In the sort of question and answer session
this afternoon, one of the things
that we were talking about was allusions and the way
in which, if one comes out of a particular culture
and tradition, allusions are not necessarily
going to find a universal resonance
and that it is increasingly difficult at this particular
period in American history, I think,
for writers of my generation, and perhaps, particularly,
for someone who didn't even start in America
but came here after I was married--
I grew up in England--
particularly difficult to count on one's readers
knowing the same things that one knows
and which one used to sort of take for granted
were common knowledge, because that whole range
of common knowledge, there is so much input in our lives now
and I suppose there will be more and more.
It's very confusing.
Nobody can know it all.
And if Western culture and its traditions of what one
comes out of, one has to use those allusions
but they more and more seem to need footnoting.
Well, this poem, I suppose is, in a way, an example of that
because this poem talks about John Ruskin
and it quotes a lot from Ruskin.
So I hope it wouldn't be inaccessible to somebody
that knew nothing about Ruskin.
I hope it sort of makes itself reasonably accessible.
But, on the other hand, if you did know something
about Ruskin, it would have a context that would give it
a different kind of resonance.
It also talks about John Muir and I
think one can, at the moment, count on the fact
that people who read poetry and go to poetry readings
also care about the wilderness and animal ecology
and therefore they would know who John Muir is.
All the quotes in here are from Ruskin.
It's called "The Faithful Lover."
"Play with a few decades, shift them.
Try to imagine Ruskin in the new world walking with John
Muir in the wilderness.
He, who's enraptured first sight of the Alps,
transformed him, that meek Protestant Sunday,
when he and mama and papa and dull
cousin Mary were patiently waiting the secular week's
beginning before attempting the sites,
but all unawares came face-to-face with the sublime.
Unmistakably not clouds, surpassing all that engravings
had promised.
Floating west of Schaffhausen, sharp,
tinged with rose, far into bloom, suddenly beyond.
Changed him from docile prig, for a child-
he was 14 and knew so much and so little--
to a man of passion, whatever his failings.
Imagine him in Yosemite.
Would loyalties already divided, rock simple or rock wort,
strata of mountains, strata of human craft, tools of geology
or tools of art have split him?
Would wilderness, legends unknown,
or, if known, offering no toehold for his mind's
expectant footing, have swept him
wholly into its torrents of non-human grandeur?
Or wouldn't art have pulled him back
in the end to layered history felt in the bones.
Even geology a fraction of that insistence,
loved for its poetry of form, color, textures.
Not as a scientist, loves it.
Back to where human hands created rich tessellations
or the shadowy rialto through its colossal curve,
slowly forth, that strange curve, so delicate,
so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern,
graceful as a bow just bent.
Back to where nature, even the Alps, still so remote,
unsung through so many centuries,
lay in the net or nest of perception.
Seen then, re-seen, recognized, wrought in myth."