WEBVTT

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All right, I'm going to read
a few poems to finish off

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this evening, and
maybe pull up some

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of the ideas and
themes that have

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come in earlier in the evening.

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The cover for this
book, Rope, is

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a detail from a painting
by Brice Marden.

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Brice Marden went
to Japan and he

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started doing these
line drawings because he

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was studying
Japanese calligraphy,

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and he became completely
in love with the line.

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Not what the line was saying
in terms of its letter,

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but the gorgeous energy
and fluidity of the line.

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He did a series of paintings
that came off of the Han Shan

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or Cold Mountain poems,
that Gary Snyder and David

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Hinton have both
translated so beautifully.

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So it was actually
Lucinda's idea.

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When I was looking for a
cover, she said Brice Marden.

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She knew I'd been to
the show and loved it.

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And I had given her the book,
actually, of the Han Shan

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drawings.

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So I'm going to open
this with the first poem

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in the book, which comes off
of seeing those paintings.

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And the title is a title of a--

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I think it's a six
panel work that

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was exhibited at the
Museum of Modern Art in New

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York a couple of years ago.

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The Propitious Garden
of the Plane Image,

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after the paintings
of Brice Marden.

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"By the time the Santa
Anas travel from the ocean

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to our inland desert,
they've lost their name.

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The palos verdes and
mesquites know such winds

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that rake through
their pinnate leaves.

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I live about as far from
the source of these storms

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as I do from the
muses, their names

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lost too since they've
descended from Olympus

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to hijack our moods and amplify
the cosmic background noise.

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So everything that
needs to be said

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can be said without
the right words,

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with only the gusts,
so utterly themselves,

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and the inner pattern
that never falters.

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The canvas is the path the
mountain hermit takes, leaving

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the city to purify his ears.

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A path, but no
sign of footprints.

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Many pathways that loop
and veer, and sometimes

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touch themselves or each
other for an interval,

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then split and turn away.

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How does a line become a path?

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The way in is to choose a
certain color and follow.

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Get lost and choose again,
the lines and the light."

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