WEBVTT

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In the sort of question
and answer session

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this afternoon,
one of the things

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that we were talking about
was allusions and the way

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in which, if one comes out
of a particular culture

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and tradition, allusions
are not necessarily

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going to find a
universal resonance

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and that it is increasingly
difficult at this particular

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period in American
history, I think,

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for writers of my generation,
and perhaps, particularly,

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for someone who didn't
even start in America

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but came here after
I was married--

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I grew up in England--

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particularly difficult
to count on one's readers

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knowing the same
things that one knows

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and which one used to
sort of take for granted

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were common knowledge,
because that whole range

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of common knowledge, there is
so much input in our lives now

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and I suppose there
will be more and more.

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It's very confusing.

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Nobody can know it all.

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And if Western culture and
its traditions of what one

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comes out of, one has
to use those allusions

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but they more and more
seem to need footnoting.

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Well, this poem, I suppose is,
in a way, an example of that

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because this poem
talks about John Ruskin

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and it quotes a lot from Ruskin.

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So I hope it wouldn't be
inaccessible to somebody

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that knew nothing about Ruskin.

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I hope it sort of makes
itself reasonably accessible.

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But, on the other hand,
if you did know something

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about Ruskin, it would have
a context that would give it

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a different kind of resonance.

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It also talks about
John Muir and I

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think one can, at the
moment, count on the fact

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that people who read poetry
and go to poetry readings

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also care about the
wilderness and animal ecology

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and therefore they would
know who John Muir is.

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All the quotes in
here are from Ruskin.

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It's called "The
Faithful Lover."

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"Play with a few
decades, shift them.

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Try to imagine Ruskin in the
new world walking with John

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Muir in the wilderness.

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He, who's enraptured
first sight of the Alps,

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transformed him, that
meek Protestant Sunday,

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when he and mama
and papa and dull

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cousin Mary were patiently
waiting the secular week's

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beginning before
attempting the sites,

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but all unawares came
face-to-face with the sublime.

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Unmistakably not clouds,
surpassing all that engravings

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had promised.

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Floating west of
Schaffhausen, sharp,

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tinged with rose, far into
bloom, suddenly beyond.

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Changed him from docile
prig, for a child-

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he was 14 and knew so
much and so little--

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to a man of passion,
whatever his failings.

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Imagine him in Yosemite.

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Would loyalties already divided,
rock simple or rock wort,

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strata of mountains, strata of
human craft, tools of geology

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or tools of art have split him?

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Would wilderness,
legends unknown,

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or, if known, offering
no toehold for his mind's

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expectant footing,
have swept him

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wholly into its torrents
of non-human grandeur?

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Or wouldn't art
have pulled him back

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in the end to layered
history felt in the bones.

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Even geology a fraction
of that insistence,

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loved for its poetry of
form, color, textures.

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Not as a scientist, loves it.

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Back to where human hands
created rich tessellations

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or the shadowy rialto
through its colossal curve,

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slowly forth, that strange
curve, so delicate,

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so adamantine, strong
as a mountain cavern,

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graceful as a bow just bent.

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Back to where nature, even
the Alps, still so remote,

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unsung through so
many centuries,

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lay in the net or
nest of perception.

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Seen then, re-seen,
recognized, wrought in myth."

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