WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.930 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.930 --> 00:00:05.060 align:middle line:84% Our next reading will be one week from tonight 00:00:05.060 --> 00:00:06.950 align:middle line:90% in this auditorium. 00:00:06.950 --> 00:00:10.370 align:middle line:84% There will be a reading to honor the students who are 00:00:10.370 --> 00:00:13.160 align:middle line:90% winners in this year's contest. 00:00:13.160 --> 00:00:17.350 align:middle line:84% That's the 28th at 8 o'clock here. 00:00:17.350 --> 00:00:20.380 align:middle line:84% There's a great deal going on this weekend. 00:00:20.380 --> 00:00:25.300 align:middle line:84% Chax Press tomorrow night is sponsoring a reading 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:29.200 align:middle line:90% by New Mexico poet Janet Rodney. 00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:33.193 align:middle line:90% And part of that-- 00:00:33.193 --> 00:00:34.610 align:middle line:84% for part of that reading she'll be 00:00:34.610 --> 00:00:38.900 align:middle line:84% joined by Joy Harjo and Keith Stoutenburg, 00:00:38.900 --> 00:00:42.560 align:middle line:84% playing saxophone and keyboard jazz. 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:47.330 align:middle line:84% And very exciting event this weekend, the Tucson Poetry 00:00:47.330 --> 00:00:48.860 align:middle line:90% Festival. 00:00:48.860 --> 00:00:52.610 align:middle line:84% And they have tickets on sale here tonight for the festival. 00:00:52.610 --> 00:00:55.130 align:middle line:84% It begins on Friday night with a reading 00:00:55.130 --> 00:00:56.845 align:middle line:90% by Jane Miller and Ron Silliman. 00:00:56.845 --> 00:00:59.670 align:middle line:90% 00:00:59.670 --> 00:01:02.724 align:middle line:84% Saturday, there'll be a small group 00:01:02.724 --> 00:01:04.099 align:middle line:84% discussions with all of the poets 00:01:04.099 --> 00:01:07.070 align:middle line:90% who are here in the morning. 00:01:07.070 --> 00:01:16.440 align:middle line:84% And afternoon, open mic reading, a discussion at 3:30 PM, 00:01:16.440 --> 00:01:22.500 align:middle line:84% and at 7:30 PM the readers will be Nathaniel Tarn and Edward 00:01:22.500 --> 00:01:24.810 align:middle line:90% Brathwaite. 00:01:24.810 --> 00:01:27.600 align:middle line:84% Sunday afternoon, the readers will 00:01:27.600 --> 00:01:33.040 align:middle line:84% be Meg Davis, Daphne Bartlett, and Robert Creeley. 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:33.540 align:middle line:90% That's it. 00:01:33.540 --> 00:01:37.770 align:middle line:84% The Scottish Rite Cathedral, 160 South Scott Avenue 00:01:37.770 --> 00:01:40.500 align:middle line:90% in the Downtown Arts District. 00:01:40.500 --> 00:01:44.340 align:middle line:84% So there'll be more information where the tickets will 00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:46.380 align:middle line:90% be on sale out in the hall. 00:01:46.380 --> 00:01:50.580 align:middle line:84% And please stay and have some brownies 00:01:50.580 --> 00:01:55.170 align:middle line:84% and tell Maxine Kumin how wonderful she is. 00:01:55.170 --> 00:01:58.470 align:middle line:84% We almost didn't invite Maxine this year 00:01:58.470 --> 00:02:01.585 align:middle line:84% because last time she came my husband tried 00:02:01.585 --> 00:02:02.460 align:middle line:90% to run away with her. 00:02:02.460 --> 00:02:05.640 align:middle line:84% And I said, why should I put up with that again. 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:08.039 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:08.039 --> 00:02:11.009 align:middle line:84% She's both a poet and a novelist. 00:02:11.009 --> 00:02:14.310 align:middle line:84% Her most recent book of poetry is Nurture. 00:02:14.310 --> 00:02:17.910 align:middle line:84% And we have copies of Nurture on sale tonight. 00:02:17.910 --> 00:02:22.620 align:middle line:84% Her honors include a Pulitzer Prize 00:02:22.620 --> 00:02:24.840 align:middle line:84% and the appointment as a Consultant 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:26.670 align:middle line:90% to the Library of Congress. 00:02:26.670 --> 00:02:31.170 align:middle line:84% That appointment now is called the Poet Laureate of America. 00:02:31.170 --> 00:02:33.880 align:middle line:84% They changed the title just recently. 00:02:33.880 --> 00:02:36.240 align:middle line:84% It's a great, great pleasure to have her back. 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:37.040 align:middle line:90% Maxine Kumin. 00:02:37.040 --> 00:02:40.435 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:40.435 --> 00:02:51.120 align:middle line:90% 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:52.110 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:02:52.110 --> 00:02:56.010 align:middle line:84% And that's just an ugly rumor that Lois is passing around, 00:02:56.010 --> 00:02:59.340 align:middle line:84% Richard and I are prepared to deny. 00:02:59.340 --> 00:03:01.470 align:middle line:90% Where are you Richard? 00:03:01.470 --> 00:03:04.290 align:middle line:90% Deny it. 00:03:04.290 --> 00:03:07.530 align:middle line:90% We're just good friends right? 00:03:07.530 --> 00:03:10.560 align:middle line:84% I want to open the reading tonight with a poem which 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:12.390 align:middle line:90% is more a found poem. 00:03:12.390 --> 00:03:15.960 align:middle line:84% I had very little to do with the writing of it. 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:18.060 align:middle line:84% It's true that the poet is a meddler. 00:03:18.060 --> 00:03:20.580 align:middle line:84% And I moved things around a little. 00:03:20.580 --> 00:03:22.530 align:middle line:84% And I did write the ending of it. 00:03:22.530 --> 00:03:24.390 align:middle line:84% But most of the language of this poem 00:03:24.390 --> 00:03:27.600 align:middle line:84% is found in a pamphlet that's published by the Canadian 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:29.760 align:middle line:84% Minister of the Environment and it 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:33.450 align:middle line:84% is distributed throughout the parks of the Canadian Pacific 00:03:33.450 --> 00:03:34.710 align:middle line:90% Northwest. 00:03:34.710 --> 00:03:37.440 align:middle line:84% And the pamphlet and the poem have the same title, 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:41.760 align:middle line:90% "You are in Bear Country." 00:03:41.760 --> 00:03:45.240 align:middle line:84% "They've been here for thousands of years. 00:03:45.240 --> 00:03:47.460 align:middle line:90% You're the visitor. 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:48.930 align:middle line:90% Avoid encounters. 00:03:48.930 --> 00:03:50.190 align:middle line:90% Think ahead. 00:03:50.190 --> 00:03:55.680 align:middle line:84% Keep clear of berry patches, garbage dumps, carcasses. 00:03:55.680 --> 00:04:00.030 align:middle line:84% On woods walks, bring noisemakers, bells, clap hands 00:04:00.030 --> 00:04:02.040 align:middle line:90% along the trail, or sing. 00:04:02.040 --> 00:04:05.820 align:middle line:84% But in dense bush or by running water, 00:04:05.820 --> 00:04:08.850 align:middle line:90% bear may not hear your clatter. 00:04:08.850 --> 00:04:11.550 align:middle line:90% Whatever else don't whistle. 00:04:11.550 --> 00:04:15.630 align:middle line:84% Whistling is thought by some to imitate the sounds bears 00:04:15.630 --> 00:04:17.310 align:middle line:90% make when they mate. 00:04:17.310 --> 00:04:19.500 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:19.500 --> 00:04:23.910 align:middle line:84% You need to know there are two kinds, Ursis arctos horribilis, 00:04:23.910 --> 00:04:27.360 align:middle line:84% or grizzly, and Ursis americanus, 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:33.030 align:middle line:84% the smaller black said to be somewhat less likely to attack. 00:04:33.030 --> 00:04:37.230 align:middle line:84% Alas a small horribilis is difficult to distinguish 00:04:37.230 --> 00:04:39.082 align:middle line:90% from a large americanus. 00:04:39.082 --> 00:04:42.120 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:42.120 --> 00:04:45.660 align:middle line:84% Although there is no guaranteed life-saving way 00:04:45.660 --> 00:04:49.440 align:middle line:84% to deal with an aggressive bear some ploys 00:04:49.440 --> 00:04:52.730 align:middle line:84% have proved more successful than others. 00:04:52.730 --> 00:04:56.070 align:middle line:90% Running's a poor choice. 00:04:56.070 --> 00:04:59.280 align:middle line:90% Bear can outrun a racehorse. 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:04.380 align:middle line:84% Once you're face to face, speak softly, take off your pack, 00:05:04.380 --> 00:05:07.740 align:middle line:84% and set it down to distract the grizzly, 00:05:07.740 --> 00:05:14.700 align:middle line:84% meanwhile back slowly toward a large sparsely branched tree. 00:05:14.700 --> 00:05:19.230 align:middle line:84% But remember black bears are agile climbers in which case 00:05:19.230 --> 00:05:23.160 align:middle line:90% a tree may not offer escape. 00:05:23.160 --> 00:05:26.520 align:middle line:84% As a last resort you can play dead. 00:05:26.520 --> 00:05:29.340 align:middle line:90% Drop to the ground face down. 00:05:29.340 --> 00:05:33.420 align:middle line:84% In this case, wearing your pack may shield your body 00:05:33.420 --> 00:05:34.200 align:middle line:90% from attack. 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:37.180 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:37.180 --> 00:05:38.020 align:middle line:90% Courage. 00:05:38.020 --> 00:05:39.100 align:middle line:90% Lie still. 00:05:39.100 --> 00:05:42.400 align:middle line:84% Sometimes your bear may veer away. 00:05:42.400 --> 00:05:47.500 align:middle line:84% If not bears have been known to inflict only minor injuries 00:05:47.500 --> 00:05:49.780 align:middle line:90% upon the prone. 00:05:49.780 --> 00:05:54.760 align:middle line:84% Is death by bear to be preferred to death by bomb? 00:05:54.760 --> 00:05:57.940 align:middle line:84% Under these extenuating circumstances, 00:05:57.940 --> 00:06:01.270 align:middle line:90% your mind may make absurd leaps. 00:06:01.270 --> 00:06:03.130 align:middle line:90% The answer's yes. 00:06:03.130 --> 00:06:04.330 align:middle line:90% Come on in. 00:06:04.330 --> 00:06:06.330 align:middle line:90% Cherish your wilderness." 00:06:06.330 --> 00:06:08.610 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:08.610 --> 00:06:11.520 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:06:11.520 --> 00:06:17.340 align:middle line:90% 00:06:17.340 --> 00:06:22.290 align:middle line:84% Well, as it happens, the next poem is also about bears. 00:06:22.290 --> 00:06:25.860 align:middle line:84% And it picks up where that one leaves off. 00:06:25.860 --> 00:06:29.760 align:middle line:84% The hero of this poem is the man who has been attacked 00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:31.950 align:middle line:90% and has lived to tell his story. 00:06:31.950 --> 00:06:34.860 align:middle line:84% Unfortunately he does not know the difference between lie 00:06:34.860 --> 00:06:38.220 align:middle line:84% and lay in common with many of us. 00:06:38.220 --> 00:06:42.600 align:middle line:84% And there is a little reference to that in the poem too. 00:06:42.600 --> 00:06:46.380 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "In the Park." 00:06:46.380 --> 00:06:50.460 align:middle line:84% "You have 49 days between death and rebirth 00:06:50.460 --> 00:06:52.110 align:middle line:90% if you're a Buddhist. 00:06:52.110 --> 00:06:55.740 align:middle line:84% Even the smallest soul could swim the English Channel 00:06:55.740 --> 00:07:01.320 align:middle line:84% in that time or climb, like a 10-month-old child, every step 00:07:01.320 --> 00:07:07.230 align:middle line:84% of the Washington Monument to travel across, up, down, over, 00:07:07.230 --> 00:07:08.430 align:middle line:90% or through. 00:07:08.430 --> 00:07:12.420 align:middle line:84% You won't know till you get there which to do. 00:07:12.420 --> 00:07:15.510 align:middle line:84% He laid on me for a few seconds, said 00:07:15.510 --> 00:07:19.050 align:middle line:84% Roscoe Black, who lived to tell about his skirmish 00:07:19.050 --> 00:07:22.260 align:middle line:84% with a grizzly bear in Glacier Park. 00:07:22.260 --> 00:07:25.470 align:middle line:84% He laid on me not doing anything. 00:07:25.470 --> 00:07:30.420 align:middle line:84% I could feel his heart beating against my heart. 00:07:30.420 --> 00:07:32.580 align:middle line:90% Never mind lie and lay. 00:07:32.580 --> 00:07:35.130 align:middle line:90% The whole world confuses them. 00:07:35.130 --> 00:07:41.490 align:middle line:84% For Roscoe Black, you might say all 49 days flew by. 00:07:41.490 --> 00:07:44.010 align:middle line:84% I was raised on the Old Testament. 00:07:44.010 --> 00:07:49.740 align:middle line:84% In it, God talks to Moses, Noah, Samuel, and they answer. 00:07:49.740 --> 00:07:52.140 align:middle line:90% People confer with angels. 00:07:52.140 --> 00:07:55.650 align:middle line:84% Certain animals converse with humans. 00:07:55.650 --> 00:08:01.020 align:middle line:84% It's a simple world full of crossovers, heavens and airy 00:08:01.020 --> 00:08:05.940 align:middle line:84% somewhere, and God has a nasty temper when provoked. 00:08:05.940 --> 00:08:09.210 align:middle line:84% But if there's a hell, little is made of it. 00:08:09.210 --> 00:08:14.550 align:middle line:84% No long-tailed devil, no eternal fire, and no choosing 00:08:14.550 --> 00:08:16.590 align:middle line:90% what to come back as. 00:08:16.590 --> 00:08:20.250 align:middle line:84% When the grizzly bear appears he lie/lays down 00:08:20.250 --> 00:08:22.560 align:middle line:90% on atheist and zealot. 00:08:22.560 --> 00:08:27.600 align:middle line:84% In the pitch dark, each of us waits for him in Glacier Park." 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:31.090 align:middle line:90% 00:08:31.090 --> 00:08:34.000 align:middle line:84% Well I will take advantage of your hospitality 00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:37.900 align:middle line:90% and read one more bear poem. 00:08:37.900 --> 00:08:39.159 align:middle line:90% This is an actual-- 00:08:39.159 --> 00:08:42.250 align:middle line:90% This is not a metaphoric bear. 00:08:42.250 --> 00:08:46.420 align:middle line:84% The poem has a little epigraph from John McPhee, an essayist 00:08:46.420 --> 00:08:47.920 align:middle line:90% whose work I admire greatly. 00:08:47.920 --> 00:08:51.520 align:middle line:84% And he's done a wonderful essay on the black bears 00:08:51.520 --> 00:08:53.920 align:middle line:90% of Western Pennsylvania. 00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:56.710 align:middle line:84% And in that essay he says, "Black bears 00:08:56.710 --> 00:08:59.800 align:middle line:84% are not particularly interested in flesh. 00:08:59.800 --> 00:09:04.560 align:middle line:84% They have been seen in the fields eating string beans." 00:09:04.560 --> 00:09:06.560 align:middle line:84% And that's where this poem is going to take off. 00:09:06.560 --> 00:09:10.150 align:middle line:84% And I suppose I should say here in Arizona where you might not 00:09:10.150 --> 00:09:13.870 align:middle line:84% know it, the Kentucky wonders are pole beans. 00:09:13.870 --> 00:09:17.180 align:middle line:84% It's called "Encounter in August." 00:09:17.180 --> 00:09:21.410 align:middle line:84% "Inside the teepee that admits sunlight to the under part, 00:09:21.410 --> 00:09:27.410 align:middle line:84% he stands eating my Kentucky wonders, downs pod after pod, 00:09:27.410 --> 00:09:31.520 align:middle line:84% spilling the beans, the ones I'd saved for shelling out 00:09:31.520 --> 00:09:37.070 align:middle line:84% this winter, thinking soup when he'd gone deep, denned up. 00:09:37.070 --> 00:09:40.190 align:middle line:84% This is not Eden, which ran unfenced 00:09:40.190 --> 00:09:44.210 align:middle line:84% and was not intercropped, Eden where frost never 00:09:44.210 --> 00:09:46.020 align:middle line:90% overtook a patch. 00:09:46.020 --> 00:09:50.480 align:middle line:84% We stand 10 yards apart, two omnivores not 00:09:50.480 --> 00:09:53.090 align:middle line:90% much interested in flesh. 00:09:53.090 --> 00:09:56.000 align:middle line:84% I think he ought to smell me through his greed 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:59.660 align:middle line:84% or hear my heart outbeat his steady chomp. 00:09:59.660 --> 00:10:02.960 align:middle line:84% But nothing interrupts his lunch. 00:10:02.960 --> 00:10:06.350 align:middle line:84% At last he goes the way the skunk does, 00:10:06.350 --> 00:10:11.570 align:middle line:84% supreme egoist, ambling into the woodlot on all fours 00:10:11.570 --> 00:10:15.920 align:middle line:84% leaving my trellis flat and being less. 00:10:15.920 --> 00:10:20.990 align:middle line:84% And yet I find the trade-off fair, beans and more beans 00:10:20.990 --> 00:10:22.820 align:middle line:90% for this hour of bear." 00:10:22.820 --> 00:10:25.940 align:middle line:90% 00:10:25.940 --> 00:10:29.710 align:middle line:84% I'm going to go back and read some earlier, some kind 00:10:29.710 --> 00:10:32.170 align:middle line:90% of really early poems. 00:10:32.170 --> 00:10:35.050 align:middle line:90% 00:10:35.050 --> 00:10:38.620 align:middle line:84% One I like to read is a poem written in rhyming couplets 00:10:38.620 --> 00:10:41.980 align:middle line:84% that goes back to my adolescent years 00:10:41.980 --> 00:10:44.620 align:middle line:84% when I had a lot of fantasies about becoming 00:10:44.620 --> 00:10:46.750 align:middle line:84% a professional swimmer and I didn't 00:10:46.750 --> 00:10:48.760 align:middle line:90% know I was going to be a poet. 00:10:48.760 --> 00:10:52.500 align:middle line:90% And it's called "Morning Swim." 00:10:52.500 --> 00:10:56.100 align:middle line:84% "Into my empty head there come a cotton beach, 00:10:56.100 --> 00:11:01.230 align:middle line:84% a dock wherefrom I set out oily and nude through mist 00:11:01.230 --> 00:11:04.080 align:middle line:90% in chilly solitude. 00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:06.810 align:middle line:84% There was no line, no roof, or floor 00:11:06.810 --> 00:11:09.450 align:middle line:90% to tell the water from the air. 00:11:09.450 --> 00:11:15.660 align:middle line:84% Night fog thick as terry cloth closed me in its fuzzy growth. 00:11:15.660 --> 00:11:18.930 align:middle line:90% I hung my bathrobe on two pegs. 00:11:18.930 --> 00:11:21.660 align:middle line:90% I took the lake between my legs. 00:11:21.660 --> 00:11:28.020 align:middle line:84% Invaded and invader, I went overhand on that flat sky. 00:11:28.020 --> 00:11:31.470 align:middle line:84% Fish twitched beneath me quick and tame. 00:11:31.470 --> 00:11:34.800 align:middle line:84% In their green zone, they sang my name. 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:39.810 align:middle line:84% And in the rhythm of the swim, I hummed a 2/4 time, slow hymn, 00:11:39.810 --> 00:11:42.780 align:middle line:90% I hummed Abide with Me. 00:11:42.780 --> 00:11:47.790 align:middle line:84% The beat rose in the fine thrash of my feet, rose in the bubbles 00:11:47.790 --> 00:11:51.900 align:middle line:84% I put out slantwise trailing through my mouth. 00:11:51.900 --> 00:11:53.730 align:middle line:90% My bones drank water. 00:11:53.730 --> 00:11:56.730 align:middle line:90% Water fell through all my doors. 00:11:56.730 --> 00:12:02.100 align:middle line:84% I was the well that fed the lake that met my sea in which I 00:12:02.100 --> 00:12:04.350 align:middle line:90% sang Abide with Me." 00:12:04.350 --> 00:12:20.530 align:middle line:90% 00:12:20.530 --> 00:12:26.200 align:middle line:84% A long time ago, I wrote a cycle of poems about a hermit. 00:12:26.200 --> 00:12:27.700 align:middle line:84% And I think there are eight of them. 00:12:27.700 --> 00:12:31.870 align:middle line:84% And they're all written in the male persona which 00:12:31.870 --> 00:12:33.490 align:middle line:84% I did only because I didn't think 00:12:33.490 --> 00:12:38.530 align:middle line:84% the world would take a female hermit seriously enough. 00:12:38.530 --> 00:12:43.240 align:middle line:84% So that in each case, the hermit is me. 00:12:43.240 --> 00:12:45.880 align:middle line:84% And since spring has come to Arizona, 00:12:45.880 --> 00:12:49.150 align:middle line:84% and it's not even too far away in New Hampshire, 00:12:49.150 --> 00:12:50.440 align:middle line:90% I'll read one. 00:12:50.440 --> 00:12:54.220 align:middle line:84% I did wake up this morning to wonderful mockingbird calls. 00:12:54.220 --> 00:12:57.610 align:middle line:84% It was such fun to lie there and hear a variety. 00:12:57.610 --> 00:12:59.260 align:middle line:84% I heard the red-winged blackbird, 00:12:59.260 --> 00:13:01.240 align:middle line:84% a sort of drunken red-winged blackbird. 00:13:01.240 --> 00:13:04.120 align:middle line:84% And then I heard a bobwhite, which 00:13:04.120 --> 00:13:07.080 align:middle line:84% was just a little off the mark, and a little bit of a cardinal, 00:13:07.080 --> 00:13:08.830 align:middle line:84% and then some things I couldn't recognize. 00:13:08.830 --> 00:13:14.860 align:middle line:84% But it really made me long for that to happen in our woods. 00:13:14.860 --> 00:13:19.270 align:middle line:84% And this one is called "The Hermit Wakes to Bird Sounds." 00:13:19.270 --> 00:13:20.860 align:middle line:90% "He startles awake. 00:13:20.860 --> 00:13:23.320 align:middle line:84% His eyes are full of white light. 00:13:23.320 --> 00:13:26.980 align:middle line:84% In a minute the sun will ooze into the sky. 00:13:26.980 --> 00:13:31.330 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile all the machines of morning start up. 00:13:31.330 --> 00:13:34.090 align:middle line:84% The typewriter bird is at it again. 00:13:34.090 --> 00:13:38.020 align:middle line:84% Her style is full of endearing hesitations. 00:13:38.020 --> 00:13:42.430 align:middle line:84% The words, when they come, do so in the staccato rush 00:13:42.430 --> 00:13:45.220 align:middle line:90% of a deceitful love letter. 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:49.270 align:middle line:84% The sewing machine bird returns to the doddering elm. 00:13:49.270 --> 00:13:52.960 align:middle line:84% Like Penelope, she rips out yesterday's stitches 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:57.790 align:middle line:84% only to glide up and down, front and back, reentering 00:13:57.790 --> 00:14:00.700 align:middle line:90% the same needle holes. 00:14:00.700 --> 00:14:04.690 align:middle line:84% The bird who presides at the well house primes the pump. 00:14:04.690 --> 00:14:09.250 align:middle line:84% Two gurgles, a pause, four squeaks of the handle, 00:14:09.250 --> 00:14:12.250 align:middle line:84% and time after time a promise of water 00:14:12.250 --> 00:14:16.300 align:middle line:84% can be heard falling back in the pipe's throat. 00:14:16.300 --> 00:14:19.990 align:middle line:84% Far off the logging birds soar into heartwood 00:14:19.990 --> 00:14:21.550 align:middle line:90% with rusty blades. 00:14:21.550 --> 00:14:26.890 align:middle line:84% And the grouse cranks up his eternally unstartable Model T. 00:14:26.890 --> 00:14:31.150 align:middle line:84% And the oil can bird comes with his liquid pok pok 00:14:31.150 --> 00:14:35.530 align:middle line:84% to attend to the flinty clanks of the disparate parts. 00:14:35.530 --> 00:14:39.820 align:middle line:84% And as the old bleached sun slips into position, 00:14:39.820 --> 00:14:44.170 align:middle line:84% slowly the teasing, inept, malfunctioning, 00:14:44.170 --> 00:14:49.660 align:middle line:84% one of a kind machines fall silent." 00:14:49.660 --> 00:14:54.070 align:middle line:84% There's something very seductive about writing a cycle of poems 00:14:54.070 --> 00:14:57.310 align:middle line:84% because you have that enduring hope that what 00:14:57.310 --> 00:15:00.370 align:middle line:84% doesn't fit into one is going to turn up 00:15:00.370 --> 00:15:01.720 align:middle line:90% and be useful in another. 00:15:01.720 --> 00:15:05.560 align:middle line:84% And really on the heels of writing the hermit poems 00:15:05.560 --> 00:15:08.005 align:middle line:84% I wrote a cycle of poems about an old horse. 00:15:08.005 --> 00:15:10.720 align:middle line:90% 00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:13.090 align:middle line:84% And the horse's name being Amanda. 00:15:13.090 --> 00:15:15.910 align:middle line:84% And I guess I'll just read this one which 00:15:15.910 --> 00:15:17.980 align:middle line:84% has a rather long pretentious title 00:15:17.980 --> 00:15:20.240 align:middle line:90% and is itself quite small. 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:22.870 align:middle line:84% It's called "Amanda Dreams She has Died 00:15:22.870 --> 00:15:26.800 align:middle line:90% and Gone to the Elysian Fields." 00:15:26.800 --> 00:15:30.640 align:middle line:84% "This morning Amanda lies down during breakfast. 00:15:30.640 --> 00:15:33.100 align:middle line:90% The hay is hip-high. 00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:36.130 align:middle line:84% The sun sleeps on her back as it did 00:15:36.130 --> 00:15:39.820 align:middle line:84% on the spine of the dinosaur, the fossil bat, 00:15:39.820 --> 00:15:43.840 align:middle line:84% the first fish with feet she was once. 00:15:43.840 --> 00:15:47.350 align:middle line:84% A breeze fans the deerflies from lighting. 00:15:47.350 --> 00:15:51.220 align:middle line:84% Only a gaggle of gnats housekeeps in her ears. 00:15:51.220 --> 00:15:54.730 align:middle line:84% A hay plume sticks out of her mouth. 00:15:54.730 --> 00:15:57.700 align:middle line:84% I come calling with a carrot from which I 00:15:57.700 --> 00:15:59.890 align:middle line:90% have taken the first bite. 00:15:59.890 --> 00:16:01.450 align:middle line:90% She startles. 00:16:01.450 --> 00:16:04.600 align:middle line:84% She considers rising but retracts 00:16:04.600 --> 00:16:08.650 align:middle line:84% the pistons of her legs and accepts as loose-lipped 00:16:08.650 --> 00:16:10.210 align:middle line:90% as a camel. 00:16:10.210 --> 00:16:11.890 align:middle line:90% We sit together. 00:16:11.890 --> 00:16:15.670 align:middle line:84% In this time and place, we are heart and bone, 00:16:15.670 --> 00:16:18.740 align:middle line:84% for an hour we are incorruptible." 00:16:18.740 --> 00:16:22.160 align:middle line:90% 00:16:22.160 --> 00:16:26.960 align:middle line:84% Probably a good place to put in this next poem 00:16:26.960 --> 00:16:29.120 align:middle line:90% occurs right after that one. 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:31.520 align:middle line:90% This was a request. 00:16:31.520 --> 00:16:34.640 align:middle line:84% But I like to read it to an academic audience 00:16:34.640 --> 00:16:36.440 align:middle line:84% because it has a four letter word in it 00:16:36.440 --> 00:16:39.680 align:middle line:84% and I feel I have to do my part to play catch up 00:16:39.680 --> 00:16:42.397 align:middle line:84% with my male colleagues whose poems are littered 00:16:42.397 --> 00:16:43.355 align:middle line:90% with four letter words. 00:16:43.355 --> 00:16:47.070 align:middle line:90% 00:16:47.070 --> 00:16:48.920 align:middle line:84% So this is called "The Excrement Poem." 00:16:48.920 --> 00:16:53.150 align:middle line:90% 00:16:53.150 --> 00:16:57.530 align:middle line:84% "It is done by us all, as God disposes, from the least 00:16:57.530 --> 00:17:00.020 align:middle line:84% cast of worm to what must have been 00:17:00.020 --> 00:17:02.780 align:middle line:84% in the case of the brontosaur, say, 00:17:02.780 --> 00:17:08.000 align:middle line:84% spoor of considerable heft, something awesome. 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:08.839 align:middle line:90% We eat. 00:17:08.839 --> 00:17:10.250 align:middle line:90% We evacuate. 00:17:10.250 --> 00:17:12.500 align:middle line:90% Survivors that we are. 00:17:12.500 --> 00:17:14.660 align:middle line:84% I think these things each morning 00:17:14.660 --> 00:17:19.579 align:middle line:84% with shovel and rake drawing the risen brown buns toward me, 00:17:19.579 --> 00:17:23.180 align:middle line:84% fresh from the horse oven, as it were, 00:17:23.180 --> 00:17:26.660 align:middle line:84% or culling the alfalfa-green ones expelled 00:17:26.660 --> 00:17:29.690 align:middle line:84% in a state of ooze through the sawdust bed 00:17:29.690 --> 00:17:34.670 align:middle line:84% to take a serviceable form, as putty does, so as to lift out 00:17:34.670 --> 00:17:37.070 align:middle line:90% and tire from the stall. 00:17:37.070 --> 00:17:40.520 align:middle line:84% And wheeling to it, storming up the slope, 00:17:40.520 --> 00:17:44.480 align:middle line:84% I think of the angle of repose the manure pile 00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:49.280 align:middle line:84% assumes, how sparrows come to pick the redelivered grain, 00:17:49.280 --> 00:17:55.130 align:middle line:84% how inky-cap coprinus mushrooms spring up in a downpour. 00:17:55.130 --> 00:17:58.280 align:middle line:84% I think of what drops from us and must then 00:17:58.280 --> 00:18:02.390 align:middle line:84% be moved to make way for the next and next. 00:18:02.390 --> 00:18:07.250 align:middle line:84% However much we stain the world, spatter it with our leavings, 00:18:07.250 --> 00:18:12.170 align:middle line:84% make stenches, defile the great formal oceans with what 00:18:12.170 --> 00:18:17.300 align:middle line:84% leaks down, trundling off today's last barrel-full, 00:18:17.300 --> 00:18:21.005 align:middle line:84% I honor shit for saying, we go on." 00:18:21.005 --> 00:18:21.795 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:21.795 --> 00:18:24.090 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:18:24.090 --> 00:18:24.590 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:18:24.590 --> 00:18:28.790 align:middle line:90% 00:18:28.790 --> 00:18:33.110 align:middle line:84% Well while I'm being scatological, 00:18:33.110 --> 00:18:34.280 align:middle line:90% I'll read another. 00:18:34.280 --> 00:18:36.950 align:middle line:84% This is a kind of an experimental vision. 00:18:36.950 --> 00:18:39.200 align:middle line:84% This was the poem that got me in so much trouble 00:18:39.200 --> 00:18:40.790 align:middle line:84% when I was at the Library of Congress 00:18:40.790 --> 00:18:43.730 align:middle line:84% because I was attacked by the Heritage Foundation 00:18:43.730 --> 00:18:47.570 align:middle line:90% as a pornographic poet. 00:18:47.570 --> 00:18:50.610 align:middle line:84% And since I always got off the elevator on the third floor, 00:18:50.610 --> 00:18:53.630 align:middle line:84% which is where the Poetry Office at the Library of Congress is, 00:18:53.630 --> 00:18:56.210 align:middle line:84% it's a floor labeled attic in the elevator. 00:18:56.210 --> 00:18:59.510 align:middle line:84% And I used to whistle walking down the hall. 00:18:59.510 --> 00:19:02.600 align:middle line:84% The two women who constitute my staff and are 00:19:02.600 --> 00:19:06.470 align:middle line:84% my dear friends would say, aha the whistling pornographer 00:19:06.470 --> 00:19:08.900 align:middle line:90% returns. 00:19:08.900 --> 00:19:12.770 align:middle line:84% This poem this is sort of an anti-animal experimentation 00:19:12.770 --> 00:19:16.250 align:middle line:90% poem called "Heaven as Anus." 00:19:16.250 --> 00:19:18.830 align:middle line:84% "In the Defense Department there is a shop 00:19:18.830 --> 00:19:21.590 align:middle line:84% where scientists sew the eyelids of rabbits 00:19:21.590 --> 00:19:27.440 align:middle line:84% open, lest they blink in the scourge of a nuclear drop. 00:19:27.440 --> 00:19:31.430 align:middle line:84% And elsewhere, dolphins are being taught to defuse bombs 00:19:31.430 --> 00:19:33.500 align:middle line:90% in the mockup of a harbor. 00:19:33.500 --> 00:19:38.870 align:middle line:84% And monkeys learn to perform the simple tasks of draftees. 00:19:38.870 --> 00:19:41.600 align:middle line:90% It is done with electric shocks. 00:19:41.600 --> 00:19:45.380 align:middle line:84% Some mice who have failed their time tests in the maze 00:19:45.380 --> 00:19:49.640 align:middle line:84% now go to the wire unbidden for their jolts. 00:19:49.640 --> 00:19:53.570 align:middle line:84% Implanting electrodes yields rich results. 00:19:53.570 --> 00:19:57.170 align:middle line:84% Alley cats turn from predators into prey. 00:19:57.170 --> 00:20:00.680 align:middle line:84% Show them a sparrow and they cower. 00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:02.780 align:middle line:84% While the white wall labs fill up 00:20:02.780 --> 00:20:06.380 align:middle line:84% with the feces of fear, where calves whose hearts 00:20:06.380 --> 00:20:10.820 align:middle line:84% have been done away with walk and bleat on plastic pumps. 00:20:10.820 --> 00:20:14.510 align:middle line:84% And what is any of this to the godhead? 00:20:14.510 --> 00:20:17.990 align:middle line:84% These squeals, whines, writhings, 00:20:17.990 --> 00:20:21.890 align:middle line:84% unexpected jumps, whose children burn alive, 00:20:21.890 --> 00:20:28.580 align:middle line:84% boobytrap the dead, lop ears and testicles, core and disembowel. 00:20:28.580 --> 00:20:31.010 align:middle line:90% It all ends at the hole. 00:20:31.010 --> 00:20:34.580 align:middle line:84% No words may enter the house of excrement. 00:20:34.580 --> 00:20:38.540 align:middle line:84% We will meet there as the sphincter of the good Lord 00:20:38.540 --> 00:20:44.390 align:middle line:84% opens wide and He takes us all inside." 00:20:44.390 --> 00:20:45.810 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:20:45.810 --> 00:20:46.310 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:20:46.310 --> 00:20:49.940 align:middle line:90% 00:20:49.940 --> 00:20:52.100 align:middle line:84% Well now we've brought God into it. 00:20:52.100 --> 00:20:55.510 align:middle line:90% 00:20:55.510 --> 00:20:58.840 align:middle line:90% Yeah, don't tell Jesse Helms OK? 00:20:58.840 --> 00:21:02.440 align:middle line:84% Fortunately I don't-- I'm not facing what the recipients 00:21:02.440 --> 00:21:04.930 align:middle line:84% of this year's grants are facing where they have to sign 00:21:04.930 --> 00:21:06.800 align:middle line:90% a loyalty oath. 00:21:06.800 --> 00:21:07.820 align:middle line:90% That's really true. 00:21:07.820 --> 00:21:11.020 align:middle line:84% I mean, it would be a terrific position to be in, as a writer, 00:21:11.020 --> 00:21:13.990 align:middle line:84% to have to make that decision to give up the whatever 00:21:13.990 --> 00:21:16.780 align:middle line:90% it is, $17,000 or $20,000. 00:21:16.780 --> 00:21:18.790 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:21:18.790 --> 00:21:24.040 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I spent six weeks as writer in residence 00:21:24.040 --> 00:21:28.570 align:middle line:84% at a small college in Danville, Kentucky, which 00:21:28.570 --> 00:21:29.620 align:middle line:90% was a wonderful-- 00:21:29.620 --> 00:21:32.650 align:middle line:84% You know, Thoreau says at one point in Walden, 00:21:32.650 --> 00:21:35.140 align:middle line:84% which is my Bible, he says, "One need not 00:21:35.140 --> 00:21:39.010 align:middle line:84% go halfway around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar." 00:21:39.010 --> 00:21:41.230 align:middle line:90% Which is now Tanzania. 00:21:41.230 --> 00:21:42.340 align:middle line:90% "Extra vagance! 00:21:42.340 --> 00:21:44.500 align:middle line:90% It depends how one is yarded." 00:21:44.500 --> 00:21:49.720 align:middle line:84% And I found the extra vagance in Danville, Kentucky. 00:21:49.720 --> 00:21:53.380 align:middle line:84% I had never lived in pentecostal country before. 00:21:53.380 --> 00:21:55.570 align:middle line:90% And it was quite a revelation. 00:21:55.570 --> 00:21:57.910 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "The Jesus Infection." 00:21:57.910 --> 00:22:00.840 align:middle line:90% 00:22:00.840 --> 00:22:03.780 align:middle line:84% "Jesus is with me on the bluegrass parkway 00:22:03.780 --> 00:22:05.100 align:middle line:90% going eastbound. 00:22:05.100 --> 00:22:09.600 align:middle line:84% He is with me on the old Harrodsburg road coming home. 00:22:09.600 --> 00:22:14.400 align:middle line:84% I am listening to country gospel music in the borrowed Subaru. 00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:17.850 align:middle line:84% The gas pedal and the words leap to the music. 00:22:17.850 --> 00:22:19.890 align:middle line:90% Oh throw out the lifeline. 00:22:19.890 --> 00:22:22.590 align:middle line:90% Someone is drifting away. 00:22:22.590 --> 00:22:25.950 align:middle line:84% Flags fly up in my mind without my knowing 00:22:25.950 --> 00:22:27.840 align:middle line:90% where they've been lying furled. 00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:33.120 align:middle line:84% And I am happy living in the sunlight where Jesus is near. 00:22:33.120 --> 00:22:35.820 align:middle line:84% A man is driving his polled Herefords 00:22:35.820 --> 00:22:38.220 align:middle line:84% across the gleaning of a cornfield 00:22:38.220 --> 00:22:42.210 align:middle line:84% while I am bound for the kingdom of the free. 00:22:42.210 --> 00:22:45.490 align:middle line:84% At the little trestle bridge that has no railing, 00:22:45.490 --> 00:22:49.800 align:middle line:84% I see that I won't have to cross Jordan alone. 00:22:49.800 --> 00:22:54.480 align:middle line:84% Signposts every mile exhort me to Get Right with God 00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:56.340 align:middle line:90% and I move over. 00:22:56.340 --> 00:23:00.480 align:middle line:84% There's a neon message blazing at the crossroad catty corner 00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:01.980 align:middle line:90% to the Burger Queen. 00:23:01.980 --> 00:23:04.500 align:middle line:90% Ye Come with Me. 00:23:04.500 --> 00:23:07.470 align:middle line:90% Is it well with my soul, Jesus? 00:23:07.470 --> 00:23:11.520 align:middle line:84% It sounds so easy to be happy after the sunrise, 00:23:11.520 --> 00:23:14.940 align:middle line:84% to be washed in the crimson flood. 00:23:14.940 --> 00:23:18.720 align:middle line:84% Now I am tailgating and I read a bumper sticker 00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:21.730 align:middle line:84% on a Ford truck full of Poland Chinas. 00:23:21.730 --> 00:23:24.450 align:middle line:90% It says honk if you know Jesus. 00:23:24.450 --> 00:23:26.760 align:middle line:90% And I do it. 00:23:26.760 --> 00:23:30.840 align:middle line:84% My sound blasts out four miles behind the pig squeal. 00:23:30.840 --> 00:23:34.350 align:middle line:84% And it's catching in the front end, in the axle, 00:23:34.350 --> 00:23:38.140 align:middle line:84% in the universal joint, this rich contagion. 00:23:38.140 --> 00:23:41.670 align:middle line:84% We are going down the valley on a hairpin turn. 00:23:41.670 --> 00:23:44.760 align:middle line:84% The swine and me, we're breakneck in. 00:23:44.760 --> 00:23:49.720 align:middle line:84% We are leaning on the everlasting arms." 00:23:49.720 --> 00:23:52.630 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:23:52.630 --> 00:24:00.890 align:middle line:90% 00:24:00.890 --> 00:24:04.940 align:middle line:84% Well I know that some of you are aware of the fact 00:24:04.940 --> 00:24:06.980 align:middle line:84% that the late Anne Sexton and I were 00:24:06.980 --> 00:24:09.260 align:middle line:84% very close personal friends and very 00:24:09.260 --> 00:24:10.760 align:middle line:90% close professional friends. 00:24:10.760 --> 00:24:15.710 align:middle line:84% And after her death, although I had vowed I would not do, 00:24:15.710 --> 00:24:20.120 align:middle line:84% I found that I was writing elegies to her name. 00:24:20.120 --> 00:24:23.510 align:middle line:84% What's interesting to me is how these change. 00:24:23.510 --> 00:24:26.870 align:middle line:84% The first several ones are apostrophes, 00:24:26.870 --> 00:24:30.830 align:middle line:84% that is direct address to the absent one. 00:24:30.830 --> 00:24:32.620 align:middle line:84% And then-- So I think I'll read two. 00:24:32.620 --> 00:24:34.370 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read one of these early ones. 00:24:34.370 --> 00:24:36.720 align:middle line:84% And then I'm going to read a recent one. 00:24:36.720 --> 00:24:40.160 align:middle line:84% I think-- Although it may be hard to get into this 00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:41.600 align:middle line:90% since it's so wintery. 00:24:41.600 --> 00:24:44.390 align:middle line:84% It's called "Splitting Wood at Six Above," which 00:24:44.390 --> 00:24:45.800 align:middle line:90% is the best time to split wood. 00:24:45.800 --> 00:24:49.670 align:middle line:84% Once it's below freezing, wood splits much-- 00:24:49.670 --> 00:24:52.220 align:middle line:90% more easily. 00:24:52.220 --> 00:24:57.350 align:middle line:84% And it contains a passage about paying 00:24:57.350 --> 00:25:01.250 align:middle line:84% for an expensive long distance call. 00:25:01.250 --> 00:25:03.500 align:middle line:84% It was our habit to talk on the phone every day. 00:25:03.500 --> 00:25:07.820 align:middle line:84% And when one of us was out of town we called after 5:00, 00:25:07.820 --> 00:25:09.470 align:middle line:84% but we still might be on the phone 00:25:09.470 --> 00:25:11.210 align:middle line:90% for 45 minutes or an hour. 00:25:11.210 --> 00:25:12.910 align:middle line:84% And then we would split the phone bill 00:25:12.910 --> 00:25:13.910 align:middle line:90% at the end of the month. 00:25:13.910 --> 00:25:18.230 align:middle line:84% And back then even I can remember paying phone bills 00:25:18.230 --> 00:25:22.970 align:middle line:90% of $250-$300 for a month apart. 00:25:22.970 --> 00:25:25.070 align:middle line:90% That's just background for this. 00:25:25.070 --> 00:25:28.400 align:middle line:90% "Splitting Wood at Six Above." 00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:32.660 align:middle line:84% "I open a tree in the stupefying cold. 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:35.270 align:middle line:90% Ice on bare flesh a scald. 00:25:35.270 --> 00:25:39.350 align:middle line:84% I seat the metal wedge with a few left-handed swipes. 00:25:39.350 --> 00:25:44.690 align:middle line:84% Then with a change of grips lean into the eight-pound sledge. 00:25:44.690 --> 00:25:47.000 align:middle line:90% It's muslin overhead. 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:52.580 align:middle line:84% Snow falls as heavy as salt. You are four months dead. 00:25:52.580 --> 00:25:56.690 align:middle line:84% The beech log comes apart like a chocolate nougat. 00:25:56.690 --> 00:25:59.870 align:middle line:84% The wood speaks first in the tiny voice 00:25:59.870 --> 00:26:02.750 align:middle line:90% of a bird cry, a puppet squeak. 00:26:02.750 --> 00:26:07.190 align:middle line:84% And then all in a rush, all in a passionate stammer, 00:26:07.190 --> 00:26:11.930 align:middle line:84% the papery soul of the beech released by wedge and hammer 00:26:11.930 --> 00:26:15.270 align:middle line:90% flies back into air. 00:26:15.270 --> 00:26:20.760 align:middle line:84% Time will do this as fair to hickory, birch, black oak. 00:26:20.760 --> 00:26:23.910 align:middle line:84% Easing the insects until rot and freeze 00:26:23.910 --> 00:26:28.950 align:middle line:84% combine to raise out of wormwood cracks, blue and dainty. 00:26:28.950 --> 00:26:33.300 align:middle line:84% The souls, they are thin as an eyelash. 00:26:33.300 --> 00:26:36.450 align:middle line:90% They flap once going up. 00:26:36.450 --> 00:26:39.480 align:middle line:90% The air rings like a bell. 00:26:39.480 --> 00:26:42.720 align:middle line:84% I breathe out drops, cold morning ghost 00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:45.900 align:middle line:84% puffs like your old cigarette cough. 00:26:45.900 --> 00:26:48.180 align:middle line:90% See you tomorrow, you said. 00:26:48.180 --> 00:26:49.410 align:middle line:90% You lied. 00:26:49.410 --> 00:26:51.150 align:middle line:90% We're far from finished. 00:26:51.150 --> 00:26:53.340 align:middle line:90% I'm still talking to you. 00:26:53.340 --> 00:26:56.850 align:middle line:84% Last night's dream, we'll split the phone bill. 00:26:56.850 --> 00:27:01.470 align:middle line:84% It's expensive calling from the other side. 00:27:01.470 --> 00:27:06.240 align:middle line:84% Even waking it seems logical, your small, round, 00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:11.130 align:middle line:84% stubbornly airborne soul, that sun-yellow daisy heart slipping 00:27:11.130 --> 00:27:15.030 align:middle line:84% the noose of its pod, scooting over the tightrope none 00:27:15.030 --> 00:27:19.890 align:middle line:84% the worse for its trip to arrive at the other side. 00:27:19.890 --> 00:27:22.230 align:middle line:90% It is the sound of your going. 00:27:22.230 --> 00:27:24.660 align:middle line:90% I drive into heartwood. 00:27:24.660 --> 00:27:32.700 align:middle line:84% I stack my quartered cuts, bark down, open yellow face up." 00:27:32.700 --> 00:27:34.190 align:middle line:84% There are a number of these poems. 00:27:34.190 --> 00:27:39.210 align:middle line:84% And there's one in the new book, in Nurture. 00:27:39.210 --> 00:27:41.640 align:middle line:84% And I thought I might then read this 00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:45.660 align:middle line:84% because this is the first time in which it isn't a you poem. 00:27:45.660 --> 00:27:50.100 align:middle line:84% This is a very detached third person. 00:27:50.100 --> 00:27:54.140 align:middle line:84% And I have never found it possible to write 00:27:54.140 --> 00:27:58.100 align:middle line:84% a poem to specification, to spec as it were. 00:27:58.100 --> 00:28:01.580 align:middle line:84% And in this case I was asked to write a poem. 00:28:01.580 --> 00:28:04.310 align:middle line:84% And three or four or five months elapsed, 00:28:04.310 --> 00:28:06.350 align:middle line:84% long after the magazine had been published, 00:28:06.350 --> 00:28:09.060 align:middle line:90% and suddenly came the poem. 00:28:09.060 --> 00:28:12.530 align:middle line:84% So it's called "On Being Asked to Write a Poem in Memory 00:28:12.530 --> 00:28:13.625 align:middle line:90% of Anne Sexton." 00:28:13.625 --> 00:28:16.180 align:middle line:90% 00:28:16.180 --> 00:28:19.600 align:middle line:84% "The elk discards his antlers every spring. 00:28:19.600 --> 00:28:20.770 align:middle line:90% They rebud. 00:28:20.770 --> 00:28:21.850 align:middle line:90% They grow. 00:28:21.850 --> 00:28:25.120 align:middle line:84% They are growing an inch a day to form a rococo 00:28:25.120 --> 00:28:29.620 align:middle line:84% rack with a 5-foot spread even as we speak. 00:28:29.620 --> 00:28:34.630 align:middle line:84% Cartilage at first, covered with velvet, bendable, tender 00:28:34.630 --> 00:28:37.900 align:middle line:90% gristle yet destined to ossify. 00:28:37.900 --> 00:28:41.500 align:middle line:84% The velvet sloughed off hanging in tatters 00:28:41.500 --> 00:28:44.830 align:middle line:90% from altars and scrub growth. 00:28:44.830 --> 00:28:48.640 align:middle line:84% No matter how hardened it seems there was pain. 00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:52.810 align:middle line:84% Blood on the snow from rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. 00:28:52.810 --> 00:28:56.410 align:middle line:84% What a heavy candelabrum to be borne forth, 00:28:56.410 --> 00:28:59.770 align:middle line:84% each year more elaborately turned. 00:28:59.770 --> 00:29:04.390 align:middle line:84% The special issues, the prizes in her name. 00:29:04.390 --> 00:29:08.335 align:middle line:84% Above the mantel the late elks antlers gleam." 00:29:08.335 --> 00:29:11.600 align:middle line:90% 00:29:11.600 --> 00:29:14.270 align:middle line:84% And just because I think it's interesting to follow 00:29:14.270 --> 00:29:17.810 align:middle line:90% the thread, you know, of-- 00:29:17.810 --> 00:29:20.090 align:middle line:84% Someone once said, oh the poet has one song 00:29:20.090 --> 00:29:21.560 align:middle line:90% and sings it over and over. 00:29:21.560 --> 00:29:23.810 align:middle line:90% And there's really a lot-- 00:29:23.810 --> 00:29:26.280 align:middle line:90% an enormous truth to that. 00:29:26.280 --> 00:29:30.440 align:middle line:84% So I thought I'd kind of display this poem, which is too 00:29:30.440 --> 00:29:33.930 align:middle line:90% new to have been collected yet. 00:29:33.930 --> 00:29:36.990 align:middle line:84% And it's called "The Green Well." 00:29:36.990 --> 00:29:39.210 align:middle line:90% It's very elegiac. 00:29:39.210 --> 00:29:45.420 align:middle line:84% "June 5:00 AM, before the sun retakes its dips and humps, 00:29:45.420 --> 00:29:48.540 align:middle line:84% light rims the field with an aura. 00:29:48.540 --> 00:29:53.580 align:middle line:84% Gnats form an ectoplasmic cloud over the bruised bathtub, 00:29:53.580 --> 00:29:56.850 align:middle line:84% over the salt lick hollowed out by tongues 00:29:56.850 --> 00:30:00.360 align:middle line:84% like medieval stairs petitioners' feet have 00:30:00.360 --> 00:30:03.270 align:middle line:90% worn looking for the truth. 00:30:03.270 --> 00:30:06.750 align:middle line:84% I hold truth in a nine lives can twice 00:30:06.750 --> 00:30:10.560 align:middle line:84% weekly for the cats whose paws explore the lips 00:30:10.560 --> 00:30:15.390 align:middle line:84% and sills of stalls so deftly that they never need encounter 00:30:15.390 --> 00:30:17.760 align:middle line:90% the grounded dogs. 00:30:17.760 --> 00:30:20.490 align:middle line:84% Today a newly dead red squirrel hugs 00:30:20.490 --> 00:30:25.020 align:middle line:84% the top of the feed bin, recompense, exact. 00:30:25.020 --> 00:30:26.520 align:middle line:90% Thanks Abra. 00:30:26.520 --> 00:30:30.390 align:middle line:84% Thank you, Kadabra for doing God's work. 00:30:30.390 --> 00:30:35.820 align:middle line:84% Fledglings, field mice, shrews, moles, baby rabbits, 00:30:35.820 --> 00:30:39.120 align:middle line:84% else why would He have made so many? 00:30:39.120 --> 00:30:42.720 align:middle line:84% I bury what I deplore in the manure pile, 00:30:42.720 --> 00:30:45.990 align:middle line:84% deep in that warm brown digester to be 00:30:45.990 --> 00:30:49.050 align:middle line:84% flung next fall on the meadow, then 00:30:49.050 --> 00:30:54.510 align:middle line:84% let myself down rung by rung into the green well of losses. 00:30:54.510 --> 00:30:58.950 align:middle line:84% A kitchen midden where the newly dead, layer by layer, 00:30:58.950 --> 00:31:02.730 align:middle line:84% overtake the long and longer vanished. 00:31:02.730 --> 00:31:06.630 align:middle line:84% Gone now to tankage, my first saved starveling 00:31:06.630 --> 00:31:11.430 align:middle line:84% mare and the filly we tore from her in the rain. 00:31:11.430 --> 00:31:16.020 align:middle line:84% After the lethal pheno barb, the vet exchanged my check 00:31:16.020 --> 00:31:18.060 align:middle line:90% for his handkerchief. 00:31:18.060 --> 00:31:21.180 align:middle line:84% Nine live foals since and I'm still 00:31:21.180 --> 00:31:26.160 align:middle line:84% pocked with grief, with how they lay on their sides, half-dry, 00:31:26.160 --> 00:31:28.230 align:middle line:90% half-wet. 00:31:28.230 --> 00:31:32.940 align:middle line:84% Grief, sir, is a species of idleness, a line 00:31:32.940 --> 00:31:35.010 align:middle line:90% we treasured out of bellow. 00:31:35.010 --> 00:31:40.050 align:middle line:84% My suicided long-term friend and I, all these years 00:31:40.050 --> 00:31:44.640 align:middle line:84% I've fought somehow to bless her drinking in of the killer car 00:31:44.640 --> 00:31:45.900 align:middle line:90% exhaust. 00:31:45.900 --> 00:31:48.540 align:middle line:84% But a coal of anger sat and winked 00:31:48.540 --> 00:31:52.650 align:middle line:84% its live orange eye undimmed in my chest, 00:31:52.650 --> 00:31:57.720 align:middle line:84% while the world buzzed gossiping in the hive. 00:31:57.720 --> 00:32:01.950 align:middle line:84% That mare, a dangerous runaway, her tongue thickly 00:32:01.950 --> 00:32:06.870 align:middle line:84% scarred by wire, my friend too fleeing her wolves, 00:32:06.870 --> 00:32:11.460 align:middle line:84% her voices that those voodoo doctors could not still 00:32:11.460 --> 00:32:14.160 align:middle line:90% nor save her from. 00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:17.580 align:middle line:84% It does not end with us though end it will. 00:32:17.580 --> 00:32:20.130 align:middle line:84% A hapless swallow lays another clutch 00:32:20.130 --> 00:32:23.370 align:middle line:90% of eggs in the accessible nest. 00:32:23.370 --> 00:32:29.529 align:middle line:84% The cats elaborately clean themselves after the kill." 00:32:29.529 --> 00:32:31.894 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:32:31.894 --> 00:32:36.630 align:middle line:90% 00:32:36.630 --> 00:32:41.560 align:middle line:84% Well I think we need something a little lighter after that. 00:32:41.560 --> 00:32:45.115 align:middle line:84% And I'll read a couple of what I call my tribal poems. 00:32:45.115 --> 00:32:47.620 align:middle line:90% 00:32:47.620 --> 00:32:51.430 align:middle line:84% This is really my sex misinformation poem. 00:32:51.430 --> 00:32:54.130 align:middle line:84% I wrote this poem for my mother's 82nd birthday. 00:32:54.130 --> 00:32:56.720 align:middle line:90% 00:32:56.720 --> 00:32:59.450 align:middle line:84% It's just called "Birthday Poem." 00:32:59.450 --> 00:33:03.260 align:middle line:84% "I am born at home, the last of four children. 00:33:03.260 --> 00:33:07.940 align:middle line:84% The doctor brings me as promised in his snapshot black leather 00:33:07.940 --> 00:33:09.290 align:middle line:90% satchel. 00:33:09.290 --> 00:33:13.070 align:middle line:84% He takes me out in sections, fastens limbs 00:33:13.070 --> 00:33:19.250 align:middle line:84% to torso, torso to neck stem, pries mama's navel open 00:33:19.250 --> 00:33:22.670 align:middle line:90% and inserts me head first. 00:33:22.670 --> 00:33:27.140 align:middle line:84% Chin back I swim upward up the alimentary canal, 00:33:27.140 --> 00:33:30.770 align:middle line:84% bypassing mouth and nose holes, and knock 00:33:30.770 --> 00:33:33.650 align:middle line:84% at the top of her head to be let out, 00:33:33.650 --> 00:33:37.130 align:middle line:90% wherefore her little bald spot. 00:33:37.130 --> 00:33:40.550 align:middle line:84% Today my mother is 82, splendidly 00:33:40.550 --> 00:33:42.470 align:middle line:90% braceleted and wigged. 00:33:42.470 --> 00:33:46.250 align:middle line:84% She had to go four times to the well to get me." 00:33:46.250 --> 00:33:49.920 align:middle line:90% 00:33:49.920 --> 00:33:53.220 align:middle line:90% And I'll read-- 00:33:53.220 --> 00:33:55.500 align:middle line:84% I'll read another one out of this group. 00:33:55.500 --> 00:33:59.070 align:middle line:84% This one is called "Sunbathing on a Rooftop in Berkeley." 00:33:59.070 --> 00:34:02.240 align:middle line:90% 00:34:02.240 --> 00:34:06.410 align:middle line:84% "Eleven palm trees stand up between me and the bay. 00:34:06.410 --> 00:34:10.580 align:middle line:84% A quarter turn and I'm in line with Campanile Tower. 00:34:10.580 --> 00:34:13.190 align:middle line:90% The hippies are sunbathing too. 00:34:13.190 --> 00:34:16.100 align:middle line:84% They spread themselves out on the sidewalks 00:34:16.100 --> 00:34:21.320 align:middle line:84% with their ingenious crafts for sale and their humble puppies. 00:34:21.320 --> 00:34:24.650 align:middle line:84% We are all pretending summer is eternal. 00:34:24.650 --> 00:34:28.520 align:middle line:84% Mount Tamalpais hovers in the distance. 00:34:28.520 --> 00:34:32.330 align:middle line:84% I pinch myself that this is California 00:34:32.330 --> 00:34:35.000 align:middle line:84% but behind my light-struck eyelids 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:40.280 align:middle line:84% I am also a child again in an amusement park in Pennsylvania. 00:34:40.280 --> 00:34:45.710 align:middle line:84% And 40 years blow in and out adapting as the fog does 00:34:45.710 --> 00:34:48.620 align:middle line:90% to conditions in the bay. 00:34:48.620 --> 00:34:52.969 align:middle line:84% My daughter has gone to her class in criminal procedure. 00:34:52.969 --> 00:34:55.909 align:middle line:84% She pulls her hair back in a twist. 00:34:55.909 --> 00:34:59.660 align:middle line:84% Maybe she will marry the young man she lives with. 00:34:59.660 --> 00:35:02.450 align:middle line:84% I take note how severely she regards 00:35:02.450 --> 00:35:05.120 align:middle line:90% the laws of search and seizure. 00:35:05.120 --> 00:35:08.750 align:middle line:84% She moves with the assurance of a cheetah. 00:35:08.750 --> 00:35:12.230 align:middle line:84% Still marriage may be the sort of entrapment 00:35:12.230 --> 00:35:14.360 align:middle line:90% she wishes to avoid. 00:35:14.360 --> 00:35:20.780 align:middle line:84% She is all uncertainties as I am in this mothering business. 00:35:20.780 --> 00:35:22.940 align:middle line:90% Oh summers without end. 00:35:22.940 --> 00:35:27.020 align:middle line:84% The exact truth is we are expanding sideways 00:35:27.020 --> 00:35:31.100 align:middle line:84% as haplessly as in the mirrors of the funhouse 00:35:31.100 --> 00:35:34.820 align:middle line:84% we bulge toward the separate fates that await us, 00:35:34.820 --> 00:35:38.210 align:middle line:84% sometimes touching as sleeves will 00:35:38.210 --> 00:35:42.040 align:middle line:84% whether or not a hug was intended. 00:35:42.040 --> 00:35:44.440 align:middle line:90% Oh summers without end. 00:35:44.440 --> 00:35:47.890 align:middle line:84% The truth is no matter how I love her, 00:35:47.890 --> 00:35:51.370 align:middle line:84% death blew up my dress that day while she 00:35:51.370 --> 00:35:53.530 align:middle line:90% was in the egg unconsidered." 00:35:53.530 --> 00:35:57.070 align:middle line:90% 00:35:57.070 --> 00:36:01.270 align:middle line:84% And again I guess this will illustrate 00:36:01.270 --> 00:36:04.890 align:middle line:90% what I said about the one song. 00:36:04.890 --> 00:36:07.360 align:middle line:90% This is a different daughter. 00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:09.850 align:middle line:84% And it's called "We Stood There Singing." 00:36:09.850 --> 00:36:14.110 align:middle line:84% This takes place in just outside of Geneva, Switzerland 00:36:14.110 --> 00:36:18.520 align:middle line:84% in the French Alps where we are going, 00:36:18.520 --> 00:36:23.260 align:middle line:84% climbing up to one of the stud farms for a horse which 00:36:23.260 --> 00:36:29.040 align:middle line:84% has been for, I guess, since the Middle Ages, 00:36:29.040 --> 00:36:33.660 align:middle line:84% the prime and unspoiled breed of the Swiss army. 00:36:33.660 --> 00:36:35.910 align:middle line:84% And it's sort of a light draft animal. 00:36:35.910 --> 00:36:36.660 align:middle line:90% They ride them. 00:36:36.660 --> 00:36:37.690 align:middle line:90% And they drive them. 00:36:37.690 --> 00:36:39.450 align:middle line:90% They use them to pull. 00:36:39.450 --> 00:36:46.020 align:middle line:84% Le Bon Roi Dagobert is a children's song in French. 00:36:46.020 --> 00:36:49.380 align:middle line:84% It's all about this the good King Dagobert who's 00:36:49.380 --> 00:36:52.470 align:middle line:84% not quite all there and the good Saint 00:36:52.470 --> 00:36:54.390 align:middle line:90% Louis who looks after him. 00:36:54.390 --> 00:36:56.670 align:middle line:84% In the very first stanza of the King 00:36:56.670 --> 00:36:58.920 align:middle line:84% has put his pants on backwards and, you 00:36:58.920 --> 00:37:02.160 align:middle line:84% know, in succeeding stanzas he does other ridiculous things. 00:37:02.160 --> 00:37:06.000 align:middle line:84% And Saint Louis kind of bails him out. 00:37:06.000 --> 00:37:08.490 align:middle line:90% "We Stood There Singing." 00:37:08.490 --> 00:37:12.150 align:middle line:84% "On a gray day in March in his first year, 00:37:12.150 --> 00:37:16.740 align:middle line:84% we drove up out of orderly Geneva, mother and daughter, 00:37:16.740 --> 00:37:19.590 align:middle line:84% and the daughter's child, up the hairpin 00:37:19.590 --> 00:37:23.160 align:middle line:84% turns of the Chasseral in search of the horses 00:37:23.160 --> 00:37:26.940 align:middle line:84% of the Franches-Montagnes with feathered fetlocks 00:37:26.940 --> 00:37:31.720 align:middle line:84% and manes blown wild, each splashed-white face the same, 00:37:31.720 --> 00:37:35.790 align:middle line:84% the same kind eye said to persist unchanged 00:37:35.790 --> 00:37:38.640 align:middle line:90% since Charlemagne. 00:37:38.640 --> 00:37:42.240 align:middle line:84% The baby slept tipped sideways in his chair, 00:37:42.240 --> 00:37:44.970 align:middle line:84% slept through sudden snow squalls that 00:37:44.970 --> 00:37:48.540 align:middle line:84% blanked the alpine road like a stage scrim 00:37:48.540 --> 00:37:52.710 align:middle line:84% and woke up cranky in Les Breuleux where 00:37:52.710 --> 00:37:57.450 align:middle line:84% at the village's one store we stopped to take our bearings. 00:37:57.450 --> 00:38:00.510 align:middle line:84% When he howled, the aproned woman 00:38:00.510 --> 00:38:05.550 align:middle line:84% invited us back past vats of sauerkraut and wheels of cheese 00:38:05.550 --> 00:38:08.170 align:middle line:90% into their bedroom. 00:38:08.170 --> 00:38:12.810 align:middle line:84% I remember that plain space of rough white plaster 00:38:12.810 --> 00:38:16.200 align:middle line:84% and crucifix, oak beams overhead, 00:38:16.200 --> 00:38:20.010 align:middle line:84% runner of tattered lace on the chest of drawers. 00:38:20.010 --> 00:38:23.670 align:middle line:84% I remember the lambskin she unrolled on the bed, 00:38:23.670 --> 00:38:26.250 align:middle line:90% motioning you to lay him down. 00:38:26.250 --> 00:38:29.730 align:middle line:84% And after he was done up sweet with powder, 00:38:29.730 --> 00:38:34.620 align:middle line:84% she opened her arms and bounced him chortling around the room 00:38:34.620 --> 00:38:39.660 align:middle line:84% singing him bits of Le Bon Roi Dagobert. 00:38:39.660 --> 00:38:42.060 align:middle line:90% We stood there singing. 00:38:42.060 --> 00:38:46.230 align:middle line:84% I remember that moment of civility among women." 00:38:46.230 --> 00:38:52.170 align:middle line:90% 00:38:52.170 --> 00:38:58.530 align:middle line:84% The beginning of my brief stay here, 00:38:58.530 --> 00:39:01.830 align:middle line:84% I read one poem which came from a series I wrote when 00:39:01.830 --> 00:39:06.350 align:middle line:90% my brothers-- 00:39:06.350 --> 00:39:10.830 align:middle line:84% the next in line to me, and we were-- 00:39:10.830 --> 00:39:13.290 align:middle line:84% there were four of us in the family-- 00:39:13.290 --> 00:39:15.780 align:middle line:84% died of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, which 00:39:15.780 --> 00:39:17.700 align:middle line:90% was a long and terrible dying. 00:39:17.700 --> 00:39:19.980 align:middle line:84% And I read one poem at that time. 00:39:19.980 --> 00:39:24.240 align:middle line:84% And I'd like to read a different one tonight. 00:39:24.240 --> 00:39:27.690 align:middle line:84% You do need to know that when you get to these L words, 00:39:27.690 --> 00:39:30.690 align:middle line:84% these flowers that all have L's in them, 00:39:30.690 --> 00:39:35.320 align:middle line:84% that what we're looking at is more L's than the word needs. 00:39:35.320 --> 00:39:35.820 align:middle line:90% OK? 00:39:35.820 --> 00:39:40.050 align:middle line:84% The poem is called "The Man of Many L's." 00:39:40.050 --> 00:39:42.960 align:middle line:84% "My whole childhood I feared cripples 00:39:42.960 --> 00:39:46.680 align:middle line:84% and how they got that way, the one-legged lavender 00:39:46.680 --> 00:39:51.030 align:middle line:84% man who sold his sachets by St Mary's steeple, 00:39:51.030 --> 00:39:54.990 align:middle line:84% the blind who tapped past, humming what they knew. 00:39:54.990 --> 00:39:57.990 align:middle line:84% Even the hunchback seamstress, a rag doll 00:39:57.990 --> 00:40:02.100 align:middle line:84% who further sagged to pin my mother's hems had once been 00:40:02.100 --> 00:40:04.800 align:middle line:90% sturdy, had once been whole. 00:40:04.800 --> 00:40:06.810 align:middle line:90% Something entered people. 00:40:06.810 --> 00:40:09.690 align:middle line:84% Something chopped, pressed, punctured, 00:40:09.690 --> 00:40:11.800 align:middle line:90% had its way with them. 00:40:11.800 --> 00:40:17.020 align:middle line:84% And if you looked, bad child, it entered you. 00:40:17.020 --> 00:40:19.300 align:middle line:84% When we found out what the disease would 00:40:19.300 --> 00:40:23.620 align:middle line:84% do, lying like any council's stalwarts, all of us 00:40:23.620 --> 00:40:28.330 align:middle line:84% swore to play our parts in the final act at your command. 00:40:28.330 --> 00:40:30.160 align:middle line:90% The first was easy. 00:40:30.160 --> 00:40:34.270 align:middle line:84% You gave up your left hand and the right grew wiser, 00:40:34.270 --> 00:40:36.730 align:middle line:90% a juggler for its king. 00:40:36.730 --> 00:40:39.850 align:middle line:84% When the poor dumb leg began to falter, 00:40:39.850 --> 00:40:44.770 align:middle line:84% you took up an alpenstock for walking once flourished Sundays 00:40:44.770 --> 00:40:46.960 align:middle line:90% by our dead father. 00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:50.800 align:middle line:84% Month by month the battleground grew thinner. 00:40:50.800 --> 00:40:53.410 align:middle line:84% When you could no longer swallow meat, 00:40:53.410 --> 00:40:56.410 align:middle line:84% we steamed and mashed your dinner and bent 00:40:56.410 --> 00:40:59.740 align:middle line:84% your straw to chocolate soda treats. 00:40:59.740 --> 00:41:02.530 align:middle line:84% And when you could not talk, still you 00:41:02.530 --> 00:41:06.340 align:middle line:84% could write questions and answers on a magic slate, 00:41:06.340 --> 00:41:10.450 align:middle line:84% then lift the page like laundry to the wind. 00:41:10.450 --> 00:41:13.930 align:middle line:84% I plucked the memory splinter from your spine 00:41:13.930 --> 00:41:16.600 align:middle line:84% as we played at being normal, who 00:41:16.600 --> 00:41:21.580 align:middle line:84% had eased each other in the cold zoo of childhood. 00:41:21.580 --> 00:41:24.640 align:middle line:84% Three months before you died I wheeled you 00:41:24.640 --> 00:41:27.640 align:middle line:84% through the streets of placid Palo Alto 00:41:27.640 --> 00:41:31.810 align:middle line:84% to catch spring in its flamboyant tracks. 00:41:31.810 --> 00:41:35.350 align:middle line:84% You wrote the name of every idiot flower I did not 00:41:35.350 --> 00:41:39.820 align:middle line:84% know, yucca rained, mimosas shone, 00:41:39.820 --> 00:41:42.610 align:middle line:84% the bottlebrush took fire as you fought 00:41:42.610 --> 00:41:46.240 align:middle line:84% to hold your great head on its stem. 00:41:46.240 --> 00:41:54.010 align:middle line:84% Lilac you wrote, magnolia, lily, and further oleander, 00:41:54.010 --> 00:41:56.260 align:middle line:90% delphinium. 00:41:56.260 --> 00:42:02.620 align:middle line:84% Oh man of many L's, brother, my wily resident ghost, 00:42:02.620 --> 00:42:07.540 align:middle line:84% may I never spell these crowfoot dogbane words again, 00:42:07.540 --> 00:42:13.060 align:middle line:84% these showy florid words again, except I name them 00:42:13.060 --> 00:42:14.395 align:middle line:90% under your spell." 00:42:14.395 --> 00:42:18.200 align:middle line:90% 00:42:18.200 --> 00:42:21.410 align:middle line:84% One-- I think maybe one last of the tribal group. 00:42:21.410 --> 00:42:24.480 align:middle line:90% This is quite a bit lighter. 00:42:24.480 --> 00:42:29.480 align:middle line:84% It's a little lyric called "Appetite." 00:42:29.480 --> 00:42:32.870 align:middle line:84% "I eat these wild red raspberries 00:42:32.870 --> 00:42:37.610 align:middle line:84% still warm from the sun and smelling faintly of jewelweed 00:42:37.610 --> 00:42:40.220 align:middle line:90% in memory of my father. 00:42:40.220 --> 00:42:42.500 align:middle line:84% Tucking the napkin under his chin 00:42:42.500 --> 00:42:47.390 align:middle line:84% and bending over an ironstone bowl of the bright droplets, 00:42:47.390 --> 00:42:52.130 align:middle line:84% awash in cream, my father with a sigh of a man who 00:42:52.130 --> 00:42:56.900 align:middle line:84% has seen all and been redeemed, said time after time 00:42:56.900 --> 00:43:01.235 align:middle line:84% as he lifted his spoon, men kill for this." 00:43:01.235 --> 00:43:15.420 align:middle line:90% 00:43:15.420 --> 00:43:18.630 align:middle line:90% And this is a moose poem. 00:43:18.630 --> 00:43:20.610 align:middle line:90% It's also about Thoreau. 00:43:20.610 --> 00:43:25.440 align:middle line:84% The word camelopard was an early word in our language 00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:29.500 align:middle line:84% that was used to describe the giraffe. 00:43:29.500 --> 00:43:31.480 align:middle line:84% That's the only thing that needs to be glossed. 00:43:31.480 --> 00:43:35.380 align:middle line:84% And it's called "My Elusive Guest." 00:43:35.380 --> 00:43:37.930 align:middle line:84% "Thoreau loved the grayness of them, 00:43:37.930 --> 00:43:42.610 align:middle line:84% homespun with leafy horns, like lichen made of bone. 00:43:42.610 --> 00:43:45.820 align:middle line:84% God's own horses, poor timid creatures, 00:43:45.820 --> 00:43:49.750 align:middle line:84% he said in 1846 in the Maine woods, 00:43:49.750 --> 00:43:52.390 align:middle line:84% and then went on to wonder why they 00:43:52.390 --> 00:43:57.430 align:middle line:84% stood so high at the shoulders, why so long a head, no tail 00:43:57.430 --> 00:43:58.930 align:middle line:90% to speak of. 00:43:58.930 --> 00:44:03.580 align:middle line:84% How like the camelopard, he said, rolling the archaic word 00:44:03.580 --> 00:44:04.630 align:middle line:90% on his tongue. 00:44:04.630 --> 00:44:11.410 align:middle line:84% High before and low behind and stayed admiring them upwind. 00:44:11.410 --> 00:44:16.270 align:middle line:84% A hundred years later the widow Blau, whose rockbound farm 00:44:16.270 --> 00:44:20.290 align:middle line:84% I now inhabit, broomed a moose out of her kitchen garden, 00:44:20.290 --> 00:44:22.930 align:middle line:84% thinking it the neighbor's brown cow, 00:44:22.930 --> 00:44:26.230 align:middle line:84% marauding among the vegetables at dawn, 00:44:26.230 --> 00:44:29.020 align:middle line:84% then looked up to behold those rabbit 00:44:29.020 --> 00:44:32.200 align:middle line:84% ears, that wet nearsighted eye, that 00:44:32.200 --> 00:44:38.350 align:middle line:84% ferny rack of gray on a still-gray sky and none since. 00:44:38.350 --> 00:44:42.640 align:middle line:84% Spring mornings at first light sometimes through fog, 00:44:42.640 --> 00:44:45.850 align:middle line:84% some heavy weight shifts and wavers 00:44:45.850 --> 00:44:49.780 align:middle line:84% against the line of trees and wanting it in my blood, 00:44:49.780 --> 00:44:54.490 align:middle line:84% like a spray of musk, I beckon the elusive guest, 00:44:54.490 --> 00:44:56.110 align:middle line:90% willing it close. 00:44:56.110 --> 00:45:01.080 align:middle line:90% My wild thing, my moose." 00:45:01.080 --> 00:45:04.140 align:middle line:84% And I think I'll go back to the new book 00:45:04.140 --> 00:45:09.090 align:middle line:84% and perhaps read a couple of these animal poems. 00:45:09.090 --> 00:45:17.266 align:middle line:90% 00:45:17.266 --> 00:45:24.430 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about a dog who is no longer among the living, 00:45:24.430 --> 00:45:27.120 align:middle line:90% a wonderful dog however. 00:45:27.120 --> 00:45:31.920 align:middle line:84% It's called "Custodian" and this is really a biographical, very 00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:34.740 align:middle line:90% accurate picture. 00:45:34.740 --> 00:45:37.320 align:middle line:84% Every spring when the ice goes out, 00:45:37.320 --> 00:45:41.220 align:middle line:84% black commas come scribbling across the shallows. 00:45:41.220 --> 00:45:43.620 align:middle line:90% Soon they sprout four legs. 00:45:43.620 --> 00:45:46.200 align:middle line:90% Slowly they absorb their tails. 00:45:46.200 --> 00:45:50.610 align:middle line:84% And by mid-June, full-voiced, announce themselves. 00:45:50.610 --> 00:45:53.190 align:middle line:90% Enter our spotted dog. 00:45:53.190 --> 00:45:56.100 align:middle line:84% Every summer, tense with the scent of them, 00:45:56.100 --> 00:46:00.840 align:middle line:84% tail arced like a pointer's but wagging in anticipation, 00:46:00.840 --> 00:46:06.180 align:middle line:84% he stalks his frogs 200 yards clockwise around the perimeter 00:46:06.180 --> 00:46:10.110 align:middle line:84% of this mucky pond, then counterclockwise, 00:46:10.110 --> 00:46:14.220 align:middle line:84% an old pensioner happy in his work. 00:46:14.220 --> 00:46:18.420 align:middle line:84% Once every 10 or so pounces he succeeds, 00:46:18.420 --> 00:46:22.020 align:middle line:84% carries his captive north in his soft mouth, 00:46:22.020 --> 00:46:24.090 align:middle line:90% uncorks him on the grass. 00:46:24.090 --> 00:46:28.440 align:middle line:84% And then sits head cocked, watching the slightly dazed 00:46:28.440 --> 00:46:32.460 align:middle line:90% amphibian hop back to sanctuary. 00:46:32.460 --> 00:46:34.830 align:middle line:84% Over the years the pond's inhabitants 00:46:34.830 --> 00:46:38.790 align:middle line:84% seem to have grown accustomed to this ritual of capture 00:46:38.790 --> 00:46:40.650 align:middle line:90% and release. 00:46:40.650 --> 00:46:45.390 align:middle line:84% They ride untroubled in the wet pocket of the dog's mouth, 00:46:45.390 --> 00:46:48.480 align:middle line:84% disembark in the meadow like hitchhikers, 00:46:48.480 --> 00:46:52.110 align:middle line:90% and strike out again for home. 00:46:52.110 --> 00:46:54.270 align:middle line:84% I have seen others of his species 00:46:54.270 --> 00:46:57.030 align:middle line:84% kill and swallow their catch and then be 00:46:57.030 --> 00:46:59.640 align:middle line:90% seized with violent retchings. 00:46:59.640 --> 00:47:02.820 align:middle line:84% I have seen children corner polliwogs 00:47:02.820 --> 00:47:06.900 align:middle line:84% in the sun-flecked hollow by the green rock and lovingly 00:47:06.900 --> 00:47:11.160 align:middle line:84% squeeze the life out of them in their small fists. 00:47:11.160 --> 00:47:14.850 align:middle line:84% I have seen the great blue heron swoop in time 00:47:14.850 --> 00:47:18.990 align:middle line:84% after wing-slapping time to carry frogs back 00:47:18.990 --> 00:47:22.380 align:middle line:84% to the fledglings in the rookery. 00:47:22.380 --> 00:47:26.580 align:middle line:84% Nothing is to be said here of need or desire. 00:47:26.580 --> 00:47:32.160 align:middle line:84% No moral arises nor is this, probably, purgatory. 00:47:32.160 --> 00:47:37.770 align:middle line:84% We have this old dog, custodian of an ancient race of frogs, 00:47:37.770 --> 00:47:41.730 align:middle line:84% doing what he knows how to do and we too, 00:47:41.730 --> 00:47:45.285 align:middle line:84% taking and letting go, that same story." 00:47:45.285 --> 00:47:58.945 align:middle line:90% 00:47:58.945 --> 00:48:01.400 align:middle line:84% This one is of course, as you'll hear, 00:48:01.400 --> 00:48:04.760 align:middle line:84% inspired by watching one of those television 00:48:04.760 --> 00:48:08.950 align:middle line:90% documentaries on Africa. 00:48:08.950 --> 00:48:12.130 align:middle line:90% It's called "Catchment." 00:48:12.130 --> 00:48:17.170 align:middle line:84% "When the she-leopard stalks and pounces on an infant antelope, 00:48:17.170 --> 00:48:19.750 align:middle line:90% which one am I rooting for? 00:48:19.750 --> 00:48:24.820 align:middle line:84% The newborn I saw slip, moments ago, free from the birth canal, 00:48:24.820 --> 00:48:28.960 align:middle line:84% struggle to its feet, stagger against its mother's teat 00:48:28.960 --> 00:48:33.790 align:middle line:84% and begin to nurse, both nervously twitching tail stubs 00:48:33.790 --> 00:48:39.160 align:middle line:84% in the heat and flies of the equator, or the big cat, 00:48:39.160 --> 00:48:44.050 align:middle line:84% in whose camouflaged lair three helpless youngsters wait 00:48:44.050 --> 00:48:47.980 align:middle line:84% so starved for meat that she dares venture out 00:48:47.980 --> 00:48:50.500 align:middle line:90% to hunt by daylight? 00:48:50.500 --> 00:48:54.910 align:middle line:84% I watch this living-color film unfold with a friend, 00:48:54.910 --> 00:48:59.530 align:middle line:84% whose English bull mastiff pup, as if New Hampshire were 00:48:59.530 --> 00:49:03.580 align:middle line:84% the veldt, as if its life depended on the chase, 00:49:03.580 --> 00:49:09.430 align:middle line:84% leapt up last month to snatch a newborn doe kid from her arms 00:49:09.430 --> 00:49:13.600 align:middle line:84% and snapped its neck with one good shake. 00:49:13.600 --> 00:49:16.480 align:middle line:84% Later, watching the after-afterglow 00:49:16.480 --> 00:49:19.900 align:middle line:84% flush the whole sky pink then darken, 00:49:19.900 --> 00:49:24.550 align:middle line:84% we can almost discuss it, good and harm. 00:49:24.550 --> 00:49:27.640 align:middle line:90% Nature a catchment of sorrows. 00:49:27.640 --> 00:49:29.410 align:middle line:90% We hug each other. 00:49:29.410 --> 00:49:30.625 align:middle line:90% No lesson drawn." 00:49:30.625 --> 00:49:34.480 align:middle line:90% 00:49:34.480 --> 00:49:36.715 align:middle line:90% One more from that group. 00:49:36.715 --> 00:49:45.690 align:middle line:90% 00:49:45.690 --> 00:49:49.290 align:middle line:84% I wanted to call this Nurture book Sleeping With Animals. 00:49:49.290 --> 00:49:53.520 align:middle line:84% But Viking is a very timorous publisher 00:49:53.520 --> 00:49:55.740 align:middle line:84% and they thought that sounded too kinky. 00:49:55.740 --> 00:49:58.980 align:middle line:84% And we also had a big argument about this cover, 00:49:58.980 --> 00:50:02.085 align:middle line:84% which I think belongs on a personal hygiene product. 00:50:02.085 --> 00:50:06.200 align:middle line:90% 00:50:06.200 --> 00:50:09.110 align:middle line:90% But I lost that battle too. 00:50:09.110 --> 00:50:13.700 align:middle line:84% So I want, especially, to read this poem "Sleeping 00:50:13.700 --> 00:50:15.890 align:middle line:90% with Animals." 00:50:15.890 --> 00:50:18.410 align:middle line:84% "Nightly I choose to keep this covenant 00:50:18.410 --> 00:50:22.490 align:middle line:84% with a wheezing broodmare who, 10 days past due, 00:50:22.490 --> 00:50:25.370 align:middle line:84% grunts in her sleep in the vocables 00:50:25.370 --> 00:50:27.500 align:middle line:90% of the vastly pregnant. 00:50:27.500 --> 00:50:30.620 align:middle line:84% She lies down on sawdust of white pine, 00:50:30.620 --> 00:50:33.890 align:middle line:84% its turp smell blending with the rich scent 00:50:33.890 --> 00:50:36.410 align:middle line:90% of ammonia and manure. 00:50:36.410 --> 00:50:40.010 align:middle line:84% I in my mummy bag just outside her stall, 00:50:40.010 --> 00:50:44.660 align:middle line:84% observe the silence louder than the catch in her breathing, 00:50:44.660 --> 00:50:49.700 align:middle line:84% observe gradations of the ancient non editorial dark, 00:50:49.700 --> 00:50:52.790 align:middle line:84% against the open doorway looking south, 00:50:52.790 --> 00:50:57.230 align:middle line:84% observe the paddock posts become a chain gang, each one 00:50:57.230 --> 00:50:59.390 align:middle line:90% shackled leg and wrist. 00:50:59.390 --> 00:51:02.720 align:middle line:84% The pasture wall a graveyard of bones 00:51:02.720 --> 00:51:07.010 align:middle line:84% that ground fog lifts and swirls. 00:51:07.010 --> 00:51:11.720 align:middle line:84% Sleeping with animals, loving my animals too much, 00:51:11.720 --> 00:51:15.320 align:middle line:84% letting them run like a perfectly detached statement 00:51:15.320 --> 00:51:19.520 align:middle line:84% by Mozart through all the other lines of my life, 00:51:19.520 --> 00:51:23.540 align:middle line:84% a handsome family of serene horses glistening 00:51:23.540 --> 00:51:26.510 align:middle line:84% in their thoughtlessness, fear ghosts 00:51:26.510 --> 00:51:30.800 align:middle line:84% me still for my two skeletons, one stillborn 00:51:30.800 --> 00:51:32.990 align:middle line:90% foal eight years ago. 00:51:32.990 --> 00:51:37.430 align:middle line:84% One, hours old, dead of a broken spine. 00:51:37.430 --> 00:51:40.730 align:middle line:84% Five others swam like divers into air, 00:51:40.730 --> 00:51:44.150 align:middle line:84% dropped on clean straw, were whinnied to, 00:51:44.150 --> 00:51:48.140 align:middle line:84% tongued dry, and staggered, stagey drunkards, 00:51:48.140 --> 00:51:53.610 align:middle line:84% to their feet, nipped and nudged by their mothers to the teat. 00:51:53.610 --> 00:51:57.510 align:middle line:84% Restless, dozy, between occasional coughs 00:51:57.510 --> 00:52:00.660 align:middle line:84% the mare takes note of me and nickers. 00:52:00.660 --> 00:52:06.120 align:middle line:84% Heaves herself up, explores the corners of her feed tub. 00:52:06.120 --> 00:52:09.510 align:middle line:84% Sleeps a little, leg joints locked. 00:52:09.510 --> 00:52:14.010 align:middle line:84% I shine my light across the bar to watch the immense contours 00:52:14.010 --> 00:52:16.890 align:middle line:90% of her flanks rise and fall. 00:52:16.890 --> 00:52:20.730 align:middle line:84% Each double-inhale is threaded to the life that still 00:52:20.730 --> 00:52:23.850 align:middle line:90% holds back in its safe sac. 00:52:23.850 --> 00:52:28.410 align:middle line:84% What we say to each other in the cold black of April, 00:52:28.410 --> 00:52:32.640 align:middle line:84% conveyed in a wordless yet perfect language of touch 00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:37.440 align:middle line:84% and tremor, connects us most surely to the wet cave 00:52:37.440 --> 00:52:42.450 align:middle line:84% we all once burst from gasping, naked or furred, 00:52:42.450 --> 00:52:45.660 align:middle line:90% into our separate species. 00:52:45.660 --> 00:52:48.690 align:middle line:84% Everywhere on this planet, birth. 00:52:48.690 --> 00:52:53.580 align:middle line:84% Everywhere, curled in the amnion, an unborn wonder. 00:52:53.580 --> 00:52:59.490 align:middle line:84% Together we wait for this still-clenched burden." 00:52:59.490 --> 00:53:03.750 align:middle line:84% I think just two more poems will bring us up to time. 00:53:03.750 --> 00:53:08.910 align:middle line:84% I'll read the title poem and then I'll read one new poem. 00:53:08.910 --> 00:53:10.020 align:middle line:90% And that will be it. 00:53:10.020 --> 00:53:13.110 align:middle line:84% What I wanted on the cover was a wonderful photograph 00:53:13.110 --> 00:53:17.580 align:middle line:84% that was in Smithsonian Magazine of an orphan kangaroo 00:53:17.580 --> 00:53:22.740 align:middle line:84% being nursed, being fed milk out of a doll-sized bottle. 00:53:22.740 --> 00:53:25.740 align:middle line:84% And the scale of the human hand and the little joey 00:53:25.740 --> 00:53:27.210 align:middle line:90% was so terrific. 00:53:27.210 --> 00:53:28.920 align:middle line:90% But Viking rejected it. 00:53:28.920 --> 00:53:30.870 align:middle line:84% They said it was too fetal-looking. 00:53:30.870 --> 00:53:33.390 align:middle line:84% Which is to say, it wasn't pretty. 00:53:33.390 --> 00:53:37.500 align:middle line:84% So that's why we have Bambi on the cover. 00:53:37.500 --> 00:53:40.410 align:middle line:90% There's no Bambi in this book. 00:53:40.410 --> 00:53:43.020 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Nurture" and I just 00:53:43.020 --> 00:53:46.830 align:middle line:84% want to say about it that it really wasn't a 19th century 00:53:46.830 --> 00:53:49.650 align:middle line:84% romantic notion that there had been a wild child. 00:53:49.650 --> 00:53:51.750 align:middle line:90% There is no actual-- 00:53:51.750 --> 00:53:54.150 align:middle line:84% there is no documentation for this, 00:53:54.150 --> 00:53:57.090 align:middle line:84% despite the Romulus and Remus legend 00:53:57.090 --> 00:54:00.330 align:middle line:84% that a she-wolf nursed them, and they went on 00:54:00.330 --> 00:54:03.760 align:middle line:90% to found Rome, and so on. 00:54:03.760 --> 00:54:05.290 align:middle line:90% "Nurture." 00:54:05.290 --> 00:54:07.900 align:middle line:84% "From a documentary on marsupials 00:54:07.900 --> 00:54:11.650 align:middle line:84% I learn that a pillow case makes a fine substitute 00:54:11.650 --> 00:54:15.190 align:middle line:90% pouch for an orphaned kangaroo. 00:54:15.190 --> 00:54:18.940 align:middle line:84% I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue. 00:54:18.940 --> 00:54:21.400 align:middle line:90% They are warm in the throat. 00:54:21.400 --> 00:54:25.630 align:middle line:84% I suffer, the critic proclaims, from an overabundance 00:54:25.630 --> 00:54:28.270 align:middle line:90% of maternal genes. 00:54:28.270 --> 00:54:32.830 align:middle line:84% Bring me your fallen fledgeling, your bummer lamb, 00:54:32.830 --> 00:54:36.790 align:middle line:84% lead the abused, the starvelings into my barn. 00:54:36.790 --> 00:54:40.960 align:middle line:84% Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn. 00:54:40.960 --> 00:54:46.480 align:middle line:84% And had there been a wild child, filthy and fierce as a ferret 00:54:46.480 --> 00:54:51.970 align:middle line:84% he is called in one 19th century account, a wild child 00:54:51.970 --> 00:54:55.150 align:middle line:84% to love, it is safe to assume, given 00:54:55.150 --> 00:54:58.300 align:middle line:84% my fireside inked with paw prints, 00:54:58.300 --> 00:55:00.700 align:middle line:90% there would have been room. 00:55:00.700 --> 00:55:04.750 align:middle line:84% Think of the language we two, same and not-same, 00:55:04.750 --> 00:55:10.270 align:middle line:84% might have constructed from sign, scratch, grimace, grunt, 00:55:10.270 --> 00:55:11.890 align:middle line:90% vowel. 00:55:11.890 --> 00:55:18.108 align:middle line:84% Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl." 00:55:18.108 --> 00:55:19.060 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:55:19.060 --> 00:55:19.630 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:55:19.630 --> 00:55:25.080 align:middle line:90% 00:55:25.080 --> 00:55:26.990 align:middle line:84% I'm going to close on what I hope 00:55:26.990 --> 00:55:30.630 align:middle line:84% is going to be the title poem of a new book. 00:55:30.630 --> 00:55:32.720 align:middle line:84% It's called "Looking for Luck in Bangkok." 00:55:32.720 --> 00:55:35.270 align:middle line:90% 00:55:35.270 --> 00:55:39.050 align:middle line:84% Often at markets I see people standing in line 00:55:39.050 --> 00:55:41.810 align:middle line:90% to walk under an elephant. 00:55:41.810 --> 00:55:45.350 align:middle line:84% They count out a few coins, then crouch 00:55:45.350 --> 00:55:48.230 align:middle line:84% to slip beneath the wrinkly umbrella that 00:55:48.230 --> 00:55:53.720 align:middle line:84% smells of dust and old age and a thousand miracles. 00:55:53.720 --> 00:55:58.280 align:middle line:84% They unfold on the other side, blessed with long life, 00:55:58.280 --> 00:56:02.990 align:middle line:84% good luck, solace from grief, unruly children, 00:56:02.990 --> 00:56:06.920 align:middle line:90% and certain liver complaints. 00:56:06.920 --> 00:56:11.840 align:middle line:84% Conspicuous Caucasian, I stoop to take my turn. 00:56:11.840 --> 00:56:16.160 align:middle line:84% The feet of my elephant are stout as planted pines, 00:56:16.160 --> 00:56:19.910 align:middle line:84% his trunk completes this honest structure, 00:56:19.910 --> 00:56:24.320 align:middle line:84% this tractable, tusked, and deeply 00:56:24.320 --> 00:56:27.860 align:middle line:90% creased endangered shelter. 00:56:27.860 --> 00:56:33.590 align:middle line:84% I squat in his aromatic shade reminded of stale bedclothes, 00:56:33.590 --> 00:56:38.030 align:middle line:84% my mother's pantry shelves of cloves and vinegar, 00:56:38.030 --> 00:56:42.830 align:middle line:84% as if there were no world of drought, no parasites, 00:56:42.830 --> 00:56:45.380 align:middle line:90% no ivory poachers. 00:56:45.380 --> 00:56:51.200 align:middle line:84% My good luck running in as his runs out." 00:56:51.200 --> 00:56:51.740 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:56:51.740 --> 00:56:55.090 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:56:55.090 --> 00:57:04.445 align:middle line:90%