WEBVTT

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The next is a poem.

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I figure I'm here in a
community of a lot of poets,

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a lot of readers of poetry,
a lot of students of poetry,

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teachers of poetry.

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And I can kind of let loose
and read you longer poems

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and read you anything I
feel like reading you.

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So I'm going from
that assumption.

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This is a poem in 29 sections
called "Contradictions--

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Tracking Poems."

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And it was written
between 1983 and 1985

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in New England at
a time of a lot

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of political and personal
upheaval in the world

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and in my own life, which I
was trying to put together.

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And it's a kind of journal poem.

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There is a "you" in it which
is the beloved of the poet,

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the one addressed.

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There is a "you" which
is a kind of public you.

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And there is a "you" which
is the you that the poet uses

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to address her own self.

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So not all these yous are
necessarily synchronous.

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Look, this is January.

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The worst onslaught
is ahead of us.

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Don't be lured by these
soft gray afternoons,

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these sunsets cut from pink
and violet tissue paper,

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by the thought the
days are lengthening.

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Don't let the solstice fool you.

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Our lives will always be
a stew of contradictions.

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The worst moment
of winter can come

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in April, when the peepers
are stubbornly still,

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and our bodies plod
on without conviction,

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and our thoughts cramp down
before the sheer arsenal

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of everything that tries us--

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this battering,
blunt-edged life.