Thank you for that really lovely introduction, Morgan.
Thank you, Gail, for having me.
And thanks, everyone, for coming out tonight.
I'm grateful.
I'm coming from Massachusetts, where it's about eight below.
We have snow about this high.
This is just incredible.
So no, it won't be too cold for me to sign books outside.
So I'm going to read from my last two books and in between,
read some new poems.
Try them out.
This is the last poem from Some Values.
All right.
So how is this?
Can you hear me?
Is this all right like that?
"Beginning with a phrase from Simone Weil.
There is no better time than the present
when we have lost everything.
It doesn't mean rain falling at a certain declension
at a variable speed as without purpose or design.
The present everything is lost in time.
According to the laws of physics,
things shift when we lose sight of a present, when
there is no more everything, no more presence in everything
loved.
In the expanding model, things slowly
drift and everything better than the present is lost in no time.
A day mulch is according to gravity and the sow bug
marches, gone.
The hinge cracks.
The gate swings a breeze, breeze contingent upon a grace opening
to air, velocity tied to winging clay, every anything
in its peculiar station.
The sun brightens as it bleaches,
fades the spectral value in everything seen.
And chaos is no better model when we come adrift,
when we have lost a presence, when there is no more
everything, no more presence in everything
loved, losing anything to the present.
I heard a fly buzz.
I heard revealed nature, cars in the street,
and the garbage footprints of a world.
Every fly a perpetual window, unalloyed life.
Gling.
Pinnacles of tar.
There is no better everything than loss
when we have time, no lack in the present
better than everything.
In this expanding model, rain falls.
According to laws of physics, things drift.
And everything better than the present is gone in no time.
A certain declension, a variable speed.
Is there no better presence than loss, a grace opening to air?
No better time than the present."
That poem is kind of a fugue form, as you could hear.
We could talk about Simone Weil in the Q and A,
but you might have heard the Dickinson line,
"I heard a fly buzz."
So I'm going to go--
someone I love.
I live near Amherst, teach in Amherst.