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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you so much, Page.

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That's the nicest
introduction I've ever had.

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I think this is the
nicest place I've ever

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been to give a reading, too.

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I had to cancel a
workshop tonight

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that I teach in Kentucky.

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And I told my MFA
students that I

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was giving a reading
at the Poetry Center

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at the University of Arizona.

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And they were like,
you're going-- you're

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reading at the Poetry Center?

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So I thank you all for making
me a stranger in my hometown

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no longer.

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Speaking of my hometown,
my basketball team

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is playing our arch
rival, Duke, right now.

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So this is not going to be
a long, drawn out reading,

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I promise you.

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James Buchanan-- Duke-- the
founder of Duke University,

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he made his money on the back of
poor Kentucky tobacco farmers.

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I just like to tell people that.

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It's true.

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It's really true.

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But I really want to thank the
Poetry Center for having me

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here.

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And I want to thank Fenton for
being such a great host to me.

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Last night, in a
moment of candor,

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he assured me that my literary
reputation had not made it

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across the Mississippi River.

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So-- see what I can do
to change that tonight.

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I-- I'm very suspicious
of the language

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that we use when we--
when we talk and we

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write about religion.

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I think when we try to say the
most profound things, that's

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when language gets
thinnest and most tenuous.

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And I was expressing
this dread to my wife one

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time on the way to a
reading and she said, well,

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you probably shouldn't have
written a book about religion

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if you didn't want
to talk about it.

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There's that famous sermon the
Buddha gave where he stood up

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in front of all of his
followers and his acolytes

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and he just held up one white
flower and then he sat down.

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But you all didn't bring
me all the way out here

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to hold up a white
flower, so I'm going

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to say a few things about--

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about my connection
to fundamentalism.

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Because this is
the Poetry Center,

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I wanted to start off
just by reading two poems.

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I don't-- I don't
write a lot of poetry.

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I mainly write nonfiction.

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And the poetry I write, I
write very, very slowly.

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And there's a great
printer in Kentucky

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named Gray Zeitz who prints
books very slowly by setting

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every word by hand.

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And this is a beautiful
little book he did

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of mine, called A Short
History of the Present.

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So I'm just going to read two
poems that I hope will serve

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as a kind of prelude for
what I'm-- what will follow.

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This poem is called "This"--

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If I understand
Spinoza, we don't

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have to talk about God at all.

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It's enough simply to
praise the Norway spruce,

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whose long, green fronds hang
as graceful as the empty monks--

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empt-- empy monks--

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empty sleeves of a monk
who believes in nothing

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except the sun and
the Norway spruce.

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It's enough to praise the
waxy green bud at the tip

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of January's sweetgum branch.

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Touch your tongue to it.

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Touch your tongue to the word
where mind and thing meet

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halfway in the unseen
saying that absolves

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the world of fallen things.

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