This poem deals in a, somewhat, jocular way, I believe.
With definitions of poetry, which I was never
concerned with until I became a teacher at Brooklyn College.
And was asked, as all teachers of poetry are,
how do you know what's a poem and what isn't a poem.
Why isn't this a poem.
Why is that one, et cetera, et cetera.
And I hadn't really ever addressed myself
to this problem before.
I'm not sure that I have here, either.
Or that it helps the students who
saw it but it became a poem.
It's called ''And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name".
That Latin phrase, meaning that a poem ought
to resemble a painting, which I don't particularly
subscribe to.
"You can't say it that way anymore.
Bothered about beauty you have to come out into the open,
into a clearing, and rest.
Certainly whatever funny happens to you is OK.
To demand more than this would be strange of you.
You who have so many lovers, people who look up to you
and are willing to do things for you.
But you think it's not right, that if they really knew you.
So much for self-analysis.
Now, about what to put in your poem-painting.
Flowers are always nice, particularly delphinium.
Names of boys you once knew and their sleds, skyrockets
are good--
do they still exist?
There are a lot of other things of the same quality as those
I've mentioned.
Now one must find a few important words,
and a lot of low-keyed, dull-sounding ones.
She approached me about buying her desk.
Suddenly the street was bananas in the clanger
of Japanese instruments.
Humdrum testaments were scattered around.
His head locked into mine.
We were a seesaw.
Something ought to be written about how this affects you
when you write poetry.
The extreme austerity of an almost empty mind
colliding with the lush, Rousseau-like foliage
of its desire to communicate something between breaths.
If only for the sake of others and their desire
to understand you and desert you,
for other centers of communication.
So that understanding may begin, and in doing so be undone."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.