WEBVTT

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Now I'm going to read
for a very few minutes

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from yet another book
about which maybe I'll

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say of three or
four things because

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of the strange
nature of the poems

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in it and because of the--

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which you'll recognize the
fairly quickly when I tell you

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about the titles of them--

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titles of these poems are titles
like arrogant, sentimental,

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fat, on a diet, generous,
driven, manic, depressive,

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meticulous, lazy, et cetera.

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It's true about us,
I imagine, that we

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have trouble living
without having stories

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that we use to explain ourselves
to ourselves, to our friends.

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That we have the stories
that we use to explain

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why the world is the way it is.

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And that the stories are
absolutely necessary to us

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and they're never
quite accurate enough.

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These poems are
simply a collection

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of small stories that we--

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of that sort.

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And I want to read
a very few of them.

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Most of these are quite short.

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Because of the nature of
these titles, there are--

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in which the titles promise very
exact and precise definitions

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and the nature of reality,
which is to say that it resists

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exactly precise
definitions, there's--

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one is invited in
writing such poems

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to use aphorisms and mottos
and folk sayings and so forth.

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And so many of these
poems have epigraphs,

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which is a practice
I'd never used before.

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But the nature of these
poems seem to call for it.

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And I've taken them from
everywhere, Flaubert, Eudora

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Welty.

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In the case of this poem, Jake
LaMotta, the famous boxer.

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The poem is called, On a Diet.

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And the reason why Jake LaMotta
would be quoted about diets

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is that when he was
fighting, he always

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had trouble making his weight.

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And there would be a kind of
countdown in the sports pages.

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And the hipper newspapers would
sometimes send somebody out

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from their woman's page--

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it's now known as
the lifestyle page--

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and interview him
about his diet.

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And he would give tips
on how to lose weight.

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And the epigraph for this
poem is one of those.

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Eat all you want,
but don't swallow it.

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On a Diet.

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The ruth of soups and balm of
sauces, I renounce equally.

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What Rorschach saw in ink, I
find in the buttery frizzle

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in the saute pan.

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And I leave it behind.

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And the sweet peat smoke
tang of bananas and cream

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in clots and chocolate.

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I give away the satisfactions of
food and take desire for food.

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I'll be traveling light to
the heaven of revisions.

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Why be adipose and expense et
cetera, in our waste et cetera?

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Something like the body
of the poet's work,

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with its pale shadows, begins
to pare and replace the poet's

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body, and isn't it time?

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