And Sylvia Plath.
The readings been prepared by PL Skinner and Chris Kennedy.
And the readers will be Chris Kennedy, Linda Lashinsky,
and Professor Roger Bowen, the English Department.
I hope that you can come to the Student Union
and meet Susan Schaeffer after the reading tonight who
will be in the terrace lounge with the usual punch
and cookies.
We never pay for our punch or cookies,
but we're still getting them.
It's very nice.
Several people have come up to me in the last few years
and complained that they couldn't find books
by visiting writers.
So Blue Moon Press has agreed to sell
books following the readings.
And they'll have a table at the reception
with some of Mrs. Schaeffer's work,
and also copies of Patience in Blue Moon Press, the Blue Moon
news, and their chapbooks, and also copies of Grilled Flowers.
Susan Schaeffer has had published four books of poetry
and two novels since 1972.
Her books of poetry are The Witch and The Weather Report,
Granite Lady, The Rhymes and Runes of the Toad,
and most recently, Alphabet for the Lost Years.
Her novels are Falling and Anew.
She teaches at Brooklyn College.
We're very happy to welcome her to our campus, Susan Fromberg
Schaeffer.
[APPLAUSE]
I asked just before I came here if there were
such things as daffodils here.
I didn't mean this at any kind of slur on the West as opposed
to the East.
But my ignorance is beginning to bother me.
I saw planes taking off with parachutes--
I saw planes with parachutes and didn't
know if they were taking off or landing,
and decided I had better ask some questions before I made
any assumptions about anything.
The first poem I'd like to read is
called "Confession in April."
And this has to do with my garden.
That's what the daffodil question was about.
Also, it has to do with my refusal
to admit that the summer is over.
It's much colder in New York than it is here.
It's a poem that started when I planted a great many bulbs
in our garden when we had first moved into the house,
and was assured by the gardener that they
were tulip bulbs which are my favorite flowers.
"And when spring came, I was in for a surprise
and this is the poem that came from this unusual effort
on my part.
It's called "Confession in April."
Dear Lord, I have sinned against thee.
For I do not love all flowers equally.
For daffodils have come up in my yard instead of tulips.
For I hate their stupid yellow faces and I say
they are no better than weeds.
For I have turned spiteful and admire the cats
who do buy through their necks.
For I finger my calluses from the planting
and resent them still further.
For I blame them for their nature.
Yet once planted, they could be but what they are.
For I resent the Earth that they eat and they're growing,
for even the crow who devoured a nestling before me is more
accepted in my sight, for I will not accept them and say I
cannot.
For if I had courage, I would root them up by their heads
and leave them as carcasses.
For my anger is implacable [AUDIO OUT] against them,
yet they grow in clusters like families
and still are detestable.
For I say, how could this happen as if it counted to measure.
For I tell myself I like the barrenness better.
For I act as if this were the last year.
For I encourage the wins against them
and hate the rains which suckle them up.
For I walk neither to the right nor left,
but would trample upon them.
For in the morning, I wish it were evening
so they would be gone from my sight.
For I cannot forgive.
For all day, my face is pressed against the glass
and my eye is evil.
For I my neighbor's hose and will it to burst and drown them
entirely.
For they seem so proud.
For they have spent the winter feeling worms
at their white skins and have not complained to the air.
They do not cry out we are cold though
the wind blows against Roli.
For against heat when the sun bakes down upon them.
For not really ugly.
For much can be said to assert them yet
they anger me beyond all sanity.
For I suspect their connivance against my favorite roses.
For their goals are gall to me.
For in truth, my will is not done."
Temper tantrum poem.
These next poems come from a long series
which constitutes a good portion of the book
Alphabet for the Lost Years.
And when I started writing this alphabet series,
I knew how many letters there were in the alphabet,
that there were 26.
But after I began, the 26 began to seem
like a much larger number than it
had seemed when I first began.
So I will not torture everybody with all 26 letters I've picked
out, some of them from A to Z.
A. "At the beginning was the arch,
but its shape was strange.
It had a small tail.
It was alive.
So it was inevitable, everyone went through.
Now it has eaten its tail.
It stands in its stones, the air more solid than stones.
E, some of these are like riddles.
And if the letter is the only title, then part of the poem
is to figure out what the letter stands for."
E. "The round thing where it all begins,
the small sun under gelatinous clouds
they shift, white and warm and speckled.
It seems there are times nothing prevents them.
The Chinese buries some four years trusting them only
to Earth.
They cook in its fires, delicacy,
singing the songs of the skull, the new roots of grass.
In China is also a Great Wall in places
shattered like a venerable egg."
F. "When it grows, its green cover the cows come.
In spring, covered with green fuzz like the skull of a baby.
By summer, it riots.
There are lovers in the clover and under.
Everywhere there are soldiers, 10 pictures
slipping through bone cage.
For hundreds of years, for centuries out of mind,
the head of a man speaks to the head of a cow.
The field eats them all."
T. "Which everyone can probably guess
immediately after the first poem I read.
All winter, they lie in the black Earth.
They are blind in the eyes.
They're sleep more deep than the dead.
They sleep without where they save themselves up,
then something touches them, their dark wombs open.
They have been buried alive.
In their perpetuity, their blooms
contradict the seasons of greenness and cold.
From them, it is clear.
The flesh, it is golden.
And in the long afternoons consumes itself
in violent fires.
And the petals tire quickly, throwing their heads back
in the air resembling poppies, age
taking its tuck in their skins.
Now before their next droop with the last harsh cry of swans,
they show their black mouths.
The black son seat in the gold, thin green women
without shawls, they prepare to descend the long steps
to the chill and to black Earth.
They never look back."
C. "A man is asleep in the sun.
He does, a bee buzzes.
The air is drugged.
Somewhere a man is sawing his wood, son yields him.
The cut wood glows.
The willow bends over the water washing its hair,
boy swing from its branches.
The river confesses its sins to the sins of the bank.
The boys fall into water and peacocks of silver
when he's fallen asleep under a tree.
The sawing and sawing puts the man's wife to sleep.
Standing, he nods in the sun.
The cat is asleep on the rock.
Warm blood in the year, this season
buzzes, a bee settles itself on the skin."
This next poem, "The Bible of the Beasts of the Little
Field," is a long poem.
And I'm not sure whether it's necessary to have [AUDIO OUT]
or not to understand it.
But since it's a long poem and since people probably
haven't read it.
The last few lines of the poem have
to do with the story of Jonah and the Bible.
Are people familiar with the story of Jonah in the Bible?
It's one of the few funny stories in the Bible.
At the end of the story of Jonah,
Jonah is so angry with God after having sent him on this mission
to warn everybody that Nineveh was going to be destroyed,
then God changes his mind, so Jonah's trip in the whale
has been useless that he gets very angry
and gives God a lecture.
And essentially, says you ought to destroy it after all
that you've put me through.
And God argues with him saying, he likes the gourd
that he's sitting under which gives him shade in the desert
and how would he like it if that were killed.
And therefore should he destroy Nineveh,
which is filled with stupid people and also has many in it,
and that's the end of the story.
And Jonah loses the argument.
And this poem depends on some knowledge of the Jonah story
I think.
"One, I was born unacquainted, the beast say,
I was born unacquainted.
Everything that creeps and flies through the firmament
and swims the deep places.
And they say unto us, who is to say that our breaths go down
and yours go up and we are struck down saying,
I know you not.
I do not know you.
We have become unacquainted.
Two, let me number in this new yard
as I can a multitude of cats, both little and large, both one
color and brindle, some friendly, some not, some lame,
some strong-legged.
Some birds of many description, some red on the head,
others on the chest, little brown ones,
numerous as the seeds they do eat, a hammer add wood.
Two strolling pigeons with breast plates
of Persian enamel who feel no fear, who
walk about my toes, who in the morning call to each other
with a thick sound of water gushing
from all the deep places.
And one red cardinal and also two blue jays.
Three, let us consider the animals in the spring.
The Abyssinian mistress has brought
forth three black kittens.
In numberless leaves, they number three.
Their nest is an old car.
Its pipes are their toys.
They will not know us, though we bring milk forth to them.
They stare at us seriously out of blue button eyes.
How the mighty have fallen.
No, I am Ruth amidst daily in corn
and I have multiplied after my kind.
Black queen, my queen.
Four, is there no end to the humans and all their fence
cities, who tend to their vines and the green blood touches
their hands and now they want red?
The man in the house after is a reproach and a lament.
As they pass by, people hiss at him
yet he is innocently clipping his vines.
There was a man who took bricks and threw them.
This is the man where he has taken a cat
and broken its back.
For his crawl to its dying in the yard of the priest,
and what shall be his punishment for he has set a trap
and caught the cat called nameless.
And nameless is crippled.
And what shall his punishment be?
Will we have fed nameless and tried to minister
for there is much to this matter as a tree with two leaves
may spread its roots through the yard.
For we must consider, nameless, the cat who was crippled.
Five, angel with four faces, one and one of lion,
one ax, one eagle, come down--
come down angel with four wings, always going straight
as you gaze, resting on your two rings, when moving you forward,
one turning, and each ring full of eyes,
for the spirit of the angel rests in the wheels.
Can you inspire such wonder as nameless?
For nameless is my savior.
He has caused me to green into life
as a dry root and water, as a wire into its current,
as each green leaf to the sun.
To turn from my winter to come forth green and golden.
My Earth full of petals.
My branches, heavy with leaves.
Six, wherefore did this cat say, yay I shall live?
His skin hung on him, his bone showed through him
like laving of a dwelling that has not yet been plastered.
Why was his fur with considerable gray patches?
A map of disparity, so said we have him meant on his way
by us.
He walked in pure pain as a tree that catches on fire.
Up to the fence of pain, he went his fourth leg with him
and down again into the yard.
So he slept before the priest.
So he slept before me.
By lifting their heads, others could scare him off milk.
He lay in the greens and the rain
brought him mud splattered.
Heavy was the air and the flying bugs crowned him
as if he had died there.
He left and the Earth turned to iron.
He came again and the Earth turned to gold.
Fat and happy was the cat for, Missy,
the cat has given him her protection.
For he has given her kittens.
For his fourth foot rests on the ground and almost
will bear him.
For he has dug through the wall called despair
and has seen the green sea.
For he has let me press my eye to it
although he constantly hisses.
For he touch his head, which was the head of a savage.
On that day, I was anointed.
On that day, I had faith.
Seven, under the sun I sat on the Earth and considered.
I considered the little hill in its boldness.
I considered the little seeds in their pouches
and how the two should be joined.
And as I sat, the sky was blue and the Earth was chocolate.
So I took up my trowel and on the Earth's first turning,
discovered the worm.
And the worm was not usual.
No, he was wide as my finger.
And his color was a dull pink as the inner part of a body.
And although he was startled under my eye,
he made his way along the little hill.
And I wondered that I did not fear him or feel disgust
at him, but thought I could even see on his body
the head which made the rest ripple after,
as if it were a living wave.
And thought, how he went down deep into the cold Earth making
all his apartments, learning the road marks of pebbles
and how the sun did not shine for him or the moon.
He had still, he comes up in tribute to see them
and then makes his bed in the absolute dark.
And I thought then of the flowers
and how they bore living.
One short season nodding in the pleasant rains and sunshine
showers, then fisting back to bulbs
for 10 long months of dreams.
10 months of dreams, so long for dreams.
No wonder the timbrels and soul trees and little bells
play so in the yard and their music
starts the season to ticking, nor does the worm harm them--
10 months of dreams.
When they come they are emptied out of them,
their sight is as the clear glass.
They see what is here and I saw them and envied,
and the little worm made his way from me.
Eight, nor the great tree has cast a squirrel down before me
and the neighbors all say, take him up
and make him to eat for he is only a baby.
He lies in this box as he lay on the ground,
arms spread out as if lying and little legs also.
And his eyes do not wink but stare only.
Though the wind ruffles the fur of his comely gray tail,
he is dead; yet I have put sugared milk on his lips
for he might wake in his box.
And if it were deep, the worms will would fail him.
The baby sky darken, and I could never explain.
He is dead, he is dead, says the weather;
nor my life does not make his eye to blinks as the sun
or to water; nor does the wind Earth but stare him.
Through his small nose comes no little breeze of his own.
The small children think he is sleeping.
Good night, good night, they say under the trees.
Ellen, took up his pose.
He took up his pose and he died, yet we have nameless.
Shall I destroy Nineveh that great city,
said the Lord, wherein the people do not
know their left hand from their right.
And also much cattle, and also my
nameless, and also my nameless."
I'm not sure I should say this about this poem.
In the college where I teach, we have to--
I don't know if they do that here, do they do that here?
Senior members of the faculty go in
and listen to junior members of the faculty
to make sure they're not doing atrocious things like teaching,
whatever.
Well, this is one of the most boring activities they've
thought up at Brooklyn College.
And whenever possible, as long as the person appears sane
and doesn't seem to eat the chalk or the eraser,
I'll do anything so that the hour will pass quickly.
And during this particular hour, I wrote one of these poems.
I actually wrote two, I was so desperate.
The class was so boring.
But a boring class, that is not reportable.
Only a class in which the students are interested
and possibly not doing the prescribed material
is reportable.
So I could see the writing on the wall
and I thought I would do some of my own.
And this is one of them.
It's called "The Raven Trees."
"In the raven trees, there is a stirring of wings.
There is a fluttering of blinks and the raven trees.
There are green eyes clustering like grapes in the raven trees.
There is a white frame house, and oh, it is proper.
There is an expanse of black grass between the House
and the raven trees.
Oh, lords and ladies imagining cherubim and tiny hearts,
imagining hawks, vultures, crows.
Why can you meet on the white snow falls on the black grass,
covering the black grass, the White House, the pale sun,
the raven trees."
This poem I'm about to read next is about a cemetery in Vermont,
which dates back to about 1803.
And after about a month of pestering my husband who
hates cemeteries, he finally agreed
to go with me although he's convinced
that visiting a cemetery is an extremely morbid thing to do.
So I thought it was relatively harmless
since all we would have to do is walk
up and down among the stones and I could write down
what information it was that I wanted.
But naturally, as things would have it,
he now has plenty of grounds to complain.
If any of you have seen movies like The Exorcist
or recently, that movie with Gregory Peck,
The Omen, something always happens
and something always falls down.
Well, for some reason in a movie,
it never really seems very frightening.
But when something really falls down in a real cemetery
I discovered that's another matter altogether.
So I imagine this was my last trip
to the cemetery with my husband who is now convinced
that the cemetery had some form of protest of its own
about our being there in the first place.
It's called "The Moles--
Twitchell Cemetery, Vermont."
"They keep charts of all the cemeteries and names
and genealogies, but they sometimes
neglect to put back up the stones that fall down.
God only knows what we were doing there,
visiting Freddie so long dead in that place of stopped hearts
as if he were ours, ours only.
Died 1818 age four years nine months.
Perhaps it was merely histone, perhaps not Freddie at all.
But his father younger than we were that day, that year, 1818,
who carved the little lamb stroke by stroke
out of found marble until he fashioned
a shape for his own heart, until he
felt each stroke of his blade.
Not as sentimental as we had first thought, a lamb,
not a puppy, not the child's pet,
meaning as did the stone of his sister gone home.
Oh, it was a strange day as if blackbirds were stirring
the air to storm everywhere.
The cold white clouds, the stunning blue sky,
and the mountains rising stones over the stones;
waves out of the flood.
The stones in the midst of that greenery signaling winter,
its endless separating snows making those drifts
seem for the moment tame, nothing fearful.
Never before did we feel so helpless in the face
of enormity, shrunk to this little lamb who
gazed at us out of his black eye shoulder
while the black mold modeled his back and the picturesque stones
tilting this way and that, a forgotten town all askew.
And we were naive to lean so on his sister, poor Emmeline who
died in the second summer.
And her stone fell straight back.
The crown piece flying furthest, one stone in three pieces.
What a horror has if a God had fallen.
And how fast we jump to put up that heavy marble,
one pin holding the big slab like the pin
in the hip of a soldier.
The other two plates in the head of a skull.
Poor Emmeline, we said then, she never had luck.
It was then that we noticed the feel
of the ground and the dates of the parents
who lived 36 years after Freddy, waiting 10 for Emmeline.
And when she was gone, no foolish carving for that spongy
ground.
That ground that seemed so ready to let the boot
through to that we walked on.
It didn't feel right walking on the dead,
and then it did as if this were the Earth's crust
and now given up all disguises.
We kept telling ourselves they were down deep.
But after the fall of that stone,
it was hard to believe it.
When we realized it was only moles, little moles, hundreds
of them tunneling the loam, creating this terror,
our boots would go through to poor Emmeline and poor Freddy.
Those sleek moles opposes of gardens,
and we thought as we left or thought we
left through the white wicket.
This was the wrong garden for them.
The fruits were too deep for their pores and their noses,
but the lamb's blank eye caught us.
And as if we could read the moles notes, we knew finally
and forever those furry destroying
angels with their sharp teeth and their Earth
song, their deep mission and worm tunnels.
And though little Freddy haunted our sleep
like one of the quickest, [AUDIO OUT]
we would always be wrong."
This poem was written for one of my students
who fell madly in love every three weeks for about
a period of two years.
And whenever she fell madly in love,
everything was completely simple and clear to her.
That was the first week.
The second week, she would entertain some doubts.
And the third week, she would be considering
committing suicide or having her personality
altered in some surgical manner since she
was obviously inadequate.
And after listening to her for approximately five years,
I decided I would write a poem about love just because I
couldn't stand it anymore.
And the condition she was usually in,
she wasn't fit to talk to.
So I thought if I wrote it down, perhaps it would do some good.
I don't know whether I did it or not.
At least she hasn't mentioned the subject lately
and I haven't noticed any new engagement rings changing
every month on her finger.
So I think it may just be age.
I doubt if she's had any surgery or had her stomach pumped.
But this is the result of constant romantic torment
which makes as the world turns, look extremely tame.
It's almost enough to wean me from television altogether.
"Love."
"Why is love so difficult?
At the very word, the heart surrounds itself with briars.
But the thorns have their own secrets.
With tears, his sword slashes through, his face as gashed,
his clothes cut to pieces.
When he finds her, his tears and his blood varnish her face.
He is already full of joys and resentments,
and she is ecstatic.
Though the coffins glass mesh surely upsets her.
Her face is sticky, she asks for his handkerchief
and he sees it stain.
He does not say what he feels nor does
she looking at it's tarnishing blood as they
walk home talking of home.
They know not what they say they are so full of plans.
I will bandage the wall with drapes
and wig the ball windows with ruffled hem.
The eyes of the house shall not stare
like wide open lids stiff and unclosing--
we shall have blinds.
And he says, look I have seen these boards somewhere before
and this narrow room someday it will warm.
We can feed those shrill cries and mirrors
forbidden us are no loss.
Small faces shall give back our own.
What is that she'll win but a deep breath?
What is that cough in the attic?
I know there are vast flowers in the plaster,
they are drawn to the bodies.
From the minute, they slam the door they smell the Earth.
They argued with each other like lawyers.
They picked each other's pockets.
Someone always woke in the night and stole from the room.
The shadows were thick, each confided in the moon.
There were the illnesses and the recriminations,
and that mad lady memory locked herself in the guest room.
When they could not get her out, they fed her under the door.
Strange to say, everything prospered.
Though the cat they fed ate the pigeon who fed on their crumbs.
And when it was over, there were others left who cried
and one patched cat who kept returning
to the scene of the crime saying,
though no one understood, this was love, this was happiness,
and, I too, between hunting the birds
and the squirrels and the one pigeon
remaining take time out to mourn."
The more I look at this, the more I think
they have to do with--
I had the students that were both.
There comes a point where they become inseparable,
especially when they start teaching in the same department
you're in.
There becomes entirely inseparable.
This poem, I think, had something to do with once,
with somebody who seemed to want to spend her life doing
her graduate work.
[LAUGHTER]
And her goal seemed to be to finish it 24 hours before she
died of old age.
And I'm not sure how closely related the two things are,
but one day after eight years on the second year of the PhD,
I found myself writing this.
So I suspect there must be some kind of connection.
It's called "When."
"When does life begins?
She asked.
There is always the lace metal ball full of snakes,
its intricacies to consider, and the gold knife
to slice the gold apple which has no [AUDIO OUT] in it.
Yet each piece grows into a hole.
And we have not even mentioned the flying white horse
or the possibility of traveling unseen, but still leaving
tracks on the sand.
Or the small crystal globe sunk in the palm of my hand
in which I can see the future coming closer.
Although lately, the future resembles a pillar of smoke.
There are rumors of new plagues, surely you've heard them.
And I can never forget the two sisters, one of them blind.
They never knew they were twins.
Then the oracle spoke quick into the scold caldron,
terrible other burns and the scars,
they will heal late which is better than never.
That land, healthy as a hug."
Poems are nastier than I thought.
This one is a poem about somebody
I don't like who is quite famous.
And for good reasons, her name has been omitted even
in anagrams and across sticks and things of that sort.
We've known each other for a long time,
largely because there are some people who
insist upon knowing you whether you want to or not,
but this one is called "Famous."
And it's about somebody who everyone, I'm sure,
in this room has seen pictures of however.
I'll behave myself for change not mention who it is.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I'd be curious to see who guessed, but that's not fair.
"Famous."
"Fame was that dame she ate on and served
until a gold halo grew overhead but it hummed
with the dark sound of bees has closed against her,
even the moon heard the slam of wood doors.
Jealousy, she cried in despair with a pout.
But a housewife with a big mouth and belly
could not help herself.
While you slept, the stethoscope sounded your chest.
It is filled with the black sound of bees.
The gold sting of wasps and wasps,
wasps only for your dowry."
And it seems to have been prophetic too, which gives me
more nasty satisfaction than is really desirable in a person.
This poem is from a book I wrote called
Rhymes and Runes of the Toad.
It's all about a toad or various toads
in their various adventures.
And this one seems to have appealed to fathers
more than I thought it would.
I thought more letters from fathers detailing
all the sins of their children.
This book has come out.
Fathers are a neglected commodity,
I've discovered in this society.
I think that's probably why Joseph Heller, Something
Happened was so popular.
Has anyone read that book?
He spends a great deal of time describing why he
hates his children, his wife.
Usually you have Philip Roth complaining about his mother.
This one you have the father complaining about the children.
It's an interesting sociological development if nothing else.
The father hasn't been heard from much
in this society or century.
This one is called "Paternal Toad."
"Finally, toad had children.
Toad took fatherhood very seriously,
especially since being a toad he had hundreds of them.
One cold afternoon in the fall when the leaves were beginning
to fall and the pons were lacing with ice,
he called them all to him.
He took his place upon a rock and they sat down below,
leaf green and gray, leaf green and beige.
It is time for me to tell you how the world came to begin,
said the Toad.
First, there was blackness then a red ball of fire,
rose in the sky, then darkness again, then a white ball
of fire, not nearly so hot.
And so the pattern was set.
What happened next, they chorused their minds all agog.
At this, Toad threw himself down on his rock
and sobbed himself sick."
[LAUGHTER]
I don't know if any of you have ever
read anything about Freud's study of the "Wolf Man."
It's about a man who thought he was a wolf, not a werewolf,
thought he was a wolf a great deal of the time.
Or rather he didn't think he was a wolf much of the time.
He was afraid wolves were after him all of the time.
I think he only had a very brief interval of thinking.
He himself might be turning into a wolf
and have to do all these dreadful things.
This poem is about a picture that the wolf man, that's
what he called himself, the wolf man, and that's what Freud also
called him, drew to show Freud what
the wolves looked like when they stood outside his window
at night.
They sat in a tree and watched him
so that Freud couldn't possibly think he was imagining,
and he drew the picture and it would all be clear.
[LAUGHTER]
It's on the cover of the book.
It's a very nice picture.
But when you realize someone took it seriously,
it somehow loses its charm in some ways.
"The Picture Wolves in the Tree."
This is dedicated to Cynthia Ozick
who's an extremely talented short story
and who hates Freud.
But she's made an exception for these wolves and their tree.
"In the picture, five white wolves sit-in a tree.
The sixth has hidden himself in the works of a grandfather
clock.
They're afraid of being eaten.
But of course, this is what happens.
They are not really wolves, but six woolly lambs.
They only pretend to be wolves.
They are afraid of the wolf.
They sit-in a blasted tree in a desolate snow-covered steppe.
They all stare straight ahead, blue pines
are jagged behind them.
It is a mystery how they got up there.
It is a mystery how the wolf eats them.
They seem to be made of the snow and are not very nourishing,
but still they are eaten.
The sixth deserves our concern, crouched stiffly and patiently
under the pendulum and waits.
When is it safe to come out?
He thinks of his brothers in the tree in the snow.
He thinks of the North wind puffing the face of the clock.
He wants to sneeze from the dust.
There are two possible ends to his story.
In one, the constant ticking and chiming strive him quite mad.
The ticking turns slowly to snow.
He digs his way out smears himself with butter
and lies down on the hearth of the wolf.
He wears a little red hood for good measure.
The wolf is surprised, but knows just what to do.
In the other, he comes out thinner but wiser,
knows his pulse is a clock, and goes to the market for wives.
He brings home a fat one.
He has 14 children and teaches them hopscotch
as he used to play it.
He makes a good living building grandfather clocks.
They are all big enough for a fat sheep to sleep in.
He keeps a huge pot boiling under his chimney, his house,
of course, made of brick.
At night, his wife is often quiet and takes off her apron
and asks, what's it all for?
He says the perpetuation of hopscotch
and turns on his side.
When he dies, the whole village calls him the sage."
This is a poem that I wrote quite a long time
ago before it really was popular to start
chewing through your wrist if you discovered
you were a housewife primarily and not
an upcoming female president of the United States.
And since then, it's been anthologized a great deal
in feminist places, which is nice,
but a little bit disturbing to me
because the poem is about both the man and the woman.
And it's always been hard for me to imagine how a woman gets
herself into circumstances which are going
to drive her insane without giving consent of some kind
since there's always the bus, or mother, or something.
But this poem has really been read didactically.
I still like it and that's why I would like to read it.
There is a problem, I think, for everybody
once you commit yourself to a certain way of life
and a certain number of tasks.
And this one, in my mind, was about somebody
who had chosen to stay home.
And that was it.
I didn't really see the person as a victim of society
or a person who was oppressed by society.
Still, you can't force, read things the way
you want them read.
So maybe there's something wrong with the way
I wrote it in that case.
"Housewife."
"What can be wrong that some days I hug this house about me
like a show and feel each window like a tatter in his skin
or worse, bright eyes I must not look through.
Now my husband stands above me as high as ever
my father did, and I am in that house of dolls which when young
I could not shrink to.
I feel the shrinkage in each bone.
No matter what I do, my two girls spoil like fruit,
already they push us back like two full plates.
They play with us like dolls.
The road before the house is like a wish
that stretches out and out and will not stop.
And the smallest hills are built like steps
to the slippery moon.
But I circle this lit house like any more
and see each day open its fingers
to disclose the stone, which hand, which hand,
and the stone in both.
Once I drove my car into a tree, the bottle's
in the back burst like bombs, tubular glass beasts giving up
the ghost.
My husband thought it was the road, it was.
In the rear view mirror, it curves and curls
longer and stronger than the road ahead, a question
of perspective, I thought then.
I watched it until it turned and I did not.
I breathed in pain like air as if I had the rib had cracked.
I did not feel this pain, not then almost in my mouth.
I wriggle this life and find it loose.
Like my girls, I would pull it out,
would watch something new and white,
push like mushrooms from the rich red soil.
But there is just this hole, this phone.
So I live inside my wedding ring beneath its arch,
multiplying the tables of my days
were in the lessons of this dish, that sleeve,
wanting the book that no one wrote,
loving my husband, my children, my house
with this pain in my jaw wanting to go to where this feel
like this.
What do they do?"
This is a poem that I wrote after I
had some experience with the same situation
and realized how it wasn't terribly difficult to become
reasonably insane from lack of time,
that there were actually times when you would check the clock
to see if you had as much as 30 seconds or even 20.
And if you only had eight, could become quite frantic.
It's called the "Windows" and it's about one
of the peaceful times.
"The morning light sanctifies all the terrible objects--
the knives, the serviceable dishes
which return in their tiny orbits
again and again like used moons.
And also the strange silence of this one hour before creation.
And my own breath is not human.
The morning light sanctifies all the terrible objects--
the knives, the serviceable dishes
which return and their tiny orbits
again and again like used moons.
And also the strange silence of this one hour before creation.
And my own breath is not human, but is
a breeze through the winds and the rushes.
And months are not yet.
But green saplings saying what soon will be.
And the yard has gathered time to itself in its greenery.
There is no human element.
The human element is not yet.
The trees dance, the wind blows, blue jays
drink of the cracked fountain.
The sun opens petal by petal, and the clouds
move in their silence.
They fly in flux like white geese.
They are intelligent.
Little water's puddle and splash sing, see
the flood has pulled back.
There is a sign that compasses everything Yes,
it even rests on four pillars.
And the willows bends its hair to the blowing.
And the skies ancient silks below
and blueness up and again.
Now the flowers do speak one to the other
and even bend down to the little worm who goes
so hard through his tunnel.
With joy, they open their mouths to the tiger bee.
This is before, before everything.
Yes, it is true an angel stands at the gate
although there is no gate yet there is one indeed.
Oh, this is before and all is still then.
But my heart crawls with time, fills with it
like burrowing ants.
To them, I am only more Earth.
In a pointy white tower, a steeple,
a petal splash of peelings, a blazing forth of the sun,
a throw cry.
The ivy becomes ivy.
My hands become my hands.
The cat crosses the yard.
She has divided, her eyes full of purpose.
And in the high tower, I see the round face
with its numbers, feign marble and iron.
So the air fills with takings.
So my blood ticks.
So the room now ticks to their purpose.
Thus the hands of the clock are the flaming swords of angels.
So this little time comes to a close."
This is the last poem I'm going to read.
It's called "When I spoke."
Short, trouble with writing long poems
is that not only do you have to type them,
but reading them takes longer than reading short ones.
I like the short ones, looks like a blank page
by comparison.
"When I spoke to the cows, they would not
answer, neither the horses.
They changed their mind, speaking of the one day
they would no longer be dumb.
It was then that I realized the sun and the moon had gone out.
A chill had set in.
My lips sealed.
Bones, glacial."
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]