WEBVTT

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Well, I want to read a poem
that's harder because this

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is the age of complex poetry--

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some of it bad, some of it good.

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Sometimes it's so complex, you
don't know if it's bad or good.

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And that's both a virtue and a
fault. And it gives many of us

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trouble.

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I've always enjoyed when
students do that and explain

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to you what they're doing.

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Not to be mean.

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I'm going to read a
poem called "Blue."

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My colors and your
color, probably.

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But this is a poem about a
painting by Philip Guston, one

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of my favorite painters.

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And the painting is in
the museum at Iowa City.

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And I think the painting
is called "The Wrap."

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But I call it Blue.

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And so, I always resisted
writing poems about paintings

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and photographs.

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I always hated that.

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I thought it was a cheap trick.

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And I hate it when teachers
gave that assignment.

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Is this sounding all right, or?

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Yes.

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But I couldn't resist
because I got money for this.

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And so I wrote this poem.

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What am I doing?

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Like that?

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OK.

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Hello.

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So I'm going to read this poem.

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You know this painter, Guston,
towards the end of his life--

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last 10 years of his
life-- he started

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to paint a different
kind of painting

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than the other ones
he was doing earlier,

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which were abstract,
expressionistic.

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And he sort of was seen
as a kind of betrayer

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of the rest of the crowd.

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He started to paint
the strangest things--

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sort of cartoon characters,
with X's for eyes and shoes

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with nails in them sticking out,
and cigarettes and ashtrays--

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but in a beautiful
pattern and design.

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I just loved his paintings.

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Raise your hand if your
know his paintings.

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One, two, three.

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OK.

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What I was hunting for--

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OK, now I do mention
here a silver ball.

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My brother-in-law
Charles, over there,

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will remember that during
what we used to call The War--

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that's World War II.

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Bush's war we called--

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Anyhow, we used to
collect silver balls.

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We did.

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We'd take the insides of
cigarettes, or Hershey bars

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and add them to the silver ball.

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And we would sell
this silver ball.

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Do you remember that, Charlie?

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Of course.

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And we'd sell that silver ball.

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Then they would throw it away.

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It was the idea to make you
feel you're doing something

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important for the war effort.

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That was true of all the
things they did-- the meat

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stamps, the shoe stamps.

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You didn't know this, did you?

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"What I was hunting for was a
skeleton key and an old pack

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of Luckies wrapped in foil, so
I could add to my silver ball.

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The blue that lasted,
lasted for years.

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In fact the sky at the
end was almost dark.

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There was no wind, and the
clouds were puffs at the most

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and in a sort of
childish formation.

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I did this before.

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I walked through a mountain.

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I climbed some stairs.

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But this time there
was no let up.

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I couldn't walk over the brooms.

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I couldn't get either under
or over a fallen tree.

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And saltwater almost
made me blind.

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I wanted to match the blues.

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It was that simple.

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I had a kind of larkspur love.

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You understand that blue, even
if dark, was my connection.

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I would have sworn,
if someone asked me,

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that my blue was
like the other one.

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And all my bitterness
was just the result

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of some stray degradation--

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brooms in this case,
a knife or two.

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Can I mention, my ear was pink?

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Can I talk about that pink?

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But can I say that
it was you that

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just spread from ear to ear?

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But can I say it
listened to everything.

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It was pink and
listened to everything.

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Though I only needed one
cloud to hide behind,

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one puff, one puff lifted me up.

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It sort of sucked me in.

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And though my leg was exposed,
the cloud concealed me.

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White was my face,
and then some.

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Fog was my forest.

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Smoke was all around me.

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There I was, holding my
dress up with one hand,

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banging through the
roof with the other.

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Green was my rotten liver.

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Blue were my bloodshot eyes."

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