WEBVTT

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I wanted to mention
earlier and I forgot to

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that I'm so delighted that
my friend Brenda Hillman will

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be following me on this podium.

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Brenda and I were both in
Miss Jean Christensen's

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creative writing
class at Rincon,

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and so you get to evaluate the
fruits of Miss Christensen's

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labors here.

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Wonderful.

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Well, when I am not out
there in Amagansett,

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I live in New York
City, and New York

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is a kind of continual pressure.

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Something impinges on you
every second of every day,

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and you either love
it or you don't.

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It wakes you up.

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It pushes at you in
interesting ways.

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You can't live there and not
be affected by New York City.

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I did not for years get the
paintings of Jackson Pollock.

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I admired him, but I didn't get
it until a young friend of mine

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got a job working at the
Museum of Modern Art, which

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meant that I could get in on
Tuesdays when the museum was

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closed, and I could be
in a room full of Jackson

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Pollocks by myself, which
turns out to be a life changing

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experience.

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It's not anybody else talking,
just the incredible silence

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of those paintings.

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Pollock did some
of his best work

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out near where I
live in the country

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next to a salt marsh
called Accabonac Harbor.

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That's mentioned in
here, and I think

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that's all I need to tell you.

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"To Jackson Pollock."

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Last night somebody murdered
a young tree on 7th Avenue

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between 18th and 19th.

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Only two in that
block, and just days

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ago we'd taken refreshment in
the crisp and particular shade

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of that young
gingko's tight leaves,

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its beauty and optimism, though
I didn't think of that word

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until the snapped
trunk this morning,

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a broken broomstick discarded.

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And tell me what pleasure
could you take from that.

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Maybe I understand it,
the sudden surge of rage

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and the requirement
of a gesture,

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but this hour, I placed myself
firmly on the side of thirst,

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the sapling's ambition
to draw from the secret

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streams beneath
this city to lift up

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our subterranean waters,
power in a pointless scrawl

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now on the pavement.

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Pollock, when he swung his
wild arcs in the barn air

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by Accabonac, stripped
away incident and detail

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till all that was left was
swing and fall and return,

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austere rhythm,
deep down things,

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beautiful, because he
subtracted the specific stub

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and pith, this wreck on the too
hot pavement where scavengers

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spread their second hand books
in the scalding sunlight.

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Or maybe he didn't.

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Erase it, I mean.

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Look into the fierce ellipse
of his preserved gesture,

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and hasn't he swept up
every bit, all the busted

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and incomplete, half
finished and lost?

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Alone in the grand rooms of
last century's heroic painters,

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granted entrance on an off
day to a museum with nobody,

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thank you, this once nobody
talking, for the first time,

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I understood his huge
canvases were prayers.

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No matter to what.

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And silent as hell, he wrote
the huge engine of his attention

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towards silence and
silence emanated from them

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and they would not
take no for an answer

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though there is no other.

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Forget supplication.

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Beseechment, praise,
look down into it,

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the smash up swirl,
oil and pigment

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and tree shatter,
tumult in equilibrium.

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