Since I found out that my book Who's Who Vivid
is going to come out, I've been giving--
I had the opportunity to give more readings.
And I've been reading this poem, which sort of mentions
the last election.
I live in Ohio and teach at art college.
And I always feel like I have to apologize for living there.
[LAUGHTER]
So, I'm sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
I did the best I could.
This poem is called "Letter to a Friend
Who I'll Never See Again."
"I keep scanning the sky for a glimpse of you spinning.
But after a few minutes when you don't appear,
I go back to what Breton said about the magnificence
of waiting, and about the love of the irrational,
and the irrational of love.
From there, Wittgenstein's preface to the Philosophical
Investigations is a cakewalk, especially the part about
going, 'criss-cross in every direction over a wide field
of thought.'
With that in mind, I do hope you'll forgive me for ripping
off your Paris poem.
Though this isn't a poem, it's a letter, I'm insisting,
no copies will be made.
I will not send it out.
But if I do, I will send it to you,
where it can be appreciated or ridiculed the most.
How strange it is trying on someone else's voice,
and yet stranger that it's easier than wearing one's own.
I have only three pairs of shoes, which is laughable,
I know, and one of those is missing its laces.
I bet you have lots of shoes and all manner of dresses, ones
that anyone would be lucky to see.
In New York City, where you live,
there many sites worth noting.
Your dresses, I'm sure, being only one of them.
There's also the Statue of Liberty, the Met, and KGB,
if you're into that sort of thing.
I haven't been to New York in years.
Though the last time I was there,
my friend Flaviano punched a hole in the wall.
But the story of how that came to happen
isn't nearly as interesting as the fact
that he punched a hole in the wall in a hole in the wall.
It was in the East Village at a club called
Tony's or Strawberry Pie Filling or something
equally obvious and obnoxious.
Our band had just played, and the owner wouldn't pay us.
A month later, the place was closed.
I like to think it leaked to death, which probably isn't
far from the truth, as the owner was an intravenous drug user.
Those guys never win, but often they
don't pay the bands that play in their clubs either.
It seems that hard drug use doesn't preclude liking music,
but it does dictate what one does with one's money.
I don't have any money.
But if I did, I would send you something other
than bootlegs and manuscripts.
I'm not sure what, maybe flowers, but in a week,
they'd be dead.
And what kind of a gift is that?
I can't think of anything worse than getting flowers.
As always, they point to garbage in the end, which are things
I try hard not to think about.
Patti Smith called Gregory Corso a flower when he died,
which sounds lovely at first and then descends quickly
into nonsense and loss.
Corso, whose poetry nobody cares about but me, said that,
'spontaneity in poetry is the notes, not the poems.'
And I'm sure he'd say the same about gift giving, letter
writing, et cetera.
Like everything else, this started out with fire,
but now I'm losing steam.
I'm tired of making the world up out of nothing.
You said, 'tell me what you believe in,' in response to one
of my poems.
I believe in nothing.
And at the same time, I believe that it's
crucial to believe in something in the face of nothing,
and to live with the consequences of that belief.
Still, it's hard.
Even understanding that sentence is hard.
I believe in making indefensible statements,
and defending them any way.
I believe in walking the blood red carpet.
I believe that art is about continuity,
and rupture, and joy.
And that as James Longenbach says,
'poetry's greatest power is to instill in us a craving
for something other than poetry.'
'I am the maker and destroyer of worlds.'
That's Shiva, via J. Robert Oppenheimer.
I have a million quotations in my head.
Ruinous, formal, the slightest loss of attention
leads to death.
Oh, bomb, I love you.
There's no such thing as a breakdown.
Everything turns into writing.
And I am lost without you.
I believe in every one of them, though they
don't amount to much.
I apologize for all of this.
The letter, this poem itself, but also for the apology
itself because no one likes when writers either
apologize for that which they're about to write, or apologize
for that which they've already written,
or apologize for that which they're
in the process of writing.
Also, nobody likes quatrains, and I would never
use them in person.
But in this letter, I have found them to be a necessity.
I believe in the Almighty Zero.
I believe in inclusion rather than exclusion.
I voted for the Democrats in the most recent election,
even though my own politics are much more left wing.
As you know, the trick to a letter like this
is figuring a way to end it that pushes the content forward
while simultaneously acting as a summary of it.
I cannot do this.
I wouldn't know where to start, and I'm far too
impatient to think about it.
I'm not being clever, but rather just the opposite.
I'm telling you, I love you.
But it sounds like a rant.
It sounds like somebody plastered in Ohio.
This is how I burned all my bridges."