WEBVTT

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I'm going to read
you the title poem

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since you have to kind of
work up to the title poem.

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Somebody asked me to
read this at 9 o'clock

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in the morning in Ireland and--

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the women in Ireland
are just beginning

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to move into their
"something's wrong here" phase

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in women's liberation there.

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I talked to the wife of Shauna
Phelan and Eileen Phelan.

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And she said that
she thought that

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in the English-speaking
world, Ireland

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was maybe the worst place
to have been born a woman.

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I said, "Well, how
did you escape?"

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She said, "I had no mother.

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My mother died early."

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She said that it's all passed
down through the mothers.

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They teach the women
to be very servile.

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And she was--

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I thought I was just going
there to meet Shauna Phelan,

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but I really enjoyed
her every bit as much.

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She had been a bicycle messenger
during the 1918 revolution.

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I guess the war
helped liberate, too.

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I wrote this after a
poetry reading by the way.

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A man was reading it to
St. Lawrence University.

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And he came two hours late-- no,
one hour late and very drunk.

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And then he proceeded
to read for two hours.

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And then he sat down
next to me afterwards.

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And there was a very buxom woman
that was sitting next to me.

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And he reached over and
grabbed both breasts.

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And then he turned to
me and he said, "Do you

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write poetry, honey?"

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[LAUGHTER]

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I said, "Yeah, I
write some poetry."

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But I went home.

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And I was going to write a
poem against that kind of poet.

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But I-- a lot of other
things got into the poem.

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I was reading Lizzie Borden's--

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the trial of Lizzie
Borden, the record of that.

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Later, it all was televised and
everything, the play they did.

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But this was before
that happened,

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that it got so popular to
read about Lizzie Borden.

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So she gets into the
poem a little bit, too.

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Yeah, she was a champion of
the suffragettes, those of you

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who saw that TV production.

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She was actually convicted by
poetry, by that little rhyme,

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you know.

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You all know that.

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"Instructions to the Double."

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This is about taking risks.

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"So now it's your turn,
little mother of silences,

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little father of half-belief.

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Take up this face,
these daily rounds

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with a cabbage under each
arm, convincing the multitudes

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that a well-made-anything
could save them.

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Take up, most of
all, these hands

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trained to an ornate piano
in a house on the other side

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of the country.

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"I'm staying here without
music, without applause.

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I'm not going to
wait up for you.

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Take your time.

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Take mine, too.

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Get into some trouble
I'll have to account for.

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Walk into some bars alone
with a slit in your skirt.

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"Let the men follow
you on the street

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with their clumsy propositions,
their loud hatreds

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of this and that.

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Keep walking.

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Keep your head up.

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They are calling to you--

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slut, mother, virgin, whore,
daughter, adulteress, lover,

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mistress, bitch, wife,
cunt, harlot, betrothed,

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Jezebel, Messalina, Diana,
Bathsheba, Rebecca, Lucretia,

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Mary, Magdalena, Ruth, you,
Niobe, woman of the tombs.

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"Don't stop for anything,
not a caress or a promise.

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Go to the temple
of the poets, not

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the one like a run-down country
club, but the one on fire

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with so much it wants
to be done with.

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Say all the last words
and the first: hello,

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goodbye, yes, I, no,
please, always, never.

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"If anyone from the country
club asks if you write poems,

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say your name is Lizzie Borden.

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Show him your axe, the one they
gave you with a silver blade,

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your name engraved there
like a whisper of their own.

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If anyone calls you a
witch, burn for him.

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If anyone calls you less
or more than you are,

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let him burn for you.

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It's a dangerous mission.

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You could die out there.

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You could live forever."

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[APPLAUSE]

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