Thank you, Frances, for that very generous introduction.
What a great analytical mind you have.
I loved your comment on averaging.
Can you hear me OK, if I raise my voice, in the back there?
Do you hear me OK?
OK.
I'm going to begin with a few poems
from the first book, Candy Necklace, which
was published in 1997.
And I'm going to begin with the title poem, which originated--
which I wrote at Skidmore College in New York, Saratoga
when I was taking a workshop with Robert Pinsky in 1994.
And he gave us assignments, and one assignment
was to go out on campus, and find something, and start
the poem with that object, and end up as far away as possible.
So I went to the student store, immediately after class,
not intending to look for any object,
but I saw candy necklaces for sale, beside the cash register.
And for some reason, they spoke to me.
I don't actually remember eating candy necklaces
or wearing them, gross, when I was a kid.
But you're supposed to wear them, get
them really oily and greasy, and then eat them.
And I began with the candy necklace,
and I ended with God and--
because I was reading Giorgio Agamben's book The Coming
Community, at the time.
In fact, the poem quotes from Agamben
in one of its prose sections.
And I took the poem in, read it to the class
and to Robert, who didn't want to see it on the page
before he heard it.
And he listened carefully and asked if he could see it.
And I handed it to him.
And it took him all of 20 seconds
to decide that what was there should come in reverse order.
And so the poem now ends with a candy necklace.
I'd love to have the Robert Pinsky structural program
on my computer.
But I learned something from every workshop I ever took.
And structuration was one thing I learned from Robert.
"Candy Necklace," it's a combination.
It's a hybrid.
It's a combination of verse lines and prose sections.
I'll leave those unmarked by my voice.
"Candy Necklace."
"Unhellinized, the crows on the campus lawn
rasp like the bicycle bells of hell.
It is thus that they sing.
Someone in the cafeteria says, 'Barbara is rubbing off
on him.'
It is thus that he loves.
The little sisters of the Dying Swan
mount on one toe in their practice room and spin.
It is thus that they die.
The squirrel outside darts this way
and that, like a honeymooner looking for a mislaid wedding
ring.
Ballet is not his thing.
Everything as it is, being master without being
master of its own being.
Everything, a discreet as such, spread out
on an endless center, its irreparable limits its torment.
God, the secret of the differencing.
Wishbone of snow on the mountain and below,
a grasshopper-shaped trailer pointing to the prairies.
Goodbye, flitting sons.
You're the taking-place of God, who,
taking-place, scatters his goodness differently,
indifferently.
A mountain cannot but look down on the clefts,
its heavings made.
My daughter's the thicket in which I bleed.
Goodbye, daughters.
The pure taking-place of everything
scatters you, red berry ball and smear.
Steps maul me all the way to the smoke half-uttered in my hair.
Day and night, I try to clamor out of my separateness.
Day and night, waste the good within.
Not taking place is my sin.
Daylight in the evening.
Openness without a stint.
More craving than when there is a mountain.
This morning, the thusness of the candy necklace
in the student store.
Blue, yellow, white, and pink beads snuggling together.
They made me want a hug.
Click, they'd go, if you shook them.
Click, click, a telegraphy of hardened sweet talk.
I was hungry, but I didn't want to strip the string.
The candy necklace was outside the world."