Well, as you may guess, with students like Liz,
it's a great and deep pleasure to have the privilege
to teach here at the University of Arizona.
I'm really honored to read today with Luci,
a dear friend and a poet, whose work I admire tremendously,
and thank you all for coming out on a cold, rainy morning
in Tucson.
How strange to be able to say those words.
I'm going to read to you today from a new collection of poems
that will be coming out in September.
The collection is called "Rope."
Yes, rope.
R-O-P-E, and I will close with the poem that is titled "Rope."
There's also an epigraph that introduces
the book from the poet Saint-John Perse
from "Praises," and it says, "One has only
to serve like an old rope."
I'll start with a small poem called "The Lake."
If some of you know the great essay by E.B. White,
"Once More to the Lake."
This poem takes a little bit of spirit out of that.
"The Lake."
The rowboat bobs and bangs at the dock.
I want to float the canoe into the shallows, where
yellow water lilies bloom.
This place makes sense to me as a child.
I can read the distance from the dock
to the raft, arms pulling to join the cousins out
there, a mile from our charming oblivious and happily
drunken parents.
Did I know anything, then, about beauty or need to?
Yes.
I caught a sunfish once--
a golden marvel, the size of my hand.
They're no good for eating, someone said.
Throw it back.
I stared at the fine weave of its scales,
the pale calico of white, yellow,
orange, the body so thin.
I knew the place it came from was deeper than I could ever
see or dive to.
That beauty could come up from a dark and cold place,
and mercy was a skill my hands would have to learn.