Thank you.
It's warmer here than Washington.
It's the state of Washington where it's cold.
What I plan to do tonight is to read some new poems
and some old poems.
To me, old poems or poems that are in the book.
I'm telling you that because otherwise, you wouldn't know.
So I'm going to start off with one that's an older poem.
And probably, I'll be alternating them
through the reading.
The poem that I want to start with is "John Clare".
That's its title.
And you should know a little bit about who its subject is.
Probably to be able to get into it.
John Claire was a 19th Century British
poet, roughly a contemporary of Keats.
And among other things, he went crazy.
And the thing that interested me or that
moved me was that in his craziness and his insanity,
he was granted moments of lucidity in which he
knew where he was, he knew what his condition was.
And I always thought was he probably also knew
that he was going to be returned to the state
that he had been in, and there was nothing
that he could do about it.
It seemed to me that that must have
been perhaps the most awful part of the experience--
to anticipate the return over which you had no control.
"John Clare" "Sometimes there is a man.
I never feel him come.
But he is who I am, and I am someone.
He does not care to stay.
If we are both John Clare, why does he go away?
And where?