I want to thank everyone involved in having me here,
and it's just I've heard so much over the years
about the University of Arizona Poetry Center and it seems--
I mean if you had a ultraviolet or whatever
it is, heat-sensitive photograph of the country,
Tucson would be a big red spot in terms of poetry activity.
And it really is great to be at a mecca for this activity.
And so the final poem I'll read is called "Nightclub."
I mentioned in the poem a singer named Johnny Hartman.
I don't know if you know him.
He died some 10 or 15 years ago maybe, but he is a jazz singer
and he recorded a famous album with John Coltrane.
He had just a perfectly if you haven't
heard of a perfectly mellow dark voice just seemingly
divinely crafted to sing a soulful ballads, Johnny
Hartman.
And the poem's called "Nightclub."
"You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you.
Is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful too bad you're
a fool is another one you don't hear,
or you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear guaranteed.
For no particular reason this afternoon,
I am listening to Johnny Hartman whose dark
voice can curl around the concepts of love, beauty,
and foolishness like no one else can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette someone
left burning on a baby grand piano around 3 o'clock
in the morning.
Smoke that billows up into the bright lights.
While out there in the darkness, some of the beautiful fools
have gathered around little tables to listen.
Some with their eyes closed, others leaning forward
into the music as if it were holding them up or just
twirling the loose ice in a glass slipping by degrees
into a rhythmic dream.
Yes, there is all this foolish beauty
born beyond midnight that has no desire
to go home, especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax that
hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage and hands
the instrument down to me and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips and blow
into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish, my long bebop solo begins by saying.
So damn foolish, we have become beautiful without even
knowing it."
Thank you.