It's a really great night tonight,
because Annie is a maker, Brian is a maker, Drew is a maker,
and I'm a maker.
It's really great company.
And I imagine a lot of you are makers.
We make stuff.
I was asked earlier--
Annie and I had the opportunity to spend
the day together talking to people
who were interested in poetry.
And there was discussion of what definitions there
could be about poetry.
And they were various.
Well, I suggested a few that I didn't quite believe in,
but, you know, sounded pretty.
I do believe that poetry is language that does
more than one thing at a time.
And I do believe that poetry is allowed to lie.
There's a question that happens when you are making a thing.
And that's, what's its purpose, what's its usefulness.
It's easy to work in a group home and say,
a hamburger is not being offered,
and you get immediately some resolution.
And it's really easy to make a gimlet.
But it's difficult to stay up all night alone and think
about yourself and betray yourself and testify
against yourself.
I wrote a book that I thought was truthful.
And it turned out to be not as truthful as I thought.
And so I decided I would, upfront in this second book,
confess that I'm a liar and that what I make
is a representation and not an actuality.
It is not biography.
But it does track my search and my thinking.
And another definition of poetry is that it's
the residue of a life lived.
And so here's some residue.