Hi.
It's great to be here.
I want to thank the Poetry Center, Gail Browne,
and Frances Sjoberg for having me here.
It's a great honor to read in this place
where I sat and listened to so many great readings
when I was a graduate student here.
And then later, when I was a loitering person seeking
employment, hanging out in Tucson.
And I want to thank you for coming,
for believing that poetry would be entertaining enough
to fill an hour of your time on Wednesday night.
And it's also because this is a sort of hometown of mine.
It's a thrill, and also a great anxiety,
to be in the presence of many people
who I have known over many years who are here tonight, from whom
I've received so much kindness.
There are people here that I've met in AA meetings.
There are people here I've met in the opposite of AA meetings.
The person who taught me how to write the five paragraph essay
is here.
And the person who taught me the meaning of the words
dysfunctional relationship.
[APPLAUSE]
And I especially want to thank my old friend and teacher
Steve Orlen, who's taught me so much over the years--
some of it by negative example, it's true.
But not all of it.
And I'm going to start off with a poem.
Which is -- It's about a season.
If you told me when I was a young poet that I
would write poems about seasons, I never
would have believed you.
I never would have believed that I'd
become so incredibly boring.
But this is about this very particular season.
There's a lot of seasons.
There's a season when in bathing suits go on sale at Kmart.
That's a kind of season.
There's this season of declining sexual interest-- that's
a season.
This is about the season that happens
in autumn, when the high school bands start
rehearsing on the football fields,
but they aren't very good yet.
And if you live near a high school,
you hear them rehearsing and marching around
in straggling formation.
The trombones are off.
And the wind blows the sound.
And the wind also distorts a little.
And there's something really autumnal about that flavor.
It's about that moment.
And the bands used to play songs like "Louie
Louie" and "Impossible Dream".
Now they play it's "Born To Be Bad"
and "Like a Virgin", or something else.
I'm onto something.
Anyway, it's called "Impossible Dream".
"In Delaware, a Congressman, accused of sexual misconduct,
says clearly at the press conference,
speaking right into the microphone,
that he would like very much to do it again.
It was on the radio.
And Carla laughed as she painted "die, you pig" in red nail
polish on the back of a turtle she
plans to turn loose tomorrow in Jerry's backyard.
We lived near the high school that year.
And in the afternoons, in autumn,
we could hear the marching band rehearsals from the stadium--
off-key trumpets smeared and carried by the wind,
drums and weirdly bent trombones,
a ragged 'Louie Louie' or, sometimes,
'The Impossible Dream'.
I was reading a book about pleasure,
how you have to glide through it without clinging, like an arrow
passing through a target, coming out the other side,
and going on.
Sitting at the picnic table, carved
with the initials of the previous tenants,
in October sunlight blessing the pale grass,
you would have thought we had it all.
But the turtle in Carla's hand turned its odd, stiff legs
like oars, as if it wasn't made for holding still.
And the high school band played worse than ever for a moment,
as if getting the song right was the impossible dream."