I think I like a little comic relief.
There are some musicians in Ireland--
I was talking about to one class--
who play one thing and play it very well.
I think I'm that kind of poet sometimes.
So I'm going to bring someone else into the scene
here, a poet that I know in the east named Tom Lux.
In Ireland, I started to look for the music of a man named
Sean Maguire, who's a very good fiddle player,
and I love slow airs.
And I wanted to find him playing slow airs,
but somebody said to me, well, you're
never going to hear him play that well.
He only plays jigs and reels, so here's a jig,
and it's from Tom Lux, his book The Glassblower's Breath.
I told Tom that I thought he was the WC Fields of modern poetry.
I read this poem up in the northwest just
to antagonize him a little.
It's called "Green Prose."
It's a prose poem.
"I'm writing this with green ink,
so you'll believe me when I tell you I'm a nature poet.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm a nature poet.
You know, the ones close to the earth, the green water, blood,
and breath of it all.
Don't move, there's a grasshopper on my shoulder.
[LAUGHTER]
I think he's about to nuzzle my ear.
Surely, you're getting tired of this nature bunk by now.
Nature is bunk.
In the dry cave of every nature poet's mind,
there is a desire to torture chipmunks,
[LAUGHTER]
Those most detestable of small rodents,
to stomp lady slippers, et cetera.
And who hasn't dreamed of strangling
a deer with his bare hands, of tearing out the liver
and devouring it.
Let's get this straight once and for all, green
is the symbol of death and mourning.
It's the official color of lamentation.
Everybody but me has lied to you.
There is no green, unless it comes
from gashes far inside the blackest lung, no green.
Don't think about it or you'll die."
[LAUGHTER]
I just love that poem.
I might read you another one later on.
I'll put that one back there.
Maybe, I'll go on a tour of the country posing as Tom.
I love his poems so much.