When I was in school, I believe I was induced to feel that--
well, somehow the whole situation
induced me to feel that in books,
that there were things written by means of skills.
Learned and then added together, in order
to bring about literature.
I'm just sort of sliding into purposely--
not trying to formulate this beforehand,
but just trying to slide into doing the witness.
That I've come to believe that surely, the language we
all use every day, we can use by little increments
and enhancements in all kinds of ways.
And sometimes if you would get lucky,
you would be saying something or writing something
with so much resonance, human resonance
that it would be like literature maybe.
Well, I'll retreat from that and read
something called "Old Dog."
"Toward the last, in the morning,
she could not get up, even when I rattled her pan.
I helped her into the yard, but she stumbled and fell.
I knew it was time.
The last night a mist drifted over the fields.
In the morning, she would not raise her head.
The far clear mountains we had walked, surged back to mind.
We looked at slow bargain.
Our days together were the ones we'd already had.
I gave her something the vet had given, and patted her still,
a good last friend."
Now my tactic would be to read these things
with all the fervency I can muster at the time,
so I hope you forgive me for that.
But once it's done, I'm ready to sacrifice any or all of these
in the interests of some kind of immediacy
here, so I want to come back to this.
I don't know exactly how to feel about this old dog statement,
but there is a part I want to call attention to,
that I don't like.
But I don't exactly know what to do about it,
and I just want to sacrifice the poem
by calling attention to it.
Everything in it seems a kind of minimum, straight, direct
statement.
"Toward the last, in the morning,
she could not get up" and so on.
Just as straight as it can be, but there is a part
that has good diction in it.
And it's this part I'm nervous about.
There is a place where it says, "the mountains we had walked
surged back to mind."
And well, I would like to feel reluctant about good diction,
instead of good about good diction.
All my life I've been haunted by one of those statements,
that one of those smart French poets said.
Someone asked him, how are poems made?
And he said something like this, "poems are made with words."
Well, you can't really disagree--
[LAUGHTER]
But on the other hand, all the implications
seem to me to be wrong.
So I'd like you to indulge me for just a minute, don't
judge me too harshly too soon.
No, poems are not made with words, but with contexts.
And it would be better to find yourself adjusting,
and accommodating to some kind of ongoing communication
that would become so natural, with such momentum,
that you can make mistakes about words
and still it would be all right.
Well, I don't want to belabor this.
It's just an idea, kind of a feeling.