Quite a crowd.
It's great to see all of you.
And thank you, Gail.
The first poem she read by Coleridge
is an excerpt of a poem that's called "This Lime-tree Bower
my Prison."
And the question I would get during question and answer
sessions, usually at high schools,
would be what's your favorite poem?
And I got tired of the 10-minute explanation about the silliness
of ranking poems in favorites.
And I just decided I would take "This Lime-tree Bower
my Prison" my favorite poem.
So, thanks for reading that one.
As far as Emily Dickinson, you do find, as a writer,
that poets who are long dead have started to imitate you.
This is typically known as anticipatory plagiarism.
And speaking of long-dead poets, it
was good to see their work re-animated by these two
young students.
I've been accused by some people of exhibiting a kind
of consciousness of a reader.
So if it's wrong to write as a reader,
I don't want to be writing.
So I thought I'd start with the poem that's
just addressed to the reader.
It's called "You, Reader."
I wonder how you are going to feel when you find it out
that I wrote this instead of you.
That it was I got up early to sit in the kitchen
and mention with a pen the rain-soaked windows, the ivy
wall paper, and the goldfish circling its bowl.
Go ahead and turn aside, bite your lip, and tear up the page.
But listen, it was just a matter of time before one of us
happened to notice the unlit candles and the clock
humming on the wall.
Plus, nothing happened that morning,
a song on the radio, a car whistling along
the road outside.
And I was only thinking about the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side by side on a place mat.
I wondered if they had become friends after all these years
or if they were still strangers to one another,
like you and I have managed to be
known and unknown to each other at the same time.
Me at this table with a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway somewhere,
near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.
[APPLAUSE]
I did want to remind you of how lucky you are to have
this amazing Poetry Center.
If you haven't been there, you really must go.
It's amazing.
Forget the contents for a minute,
but the building itself is designed
by one of the world's coolest architects, Les Wallach.
And there's no freestanding building
devoted to poetry in this country, or, as far as I know,
anywhere in the world, of building
of that magnitude whose sole purpose is
to house and encourage the reading
and the writing of poetry.
And not just during Poetry Month should you go.
But, you know, if you name a month or a week
or a day after something, it is a sign of its neglect.
Mother's Day is a good example of that.
National Secretary's Week is another one.
You'll never hear of a National Television Month.
No thanks, television doesn't need that attention.