I'd like to read a few new poems and then let
you get out of this hot room.
One of the problems I had when I finished my second book
was that I felt I had exhausted a subject that
was very important to me.
And I wasn't sure what was compelling enough
to write about.
I knew that having compelling subject matter
was what makes poems great poems.
And I was going through a period, I felt,
of transition where I was unsure of myself in lots of areas.
This poem is called The Subject Matter.
How elusive.
What we want to speak of.
A face reflected in water.
The buzz of a bee from flower to flower.
Or was it mother, weeping by the campsite at all the family
outings.
The drift of incidents builds and builds
like the fire that makes so many shapes and shadows we don't
know what to make of them.
Yet, there were moments we seem to cohere to one another,
to huddle close, or hug after long absences.
The season for memory is brief and clouded over,
but it strikes you that the sun was out.
You took the family photograph and the family soon dispersed.
Later on, the images and details seemed so real.
An explanation of the hillside.
But you can't find yourself in the picture
and the flowers growing over the meadow
now are not the ones we wanted to preserve,
the ones we meant to pick.
Well he's very ambivalent about telling people not to applaud.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm always ambivalent about telling people to applaud.
Guess you know what kind of guy I am.