Thank you, Lois.
Yesterday I went to a poetry class
here on the campus and somebody was talking
about my first book, and asked me if I still
liked it of course, I love it.
Actually I had occasion not long ago to read from it,
and I was astounded at how shitty it was.
And enormously embarassed--
[LAUGHTER]
I was reading in front of my students and I was here
I was reading a book that I'd written
when I was 10 years younger than they were, and they were
sitting before me-- and I was in-- and I was sweating
and it was awful.
And so Steve Orlen the other day asked me
if there was anything in the book I liked?
And there are a couple of poems that I like a great deal,
and I thought I'd read at least one
of them, which is the one he referred
to-- he asked me if I still like this poem and it said I did.
I hadn't written many love poems,
I guess I'm just not much of a lover and I mean,
I could find out--
[LAUGHTER]
but I've never really asked.
There's a great gag in old Mailer,
in Mailer's novels the men always turn to the woman
and say, how was it?
[LAUGHTER]
And that's really what the novels are about,
the women are asking how it was.
The men are asking and the women are like unbelievable,
but I've never asked.
I sheltered myself from a lot of truths.
[LAUGHTER]
And so I've written-- but let me read this love poems,
very serious poems to my wife, which makes it
one of the most unusual love
poems--
[LAUGHTER]
In the Western world really called "For Fran."
She packs the flower beds with leaves, rags,
dampened papers, ties with twine the lemon tree.
But winter carves its features on the uprooted stem.
I see the true vein in her neck
and where the smaller ones have broken bluing the skin
And where the dark cold lines of weariness
have eaten out through the winding of the bone.
On the hard ground where Adam strayed,
where nothing but his wants remain,
what do we do to those we need?
To those whose need of us endures even the knowledge
of what we are.
I turned to her whose future bears the promise
of the appalling air.
My living wife, Frances Levine, mother
of Theodore, John, and Mark.
Out of whatever we have been we will make something
for the dark.