I'm going to skip reading any points through my first two
books, and read some from the latest book.
And then read some newer poems.
It's a tough act to follow up, I think.
I hope my poems are a little more accessible than that.
I wish they were 1/10 as good.
Here's a poem, sort of a what do you call--
I guess a literary poem, or based on literary history.
It's called "Rilke and Lou."
And it's about Rilke, the great German poet,
and Lou Andreas-Salomé, who was a lover of Rilke's.
It's really about Lou Andreas-Salomé who was
a writer.
Brilliant writer, actually, a brilliant woman.
Very well known in her time.
Later in her life, a student of Freud's.
Became a psychoanalyst later in her life.
It mentions Nietzsche, who was also in love with Salomé.
She didn't love him.
A few other people.
There's been some confusion about this poem.
There's angels at the beginning.
And to me, those are the good angels.
The angels of poetry, and life, and affirmation.
And then there's angels at the end.
They come in at the end.
Those are the angels of death.
"Rilke and Lou."
And it has an epigraph from her journals,
that goes "Rainer must go."
[LAUGHTER]
"Of course, Lou noticed the angels
in Rilke's pockets and hat.
But wondered, does he have to be a poet all of the time?
[LAUGHTER]
That actually wasn't the real problem.
Rainer was a sweetheart, too sweet.
Hanging around too much.
Besides he practically wept every time
a leaf fell off a tree.
[LAUGHTER]
Jesus, thought Lou.
This guy will devour me, or try at least.
He's rather frail, so let's unload him fast.
Only because she had bigger genius,
you understand, than any poet, any philosopher.
Nietzsche is a good example.
And certainly up there in insights with Freud.
And as we have come to expect from all Illuminati,
she was angry when she saw the other angels.
Angry at the end that they were coming."
The poem came out of reading a biography for her.
I forget the author, but it's published by Norton
in paperback.
And that last-- those last sentences.
She was pissed off when--
She was very old.
She was well into her 80s.
And she was dying, and she was mad that she was dying.
She was pissed off.
I like that.
[LAUGHTER]
Not afraid, or anything, but mad because she had to die.