Thank you very much.
I think the climate here must be very dry.
My mouth seems to be sticking.
And I don't drink anymore.
It used to be vodka and tonic would do that,
but I don't drink anymore.
So I have no excuse.
[MOUTH NOISES]
I started teaching at the age of 40.
And before that, I worked in an aircraft factory
for about 13 years.
There's some rivalries sometimes set up,
I think, needlessly, between creative writers and more
traditional academic people.
I think these games are noisy and needless, in a way.
I think usually, too, and--
when some creative writer is criticizing
the typical academic, he's really
usually talking about the worst of the academics.
And I think the same goes when the academics are criticizing
the creative writers.
They're talking about the most vain and egotistical
of the creative writers.
But I've had an opportunity to work with some very fine
academics and to know some.
In fact, I'm proud to say I number,
among my friends, J. Hillis Miller, who I think
is a great literary critic.
And by "great" I mean I can understand his criticism.
[LAUGHTER]
And it helps me to understand.
I mean, I find some critics--
Northrop Frye's essay on Stevens,
for example, I find absolutely unintelligible.
But Miller seems to make sense.
I mean, let's say, I understand the literature better.
Well, I've done a poem that's not dedicated
to anybody in particular.
But it's for all those people who
do teach very difficult subjects that I couldn't possibly
teach, like modern literary criticism,
and who can understand people like RP Blackmer and so forth.
And I've written this poem.
It's called The Art of Poetry.
"The man in the moon was better not a man.
Think sad Raymond, how you glare across the sea,
hating the invisible Near East and your wife's hysteria.
You'll always be here, rain or gloom,
painting a private Syria.
Preferred dimensions of girls, outside
gulls scar across your fantasy.
The rifle spray on glass unfocuses the goats
you stalk on the horizon, flattering blue like dolphins
looping over the sun.
Better the moon you need, better not a man, sad Raymond
twice a day.
The tide comes in.
Envy your homemade heroes when the tide is low,
laughing their spades at clams, drinking a breezy beer
and breeze from Asia Minor.
In those far far, principalities they've been, their tall wives
elegant in audience with kings.
And envy that despairing man you found one morning
sobbing on a log, babbling about a stuffed heart in Wyoming.
Don't think Raymond they'd respond
to what's inside you every minute, crawling slowest tide.
Better not tell them.
Better the man you seem, sad Raymond twice a night.
The tide comes in.
Think once how good you dreamed, the way
you hummed a melody from Norway when that summer storm came
battering the alders, turning the silver underside of leaves
toward the moon.
And think sad Raymond of the wrong way maturation
came, wanting only those women you despised,
imitating the voice of every man you envied.
The slow walk home alone, pause at door, the screaming kitchen,
and every day this window, loathing the real horizon.
That's what you are, better the man
you are, a sad Raymond twice a day.
The tide comes in.
All's in the name, what if you were Fred, then none of this
need happen.
What's sad Raymond if in your will,
you leave your tongue and tear ducts to a transplant hospital.
There's your motive for trailing goats
to Barnhill, goats that suddenly are real,
out distancing the quick shark and the quarter mile
and singing home sweet home.
Motive, but no blood.
Sad, sad, the salty fusillade of skewers once more your raging
playfield.
Better behind the glass.
Better the man you were.
A sad Raymond twice a night.
The tide comes in.
A sad Raymond twice a lifetime, the tyrant moon loses control.
Tides are run by starfish, and those charts
you study mornings on your wall are meaningless as tide.
The Near East isn't near or East.
And Fred was an infant in your neighborhood devoured by a dog.
Those days you walk the beach looking for that man who's
pure in his despair.
He's never there.
A real man walks the moon and you can't see him.
The moon is cavalier.
Better to search your sadness for the man, a sad Raymond.
Twice a moment tides come in."
Listen I have been up here a goodly time.
As I say, is this is my first time in Arizona in 32 years.
And I never expected an audience this big
and you've been very gracious and very attentive.
And that's why being up here this last hour
has really been my pleasure.
So my thanks to you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much.
You're very sweet.