WEBVTT

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The poem I'll read
now is in my new book,

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but it's an old poem,
written, to begin with,

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about 10 years ago.

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Well, I used to teach
a correspondence course

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in how to write poetry--

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[GIGGLES]

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--where at the time when
the University of Chicago

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had a correspondence school.

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And I taught it for
over a year, I think.

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Had many students
all over the country,

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in small towns sending me poems.

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And I would come home at
night and find six or seven

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envelopes, and rush
upstairs, and put my comments

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on the poems, and
send them back.

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And they would get my
comments, and rush upstairs,

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and put a new envelope--
or poem in the envelope,

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and send it back.

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A frantic time.

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And when I gave up that course,
I wrote a poem, "A Farewell

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To My Students."

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I had the--

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I had developed a certain
very naturally, very platonic

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friendship with those
students through the mail,

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through many of them.

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And I felt really close
to them in a strange way.

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But I'm sure if I
met them, I wouldn't

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feel that way because then--

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because the whole
basis of our friendship

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would be changed
because it wouldn't

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be a platonic friendship.

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With the gestures of
the face, the emotions

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of the face, and the
sound of the voice

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would make us
strangers right away.

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But anyway, when
this poem came out,

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it sounded to me awfully cruel.

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And because I could see that
at a certain point in my life,

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I might very well have been
one of those people sending off

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poems to some snotty young man
in New York who was supposed

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to be no more than me.

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It seemed it was
morally objectionable.

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And over the course of 10
years, I've changed it.

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And I guess I changed
it as far as I could.

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And it probably still is
morally objectionable.

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But any event, I felt in
writing it, the damage was done.

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You probably think it was
merely an admission, really.

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So I-- with that overlong
preamble, I'm going to read

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"The Correspondence-School
Instructor

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Says Goodbye To His
Poetry Students."

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Goodbye lady in Bangor, who
sent me snapshots of yourself

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after definitely hinting
you were beautiful.

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Goodbye, Miami
Beach urologist, who

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enclosed plain brown
envelope for the return

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of your very "Clinical Sonnets."

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[LAUGHTER]

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Goodbye manufacturer of
brassieres on the Coast,

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[LAUGHTER]

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--whose eclogues give the
fullest treatment in literature

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yet to the sagging breast motif.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote "Being German,

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my hero is Hitler," instead
of "Sincerely yours--"

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[LAUGHTER]

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--at the end of long
neat-scripted letters,

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demolishing the Pre-Raphaelites.

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I swear to you,
it was just my way

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of cheering myself
up as I licked

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the stamped, self-addressed
envelope, the game I had

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of trying to guess
which one of you

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this time had poisoned his glue.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I did care.

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I did read his poem entire.

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I did say what I thought was
the truth in the mildest words I

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knew.

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And now, in this poem,
or chopped prose,

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not any better I realize
than those troubled lines

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I kept sending
back to you, I have

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to say I am relieved it is over.

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At the end, I could feel only
pity for that urge toward more

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life, your poems kept
smothering in words,

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the smell of which days later
would tingle in your nostrils

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as new God-given
impulses to write.

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Goodbye, you who are for
me, the postmarks again

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that shattered town--

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Xenia, Burnt Cabins, Hornell--

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their loneliness given away
in poems, only their solitude

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kept.

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[APPLAUSE]

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