[APPLAUSE]
David Wojahn.
Well, this is a wonderful and humbling event.
I was so lucky when I came down here
to have two immensely gifted teachers, Jon
Anderson and Steve Orlen.
And I remember after I'd show poems to Jon,
I'd talk to my friends, and I'd say,
I love hearing him talk about my poems.
They make me feel like the center of the universe.
And I often show--
or almost always show the same poems to Steve,
and I remember the first time I went into his office,
He looked at the poems and said, these are--
he paused and said, reasonably good.
But you can get better.
And I remember after doing this dozens and dozens of times,
over a couple of years.
Having wonderful conference again,
with Jon about my poems.
And walking out of the Modern Languages Building
and again, Jon was a great teacher,
and I said to myself, yeah, I really
feel like the center of the universe now.
And then it occurred to me that I'd always
felt like the center of the universe,
and that maybe what I'd better do is start getting better.
As a teacher, I think that was the most valuable lesson
that anyone has ever taught me.
That you want to tell someone they're good.
You want to tell someone they're good.
That you want to tell someone that they can also get better,
and you want to help to show them that way,
and Steve taught me that.
It's a poem by Steve, called "Monkey Mind."
"When I was a child, I had what is called an inner life.
For example, I looked at the girl over there
in the second aisle of seats and wondered
what it was like to have buck teeth pushing out
your upper lip.
And how it felt to have those little florets of breasts
swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep.
Walking home, I asked her both questions,
and instead of answering, she told
her mother, who told the teacher, who told my father.
After these years, I can still feel his hand
rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision,
then coming down so hard it took my breath away,
and up again in that small arc to smack
is open palm against my butt.
I'm a slow learner, and sometimes
I'm sitting here wondering what my father is thinking,
blind and frail and 85, plunged down into his easy chair
half the night, listening to Bach cantatas.
I know he knows that every minute of every hour
that is going to die because he told my mother
and my mother told me.
I didn't cry or cry out or say I'm sorry.
I lay across his lap and wondered
what he could be thinking to hit a kid like that."
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]