WEBVTT

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Well, I come from far away.

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Oregon.

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I want to read an Oregon
poem, "In The Oregon Country".

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From old Fort Walla
Walla and the Klickitats

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to Umpqua near Port Orford,
stinking fish tribes

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massacred our founders,
the thieving whites.

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Chief Rotten Belly
slew them at a feast,

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Kamiakin riled the Snakes and
Yakimas, all spurted arrows

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through the Cascades west.

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Those tribes became
debris on their own lands:

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Captain Jack's wide face above
the rope, his Modoc women

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dead with twitching hands.

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The last and the most splendid,
Nez Percé Chief Joseph,

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fluttering eagles through
Idaho, dashed his pony-killing

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getaway.

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They got him.

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Repeating rifles bored
at his head and in one

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fell look Chief Joseph saw
the game out of that spiral

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mirror all explode.

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Back of the Northwest
map their country goes,

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mountains yielding
and hiding fold

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on fold, gorged with yew
trees that were good for bows.

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In a way, I have my
comeuppance this program

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for slighting diction
earlier, because I

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feel an exuberance about words.

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So I take back part
of what I said.

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Sometimes it's just fun.

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I guess fun is the word.

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At least you're
engaged in something.

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Reverberating just with sound.

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And there are words that have--

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that are poems from
their syllables.

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And I want to say
one other thing,

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since we're all from the West.

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When I wrote this, I formed
it so it has sort of a rhyme.

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Well, at least, Klickitats,
whites, east, west, lands,

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hands.

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Then I came to an emergency.

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There's a line that says, the
last and the most splendid,

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Nez Percé.

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Well, there is this
little accent, you know.

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"Nay Persay," perhaps.

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So I put it in
very carefully when

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I sent it to an Eastern
editor, who took the poem.

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And I've often wondered whether
he knew how to pronounce Nez

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Percé.

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And if he did know
how, maybe he would

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have thought it wasn't
pure enough to publish.

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I don't know.

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