[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Well, I have a lot of friends in the audience,
but it's hard to read for your friends than it is for enemies.
I'll tell you.
First of all, there was a line in that newspaper article.
They said, who are your favorite poets?
And I said Merwin, Canal, and Levine.
And they said, who did I feel influenced by?
Which it's not true nobody's influenced my work.
My work is my work.
What they have done for me is support me
for the past couple of months, both materially
and spiritually.
And I owe them a lot for that.
So they're really good friends.
I'm nervous tonight.
Can you all hear me?
OK, good.
I really like some of Philip Levine's work.
I don't know.
He spent a lot of time in Detroit
and he has a particular hardness that I really like.
And even though I don't think the reading
will go past an hour, but I ask you please to bear with me.
I'd like to read a poem of his because it's
like I'm always in another time, and this poem is another time.
I come from the '30s tonight.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother that, sort of, thing.
So let me start out.
And this is by Philip Levine and it's
called "Saturday Sweeping."
Let all of these people in first.
"Saturday Sweeping."
"Saturday sweeping with an old broom,
counting the strokes back and forth.
The dust bray's up silver in the February sun
and comes down gray.
Soft straw muzzle poking in and bringing out scraps of news.
Little fingers and signatures.
Everybody's had this room one time or another
and never thought to sweep.
Outside the snows stiffen, the roofs loosen their last teeth
into the streets.
Outside it's 1952.
Detroit unburned stumbles away from my window
over the drained roofs toward the river
to scald its useless hands.
Half the men in this town are crying in the snow.
Their eyes blackened like Chinese soldiers.
The gates are closing at Dodge main and Wyandotte Chemical.
They must go home to watch the kids
scrub their ground, brown faces or grease cartridges
for the showdown.
If anyone knocks on your door, he'll
be oil flecked or seaborn.
He'll be bringing words from the people of the ice drifts
or the great talking dogs that save the Jews.
Meanwhile, our masters will come on television
to ask for our help.
Here, the radiator's working, stove says don't touch,
and the radios crying.
I don't get enough on my keeper.
The only thing I've got, sweeping out my one room life
while the sun still up."
No, please don't applaud till it's over.
That's just the tribute to my friends and all the poets
that I really love.