The poem I'll read now is in my new book,
but it's an old poem, written, to begin with,
about 10 years ago.
Well, I used to teach a correspondence course
in how to write poetry--
[GIGGLES]
--where at the time when the University of Chicago
had a correspondence school.
And I taught it for over a year, I think.
Had many students all over the country,
in small towns sending me poems.
And I would come home at night and find six or seven
envelopes, and rush upstairs, and put my comments
on the poems, and send them back.
And they would get my comments, and rush upstairs,
and put a new envelope-- or poem in the envelope,
and send it back.
A frantic time.
And when I gave up that course, I wrote a poem, "A Farewell
To My Students."
I had the--
I had developed a certain very naturally, very platonic
friendship with those students through the mail,
through many of them.
And I felt really close to them in a strange way.
But I'm sure if I met them, I wouldn't
feel that way because then--
because the whole basis of our friendship
would be changed because it wouldn't
be a platonic friendship.
With the gestures of the face, the emotions
of the face, and the sound of the voice
would make us strangers right away.
But anyway, when this poem came out,
it sounded to me awfully cruel.
And because I could see that at a certain point in my life,
I might very well have been one of those people sending off
poems to some snotty young man in New York who was supposed
to be no more than me.
It seemed it was morally objectionable.
And over the course of 10 years, I've changed it.
And I guess I changed it as far as I could.
And it probably still is morally objectionable.
But any event, I felt in writing it, the damage was done.
You probably think it was merely an admission, really.
So I-- with that overlong preamble, I'm going to read
"The Correspondence-School Instructor
Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students."
Goodbye lady in Bangor, who sent me snapshots of yourself
after definitely hinting you were beautiful.
Goodbye, Miami Beach urologist, who
enclosed plain brown envelope for the return
of your very "Clinical Sonnets."
[LAUGHTER]
Goodbye manufacturer of brassieres on the Coast,
[LAUGHTER]
--whose eclogues give the fullest treatment in literature
yet to the sagging breast motif.
[LAUGHTER]
Goodbye, you in San Quentin, who wrote "Being German,
my hero is Hitler," instead of "Sincerely yours--"
[LAUGHTER]
--at the end of long neat-scripted letters,
demolishing the Pre-Raphaelites.
I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelope, the game I had
of trying to guess which one of you
this time had poisoned his glue.
[LAUGHTER]
I did care.
I did read his poem entire.
I did say what I thought was the truth in the mildest words I
knew.
And now, in this poem, or chopped prose,
not any better I realize than those troubled lines
I kept sending back to you, I have
to say I am relieved it is over.
At the end, I could feel only pity for that urge toward more
life, your poems kept smothering in words,
the smell of which days later would tingle in your nostrils
as new God-given impulses to write.
Goodbye, you who are for me, the postmarks again
that shattered town--
Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell--
their loneliness given away in poems, only their solitude
kept.
[APPLAUSE]