If that provokes any curiosity, then
I'd be happy-- there's a microphone here,
or you're up front, you can just shout out a question,
I'll repeat it.
Do I have any poems on tape?
Yes, I do have poems on tape.
I have a CD--
two of them, really.
One's more available than the other.
But there's one, it's just called,
me, Live at Symphony Space.
I give a reading in New York and it was recorded.
And, oddly enough, I'm introduced
by Bill Murray, whose introduction
had to be edited down.
[LAUGHTER]
So yeah, there is a CD available.
How do you suggest appreciating poetry
that's less accessible than yours is when you're not taking
the college class [INAUDIBLE]?
Well I think it's difficult. And if poetry
is presented in anthology form, and you're
kind of jumping from Walt Whitman, to Emily Dickinson,
and so forth, if you read one poet for a while,
you get to know how hard you can press on their poetry--
because you were talking about less accessible poetry.
And some poetry you press really hard on
and it will press back into you.
English 17th century metaphysical poetry can be--
you can just go line by line, and something will always be--
every line will give forth something, some contributing
thing to the poem.
If you took another poet and pressed that hard,
you would go through the poem like it was tissue paper.
You'd be overanalyze it.
So when the question of analysis comes up, or explication--
and I went to graduate school.
I have a PhD in English, so obviously I
got some conceptual pleasure of dealing with difficult poetry,
like Wallace Stevens, and Hart Crane, and others.
But one has to know how hard to push, what analytical pressure
a certain poet--
what is the right amount of pressure
to apply to a certain poet?
And that's really-- there's no easy way
to do this unless you read extensively in that poet.
So you were asking for a kind of easier answer,
but I don't know if there is one.
Sir?
All my questions were answered the last time
you were here at the Swede Johnson University Foundation.
And anticipating this, I dreamed about this meeting last night,
and suddenly I woke up and wrote this poem.
And I'd ask permission to read it, but you might say no.
"I saw him talk to Billy Collins last night.
I walked straight up to him and with no intro said,
my friend here thinks I'm a good poet.
I think I'm an excellent poet.
A lot of people say I'm a very good poet, that
is except editors.
Why is that?
Billy asked.
I said, because I make sense.
Billy turned and walked away.
Last night I talked to Billy Collins,
all he said to me was, why's that?"
[APPLAUSE]
Yes.
I don't have a question, I have a comment.
OK.
It's like, oh my God, you're awesome.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
Could that be lowered at all?
Do you experience your poetry differently
once you've read it aloud to an audience?
Well, I know something more about it
after I read it out to an audience.
But I read it, I don't--
when I finish it, I don't kind of up on my coffee
table to proclaim it.
I think reading it--
I've read some poems to my dog.
She's the kind of dog that really
wants to understand English.
[LAUGHTER]
She starts cocking her head.
If I just get the right angle I can [INAUDIBLE]..
As I'm writing, the right composition of the poem
is not just a matter of ink, it's an acoustic.
It has an acoustic dimension.
And I'm hearing it as I'm writing,
and as I'm testing lines, then stanzas, and sentences,
I'm testing them acoustically in addition to for their sense,
or their contributions to the forward run
from the poem, conceptual run of the poem.
So the poems have been musically checked by me
before I read them out loud.
So there aren't too many surprises, but occasionally,
maybe that last poem, "On Turning 10"
probably for better or worse, I think
that poem succeeds maybe more than other ones
in doing what I try to do in a lot of poems
which is ride this line between seriousness and humor.
And it's interesting to read that poem out loud,
because OK, it's meant to be funny,
but it turns serious at the end.
Because as I was writing it I kind of
started to really sympathize with this child,
this 9-year-old on the verge of the double figures.
And I think I got sort of emotionally involved in it.
I wanted it to end with a sort of a serious ending.
So when that one was let out read out loud,
the laughter tapers off in degrees.
There are still kind of pockets of people that are still
laughing, and that's sort of an interesting kind of feedback.
I think reading poems out loud, you do get to--
you learn things.
And if your ears are attentive to the audience,
silence is both the best reaction
and the worst reaction.
Some silences are really good and others are really bad.
So listening to a live audience, you
do get some interesting feedback that way.
Well I just sense a sense of delight
that you get when you're reading some of your poetry aloud.
And really, I've read a lot of your poetry,
and it really adds to it, to get your sense of how
you've enjoyed this poem.
Well, I enjoy it because so many people are here.
And I thank all of you for coming today.
It's been a fun experience, thanks.
[APPLAUSE]