WEBVTT

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There's another work later that
I'll share that's also sung.

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The rest of these, I'll read.

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This next one is called
"Behind Every Good Soldier."

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And the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan

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do thread through a
number of these poems.

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My dad was in the service.

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He was in Vietnam in the Navy.

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And I know there are some
service people in the room

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as well.

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I feel very
connected to families

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who have family members who are
serving in the current wars.

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I don't think I need to tell
you anything more about this

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when it's called "Behind
Every Good Soldier."

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"It sounds too scripted,
unbelievable now,

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but he really did ask,
what would you think of me

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if I killed someone?

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When this childhood
sweetheart joined the Marines

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a decade ago, I was
back from college

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and leaping at him
for a week or so,

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smoking at his kitchen
window, drinking

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in the ridiculous brilliance
of a typical Berkeley garden,

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azaleas and tropical whatnot.

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How sure of greenness
it all seemed,

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how shocking the mob
of growing things

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that surged against his
little yellow house.

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The answer I gave evaporates.

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But the question roosts in
the mind's cave, elaborates

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rubbery wings each time I
meet a returning veteran.

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Old lover, neighbors,
boys marching drills

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on the college quad, what
do I think of you when

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I think of you killing?

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I see an old ghost,
fatigued as storm-blown sand

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standing behind you.

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And it's nothing but
fangs and finger bones,

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disguised as a girl with a
sweet little honey pot country

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you've got to defend.

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She's got her dirty little
hands all over your weapons."

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I realized, I feel
like I'm always

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learning about poetry by trying
things out and by failing.

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And every now and then,
the dart hits the mark.

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So I feel like I'm always
learning about poetry.

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So I think, when
I wrote this book,

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I learned about two
ends of the spectrum.

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I learned that I could
really mine things that felt

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very deeply personal to me.

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I think my first book leaves
out a certain dimension

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of the personal,
and in this book,

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I just decided to go in and dig
for that kind of thing, which

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can be difficult and painful.

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And then on the other
end of the spectrum--

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this is going to sound dumb.

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But on the other
end of the spectrum,

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I also learned that you can
try things out just for fun.

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That it's OK to try things
out just for the joy of it,

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which, when you're
an aspiring writer,

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meaning before my
first book was out

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and I didn't have that
validation of the first book

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in hand, it all
seemed very serious

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and all seemed very
serious and very urgent.

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And then once I had that
first book out and was putting

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the second one
together, I realized,

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you know, it's OK to just be
having fun some of the time.

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So I'm doing that here.

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And I'm doing
something that poets

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have done elsewhere
as well, which

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is play with this
idea of naming groups,

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like flock of seagulls, a murder
of crows, that kind of thing.

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So just playing with the
idea of naming groups,

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and the poem is
called "Ars Poetica,"

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which means the art of poetry.

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And it's subtitled
"Autumn Packing List."

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"A flock of meetings, a threat
of oranges, a moon of matings,

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a crate of bells.

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A gyp of whisky, a drop of
talent, a plate of pyrite,

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a fae of mist.

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A hit of blood, a whiff of
summer, a lisp of theory,

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a tuft of sea.

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A weight of weasels, a pain of
peacocks, a roll of bat wings,

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a bomb of leaves."

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