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Then another one
along that line I'll

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tell you about in a minute.

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But I'd like to read
"The Groundhog," which

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I think I owe you.

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For years, I couldn't
read this poem.

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I had a horrible nervous state
for many, many years worrying

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whether this would be the only
poem of mine that would ever

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be known.

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And so I got off it.

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But then years later,
I came back onto it.

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And actually this poem
was written with--

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at the same time that three
other poems were written.

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And it may interest
you to know that when

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I wrote these four poems--

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Well I guess they put this
in the paper this morning

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or maybe you read
it in the paper.

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Maybe I'm just repeating.

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But I'll say it anyway.

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That when I wrote
these four poems

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I really thought they
were all about alike,

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my innocence, my passion,
my desire for truth,

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whatever it is, whatever it is.

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I wouldn't know.

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The mystery of poetry was
the same about all four.

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And yet as the years
went on, one of them

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became what I call a mountain--
a mountain peak poem, this one.

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The next one was called in a
hard intellectual light, which

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you'd might call a plateau poem.

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And the other two didn't even
get into a little magazine

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let alone a book or anthologies.

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So what do you make of that?

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That in a sense the poet
doesn't know what he's doing.

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Well I mean you have
to be awfully brainy.

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And you have to be terribly
alive when you're writing.

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But I mean the fate
of a poem is something

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out of the hands of the poet.

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I really believe this.

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This poem for
instance was written

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in a terrific state of--

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a marvelous state
of total knowledge

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of feeling of power or of
ability in about 15 minutes.

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And I never had to change
a word or maybe only one.

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These things they
bother me to this day.

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And in about in a whole lifetime
of writing, about half a dozen

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of my poems have
been given to me

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in this way, which is
really spiritual, mystical,

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or whatever.

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It's very strange.

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As if the personality,
the whole being,

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this heavy body that we have
was a light and airy vein.

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And that you were used by
a spirit far beyond you.

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That the personality is
simply a wind vane blown

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upon by some higher power.

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Well I don't want to
press that too far.

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But anyway here's the poem.

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"In June, amid
the golden fields,

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I saw a Groundhog lying dead.

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Dead lay he.

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My senses shook.

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And mind outshot
our naked frailty.

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There lowly in the
vigorous summer

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his form began its
senseless change,

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and made my senses waver dim
seeing nature ferocious in him.

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Inspecting close
his maggots' might

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and seething cauldron
of his being,

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half with loathing, half
with a strange love,

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I poked him with an angry stick.

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The fever arose, became a
flame and vigor circumscribed

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the skies, immense energy in
the sun, and through my frame

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a sunless trembling.

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My stick had done
nor good nor harm.

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Then stood I silent in the day
watching the object, as before,

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and kept my reverence for
knowledge trying for control

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to be still, to quell
the passion of the blood.

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Until I had bent
down on my knees

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praying for joy in
the sight of decay.

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And so I left.

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And I returned in
autumn strict of eye,

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to see the sap gone
out of the groundhog,

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but the bony sodden
hulk remained.

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But the year had
lost its meaning,

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and in intellectual chains I
lost both love and loathing,

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mured up in the wall of wisdom.

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Another summer took the fields
again massive and burning,

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full of life, but when
I chanced upon the spot

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there was only a
little hair left,

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and bones bleaching
in the sunlight

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beautiful as architecture.

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I watched them like a geometer,
and cut a walking stick

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from a birch.

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It has been three years, now.

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There is no sign
of the groundhog.

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I stood there in
the whirling summer,

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my hand capped a withered
heart, and thought

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of China and of Greece,
of Alexander in his tent,

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of Montaigne in his
tower, of Saint Theresa

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in her wild lament."

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I'll give you a footnote
on Montaigne in his tower.

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I used to bicycle around France
as a student and Montaigne's

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farm is still there.

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And he has a tower
where he worked.

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And there are chalk
markings on the rafters

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still with his sayings.

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So you can take it as a
metaphor or as a reality.

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You easily see that in my scheme
of things the ruler of men

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is on the lowest plane or the
warrior, the great Alexander,

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is lowest.

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The philosopher is next.

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The highest type of
mankind is the saint

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or the religious person.

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Well now there's
for some old ones.

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I want to give you one more.

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And this is a poem--

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Oh by the way, you know when I
read that one about if I could

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only live at the pitch of this
nature of madness or something?

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That's really-- that's the
idea of the divine madness

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of the Greeks, which
wasn't total madness.

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But it was drunkenness of
spirit or being totally alive

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is what they believed in.

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That's from which all
of their art sprang.

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And just to take
a minute, I'd like

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to read you the greatest thing
ever said about creative act.

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It is by Plato in the Ion.

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And this is what he had to say.

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"For all good poets,
epic as well as lyric,

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compose their beautiful poems
not by art but because they

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are inspired and possessed.

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And as the Corybantian
revellers when they dance

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are not in their right
mind, so the lyric poets

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are not in their right mind
when they are composing

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their beautiful strains.

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But when falling under the
power of music and meter

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they are inspired and possessed,
like Bacchic maidens who

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draw milk and honey
from the rivers

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when they are under the
influence of Dionysus,

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but not when they are
in their right mind.

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And the soul of the
lyric poet does the same

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as they themselves say.

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For they tell us that they bring
songs from honeyed fountains,

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culling them out of the
gardens and dells of the Muses.

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They, like the bees, winging
their way from flower

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to flower.

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And this is true."

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And remember the next sentence
for the rest of your lives.

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"For the poet is a light
and winged and holy thing,

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and there is no invention in
him until he has been inspired

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and is out of his senses, and
the mind is no longer in him.

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When he has not
attained to this state,

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he is powerless and is
unable to utter his oracles."

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Well I read this passage
with the greatest belief

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for many years.

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And yet it's only
a little while ago

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that I thought that this isn't
the total truth after all.

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That all Plato was talking
about is the lyric poem.

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Because how could this
be true of Chaucer?

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It couldn't be.

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It couldn't apply to Chaucer.

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It couldn't apply to
Shakespeare's plays.

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It couldn't apply
to the long poem,

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like Milton's Paradise Lost.

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So I think what he is saying
about this near madness

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is the divine ecstasy is
only for lyric poetry.

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