WEBVTT

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Oh, OK.

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That's fine.

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Thank you.

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It's an honor and a
pleasure to be here.

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Dick and Lois Shelton
have for some time

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been asking me if I
could come to Tucson.

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And I said yes, finally,
and ended up this afternoon

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in Phoenix.

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And poor Lois was being paged.

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And I said, why don't they come?

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And finally got word
from the Poetry Center

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that she was waiting
for me in Tucson.

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So it's been a very
interesting afternoon.

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Excuse me.

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I also would like to thank
everyone for coming out

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for a reading on a warm--

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very warm-- Wednesday
night in September.

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I think that's honorable.

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I know some of you have
guns to your heads, maybe.

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But I hope that you'll find that
it will have been worthwhile.

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As Lois suggested in
her preparatory remarks,

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I work in a lot of
different genres.

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And it's not necessarily
because I feel that I'm equally

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at ease in all genres.

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It's just that I love writing.

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I really find that it's a
very stimulating and exciting

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adventure every time I get at
the unknown or crack some code

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or come close to cracking some
spiritual code, which writing

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can help you do.

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It's also because if you're
a professional writer,

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you learn to write in as
many genres as you can.

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Because you've got to
keep the money coming in.

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Dilettantes can write
inaccessible, arcane stuff.

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If you're trying to
make some money at it,

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you have to be
understandable sometimes.

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So I'll be reading variously
from works of poetry

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and works of prose.

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And I think we'll probably start
out with poetry because this

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is billed as a poetry reading.

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I don't always make the
traditional distinction that's

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drawn between poetry and prose.

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I think that, ultimately,
you're dealing

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with language and human
spirit and human emotion.

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And it's very nice to be able
to pigeonhole it and say,

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this is poetry, and
this is not poetry.

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And of course, we all too
easily forget nowadays

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that in former times,
everything was done in poetry

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by learned people.

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You wrote scientific treatises
in poetry and astronomical

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reports in poetry, and you
gave lectures in poetry,

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and you wrote botany in
poetry and all of that.

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And of course, you did
religious services in poetry.

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And I think that poetry
is such a natural part

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of the human makeup
that we look for it--

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even today, in a
very prosaic era--

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we look for it in
human expression.

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And if anyone comes
anywhere near it,

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we're all queuing up
to get in and see them

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or to buy their record
or to read their column

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or whatever they
do that allows them

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to express themselves this way.

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Why do I think poetry
is a natural part

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of the human experience?

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It's because if you look
at preliterate society,

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you find that poetry has always
existed among all people--

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all peoples, I should say--
at all times and all places.

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Written poetry, that
stuff in the skinny lines,

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is a relatively new phenomenon
and is actually an offshoot

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of the printing press.

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But poetry came long, long,
long before the printing press.

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And I feel that it's
part of my mission

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to restore that memory to
people, that we probably sat

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around for thousands
of years in caves

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telling each other
stories and singing songs.

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And it's as natural as
breathing, as eating,

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as working--

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all of the basic
human activities.

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In a lot of
preliterate cultures,

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there's no such word as art.

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I know, for example, that
in most Indigenous African

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languages, there's
no word for art.

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In the Indigenous
cultures of North America,

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there's no word for art.

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And that's because
these peoples did not

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make that distinction
between something that's

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art, where someone stands up
on stage and does a number,

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and we all sit out
there and applaud.

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Art was a part of everything
else-- of worship,

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of work, of prolonging
the species.

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It all went together-- poetry,
dance, music, worship--

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cyclical, rhythmical.

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And that understanding
has always really inspired

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me to not get too far
from the word as spoken

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rather than the word as written.

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Let's start with a very
hot night type poem.

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This is from a collection
called By Heart, which

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hasn't been published yet.

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Usually, people start
out with published things

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and come around to things
that are in progress

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or about to be published.

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But I'm going to do it backwards
because the heat has been

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so incredible that the only
thing I can compare it with

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was last fall when I was
working down in Houston, Texas,

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at Rice.

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And I was just blown
away by the temperature

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and by the cicadas--

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or cicadas, as they
call them down there--

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which hearkened me back
to my Mississippi boyhood.

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And I remember
arriving in Houston.

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I got off the plane and went
out to this apartment complex.

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And I heard the sound.

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It was a very still,
late August afternoon.

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And I couldn't tell
what was going on.

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Had some hydroelectric
plant gone out of order?

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It was a very exciting sound.

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And then, when it
subsided, I realized

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that I was back among locusts.

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And it started to invoke, or
evoke, all kinds of memories.

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Hence, two months
later, I wrote this poem

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called "Houston in October."

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I think the only thing that
I have to explicate here

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is the fact that
these cicadas, they're

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green and kind of silvery.

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And of course, you know
that that's a mating call.

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When they do that chirping,
it's a mating call.

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At the end of the
season, you see

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all of these male locusts
in husks on the ground.

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And they just sort of
chirp themselves out

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and fulfill their mission.

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And that's the end.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Houston in October."

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"Or is it really
October in Houston?

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There's no telling anymore.

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Nor does it matter that
the moon, two-thirds

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on the wane yet perfectly
sane, belongs in a Texas song

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tonight.

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I love the way she's
still the moving moon,

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love the slow glowing quickness
of her golden disappearing act.

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The mood she sets in this
drenching orchid heat

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is sisterly and Southern.

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Locusts bunched in trees
and Spanish moss broadcast

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their mating calls of longing
on electromagnetic cycles so

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powerful they short-circuit
the tropical meaning

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of this steaming
night and even subdue

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the city's oil-rich
evening aurora.

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But there's no
getting around it.

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The whirring of cicadas in
this deep sea Houston heat

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assails, propels, and sends me
sailing toward cooling memories

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of a lazy, fanning kind,
memories of a helicopter,

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yes, buzzing, belly up,
suspended by a ladder

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to the moon.

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It is the power of this whir
that stirs the stubborn air

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with whistling karate-chop
precision, that

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magnetizes all sound and light
within earshot of its ups

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and downs.

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Yes, it's this sweaty
moon-fed chirping

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that draws the drowsiness
from October over and over

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and over again until I slip deep
enough into sleep to see my day

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for what it's been, to
soak all over again.

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I dream in green and silver,
drained like the cicada

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and glad as any spent songster
who knows how to take a fall.

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I cool my heels and let go."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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