Anybody got any questions or want to talk about anything,
I'd be glad to.
Yes?
Is this the collage poem?
Oh, collage poem is one that's cut out.
I run quite a few of them at Kayak.
I don't do them myself.
But you take a pair of scissors, and you cut things out--
headlines, or things out of a magazine, or stuff like that.
And you assemble them, and make a poem out of them.
Is it a found poem?
Well, no.
The found poem is not actually cut up in any way.
It is, in the sense the material is found.
Yeah, in that sense.
But you actually arrange it physically so
that it has a visual and artistic effect as well
as the auditory one.
It's a lot of fun--
a pair of scissors and an old copy
of some dreadful magazine, and some advertising.
You really come up with an interesting collage poem,
often.
Somebody else?
Yeah.
You read the last poem you've written,
that you have with you?
The last poem that I've written that I have with me?
Oh.
I think one of those that I've read's
probably as recent as any.
The trouble with answering that question
is that I'm always working on poems.
And sometimes, it takes six months
before I'm happy with them.
And I'm always working on several at the same time.
So I never really can date anything.
All of those last five or six poems that I've read
were all written within this last year, anyway.
But I use names that go through a great many alterations
and personality changes.
So I never know what the hell is the last poem I wrote.
[LAUGHTER]
Really.
Anybody else?
Anybody want to make a speech?
[LAUGHTER]
Oh, no.
The chair.
Yeah?
I wonder, though, if the title and the author,
or the publisher, rather--
It's out of print.
Well, the poem's in print for the public
by San Francisco Review.
I saw-- the second one is no longer available.
Out of print.
The Ruth Stephan Poetry Center has this one, though,
in its library.
And maybe I'll give them a beat-up copy of the other one
so that they will have the complete--
there's no covers going on this.
I don't have on any covers left.
But allow me to present it to Mr. Long now.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Now, you'll have a complete file, anyway.
OK.
Yeah?
Do you think poetry will be replaced by other media?
When you think of media, is Marshall McLuhan right or not?
[LAUGHTER]
Well I don't know.
In the historical long run, who in the hell
knows what's going to survive?
But it's certainly surviving very well in my lifetime.
There's a great deal more interest in poetry today
than there was 10 or 12 years ago.
It's always been a small audience,
probably always will be.
At least, it has been historically, as far
as the United States is concerned-- and indeed,
most of Europe.
It's a small audience.
And it's a specialized art.
And I guess we don't have the opportunity
to be speaking with the grand voices of the tribal bards
of yesteryear.
[LAUGHTER]
Unless the legend was Allen Ginsberg.
He could speak-- great big crowds.
But the audience, such as it is, has
been getting larger and more interested
in poetry in the last 10 years.
According to my experience, much more.
And poets, I think, have been rising to the challenge a bit.
In the 40s and the 50s, if people were writing poetry--
and I wasn't, until the middle of the 50s--
were all writing for the printed page,
or for the Learned Journal, or something like that,
or a little volume switch--
were never read in public.
And since about 1957 or '58, I guess,
since Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsberg,
and a number of other people started reading in public,
there's been a new challenge placed in front of the poet.
That is, the poet as a performer, too.
So now, a lot of us are traveling medicine shows.
[LAUGHTER]
In the old days, there was the Chautauqua.
75 years ago, there was the educational lecturer.
Oscar Wilde toured America before that.
Then there was the Chautauqua, and so on.
Today, a lot of folks have taken over this circuit in a way.
And I don't know what do we do it
any better than the old Chautauqua lecturer did or not.
Yeah?
Would you mind reading the poem which
played-- the title was suggesting
was there something like, the dolphin was involved in this
too.
No, I don't mind at all.
It isn't very long.
Here's another one of these kind of green thumbs.
I have menacing greens, apparently-- or at least,
they keep telling me.
They keep rising to the surface of the consciousness
in my poetry.