One of the poems I read before was a type of poem addressed
to father, whether it's the actual father
just becomes a kind of technique of address.
The evening wouldn't be complete,
I suppose, without addressing a poem to mother.
So we'll get that out of our systems.
It's called, "Thanksgiving Message".
I kind of like the story behind it better than the poem.
It's called "Thanksgiving Message" from Iowa City 1965.
And what made me think about doing such a poem
was I was walking in front of Lubin's Drugstore in Iowa City.
And someone from the workshop came up to me.
It was a fellow that I knew on site.
But we weren't friends.
And it's very embarrassing you don't
know what to talk about really.
Sometimes it is when you cross each other in the street
and you know it's just too cliche to say, hello,
and how are you.
Especially you're supposed to be both poets.
It becomes a terrible cliche to say, hello and how are you
and leave it.
And it just happened to be a couple
of days before Thanksgiving.
And I really was embarrassed.
And I just kind of blurted out, did you send your mother
a Thanksgiving card?
It was really a stupid thing to say.
But it just came out.
And he looked awfully shocked.
And he stopped with his hands in his blue jeans
and looked at me.
He was very upset about what I asked him.
And he bent his beard down and he screamed at me
that he didn't indeed send a Thanksgiving card.
But he hadn't forgotten his mother
and he sent her a whole bunch of swastikas in an envelope.
And so I decided that I had to write a poem about that,
well not about that, but about mothers and about her mother.
Because I got to thinking.
That upset me so much about the swastikas I couldn't really--
I suppose it was as ridiculous as my question.
And I went home and started to think.
And I started thinking about the death of my grandmother.
I mean these things are important because as I
started to think about and tried to piece back after reading
a history book, and find out how stupid it is to read a history
book, that the only people I really know are the ones
I have direct contact with.
And I started remembering when I was 14 and my grandmother died.
I went to see her before she died.
She was in a ladies' home.
She wanted to go there instead of being
a burden on other people.
We would gladly take her in and did for a while.
But she said she wanted to be completely independent,
at least of her own family.
You see?
And when she was dying, this is almost a cliche
I supposed with a lot of dying people.
But it did happen that she took off her Japanese slippers
that she had and she started banging the wall
in the middle of the night.
And she died of natural causes kind of death.
And she just kept banging with the slipper on the wall.
And she was protesting.
It was kind of a nice protest.
You will not take me.
I shall not die.
And she hung on for quite a few years.
So it kind of traces through that
into the final statement of all this.
I mean, what is the protest about?
Well I have my own protest.
But I decided that mothers somehow
are in their own kind of ideology
and a kind of conformity.
And that in itself becomes a kind of duty
that they feel that they are bound to, even
though we find that it is oftentimes
a terrible middle class rut.
It is grounded I think.
But there is a sense of duty there,
at least they think from the standpoint,
that they have a terrible mission to accomplish,
to raise people.
So this got me to thinking after the fellow mentioned
the swastika.
But--
"Mother, I could have posted from this midwest point
a sudden flurry of swastikas or a well thumbed flower of evil.
I send a printed plump turkey by $0.08
carrier with ill-chosen penny align sentiment enscribed.
Scant difference in the choosing, the choice.
That Indian realm of festive board is dead for the pains
he bore history are histrionic.
Maybe hearsay.
Our traits bear nothing for the chronicles.
Oral tradition fault is beyond your mother's memory.
Gran's initials diamond cut on the window
to let in light withstand the cold.
Grandfather drank himself Politico.
They called him the democratic whip.
He whipped the 10 children under pretext.
Later, he coughed himself liquid into death.
With secreted elderberry wine, I toast myself
less turbulent days.
The nursing home inmates complained,
Gran banged her toes frayed Japanese slipper on the wall
before her body burst.
The mind went out.
Like an Indian giver, the infant Jesus bestowed and claimed
the gift away.
The priest gave the final touch, the word.
She heard her own voice echo, falter in the walls.
And still salvation was stored in a crucified kit bag.
You who bore my pain must follow as prescribed until heaven
shatters, Christ refuses to be conceived."