Yes.
I have one.
Yes.
One second.
We need to--
Would you mind free associating on the word trees?
[LAUGHTER]
Look, there are to be no jokes in the Q&A.
[LAUGHTER]
I thought that was established here and we agreed on that.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, I could do it in Yiddish
[LAUGHTER]
Are you suggesting or implying that there are too many trees
in my poems hence--
I mean, what are you saying?
[LAUGHTER] Well, trees is metaphor trees, you know.
Yeah.
I mean and all of their activities that they engage in
are interesting to me.
Getting up and moving around, sympathizing with birds,
various things like that.
Yeah.
It was once asked of me you know how could it
be that nature is figure so prominently in your poetry.
You grew up in a boring street in a boring city--
in a boring suburb not a boring city
with 12 cars and 12 driveways, it was just 12 houses.
Where did it come from?
I guess it was the imagination.
We did have a tree in our front yard.
There you go.
It all goes back to the primal tree.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know.
I do love trees.
Yes.
As we all do.
Can you tell us a little bit about how
you fell in love with poetry and then how you
became a writer of poetry?
Sure.
My route to writing has been is odd, having studied business
and left it really cold turkey.
It was 180 degree turn.
I entered writing through playwriting
and I entered playwriting through Harold Pinter.
And between writing plays, I started to play at the poem.
And I entered poetry through the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.
And that appealed to me because he
was expressing large ideas for lack of a better
term with simple language.
And I thought I could enter that world perhaps.
So much poetry is hard to enter and I was able to enter that.
And that was kind of my path and I just played it in and fell
in love with the floor.
So yeah.
Yes.
Will you talk a little bit about the last lines
of the poem "Stone?"
What does it mean you mean?
Well, in the-- and on my stone both stones
please is the last line.
Stone it refers to-- and on my stone refers to a headstone.
And the custom at least the Jewish tradition
is when you visit a burial you will put stones
on the headstone.
So that that's the reference.
I was dating a woman who was into Jungian
Everything was Jungian I mean it didn't matter, you know.
Breakfast was Jungian So this poem was Jungian too.
It was the one plus two everything is the three.
One plus two equals the third stone.
I don't know what she was talking about.
But I wasn't Jungian enough for her anyways since she--
[LAUGHTER]
--she was done with me.
So yeah.
Ernesto do you want to read a poem in Yiddish?
I mean, are you itching?
No, not the nephew.
Why don't you read a poem in Yiddish?
Because I can't speak it.
I would love to.
I would love to read a poem in Yiddish.
It's such an expressive language.
So yeah.
Yes.
How would you describe the form you use?
Lyric.
Yeah.
These are generally lyric poems.
Yeah.
Yes, Eric.
What advice would you give to a young poet or somebody
is starting to write poetry?
How did you write what you write about those kinds of things
You know, I think it's cliche.
Every poet says you have to read, you have to read,
you have to read, and I share that sentiment.
It's important to read a lot.
As we were talking over dinner I think much of writing
is images.
Images, images, images, images.
And you have to try and capture the world with images,
whether you're writing prose or poetry.
And they should focus specifically
on trying to create arresting images, things
we haven't seen before.
So you know it's a specific tool to focus on images.
If it's not an image we're not going to remember it.
One of the things my limited experience teaching is I
often ask the students what they remember from poems
that were read in class.
And they all remembered the same things nine times out of 10.
And it was the images in the poem.
That's all we remember.
Whatever those who were at the celebration yesterday--
if you think back to Billy Collins reading of his poems,
the poems that you likely remember
are the ones where the images were most powerful to you,
that's what we remember.
We don't remember the feelings, love, hate.
It's just the image that stays.
That's my you know.
Yes.
So who else has influenced your work?
You mentioned Yehuda Amichai.
Who else?
A good number of poets.
Mark Strand, Wallace Stevens.
I go back to Wallace Stevens a lot.
A lot of his poems don't necessarily
make sense to me at times but I still go back there.
I like Howard Moss very much.
Stanley Kunitz.
I don't think I've had one particular influence per se
you know.
It's been a conflation of much of what
I've picked up over the years.
So yeah.
Yes.
Have you ever tried to blend poetry and poet playwriting?
Not really, no.
I would like to think that the plays I've written
have some poetic muscle to them.
But I don't think there's--
no.
The answer is no.
I mean it's a dialogue and all of it is it can be poetry.
Prose can be poetry, playwriting can be poetry.
But to actually insert poetry into a play no.
Or to do it in rhyme or anything like that no.
The plays I've written the ones that interest me are Here
and Now and Fire and Ice.
Yes.
I have another remark to make.
I think some literature prose has
such musical cadence that it could be your lyric poetry.
But of course it has a plot, has a beginning and an end
because it's more clear.
But the music of the phrasing can be extraordinary.
It takes a great writer I think to accomplish that.
I think all writing is musical.
Whether you're writing plays or poetry or
prose there is music--
there's a musicality to it and great writing has it.
So yes, the cadence you know.
And in great fiction has it.
I think it's there.
And the elements that make effective prose also
work for I mean surprise, drama, strong images.
Those are true in poetry and prose.
I mean there's-- playwriting it's all very similar
in certain ways.
The structures are different.
One more question before I start really spewing nonsense,
you know what I mean?
Rambling out of control the poet from New York
is never coming back.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes.
I'm just curious about your children's project.
Yes.
I've written a couple of children's stories
that they haven't been published yet.
Gina was very kind to use the word in process.
They're represented by a wonderful agent in New York
and they're similar in spirit to the Giving Tree.
They're for kids and for adults.
And thus far we've had a bit of a struggle finding
the right market for them.
But one of them is called "When a Feeling Came to Town."
And the other is the "Wish Maker's Wish."
So it's been a real treat, real honor to be here.
Thank you so much Gail and to the Poetry Center,
to everyone who's involved with the Poetry Center
for having me.
And thank you all for coming.
[APPLAUSE]