What time is it, Lois?
Oh, there's the clock.
OK.
I'll try and read a few lighter things here.
This is all new stuff now from the new book, which started out
to be called New Shoes.
But I decided.
Although I like that, it sounds like a real lightweight book.
And there's lots of stuff in the book that
is much more complicated than that title.
So that's why I started trying to change it.
My editor, however, loved that title.
OK.
This poem is called New Shoes or Why I Cross Out Words.
I'll tell you that.
A friend of mine who used to be my student.
Friend named Laura Wiesner.
And I started at my instigation last year.
An exchange of poems.
Because I have a hard time writing during the year
when I'm teaching because I'm busy reading everybody else's
poems.
So I have to trap myself.
And Laura was busy getting ready for her preparing her thesis
and getting ready for her, I don't
know if you have to take oral exams here, but do it state.
And so she was really hassled too.
So luckily, one of the assignments
that I had piled up on my bed of things,
I had to do one I was to read Laura's master's thesis.
And I happen to love her poetry.
It's quite different from mine.
And she has a way of seeing that makes me refocus, look
at things when I'm going into a blur state.
So I wrote her a poem, which all this isn't the one.
But I'll read later.
And I sent it to her and I said see what happened?
I want you to write me back a poem and send it to me.
And within five days.
And it has to have something to do with this poem.
It can be working just with three words from it,
or a response to an idea, or some minimal connection
to start the dialogue.
And then I'll do the same for you.
And let's see how long we can keep it going.
So a lot of the poems in two of the sections of this book
come out of that exchange.
And this is one of the ones in which I sent her a poem,
and it had a number of things crossed out.
And in her poem to me, she asked me why I crossed that word.
So she made an observation has she noticed this.
And so this is in response to that.
Those shoes you bought with the platforms and shiny leather
in steps and holes cut out, which I admired so.
Well, you bought them.
Not because it was snowing, but probably
because there was some hole or run down
heel on your other pair, and you didn't want it to show.
Or else you got bored with your good old shoes.
So well constructed and always there
to take you where you needed to go.
But one day, you looked out the window
and you wanted to take off to a place you couldn't think of,
where those shoes wouldn't do, wouldn't dance enough and lift
you into the new arrangement.
Well, that's why I cross out words.
So thoroughly, as though, I never said them when I did.
And felt I did and knew what I'd said.
And felt it to be so well constructed.
That it would keep saying itself.
That way, automatically moving ahead
when I no longer wanted to.