Sometimes, as you know, we write poems in which we, all writers,
write poems in which they mention
other writers, great writers, hoping that the glory due them
will accrue to the author.
And so I've written a poem titled, "Spenser, Chaucer,
Dryden, Johnson, Browning, Tennyson, Dickens, Hardy
and Kipling."
Those nine, with many others, are
buried in what's called Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey,
in London.
Shakespeare's not there.
And the poem makes very brief reference
to Madame Tussauds, the wax museum in London.
"Spenser, Chaucer, Dryden, Johnson, Browning, Tennyson,
Dickens, Hardy and Kipling."
"Ladies and gentlemen, the English language
holds in the hearts of each of you
a place where the poets lie buried in a musty community.
Here is that place.
Think not of Shakespeare.
He's off by himself.
That's what he gets for a girl at court
and a wife in the suburbs.
And talking so common.
He had to go home.
London's no bargain for those who remain."
[CLATTER]
[LAUGHTER]
Ah, well, it's still no bargain for those who remain.
"We came in the rain and left it to rain.
Madonna's wax face is perfect and the Commonwealth
compounding ruin.
Don't anybody bury Whitman and Williams.
And seven is American in one stony corner,
and the rest of us neither.
Death is no anthology or a cough in the audience.
We all know how many times our critic reads a book.
Less than once.
So if we have to be buried alive,
let those who always know better look for us
one at a time, in the ground gone over."