I got to stay in one of those nice, quiet artist
colonies in upstate New York.
And while I was there, I was given Elizabeth Bishop's
bedroom, sleeping room, former sleeping room, and Sylvia
Plath's former workspace.
And I was told that one of them was haunted.
[LAUGHTER]
They didn't say which one.
[LAUGHTER]
But downstairs from where I slept
was what they call a drawing room, a parlor room.
And in the parlor room they got a turntable, or a phonograph,
they called it.
A phonograph machine and some old dusty records.
So one night when I was being hainted, or haunted,
I went downstairs and dusted off all of the old records.
There was William Carlos Williams, and TS Eliot,
and Marianne Moore, and all those voices that, you know.
It's, "Let us go, then, you and I.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] and I chose the one less traveled."
So I took that cadence, that sound, that meter
back up to my workspace.
And I grew up in Washington, DC.
And when I was a kid, all the poets
sounded like Richard Nixon to me.
[LAUGHTER]
So that's how those records sound.
So this poem is an homage to that cadence, and it's called,
"All Their Stanzas Look Alike."
And it has a refrain.
And you'll know when it's your turn.
[LAUGHTER]
"All their stanzas look alike.
All their fences.
All their prisons.
All of their exercises.
All their agendas.
All their stanzas look alike."
Don't be scared.
[LAUGHTER]
"All their metaphors.
All their bookstores.
All their plantations.
All their assassinations.
All their stanzas look alike."
There you go.
"All their rejection letters.
All their letters to the editor.
All their arts and letters.
All their letters of recommendations.
All their stanzas look alike.
All their sexy coverage.
All their literary journals.
All their car commercials.
All their bribe-spiked blurbs.
All their stanzas look alike.
All their favorite writers.
All their writing programs.
All their visiting writers.
[LAUGHTER]
All their writers in residence
All their stanzas look alike."
Say it like you mean it.
[LAUGHTER]
"All their third worlds.
All their World Series.
All their serial killers.
All their killing fields.
All their stanzas look alike.
All their state grants.
All their tenure tracks.
All their artist colonies.
All their core faculties.
All their stanzas look alike.
[LAUGHTER]
All their Selected Collecteds.
All their Oxford Nortons.
All their Academy societies.
All their Oprah Vendlers."
[LAUGHTER]
I created that-- the Oprah Vendler.
That's one part Oprah Book Club and one part Helen Vendler.
[LAUGHTER]
From Harvard, the great, Pulitzer picker.
"All their stanzas look alike.
All their hallowed holocausts.
All their coy hetero couplets.
All their hollow haloed causes.
All their tone-deaf tercets.
[LAUGHTER]
All their stanzas look alike.
All their tables of contents.
All their Poet Laureates.
All their Ku Klux classics.
All their Supreme Court justices.
Except one."
You know what, it's changed since I wrote this.
"Except two.
[LAUGHTER]
Except two.
Exceptional two.
Exceptional or not, two is not enough.
All their stanzas look alike.
Even this after publication might look alike.
This proves my stereotypes.
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
I have a question.
Yes, please.
Why did you pick the fifth line to be the refrain?
Yeah, that's a good question.
She asked.
The question was, why did I pick the fifth line
to be the refrain?
I don't know the answer.
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know other than the fact that I
think fours are comfortable.
I feel like fours represent a comfortable container
or unit or sort of way, a filled room, so to speak.
We think of a stanza as a realm.
There's John, Paul, George, and Ringo, right?
That's four.
There any other famous fours?
Four Seasons.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Yeah.
So if I have--
so I don't know.
But I know that I probably agree if the line is [INAUDIBLE],,
I'd probably read it in fourths having grown up--
[VOCALIZING DRUM BEATS]
So that's probably the answer, that.
And it could, at this point, that could go on forever.
It's one of those poems if we were inventing a form,
we could pass it around and keep going.
And I think I'm only worth four.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you for that question.
[INAUDIBLE]