WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.490 align:middle line:90% Well thank you very much. 00:00:02.490 --> 00:00:06.000 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.330 align:middle line:84% I'm grateful too, to the Stephan Poetry Center 00:00:09.330 --> 00:00:11.286 align:middle line:90% for inviting me down here. 00:00:11.286 --> 00:00:17.430 align:middle line:84% For one reason, I've never seen Arizona, and it's a wild place, 00:00:17.430 --> 00:00:20.430 align:middle line:84% and I'm enjoying every minute of it. 00:00:20.430 --> 00:00:22.230 align:middle line:84% It's a little odd not to see snow around, 00:00:22.230 --> 00:00:26.278 align:middle line:90% but you can't have everything. 00:00:26.278 --> 00:00:28.320 align:middle line:84% And they've got a wonderful little poet's cottage 00:00:28.320 --> 00:00:33.780 align:middle line:84% over there, where they put these lunatics when they come. 00:00:33.780 --> 00:00:36.510 align:middle line:90% And it was sweet. 00:00:36.510 --> 00:00:39.330 align:middle line:84% When I went in, I said, well I feel at home. 00:00:39.330 --> 00:00:42.960 align:middle line:90% 00:00:42.960 --> 00:00:45.090 align:middle line:84% More and more, there's places in the United States 00:00:45.090 --> 00:00:47.770 align:middle line:90% where the poets feel at home. 00:00:47.770 --> 00:00:49.440 align:middle line:90% And that's a bad idea. 00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:52.110 align:middle line:84% You'll probably get more of them. 00:00:52.110 --> 00:00:57.592 align:middle line:84% But anyway, it is good to feel at home. 00:00:57.592 --> 00:01:00.050 align:middle line:84% And I have felt more and more at home in the United States. 00:01:00.050 --> 00:01:03.960 align:middle line:90% 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:07.050 align:middle line:84% After all, Eliot and Pound did not feel at home, 00:01:07.050 --> 00:01:09.090 align:middle line:84% and that's why they went to Europe. 00:01:09.090 --> 00:01:13.740 align:middle line:84% That's why Eliot took out English citizenship. 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:17.783 align:middle line:84% But something strange is happening in the United States. 00:01:17.783 --> 00:01:19.200 align:middle line:84% In the Eliot and Pound generation, 00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:21.270 align:middle line:84% they went to Europe, and they stayed there, 00:01:21.270 --> 00:01:25.620 align:middle line:84% and they sent back poems, magnificent flowers, 00:01:25.620 --> 00:01:27.840 align:middle line:90% tremendous plants. 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:31.020 align:middle line:84% But they sent them in flower pots, 00:01:31.020 --> 00:01:32.565 align:middle line:84% because after all, they were abroad, 00:01:32.565 --> 00:01:34.440 align:middle line:84% they had to get a big ship to carry something 00:01:34.440 --> 00:01:36.000 align:middle line:90% like "The Wasteland" over. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:37.830 align:middle line:84% But they got it over here, eventually. 00:01:37.830 --> 00:01:40.530 align:middle line:84% But still, it's in a flower pot, and it never 00:01:40.530 --> 00:01:44.190 align:middle line:84% really took ground in the United States, never really took root. 00:01:44.190 --> 00:01:46.080 align:middle line:84% And then we had, in the depression, 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:47.430 align:middle line:90% the poetry began to go down. 00:01:47.430 --> 00:01:49.170 align:middle line:84% And finally, in the '40s and the '50s 00:01:49.170 --> 00:01:53.370 align:middle line:84% we had this horrible time of academic poetry, 00:01:53.370 --> 00:01:56.760 align:middle line:84% everyone pretending he's not a man, but he's a machine, 00:01:56.760 --> 00:02:02.190 align:middle line:84% or he's an iambic machine, or he's a University machine, 00:02:02.190 --> 00:02:03.310 align:middle line:90% or something like that. 00:02:03.310 --> 00:02:05.340 align:middle line:84% But now, something else is happening, 00:02:05.340 --> 00:02:10.020 align:middle line:84% and out of the ground in the United States are coming poems. 00:02:10.020 --> 00:02:13.710 align:middle line:84% William Stafford from Kansas has written magnificent poems 00:02:13.710 --> 00:02:16.410 align:middle line:84% about Kansas, and now about Oregon. 00:02:16.410 --> 00:02:20.520 align:middle line:84% And men like James Dickey have written marvelous poems 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:22.080 align:middle line:90% about North Georgia. 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:28.110 align:middle line:84% And there are poems coming out of this area of the country. 00:02:28.110 --> 00:02:31.050 align:middle line:84% Thomas McGrath in North Dakota has written marvelous poems 00:02:31.050 --> 00:02:34.680 align:middle line:84% of all things about threshing [machines?]. 00:02:34.680 --> 00:02:37.680 align:middle line:84% In Roethke, in Michigan, those tremendous 00:02:37.680 --> 00:02:40.230 align:middle line:84% poems about greenhouses, and finally, 00:02:40.230 --> 00:02:41.250 align:middle line:90% the poems about Oregon. 00:02:41.250 --> 00:02:43.260 align:middle line:84% So that's what we're trying to do 00:02:43.260 --> 00:02:46.230 align:middle line:84% is to start poetry all over again, 00:02:46.230 --> 00:02:49.800 align:middle line:84% this time getting the plant into the ground. 00:02:49.800 --> 00:02:53.580 align:middle line:84% And that's what makes me so hopeful about the future 00:02:53.580 --> 00:02:55.180 align:middle line:90% of what's going on. 00:02:55.180 --> 00:02:59.940 align:middle line:84% This is all just something going on by the idea 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:00.990 align:middle line:90% of feeling at home. 00:03:00.990 --> 00:03:06.810 align:middle line:90% 00:03:06.810 --> 00:03:09.360 align:middle line:84% Professor and Mrs. Robins took me in yesterday 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:13.530 align:middle line:84% up to the mountains, and I saw those insane cactuses 00:03:13.530 --> 00:03:17.940 align:middle line:84% in the [INAUDIBLE] ground and the moonlight. 00:03:17.940 --> 00:03:22.080 align:middle line:84% And they also took me out to a farm 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:24.810 align:middle line:84% where their daughter had a horse. 00:03:24.810 --> 00:03:27.780 align:middle line:84% And eventually [I meet?] the daughter and the horse. 00:03:27.780 --> 00:03:30.390 align:middle line:84% And the daughter was better than horse, 00:03:30.390 --> 00:03:32.970 align:middle line:90% but it was a pretty good horse. 00:03:32.970 --> 00:03:35.130 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to begin with a poem 00:03:35.130 --> 00:03:39.180 align:middle line:84% for her, though I expect she's home studying, 00:03:39.180 --> 00:03:43.020 align:middle line:84% called "September Night With An Old Horse." 00:03:43.020 --> 00:03:47.190 align:middle line:84% Tonight, I rode through the cornfield in the moonlight. 00:03:47.190 --> 00:03:51.120 align:middle line:84% The dying grass is still waiting for winter 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:56.220 align:middle line:84% and the dark weeds are waiting as if under water. 00:03:56.220 --> 00:04:02.400 align:middle line:84% In Arabia the horses live in the tents near dark gold and water 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:04.580 align:middle line:90% and tombs. 00:04:04.580 --> 00:04:11.720 align:middle line:84% How beautiful to walk out at midnight in the moonlight, 00:04:11.720 --> 00:04:14.960 align:middle line:90% dreaming of animals. 00:04:14.960 --> 00:04:18.829 align:middle line:84% So there's a certain, when you have a human being, 00:04:18.829 --> 00:04:23.630 align:middle line:84% and a horse, and moonlight, it's just like a triangle, 00:04:23.630 --> 00:04:27.140 align:middle line:84% and some mystic meaning in that triangle, those two 00:04:27.140 --> 00:04:30.870 align:middle line:90% things, a horse and moonlight. 00:04:30.870 --> 00:04:33.320 align:middle line:84% Well, there was another night in which I 00:04:33.320 --> 00:04:36.770 align:middle line:90% saw my horse wandering around. 00:04:36.770 --> 00:04:39.470 align:middle line:84% It was after midnight, and he's eaten his grass down 00:04:39.470 --> 00:04:42.970 align:middle line:90% in the pasture pretty close. 00:04:42.970 --> 00:04:48.540 align:middle line:84% So it is another poem that started with the same thing. 00:04:48.540 --> 00:04:51.990 align:middle line:84% If I think of a horse wandering around sleeplessly, 00:04:51.990 --> 00:04:55.650 align:middle line:84% all night on the short grass covered with moonlight, 00:04:55.650 --> 00:04:59.790 align:middle line:84% I feel a joy, as if I have thought of a pirate ship 00:04:59.790 --> 00:05:03.410 align:middle line:90% plowing through dark flowers. 00:05:03.410 --> 00:05:08.210 align:middle line:84% The box elder trees around us are full of joy, 00:05:08.210 --> 00:05:12.560 align:middle line:90% obeying what is beneath them. 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:18.280 align:middle line:84% The lilac are sleeping and the plants are sleep. 00:05:18.280 --> 00:05:24.470 align:middle line:84% Even the wood made into a casket is asleep. 00:05:24.470 --> 00:05:28.790 align:middle line:84% The butterfly is carrying loam on his wing. 00:05:28.790 --> 00:05:34.670 align:middle line:84% The Toad is bearing tiny bits of granite in his skin. 00:05:34.670 --> 00:05:36.620 align:middle line:84% The leaves of the crown of the tree 00:05:36.620 --> 00:05:42.660 align:middle line:84% are asleep, like the dark bits of Earth at its root. 00:05:42.660 --> 00:05:50.970 align:middle line:84% Alive, we are like a sleek water beetle 00:05:50.970 --> 00:05:56.130 align:middle line:84% skating across still water in any direction 00:05:56.130 --> 00:06:02.250 align:middle line:84% we choose, and soon to be swallowed suddenly 00:06:02.250 --> 00:06:02.820 align:middle line:90% from beneath. 00:06:02.820 --> 00:06:06.040 align:middle line:90% 00:06:06.040 --> 00:06:13.750 align:middle line:84% Well, that's what dying is, being swallowed suddenly 00:06:13.750 --> 00:06:16.140 align:middle line:90% from underneath.