WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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This will mostly not
be a formal deal.

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I did have six or
seven pages here that I

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would like to begin with.

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And then if I'm still here we'll
go into a little discussion

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of particular writers who, in
various, vastly different ways,

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embody this notion of the poem
as a kind of meeting place.

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Can you hear me back there?

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No, not really.

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I'll try to be louder.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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And at the appropriate
time, particularly when

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we're talking about
individual poets,

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to change this into
an exchange if you

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are interested in the
particular writers and material

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that we're dealing with,
the persons of a poem.

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On cable TV recently
I surprisingly

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came across the
documentary Derrida

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in which some young people
follow the French philosopher

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cameras in both his domestic
and professional life

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and constructed a
personal portrait

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over a couple of years.

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Occasionally they would
insert a quote from Derrida

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along the bottom of the picture.

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One in particular caught
my eye and stayed with me.

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Quote "The determination of
the self as one is violence.

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Determination of the
self as one is violence."

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And that struck
me as good a place

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to begin this
little talk as any.

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This talk on what?

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We'll see.

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The persons of the
poem, I suppose,

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and its space, the poem's space,
both metaphorical and actual,

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and the present of the
poem, and the future past,

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and the historical present.

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I'd better hasten to
add that it will not

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be about Derrida
or deconstruction,

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so you may all return to
your seats, or both of you

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may return to your
seats, whichever applies.

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Since I'm reminded
that it is always

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difficult to anticipate
the nature of the audience,

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and therefore the conversation,
when we are engaged with poetry

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and poetics, we do trust
that a conversation takes

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place even if only one
within the poem itself,

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and that too is
part of our topic.

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I must confess that I find it
particularly difficult to know

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how to address you this
afternoon in the name

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of poetry, when it seems
to me that our Republic

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and its foundational language
and values and its place

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in the world of nations are all
under such relentless assault.

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I speak now of the
assault from within,

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an assault conducted by means
of those very words we take

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as basic to just governance,
freedom, liberty, democracy,

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justice.

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Words whose currency
has been debased

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in the purported support of
those things they are meant

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to secure, openness,
candor, respect for others,

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and for difference, and
for the varieties of life

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on the planet.

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What could a poetic
signify in such times?

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What is the necessity of poetry
beyond the blasé of poetry

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of instrumentality and harangue?

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What use poetry's weak and
strong voices, quiet and loud

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voices, its celebration of
otherness and difference,

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of the play of imagination and
reason, chants and pattern,

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chaos and order, dreamed
and waking consciousness?

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We seem to be searching
now, and perhaps always,

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within the present for
a present that is not,

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a present in place of the
one offered and ordained,

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product of some monstrous
devolution of thought

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and the inebriation of power.

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We search for the body of
the poem, veiled or cloaked

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as it is in our time.

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The body of the poem, its
presence, only a small number

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of poems find this.

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That poem that is
fashioned at once alone

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and in company, an
impossible thing,

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ungovernable, and exiled,
and without power.

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That eternal tradition of
examining things as they are,

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and as they are said to
be, by means of a language

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everywhere present
around us and within us,

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within language
itself, but unheard.

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A world, some might say, of
misrule, wherein we experience

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the truth of the poem's
lies, and the lies

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of the state's truths
and absolutes, where

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the subversions and refusals
of the poem, its nothings,

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its disorders, counter the
institutionalized corruption

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of the logos, the word,
and the nomos, the law.

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We employ encomium, praise,
and satire, ridicule,

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but let us not forget
lyric and its insistence

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on desire, the desiring self
in the face of repression.

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It reminds me, of course
always, of the force

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of this particular
nothing, individual desire.

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When you think, for example
that Anna Akhmatova was

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capable of terrifying Stalin
by writing love poems.

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This is great, the new
terrorism, the old one.

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The space of the poem is a
space of debate, and staging,

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and conversation among
ourselves, and there others,

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and those voices that precede,
and those yet to come.

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The figures therein, the
figura, are not ours.

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It is an alternative
space at once

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outside and inside, as any
space can be at a given moment.

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This room, for example, this
stanza, should we so insist,

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it is perhaps the only space
where I am truly at home since

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I cannot recognize
myself there, or here.

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Who are the persons of the poem?

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Let me begin by reading a poem
that that phrase popped out

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of when I began to
think about this talk.

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