I'm going to sort of skip around in sequence
and read some poems from the up country book.
This book opens with a series of hermit poems.
And they're all written to a male persona.
And I feel as I kind of-- as I go around and read these poems,
I feel as though I owe some sort of explanation
to my sisters in the audience for having written them
in a male voice.
And about the only thing I can find to say to redeem this fact
is that I guess at the time that I wrote them,
I really didn't think the world was
ready to take a female hermit seriously.
And so that's why they're all kind of couched
in this particular voice.
I hope I've reversed the situation somewhat
in the forthcoming book.
There are eight poems written to an old horse called the Amanda
poems.
And the speaker, as well as the mayor,
are very obviously female.
So maybe I have redressed a small grievance.
I'd like to read a couple of the hermit poems
and perhaps begin with this first one called "The Hermit
Wakes to Bird Sounds".
"He startles awake.
His eyes are full of white light.
In a minute, the sun will ooze into the sky.
Meanwhile, all the machines of morning start up.
The typewriter bird is at it again.
Her style is full of endearing hesitations.
The words, when they come, do so in the staccato rush
of a deceitful love letter.
The sewing machine bird returns to the doddering elm.
Like Penelope, she rips out yesterday's stitches,
only to glide up and down, front and back, reentering
the same needle holes.
The bird who presides at the well house primes the pump.
Two gurgles applause, for squeaks of the handle, and time
after time, a promise of water can
be heard falling back in the pipes throat.
Far off the logging birds saw into heartwood
with rusty blades, and the grouse cranks up
his eternally unstoppable model, and the oil can bird
comes with his liquid puck puck to attend to the flinty clanks
of the disparate parts.
And as the old bleached sun slips into position,
slowly, the teasing inept malfunctioning one
of a kind machines fall silent."
And this one--
I guess you don't have skunks in Arizona, do you?
Oh, you do have skunks in Arizona.
OK.
And this doesn't require any further explication.
It's called "The Hermit Meets the Skunk".
Do you want to come and sit down or--
I mean, I want to give you a chance.
OK.
"The Hermit Meets the Skunk".
"The hermit's dog skitters home, drunk with it once every fall.
The whites of his eyes marbled from the spray,
and his tail tucked tighter than a clamshell.
He contracts himself to a mouse under the hermits bed.
The hermit unsticks him with a broom
and ties him outside to a tree.
He is a spotted dog, black rampant on white.
And as the hermit scrubs, the white
goes satiny with love of soap.
The black brightens to a boot black shine.
Next, a dose of tomato juice stains the white like a razor
cut under water and purples the black.
And after that, the whole dog bleaches moon colored
under a drench of corn starch.
The hermit sniffs him.
Skunk is still plain as a train announcement.
So he is to be washed again, rinsed again, powdered again,
until the spots wink out again under the neutral white.
Inside his mouth, the hermit knows and knows
from what is visible under the tail.
Dog is equally spotted.
But in the interior, gray on a pink field.
If he were to be pinned down, his four legs
held at four corners and slit open by the enthusiast.
The hermit knows the true nature of dog--
spotted layer by layer would be laid bare.
Afterward, all night, skunk sleepwalks the house.
Skunk is a pot of copper pennies scorched dry on a high flame.
Skunk is a porridge of dead shrews stewed down to gelatin.
Skunk is the bloat of chicken gut left
10 days to sweeten in the sun.
Skunk gives the mother bed the ripe taste
of Carrion, the green kiss."