WEBVTT

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I want to read a
poem, another elegy.

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Poets they love each
other, but the truth

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is they say things like, how's
Phil Levine doing these days,

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how's his health?

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And Adrienne Rich, she's OK?

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I got the elegy partly done.

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I wrote it 20 years
ago, just in case.

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It's terrible, you know?

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The human soul is a mixed thing.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Badly mixed in some cases.

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But this is a poem
I want to read

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for a marvelous American
poet, Larry Levis.

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I don't know, I hope
you study him here.

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He died at the age of
50, in 1996, suddenly.

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And I wrote this
poem for him, taking

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a walk in Iowa City: "Down
the street, my morning walk".

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And at the end, there's
a mention of New Orleans,

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and the connection
with New Orleans

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as far as Larry
and I was concerned

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was that I had the privilege
and joy of introducing him

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to that city.

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Had never seen it,
and he was so excited.

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Jumping around the way he did.

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"The color of life is an
almost pale white robin's

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green that once was bluer
when it was in the nest,

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before the jay deranged the
straw and warm flesh was

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in the shell.

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I found it while doing my 45
minute walk between two doors

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beside some bushes and flowers.

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I put it in one of my pockets,
keeping some space around it

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to protect the pale
green, an idiot carrying

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a dead child inside
him, something

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that might have broken out
anyway, a blue afterbirth,

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shoved out of the nest.

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I laid my dead like eggs on the
table, 12 tombstones to a box.

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I buried dread that way, my
telephone calls and letters,

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and on the way I
walked into a side yard

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and straightened a brick--

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for it was May--

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and chased a gartersnake
into his rainspout.

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And since it was
morning and it was hot

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already I put the eggshell
under a leather chair

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and thought of our
trip to New Orleans

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and used the end of a broom
to prop up a rosebush,

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the way we do, sweet Larry."

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