Thank you.
I suppose you notice I'm reciting,
I'm not using a manuscript.
Well, you say to yourself, how can he do this?
And I'll tell you how I can do this.
I can do this because there's an airlines that flies out
of Montana called Northwest Orient Airlines,
and may they roast in hell.
And they lost a bag of mine on a trip to Portland.
And I had to give five readings in five days in Portland
and this altered my style.
Somewhat sad since all my manuscripts
were in the bag, which was never recovered.
I think the last poem I'll do I'm
going to do a couple of softball poems.
The last poem I'll do from the book
is called "A Missoula Softball Tournament."
Now, like a lot of poets of my generation, Jim Wright,
and Dave Wagner, and Jim Dickey, we
come from I guess what you'd call the working classes,
or if you want to be less polite about the lower classes
and because that's just about all
there was in the depression.
And so when you come from that kind of background,
I think you grow up with certain attitudes that
might be indigenous.
You grow up with ways of feeling about yourself that
affect your whole life and that is to say they may drive you
to becoming completely different,
or they may force you to wallow in self-pity.
They do-- they may take several forms
in several different ways of behaving may grow out of this.
But one thing I grew up with, was a feeling
that if I were to compete for what we normally would consider
the goals of life, that is the same money or the love
of a beautiful woman, that I would automatically
be doomed to failure.
That is to say that I would not survive in a competitive world,
and I did not have the right manners,
I did not have the right upbringing, et cetera,
et cetera.
The old story which I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with.
If not in person, at least you have heard plenty about this.
Well, one thing people--
at least what I did and I think a lot of people like me did was
we took our competitive instincts to areas
where we couldn't get hurt.
That is to say in my case, it was to baseball and softball.
In many cases, it's the--
I'll say bowling leagues, things like that.
And it's very easy to laugh at people
who do this, who take bowling and softball seriously,
but I have to admit that in a way they're my kind of people.
And my feeling for softball, or baseball, and then later
softball, went so deep that I literally never
until I started to teach, I never
took anything I did for a living as seriously as the games.
I played in at night in this little league
and in West Seattle two evenings a week,
which I played for I don't know about 15, over 15 years,
I guess after World War II.
And I didn't start to teach until it was
too old to play ball anyway.
So it was--
I finally found a job that I actually
took seriously when I got too old to take softball seriously.
Well, one thing I used to do when I was playing,
I always tried to write a poem about softball.
And somehow the poems would always end up at the--
it was the last half of the last inning
and the bases were loaded and you were three runs down,
and there were two outs, and the count
was 3, and 2 just terrible and it's
just just wretched you know.
Well, I don't know--
there was a fellow from Arizona named Barry Briggs,
I don't know if he's in the audience tonight or not.
He was a graduate, student up at Montana
and he was pitching in one of the softball teams in town.
And he asked me to it, told me about it
and I thought, well, I'd go out, I
hadn't even seen a softball game several years.
So I went out.
Foolishly put my name on a roster one night
to avoid a forfeit, I ended up playing
four games looking kind of silly in the outfield a man my age.
But anyway, I took a different attitude toward the game now.
I still loved it, and I love to watch it,
and I always kind of knew the situation, what the score was
and everything, but I started to take
note of people in the stands.
And some of the women--
some of the wives of the players became more interested
in the whole scene and I thought, well,
I'd try a softball poem again.
So about 30 years of trying I at least got this one.
It's called "Missoula Softball Tournament."
This summer most friends out of town and no wind playing
flash and dazzle in the cottonwoods,
music of the Clark Fork stale.
I've gone back to the old ways of defeat, the softball field.
Familiar dust and thud, pitcher winging drops and rises.
And wives, the beautiful wives in the stands,
basic, used, screeching runners home, infants
unattended in the dirt.
Along triple sales into right center, shout from dugout,
go run, go.
Life is better run from.
Distance to the fence, foul lines and dead center
is displayed.
I tried to steal the tricky manager's signs.
Is hit and run, the pulling of the ear, the ump
gives pitchers too much low inside.
Injustice, fraud, ancient problems focus in the heat,
bad hop on routine grounder, close play
missed by the team you want to win.
Players from the first game, high on beer
ride players in the field.
Their laughter falls short of the wall.
Under lights, the moths are momentary stars,
and wives, the beautiful wives in the stands,
now take the interest they once feigned.
Oh, long ago their marriage just begun,
years of helping husbands feel important just begun.
The scrimping, the anger brought home evenings
from degrading jobs, this poem goes out to them.
Is steal of home, the touching of the heart.
Last pitch, the soft fly, a can of corn,
the players say, routine like mornings, like the week,
they shake hands on the mound.
Nice shot on the grab to left.
Good game, good game, thus rotates
in their head light beams.
The wives, the beautiful wives, are with their men.
[APPLAUSE]