WEBVTT

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I think I like a
little comic relief.

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There are some
musicians in Ireland--

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I was talking about
to one class--

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who play one thing
and play it very well.

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I think I'm that kind
of poet sometimes.

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So I'm going to bring
someone else into the scene

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here, a poet that I know
in the east named Tom Lux.

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In Ireland, I started to look
for the music of a man named

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Sean Maguire, who's a
very good fiddle player,

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and I love slow airs.

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And I wanted to find
him playing slow airs,

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but somebody said
to me, well, you're

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never going to hear
him play that well.

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He only plays jigs and
reels, so here's a jig,

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and it's from Tom Lux, his
book The Glassblower's Breath.

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I told Tom that I thought he was
the WC Fields of modern poetry.

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I read this poem up
in the northwest just

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to antagonize him a little.

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It's called "Green Prose."

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It's a prose poem.

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"I'm writing this
with green ink,

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so you'll believe me when I
tell you I'm a nature poet.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'm a nature poet.

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You know, the ones close to the
earth, the green water, blood,

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and breath of it all.

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Don't move, there's a
grasshopper on my shoulder.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I think he's about
to nuzzle my ear.

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Surely, you're getting tired
of this nature bunk by now.

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Nature is bunk.

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In the dry cave of every
nature poet's mind,

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there is a desire to
torture chipmunks,

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[LAUGHTER]

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Those most detestable
of small rodents,

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to stomp lady
slippers, et cetera.

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And who hasn't
dreamed of strangling

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a deer with his bare hands,
of tearing out the liver

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and devouring it.

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Let's get this straight
once and for all, green

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is the symbol of
death and mourning.

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It's the official
color of lamentation.

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Everybody but me
has lied to you.

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There is no green,
unless it comes

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from gashes far inside the
blackest lung, no green.

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Don't think about
it or you'll die."

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[LAUGHTER]

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I just love that poem.

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I might read you
another one later on.

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I'll put that one back there.

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Maybe, I'll go on a tour of
the country posing as Tom.

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I love his poems so much.

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