beautiful Allard's bookstore -- art store. And I didn't know why I was buying them, but I knew why I was buying them. You know, Japanese bamboo pens, and black India ink, and soft -- giant soft paper. You know? That's enough to write a poem right there. That's enough to write a poem. You know? Because it gets you going, you know? There's no way I encourage you to get long, soft paper, and black ink, and Japanese bamboo pens -- giant ones. And that is going to get you writing a poem. Tell you the truth. And then I began to think of the Sudan, and there was a project I'd wanted to write about Darfur. And it had kind of been sizzling inside of me. And I said, "That is an incredible, incredible, impossible incident -- massacre, massacre." Paramilitary, children, villages, men and women, animals -- everybody burned and bombed, killed. How am I going to write about it? The best I can, the best I can. But what voice? What -- and I wrote in the voice of three ghost children. The voice of the mother, of the little sister, of the brother, of the friend with only one eye. I said, "Something's missing, something's missing." I want to writing from the point of view of the aunt, the tiny, little aunt that sees and sees the little things. And it's written in mud drawings. The poem is a mud drawing because the main character, Ibrahim, doesn't have any tools to write. So he gets mud and he's being chased by the Janjaweed, the paramilitary. So he gets the mud when he can and he writes this message. And he goes to another mud while he writes his message. And those messages are the poem. And this is in the voice of the aunt. "Mud Drawing Number Seven, the Aunt." And leg muscle, and hand scab, and eye sinew. And dust in groin, and sweat on nose, and green on nose, and red from nose. And tongue crawl, and bird-beak, and bird-eye rot, and bee head rot. And thorn in back and half-fly on back. And wings float and hairs burn. And tiny worm on the baby head. And worm again and lice on baby hand. And green again and blue cloud on woman belly, and blood on black. ^M01:00:16 [ Applause ] ^M01:00:26 [ Pause ] ^M01:00:33 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: There's a lot of poems up here. Maybe I'm over here already. Maybe I read all those. "Descending Tai Shan Mountain," a beautiful mountain in China. And it's good to be a poet and it's going to be human beings because we are each other. "Descending Tai Shan Mountain." My brother, he is more than that. To the left, the face of an old woman, even though he is 12. And I follow him. We pass the shrines and rise through the green web of bamboo carved with our names and an oil drum that hangs in the middle of our arc. This is what we carry step by step, breath by breath. A towel, please, for my brother. He holds onto the cord between us. Four others behind stare down, count. You can hear them on occasion, wimpering, damning, kick tiny stones from the mortar. My brother takes his last steps without seeing his heart falling, his knees go up. This is what we do every hour. There is no return, only the uncertain mountain, the mountain. ^M01:02:22 [ Applause ] ^M01:02:30 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And we're going to play a recording. You know, since the '60s -- especially in the '60s, and '70s, and '80s -- I was carrying books all over the place. Some I read and some I didn't read, but it felt good to carry a book. When we first got to the university, we all carried these big empty briefcases, you know, because we were [foreign language]. You know, when I stepped into university at UCLA, I had Chicano luggage. It was -- it was cardboard boxes with rope. That's what it was, it was cardboard boxes with rope. And one of the other books that I carried -- we carried empty brief cases, and the book that I really carried around was Pablo Neruda ^ITResidence on Earth^NO. And he was so good. And of course, in the '70s, early '70s -- we were part of that -- as young poets, we were part of what had happened in Chile, of the vicious and terrible coup and military slaughter of so many human beings. And Neruda was a writer for the people [foreign language] and also participated against fascism, fought against fascism. And the army -- the Republican Army -- that he fought with made a book for him out of their uniforms. And they mashed down their uniform and turned it into paper. And they had the machinery, and they churned out [foreign language], a great poetry collection, which we have here in the Hispanic division. It's a beautiful book. That's how it was made. And that whole thing and Pablo Neruda, we're going to play from a recording they recorded here from the heights of Machu Picchu. ^M01:04:46 [ Foreign Language Spoken ] ^M01:06:15 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: That's Pablo Neruda. ^M01:06:18 [ Applause ] ^M01:06:23 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And our great librarian in the Hispanic division, Georgia Dorn, conducted those interviews, those readings. And she invited me to read recently. And more than anything else, she has created along with the staff an amazing collection of amazing poets -- Latin American poets -- and so many great materials [foreign language] the great translator of the [foreign language] poetry of [foreign language] of the mid 1400s. From air to air like an empty net dredging through streets and ambient atmosphere I came. Lavish at autumn's coronation with the leaves, proffer of currency and between spring and wheat ears that which of boundless love caught in a gauntlet fall grants us like a long-fingered moon. Days of live radiance and discordant bodies, steels converted to the silence of acid. Nights disentangled to the ultimate flower, assaulted stamens of the nuptial land. Someone waiting for me among the violins met with the world like a buried tower sinking its spiral. Below the layered leaves color of raucous sulfur. And lower yet, in a vein of gold, like a sword in a scabbard of meteors, I plunged a turbulent and tender hand to the most secret organs of the earth. Pablo Neruda. ^M01:08:09 [ Applause ] ^M01:08:16 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: So that's a book you got to carry around. You got to carry around that book. That's going to do for it, you guarantee it. People say, "Well, how do you write a book?" I say carry a book. Carry Nerudo's book. Just carry that book. Get soft paper, Japanese -- Japanese pens, ink, Nerudo's book. That's it. I'll see you later. Come back with a poem. It will do that to you. But you got to read it to each other, you got to palsy-walsy around North Beach, you got to stay up late in Doughnut Land. It's a big doughnut cafe on the Mission District, on 20th and Mission. Doughnuts of all kinds. And you sit there and you can write, and talk, and read Nerudo. And that was -- that was 1981. "Every Day We Get More Illegal." Yet the peach tree still rises and falls with fruit and without. Birds eat it, the sparrows fight. Our desert burns with trash and drug. It also breathes and sprouts vines and maguey. Laws pass laws with scientific walls. Detention cells, husband with the son. The wife, and the daughter who married a citizen, they stay behind broken, slashed, unpowdered in the apartment to deal out the day and the puzzles. Another law, then another. Mexican, Indian, spirit, exile, migration, sky. The grass is mowed then blown by a machine. Sidewalks are empty, clean. And the red-shouldered hawk peers down from an abandoned wooden dome, an empty field. It is all in between the light. Every day this changes a little. Yesterday homeless and without papers. Alberto left for Denver, a Greyhound bus, he said, where they don't check you. Walking, working under the silver darkness. Walking, working with our mind, our life. ^M01:11:03 [ Applause ] ^M01:11:13 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: It's hard -- that's a poem where I wanted to write and inspired by the Polish writers -- post-war Polish writers. I just wanted as best as I could put those words on paper without too much of my favorite kind of painting. And I become a -- I've learned a lot from the Polish poets. This is called "I Am Merely Posing for a Photograph." I am merely posing for a photograph. Remember, when the nomenclature stops, you tell them that "Sirs, he was posing for my camera, that is all." Yes, that may just work. My eyes clear, hazel like my father's, gaze across the sea. My hands at my side, my legs spread apart in the wet sands, my pants crumpled, torn, withered. My shirt in rags, see-through in places, no buttons. What a luxury, buttons. I laugh a little, my tongue slips and licks itself. Almost I laugh, licks itself from side to side, the corners of my mouth. If only I could talk like I used to, giggle under the moonlight to myself, my arms destitute, shrunken. I hadn't noticed, after so many years sifting through rubble stars, rubble toys, rubble crosses. After so many decades beseeching rubble breasts -- pretend I came to swim. I am here by accident, like you. My face to one side. Listen to gray-white bells of rubble. The list goes on -- the bones, hearts, puffed intestines, stoned genitalia, teeth. Again I forget how to piece all this together. Scraps, so many scraps, lines and holes. The white-gray rubble light blinds me. Wait, I just thought, what if this is not visible? What if all this is not visible. Listen here, closely. I am speaking of the amber thighs still spilling nectar on the dust fleece across Gaza, the mountains, the spliced wombs across Israel, Syria. The amber serums cut across all boundaries. They smell incense, bread, honey -- the color of my mother's hands, her flesh. The shrapnel is the same color. The propellers churn. ^M01:14:30 [ Applause ] ^M01:14:42 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I gave this poem coming up a whole different beat. As a matter of fact, I put beats in it. But that's not really what it's about. You know, so much is going on. So much separation between us, between color, between colors, between classes. Just so much separation, so much violence because of that. This group, that group, this group, that group. Who's suffering more? Who's suffering less? Who's right? Who's wrong? This is called "Almost Living, Almost Dying." For all the dead. And hear my streets with ragged beats, and the beats are too beat to live, so the graves push out with hands that cannot touch the makers of light. And the sun flames down through the roofs and the roots that slide to one side. And the whistling fires of the cops and the cops in the shops do what they gotta do, and your body's on the fence, and your ID's in the air, and the shots get fired, and the gas in the face, and the tanks on your blood, and the innocence all around, and the spilling and the grilling and the grinning and the game of race no one wanted. And the same every day so you fire and eat the smoke through the long bones and the short mace and the day, this last swisher day that burns, that turns to love. And no one knows how it came, or what it is, or what is says, or what it was, or what for, or from what gate. Is it open, is it locked? Can you pull it back to your life filled with bitter juice and demon angel eyes even though you pray? And pray, mama says. You gotta sing, she says. You got wings but from what skies, from where could they rise? What are the things, the no-things called love? Can its power be fixed or grasped so the beats keep on blowing, keep on flying and the moon tracks your bed where you are alone or maybe dead and the truth carves you and carves you and calls you back, still alive. Cry, cry the candles by the last four trees still soaked in Michael Brown red, Officer Liu red, Officer Ramos red, Eric Garner red, whose last words were not words, they were just breath asking for breath. They were just burning like me, like we are all still burning. Can you hear me? Can you feel me swagging tall, driving low, and talking fine, and hollaring from my corner crime, and frying against the wall, almost living, almost dying, almost living, almost dying. ^M01:18:11 [ Applause ] ^M01:18:26 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I was listening to a Buddhist podcast. And someone mentioned Buddhist television -- or, no, Buddhist movies. The Buddhist movies? I mean, I used to go to underground movies and watch Warhol in '69 and '66, and Stan [inaudible], and all the experimental three-second films. You put peanut butter on them, let it dry, and show it on the 8 millimeter reel. ^M01:18:53 [ Laughter ] ^M01:18:55 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: But I never -- I never saw Buddhist cinema. You know? I want to be in that theatre. And I remember reading also Benjamin Peret, the great surrealist poet. And I remember Franco Harris poem about being in the movies. And so I was being hit by all sides. I had nowhere to run. This is called "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema." And I had wanted to talk about animals being tortured, but it didn't come out this way. You know, you have an idea for a poem, then you write it, it does not happen. Something else happens. "Saturday Night at the Buddhist Cinema." There were elephants in cabaret dress, reddish and cadmium blue, and dolphins in undetermined incarnations. I felt as if I had interrupted the process. I mean, the organ player had not risen. Remember the Castro Theatre off of Market? It was Visconti's ^ITRocco and His Brothers^NO, and the lights went out maybe during 1992, the Rodney King revolt. The dolphin was working this out somehow, tweeting, blinking his tiny saucy eyes. I was in the third row as usual and in the middle. And there was a horse torn, unbridled, immense, and stoic being pinned with a hideous medal by the War Provost. It turned to us and waited, waited for someone to take her home. And the cow was there in a Mexican Pancho Villa outfit spraying everyone with snowflakes. And you, you should have seen us and how we had realized the Way. How we rubbed the blood off of our faces after the killings, and how we stuck it to the assassins huddled in a shabby corner. You should have seen the Pig Act. I mean, the pig -- I mean, the real pig with a wig in flames and pinkish pajamas and a cigar doing a Fatty Arbuckle schtick. He even ordered 18 eggs over easy with 18 sides of sourdough, and cranberry sauce sardines, and a side of pastrami. He was hanging off the window ledge, top story of the St. Francis, yodeling to a Gloria Swanson look-alike in a cashmere robe. I mean, it was hilarious. It was what we all dreamed of. Yes, that was it. It was what we all dreamed of. The chicken in kimono pirouetted with piquant harpsichord arpeggios. "Sonata in E Major" by Domenico Scarlatti. The evil iris on the side of the cheeky make-up popped. That is when I fell out, slid to the toilet, but there were no towels, or stalls, or water. It was some kind of trick, I said, and blew my nose into my sleeve, an Italian piece from Beverly Hills 1966. Why was I there all of a sudden? For the Short Feature everyone shouted, "Where's the Tuna?" Everybody ready? >> Where's the tuna? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: We want the tuna. >> We want the tuna. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: We want the tuna. >> We want the tuna. >> Juan Felipe Herrera: What about the tuna? >> What about the tuna? >> Juan Felipe Herrera: The organ rose from the stage. A song, Avremi der Marvikher jittered the chandeliers sung by a scrubby lanky tenor in a shredded vest. I had the same chrysanthemum eyes of exile. I had the same wet braided locks and the black spot. We all danced with straw-stuffed violas. We lost ourselves. We regained some kind of tree-strength that had been severed. The screen lit up with our faces, huge hands reached out to us, we lit a tiny fire in the village. That is when my mother, Maria, danced an incredible inappropriate Polka at the center of the plaza. But how could that be? She died decades ago. I was expecting parables on the Three Treasures. I was running from the bombs. I was delirious for shelter. Outside everything was on fire and the gasman was after me. Imagine that -- I mean, why me? I said, "Why me?" But it was no use. So I ran in here. So I crouched under the seats next to a woman in an emeraldine scaly dress. She was calm and stunning and strumming a pearl-edged ten-string Stella. "You're Ava Gardner," I said. "Where's the exit?" This is the exit. ^M01:24:21 [ Applause ] ^M01:24:37 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: Thank you, thank you. ^M01:24:39 [ Pause ] ^M01:24:45 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: I want to thank Governor Brown. He -- he made notes about this poem and everybody has been talking about this poem. [Inaudible] published on the bullet trains on Shanghai and I don't know why. We had a beautiful workshop with the student from Shanghai the other day. Beautiful, beautiful. The State Department put it together. Amazing, amazing. It's called "Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings." I also want to thank the California Arts Council. UC Riverside, Fresno State. Let me tell you, let me tell you, let me you what a poem brings. Before you go further, let me tell you what a poem brings. First, you must know the secret. There is no poem to speak of. It is a way to attain a life without boundaries. Yes, it is that easy, a poem. Imagine me telling you this, instead of going day by day against the razors. Well, the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, the leather jacket sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example. From the outside you think you are being entertained. When you enter, things change. You get caught by surprise. Your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold standing still in the middle of a storm. A poem, of course, is always open for business, except, as you can see, it isn't exactly business that pulls your spirit into the alarming waters. There you can bathe, you can play, you can even join in on the gossip -- the mist, that is. The mist becomes central to your existence. ^M01:26:51 [ Applause ] ^M01:27:01 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: And this last piece is dedicated to my parents, to Mrs. Sampson, to all my children and family, to all those having to cross those borders, searching for food, hope, all those facing all the difficulties we have today in our barrios, in our communities, everywhere we look. It's called "Imagine What You Could Do." If I had picked chamomile flowers as a child in the windy fields and whispered to their fuzzy faces. If I let tadpoles swim across my hands in the wavy creek. If I jumped up high into my papa's army truck and left our village of farm workers and waved adios to my [foreign language]. If I let the stars at night paint my blanket with milky light with shapes of hungry birds while I slept outside. If I helped mama feed the hopping chickens and catch the crazy turkey in the front yard of our new village. If I walked through the evening forest at the top of a mountain with a silvery bucket to fetch water from the next town. If I moved to the winding city of tall bending buildings and skipped to a new concrete school I had never seen. If I opened my classroom's wooden door not knowing how to read or speak in English. If I practice spelling words in English by saying them in Spanish like pencil for pencil. If I collected goo and sticky pens because I loved how the ink flowed like tiny rivers across soft paper. If I grabbed a handful of words I had never heard or sprinkled them over a paragraph so I could write a magnificent story. If I stood up in a school far away from where I lived and sang for the first time in front of class. If I started to write a poem on a skinny paper pad after school as I walked on the wide sidewalk and then finished it when I got home. If I picked up my honey-colored guitar and called out my poem day after day and turned it into a song. If I gathered many words and many more songs with both of my hands and let them fly over my mesa turned them into a book of poems. If I stand up here in front of my familia and all of you on the high steps of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and read out loud like this, imagine what you could do. Thank you. ^M01:30:03 [ Applause ] ^M01:30:23 >> Juan Felipe Herrera: [Foreign Language]. Thank you, everybody. [Foreign Language]. Thank you so much. Dr. Billington, thank you so much. [Inaudible], Mrs. Sampson, everyone. [Foreign Language]. ^M01:30:39 [ Applause ] ^M01:30:52 [ Laughter ] ^M01:31:00 [ Applause ] ^M01:31:04 >> When you are the poet laureate, the doors open for you. Thanks so much to all of you for being here. And thank you to Juan Felipe for an amazing reading and to all the energy you already brought to the laureateship. I'm going to invite you upstairs to a reception and a book signing. But before I do that, I want to take just a quick moment to honor our fearless leader here at the Library of Congress, the Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. The librarian is charged with appointing the poet laureate by an act of Congress, but his connection to poetry is so much more than ceremonial. I have never worked with someone as brilliant in so much subjects who also happens to be one of our country's great poetry supporters. He is open to any and all of the arts voices and forms, appreciative of its demands and challenges, delighted by its rewards, and committed to the idea that writing and reading, it matters to our lives. The librarian has been beyond generous to the office, supporting its growth and giving us the tools to ensure that our newest poet laureate can launch an ambitious first-year project. And you should look for it online in just a few days. I can only hope future librarians learn from his example and continue to inspire the staff as he has me. Please join me in another round of applause for Dr. James H. Billington, our 13th Librarian of Congress. ^M01:32:26 [ Applause ] ^M01:32:35 >> This is has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. ^E01:32:42