WEBVTT

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Actually, I'm not a
very prolific writer.

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It's just that my
books are very short.

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And so I come out
with plenty of them.

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I'm very pleased
to be in Arizona,

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but it upsets all
my generalizations.

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I was saying to somebody
earlier this evening

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that when I met Dylan
Thomas, he was on the wagon.

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And when I come to Arizona,
it's pouring with rain.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Still, that's all right.

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[LAUGHS]

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I'd like to start with
a few fairly old poems

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and then go on to some
more recent stuff,

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largely for selfish
reasons in that I'm

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more interested
in what I've been

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writing in the last few years
and feel more involved with it.

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And so I read it better.

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But maybe that's not selfish.

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If anybody at the back
cannot hear me at any time,

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please shout out, even
in the middle of a poem.

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Because there's
very little point

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in sitting in an audience
when you can't hear somebody.

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I'd like to start with
a poem I usually start

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with called "The Goddess."

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And it turns out the
goddess is Proserpina,

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or sometimes known
as Persephone,

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who is a kind of fertility
goddess, I guess.

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You remember she was
picking flowers innocently

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when suddenly Pluto--

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not the dog but the
god of the underworld--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--rushed up and carried her
off to hell and raped her--

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Hades, I mean-- and raped her.

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And her mother, finally,
after much beseeching,

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got her back to the Earth
for part of the year.

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But she has to go
back every fall.

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And obviously, she
stands for fertility.

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And she has to die, or at
least go under the Earth,

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like the plants every fall and
then come back in the spring.

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But I'm using her here not just
as a fertility goddess but as

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kind of a goddess of
energy and, in that case,

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maybe as a kind of muse, too.

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"The Goddess."

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"When eyeless fish meet
her on her way upward,

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they gently turn together
in the dark brooks.

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But naked and
searching as a wind,

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she will allow no
hindrance, none, and bursts

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up through potholes and narrow
flues, seeking an outlet.

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Unslowed by fire, rock, water,
or clay, she after a time

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reaches the soft, abundant
soil, which still does not

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dissipate her force, for, look!

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Sinewy thyme, reeking in
the sunlight, rats breeding,

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breeding in their
nests, and the soldier

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by a park bench with
his greatcoat collar

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up, waiting all evening
for a woman, any woman,

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her dress tight across her
ass as bark in moonlight.

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Goddess, Proserpina, it is
we, vulnerable, quivering,

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who stay you to abundance."

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