So one of my--
this is a strange experience to be reading to your own face,
to your own face in the Overlook Hotel bar room.
There's got to be a poem in there somewhere, someday.
Listen, I'm so-- someday, I'll get to Tucson.
Do you know there's a poem I have
to say I started thinking about ways to console myself
about not being in Tucson right now,
not hiking up the Sabino Canyon tomorrow,
not going to the museum, not spending hours poring over
the amazing archives of the Poetry Center
that I've been hearing about for years from Simmons Buntin
and Alison Hawthorne Deming and others.
And it put me in mind of speaking of poetry.
There's a great poem by Billy Collins, called "Consolation,"
that you may be aware of, where he's not going anywhere
for the summer.
So he has this-- he writes this poem that
begins, "How agreeable it is to not be touring Italy
this summer, wandering her cities
and ascending her torrid hill towns.
So yeah, that came to mind."
But speaking of Alison, listen, she
is a special, special person, a special friend.
And I want to dedicate the reading of this poem
to her tonight.
And it's called "Contextual Education."
He wouldn't make us look like monkeys,
says a student in the front row.
Because he made us in his image.
She laughs and turns to check for smiles and nods.
The professor stands by the whiteboard where he has
written the word adaptation.
He's thinking of all the lessons,
like similes, that have appeared in black ink across this space
and that have, like species, gone.
He cannot help but see her in the church band on the field
trip, pretending she doesn't know she's the pretty one who
doesn't know exactly what's happening inside the boy beside
her when she tosses her pink streaked hair and blows a word
across his ear.
In the room's silence, he shows them
what she means by turning her hands into big ears
and wagging her head.
They wonder what sort of experiment they are,
as their professor turns off the lights
and clicks a chimp's face onto the screen.
No one says a thing at the God looking back
from those brown, sad eyes.