We've had one change in the schedule this year
in the poetry in the schools program.
Ruth Stone was scheduled to read on May 14th
and that reading has been canceled.
We don't know now-- it may be rescheduled or replaced.
So please watch for announcements.
That was to have been on May 14th but it is canceled.
And finally, Steve Orlen, who is going
to make the introduction tonight,
will be reading, himself, next week, Wednesday,
April 15th in the Modern Languages auditorium at 8:30.
Hi.
I'm really pleased to introduce Donald Justice tonight
because he was one of my teachers
at the writers' workshop at the University of Iowa for a term
and because his poetry has had an influence on my poetry
and on my life too.
I'll say a few things about his publications.
He's had two books of poetry and two pamphlets of poetry.
The first book was The Summer Anniversaries,
which was published in 1958 and won the Lamont Poetry
Award for first book of the year, which
was sponsored by the Academy of American Poets.
And another book, which came out in 1967 or '68,
called Night Light, both by Wesleyan University Press.
And any day now, he will have a pamphlet
to be called simply 16 Poems, which
will be published by the Stonewall Press
in Iowa City, Iowa.
The man who prints those books, they're--
turn out to be very quickly rare books.
They only published 200 or 300 copies of them.
So if you're interested, you might send away real quick
for it.
I've been realizing in the last six months or so something
I knew all along but hadn't really thought about much
that there's been how much good and lush poetry
that there has been written in America
for the last 10 or 15 years.
It seems like a silver age of poetry.
It's hard to tell how many great poets will come out of it.
One never knows that.
But there's a lot of good poetry being written.
Among that poetry, it's always difficult to--
and maybe unnecessary, I suppose--
to say, who's the best?
Who's the best poet of an age?
Or who are the best 10 or 5 poets or whatever.
But one can tell something by what impact
the poetry has on younger poets during a particular age.
And as a teacher, I think, and as a poet,
Donald Justice has probably had as much or more influence
than any of the poets writing today on younger poets.
And that influence shows on the best of the younger
poets writing in America today.
What his poetry has taught me more than anything else--
I mean, the humanness behind it is
a kind of a tough self-honesty, which maybe paradoxically, I
don't know, combines with a gentleness and a humanity.
If I could sum up the tone of Donald Justice's poetry,
it comes out in a short poem that he'll probably
read tonight called "The Thin Man"
in which there is a phrase, rich refusals.
I don't know how to explain how that ties in,
but somehow there's a strength in whatever refusals there are
and whatever acceptances there are in his poetry.
They're strong, they're honest, and they're rich.
OK.
I give you Donald Justice.
[APPLAUSE]