As you write about 70 sonnets in a row,
the instructions that you have to give yourself
are pretty clear about what not to do anymore.
It's very hard, though.
The great thing about fixed form,
in particular, a form that has such a glorious history, even
if you take liberties with it, is that it
becomes a mode of seeing.
That's the way in which--
that sort of use of paradox in a single turn in the middle
and all that happening in a highly-compressed way in 14
lines, becomes a way of sort of moving through the world.
So make yourself turn that off, so you don't do that anymore.
I found really hard.
And I found it useful to give myself
other sort of formal exercises to replace those
so that I couldn't do it.
I couldn't make the turn.
And particularly, in terms of the line length,
to try to write a poem that had either a much longer line
or a much shorter line.
And also to move away from the notion of idiomatic speech,
where I felt it was my obligation in that book
to try to see if I could persuade you
that these could be actual people
and this is how they might speak.
So I'll read you a couple of things
that-- two different ways of going about that.
Here's one way-- is to make the line extremely artificial.
A line of poetry is artificial.
It doesn't exist in the natural world.
We make it up, whether we base it
on something that has happened before,
or we do it in so-called free verse.
So I think you'll hear this.
This is a poem that's written in tercets, which
is to say three long stanzas.
And basically, the line is three strokes.
That doesn't exist in speech.
And so there's going to be some place where
you have to mangle the speech to make it come out,
or you're not.
And the two things are going to stand against one another.
I think it'll sound different to you than those sonnets did.
This is a poem called "Long Marriage."
"Forward his numb foot, back her foot, his chin on her head,
her head on his collarbone.
During those marathons between wars, our vivid Dark Times,
each dancer holds the other up so he,
as the vertical heap barely moves yet moves,
or she, eyes half-lidded, unmoored, can rest.
Why these, surviving a decimated field?
More than a lucky fit, not planks
planed from the same oak trunk but mortise and tenon.
It is the yolk that makes the pair, that binds them
to their blind resolve, two kids who
thought the world was burning itself out,
and bet on a matched disregard for the safe and the sad.
Look, one hisses toward the flared familiar ear,
we've come this far, this far, this far."
You might think that's a grim little poem but--
[LAUGHTER]
A person who's been married as long as I have
thinks of it as a triumphal poem.
[LAUGHTER]