OK so I want to say a little bit about the genesis of "100
Chinese Silences."
And I apologize to some of you, who've probably
heard this story several times already
over the course of the day.
But Billy Collins has already been mentioned,
I understand that he will actually
be here to read at some point in the future.
[COUGHING]
Excuse me.
So this book actually began at a Billy Collins reading.
So Billy Collins came to read in Madison, Wisconsin, where
I live, a few years ago.
And he read a poem called "Grave".
Now, if you're familiar with this poem, in this poem
the speaker is talking to his parents.
And standing at their graves, talking to them.
And they're not responding, of course, because they're dead.
And he says that, my father's silence
was like the 100 different kinds of silence,
according to the Chinese belief.
I was sitting there at the reading,
when he said this I thought, OK now I'm
not an expert on everything Chinese,
but this doesn't sound really familiar to me.
[LAUGHTER]
And so then at the end of the poem
Collins says, "Oh and that thing about the 100 Chinese silences,
I just made that up."
I was like, Oh my goodness.
OK.
So I vowed on the spot, that I would write these 100
Chinese silences.
[LAUGHTER]
[CLAPPING]
And so what I decided to do was, I
did this by rewriting poems by other poets
that engaged ideas of China or Asia in some way,
starting with those of Collins himself.
So I'll read you a few of those.
The very first one is actually a rewriting
of that very first Billy Collins poem, "Grave".
So this is "Chinese silence number one"
after Billy Collins' "Grave".
"What do you think of this poem?"
I asked the tomb of my unknown grandfather
with its livid quiet marble.
A Chinese silence fell.
It dropped from a glowering tree to perch on my shoulder.
We looked at each other.
It would have been hard for a stranger to tell one of us
from the other.
We both looked like monks, or scholars,
or like piles of drowned bones laid softly on the loamy earth.
My grandfather said nothing.
His Chinese silence coiled its tail
into the shape of a long lobed ear.
One of the 100 American signs for anxious virility.
Then the silence fell into a cardboard box
full of other silences.
Like blind puppies, they squirmed and sniffled
for their mother.
OK, I made that last part up.
[LAUGHTER]
But you must admit it was a fabulous metaphor, no?
Oh, now I see you are just as Chinese as all
the other silences.
[LAUGHTER]
The silence of the heavily armed gunboat, or the silence
of the drunken mariner, or my grandfather's silence
like the liberty bell, only cracked right through.