That could be the most applause a four line poem's ever
received.
[LAUGHTER]
I wrote the title poem of this other book that's,
The Trouble with Poetry.
It's really the whole title is The Trouble with Poetry
and Other Poems, which I thought was highly amusing.
[LAUGHTER]
I had to explain that humor to my editors so--
[LAUGHTER]
Oh.
Yeah, right.
That's funny.
[LAUGHTER]
Now it is.
"The Trouble with Poetry."
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along the beach one night,
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky.
The trouble with poetry is that it encourages
the writing of more poetry--
[LAUGHTER]
--more guppies crowding the fish tank, more baby
rabbits hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
Unless the day finally arrives when we have
compared everything in the world to everything else
in the world.
[LAUGHTER]
And there is nothing left to do now, but quietly
close our notebooks and sit with our hands folded on our desk.
[LAUGHTER]
Poetry fills me with joy and I rise
like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow and I
sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But, mostly, poetry fills me with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
[LAUGHTER]
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are, cut-purses,
common shoplifters, I thought to myself as a cold wave swirled
around my feet and the lighthouse moved its megaphone
over the sea, which is an image I stole directly from Lawrence
Ferlinghetti--
[LAUGHTER]
--to be perfectly honest for a moment.
The bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I used to carry in a side pocket of my uniform up and down
the treacherous halls of high school.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.