I have more announcements than usual
and I know you won't remember them all,
but I'm going to make them all anyway.
Our next reading is one week from tonight
in this auditorium, that's February 10.
And the reader is Douglas Canfield,
professor in Literature Department at the University.
And he's reading various voices in British and American poetry.
And then our second reading is two weeks
from tonight, the 17th.
And that will be a group of graduate students reading
in the Terrace Lounge of the student union.
The readers will be Stuart Brown, Nancy Eimers, Ann Guido,
Terry Pollock and Cynthia Wilson.
There's a special reading this Sunday night
at the Mosaic Cafe.
Mosaic is at the corner of Speedway and Silverbell,
west of campus.
That's at 7:30.
And the readers are Hal Lenke, Julie Godwin,
and Jefferson Carter.
Pima College is having a very special reading
on February 18--
that's two weeks from tomorrow--
and the reading will be May Swenson.
Tonight I hope you can come to the Lounge.
We're going back to the Terrace Lounge
tonight for a reception for Mr. Stafford.
The Terrace Lounge is the most inaccessible room
in the Student Union.
So if you'll just follow the leader
you'll find it eventually.
What do you say about William Stafford?
I don't know.
[APPLAUSE]
This is my fifth opportunity to hear Mr. Stafford read.
Each time it's a great joy and delight.
He's published five major collections
with Harper and Row.
Most recent Stories That Could Be True.
And a large number of small press
chapbooks, most recently with Copper Canyon Press.
The book-- Sometimes Like a Legend.
He's received all the major awards in American literature--
Guggenheim grant, National Endowment, National Book Award,
and on and on.
It's a great pleasure to introduce
our friend, William Stafford.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
"Once when the waves were talking, one said,
"I'll never be back."
And then the rest ran on toward shore but
that one went forth so far it's never been seen again.
When you walk along sometimes, you think of that absent wave
and of all that doesn't exist anymore.
Things of the other years, they'll never be back, you say.
You stop and look out.
It's already tomorrow somewhere.
Someone like you is walking.
A wave is beginning to speak and the rest shrug and go on.
You stand and care.
Much has never existed, you know.
You think of things to say; waves come in.
Wherever you walk you see a place for that wave,
but it isn't there."
I didn't know how to begin.
I've tried this before.
I have several beginnings and that was one way.
Just "Once when the waves were talking."
Now I have one--
it's called "How It Began."
That's why I thought this would be a good way to begin.
"They struggled their legs and blindly loved,
those puppies inside my jacket as I walk through town.
They crawled for warmth and licked
each other, their poor mother dead and one kind boy
to save them.
I spread my arms over their world and hurried along.
At Ellen's place I knocked and waited.
The tumult invading my sleeves, all my jacket alive.
When she came to the door we tumbled, black, white, gray,
hungry, all over the living room floor together,
rolling, whining, happy, and blind."
Now since I've been here someone raised a question
that's been haunting me for the last 24 hours about
whether when you write the things are controlled
by images, or metaphors, or syntax.
And I like to make quick moves and then see what happens,
so I opted for syntax.
But then I was thinking about reading this: "Carrying
the Puppies Inside my Jacket."
And I won't belabor this because only a few here
are involved in our discussion.
But to me it feels like just telling
about walking through town carrying puppies in my jacket.
That's all.
And can I help it if people get other things out of it?
No, I can't.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you.
This is called "Serving with Gideon."
"Now I remember in our town the druggist
prescribed the Coca-Cola mostly in tapered glasses
to us and to the elevator man in a paper cup
so he could drink it elsewhere because he was Black.
And now I remember the legion gambling
in the back room and no women but girls,
old boys who ran the town.
They were generous to their sons or the sons of friends
and of course, I was almost one.
I remember winter light closing its great blue fist slowly
eastward along the street, and the dark then deep as war
arched over a radio show called The '30s and the Great Old USA.
Look down, stars, I was almost one of the boys.
My mother was folding her handkerchief,
the library seethed and sparked right and wrong art,
and carefully I walked with my cup toward the elevator man."
Now when I was reading this I got several little signals
from myself, and those happen I try
to disregard them so as to keep up the momentum in the poem.
But I was almost derailed by the realization here that one
of the--
a distinction that I have is being so old.
That's what almost derailed me.
That is that I could refer to the '30s,
a radio show called The '30s and the Great Old USA.
And I thought of saying to you, "Children there
was a time when they didn't have television.
It was a radio show."
And the strange vision that comes to me
is standing in the University of Kansas
facing a radio just the way we face a television set
and listening to President Roosevelt. Well, I have--
I had stopped a minute.
I think I better not get historical.
Well, I mean, not hysterical, historical.
I have here a poem that I've often
identified as my weakest poem.
And as my friends and semi friends know,
I have a lot of candidates for this honor of the weakest.
But this is the one that starts with very little
and ends with nothing.
So in that sense we just--
and this is my theory of writing as my semi friends know,
I start with anything and then just see what happens.
It's called "The Little Girl by the Fence at School."
"Grass that was moving found all shades of brown,
move them along, float autumn away galloping Southward
where summer had gone.
And that was the morning someone's heart stopped
and all became still.
A girl said, "Forever?"
And the grass, "Yes, forever."
While the sky-- the sky--
the sky."
When I was trying to figure out what to bring
and what to sequence, I wanted to have variety if I could.
I realize some of my limitations and I guess,
I'm begging your indulgence if I seem
to be scrambling in various directions
here because I have something that--
and I'm not sure how relevant this is to your setting.
Though, when I look at a map of the country
there's little dots around it, I believe
maybe it's relevant everywhere.
It's called "Incident."
"They had this cloud they kept like a Zeppelin tethered
to a smokestack, and you couldn't see it
but sent out these strange little rays and after a while
you felt funny.
They had this man with a box.
He pointed it at the Zeppelin and it said, "Jesus."
The man hurried farther away and called out, "Hear ye, hear ye."
Then they coaxed the Zeppelin down into the smokestack
and they said, "We won't do that anymore."
For a long time the box kept shaking its head,
but it finally said, "OK.
Hit it."
But quietly to us it whispered, "Let's get out of here."
One of the things I was thinking of breaking the sequence up
with was confessions about, well, all sorts of things.
But one is just where things are published.
And I see Field Magazine, Oberlin, Hampden-Sydney Poetry
Review, American Poetry Review.
I don't know.
The one's from a book but it must
have been somewhere else too.
This one-- "Incident"-- the reason I thought of this
at this moment is after I wrote Incident,
I thought where shall I send this?
So I sent it to a magazine in Pennsylvania
called the Slow Loris Reader.
And I like to identify these heroic magazines that
are all over the country putting out portraits.
This is called "Yellow Cars."
"Some of the cars are yellow that go by.
Those you look at, so glimmering when
light glances at their passing.
Think of that hope: someone will like me maybe.
The tan ones don't care, the blue
have made a mistake, the white haven't tried, but the yellow--
you turn your head.
Hope lasts a long time if you're happy."
I just want to stop long enough on this.
And maybe I won't--
I hope I won't trouble this issue very much this evening.
But just stop on it for a minute.
How easy writing is.
How all of us practice every day the language.
We hold resolutions that we're going to get up the energy
to compose something today.
We get up and say, "What's for breakfast?"
Or whatever we start.
We start talking the great novel of our lives
without even knowing we're doing it.
How easy it is!
"Some of the cars are yellow, that go by.
Those you look at," and so on.
And it's as if, well, as I said, I guess I won't belabor this.
But to me it's as if you get positioned
right for the experience as it comes to you,
you can even make all kinds of mistakes.
But if you don't get situated right,
then finesse won't save it.
I mean, there's just a way to blunder along
or sometimes it seems so to me.
Maybe it's all too evident to you.
This is called "Anticipating."
"Keeping your word is bell into a future memory to wait there.
You hold that stilled bell hidden,
but you know where the sound will
be deep and slow, ready to toll all day all night, miles
around.
Others may change their word.
They can pile rocks on it, they back away,
they dance on the stones, but the bell waits in its crypt
and it slowly moves."
I neglected to say places where poems are published.
This was published in the magazine called Three Sisters.
I believe it's Georgetown University in DC.
If you're writing where you are about things that occur to you
and the writings just grow out of how it happens and you're
not aiming for certain magazines or certain markets
or certain fashions, then what happens--
what happens to you?
Maybe nothing.
But maybe there are--
over the country, there are these magazines that are not
looking where fashions are.
And they're not looking to strengthen the national will
or anything like that or attack it either.
They're just interested in things that happen,
that occur to people over the country.
So that's why I think of mentioning some of these.
I'll mention the place of publication first on this one
because probably this is the best, yeah,
this is the best phrase on the page.
It's the name of the magazine where it was published--
Negative Capability is the name on it.
A new magazine though not a new phrase.
It's called "Dropout."
"Grundy and Hoagland, and all the rest who ganged our class
and wrecked the high school gym for fun,
you thought of them last night and how they laughed
when they beat up a Mexican.
Later they marched against Hitler Youth,
but admired them too.
How they were brave and sang.
Why?
You should see how those troopers fought.
And Hoagland came back to a job with the FBI.
Remember the team, the celebration and the Lions Hall
with Coach Gist there, a real man, the speeches,
the jackrabbit chili.
You looked through the smoke and the smoky jokes
and vomited and never went back again."
[APPLAUSE]
Best in class yesterday afternoon that this all
started for me just from the names of some people I
began to think of in my high school class.
And the names were the best thing
that occurred to me and they were from memory but I had
to change the names because--
but I did my best.
"When I came back to Earth, it was my bike threw me.
I woke to day not real day.
Some of the sunlight came like bottles
piled in a window frame.
People wore pictures with labels--
doctor, intern, aid.
I remember a cookie big as the sun that lasted
as long as a glass of milk.
Someday your world won't last all day.
You'll blink, you'll fall to Earth,
and where the ocean was will be that color
here it was before you came.
Your head and what you hit will sound the same."
Partly just to put some insulation between these poems,
I want to say that I had this brilliant idea of giving
my dog a workout.
And when I'd take it out on the leash, I'd get the workout.
So I decided I'd get on my bicycle
and really make that dog work.
And it was fine except there was another dog.
And as you bicycle riders can imagine,
all sorts of odd things began to happen.
And that's when I found out it's a good idea
to have a helmet on.
It was just right.
Not too hard but enough that I knew it was real.
"Once in the '40s."
"We were alone one night on a long road in Montana.
This was in winter, a big night bar to the stars.
We had hitched-- my wife and I--
and left our ride at a crossing to go on.
Tired and cold but brave, we trudged along.
This, we said, was our life.
Watched over, allowed to go where we wanted.
We said we'd come back sometime when we got rich.
We'd leave the others and find a night like this.
Whatever we had to give, no matter how far,
to be so happy again."
I just want to stop for a minute for insulation
among these poems.
Say, when you think about it, how rich we are.
We can do the things we want to, [? hopefully ?]..
And I can remember going out hiking in the winter.
And it's just fun to get far from any place, cooled,
and just to be able to make it.
Have a good enough jacket and hike along.
And I have some--
one place where I was I read this poem once in the '40s.
And there was a girl in the audience
that was up in Bemidji, Minnesota come to think of it.
And when they say winter they mean winter up there.
And she came up after the reading, she said,
"I hitchhiked 60 miles to get here tonight.
And I want to take a look at your poem "Once in the 40s."
I felt this kinship with young people.
Last summer I was at a couple of writer's conferences.
One was on the East Coast and one on the West.
And at Port Townsend we'd go into big barracks for our lunch
and you'd get your plate, knife and fork and spoon,
and napkin all a certain way.
And this comes from that.
It's called "Objector."
"In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoon
to ward off complicity, the ordered life our leaders
have offered us.
Thin is a knife, our chance to live depends on such a sign
while others talk.
The Pentagon from the moon is bouncing exact commands.
Forget your faith, be ready for whatever it takes to win.
We face annihilation unless all citizens get in line.
I bow and cross my fork and spoon.
Somewhere other citizens more fearfully
bow in a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.
And both mean, you hostages over there will never
be slaughtered by my act.
Our vows cross never to kill and call it fate."
Well, I have here--
I hurry on to something called "School Days."
It has three parts but they're not very long.
"After the test they sent an expert questionnaire
to our school.
"Who is this kid Bohr?"
When Bohr came in he asked the expert, "Who are you?"
And for a long time they looked at each other
and Bohr said, "Thanks, I thought so."
Then they talked about why the test was given.
Afterwards they shook hands and Bohr walked slowly away.
He turned and called out, "You passed."
Part 2-- "The School Days."
"Enough sleet had pasted over the window by 3 o'clock
so we couldn't tell if it was dark.
And our pony would be out there in the little shed
waiting to take us home.
Teacher banked the stove with an extra lug.
That was the storm of 1934.
For two days we waited, singing and praying,
and I guess it worked, even though the snow drifted
over the roof.
But the pony was dead when they dug us out."
Part 3 of "School Days."
"At a tiny desk inside my desk, a doll bends over a book.
In the book is a feather found at the beach from a dead gull.
While Ms. Leonard reads The Highwayman,
I bend over my book and cry and fly all alone through the night
toward being this person I am."
Now when I was reading this--
I don't want you to think about this too seriously--
but I suddenly had this little ripple of apprehension.
What am I doing?
What sort of thing am I reading?
What are these things?
"School Days."
Who is this kid Bohr?
And so on.
Well, I want to face up to this for just a minute.
Well, I don't quite know how to do it.
They're not, I mean, after all, it's
not charge of the light brigade or anything like that.
It's just little bits of language.
Just little excursions.
And I remember-- and I've even put this in an article
and I know some people here know it.
But I was reading a biography of Niels Bohr--
the scientist from Denmark.
And they told about how when he was in school-- when
he was a kid in school they tried
to teach him a composition.
Niels Bohr was a lucky kid.
He must have been.
The torrent of experience going through his head.
But he couldn't get this pattern they had for composition.
They taught him that anything he wrote
had to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And Aristotle knew it and everybody since maybe earlier.
I don't know.
But Niels Bohr-- you know, wheels in his head.
So I memorized the last sentence in one of his themes
he wrote when he was in school.
It was this, "And I would also like to mention aluminum."
[LAUGHTER]
That's why I thought of saying some questioner says, "Who
is this kid, Bohr?"
There was a request and I want to read a poem as requested.
I'm glad to put it in.
Called "My Father, October 1940."
"He picks up what he thinks is a road map and it is his death.
He holds it easily and nothing can take it from his firm hand.
The pulse and his thumb on the map
says, "1:19 PM next Tuesday at this intersection."
And an ambulance begins to throb while his face looks tired.
Any time anyone may pick up something
so right that he can't put it down.
That is the problem for all who travel.
They fatally own whatever is really theirs.
And that is the inner thread, the luck, what can hold?
If it is to be, nothing breaks it.
Millions of observers guess all the time
but each person once can say, "Sure."
Then he's an observer.
He isn't right or wrong, he just wins or loses."
I shuffled some of these things out of the sequence I had them.
Thinking I may leave them out entirely
but I want to go back to one.
It's a matter of how-- for me it's
a matter of feeling too much and one thing happening.
But I hope this is all right with a little dilution
of things in between.
It's called "A Walk in the Country."
"To walk anywhere in the world, to live now, to speak,
to breathe a harmless breath.
What snowflake even may try today so calm alive, so mild
to death?
Out in the country once, walking the hollow night,
I felt a burden of silver come.
My back had come light pouring through the trees like money.
That walk was late though.
Late I gently came into town and a terrible thing had happened.
The world, wide, unbearably bright, had leaped on me.
I carried mountains.
Though there was much I knew, though kind people turned away,
I walked there shamed into that still picture
to bring my fear and pain.
By dawn I felt all right, my hair was covered with dew,
the light was bearable, the air came still and cool,
and God had come back there to carry the world again.
Since then, while over the world the wind appeals events,
and people contend like fools, like a stubborn tumbleweed,
I hold.
Hold where I live and look into every face.
Old friends, where can one find a partner
for the long dance over the fields?"
I want to hasten on to something called
"With Neighbors One Afternoon."
I can just feel myself relaxing when I say this.
"With Neighbors One Afternoon."
Someone's, oh-- now I have to stop for a minute.
As I started to read this line I realized there
was stumbling into something.
This is a fairly recent poem.
One before that snags my attention
was farther back when we had to say someone he or everyone he.
We couldn't say someone they.
OK, the revolution has happened.
So are there are any teachers of composition here?
That's all right.
I mean, your generation too.
I'm going to go in the next generation for a minute.
"With Neighbors One Afternoon."
"Someone said, stirring their tea,
"I would come home any time just for this.
To look out the clear backyard air and then into the cup."
You could see the tiniest pattern of bark on the trees
and every slight angle of color change in the sunshine.
Millions of miles of gold light lavished on people like us.
You could put out your hand and feel
the rush of the years rounding your life
into these days of hours.
From somewhere a leaf came gliding slowly down
and rested on the lawn.
Remember that scene?
Inside it you folded the last of your jealousy and hate
and all those deeds so hard to forget.
Absolution.
Swish.
You took the past into your mouth
and swallowed it, warm, thin, bitter."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I was at a class in the afternoon
at a college in Oregon about three weeks ago.
And one of the students had a question.
We read each other's work and talk back and forth.
And one of the students said, "A teacher
told me never to have three adjectives in a row.
What do you think of that?"
Well, if you travel around you meet these emergencies
all the time.
You want to--
[LAUGHTER]
You want to stay in good with everybody.
And then maybe the faculty is taking you out to dinner
and here is this student loosing this quail all of a sudden.
What shall I do?
So I did all sorts of things.
Anyway, I began to brood about it.
And in the reading that night I found myself reading this poem
and I felt myself coming toward the end
and I knew something awful was going to happen.
"Warm, thin, bitter, and good."
So the next week, by the way, after the class this teacher
said the person who told me was--
she told me the name.
I know-- I know that teacher.
And he stopped by with a manuscript of his poems.
And I said, "I heard"--
Well, I'll tell you it was Primus St. John.
I said, "Primus, I heard you told a student you can't
use three adjectives in a row?
That sounds pretty good.
I've always believed in not too many adjectives and so on."
And he sort of looked at me and said, "Well,"
said, "I guess I told her not to use 3 as it is."
This is called "Judgments."
"I accuse Ellen.
You have become 40 years old and successful.
Tall, well-groomed, very thoughtful, a secretary,
Ellen, I accuse.
George, you know how to help others.
You manage a school.
You never let fear or pride or faltering plans
break your control.
George, I accuse.
I accuse Tom.
You have found a role.
Now you meet all kinds of people and let
them find the truth of your eminence.
You need not push.
Oh, Tom, I do accuse.
Remember the gawky, hardly to survive students we were?
Not one of us going to succeed.
All of us abjectly aware of how cold,
unmanageable the real world was.
I remember.
And that fear was true and is true.
Last, I accuse myself.
My terrible poise, knowing this.
Knowing that then we sprawled in the world
and were ourselves part of it.
Now we hold it firmly away with gracious gestures
like this of mine.
We've achieved.
I see it all too well.
And I am accused, and I accuse."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I shift my feet because I wanted to make a transition.
And I realized I just pounded along
these poems for quite a while.
I once went to a poetry reading given by Mark Van Doren.
Again, I'm bringing history.
And he was-- he was a charming, really a winsome person.
And I was interested in his poetry.
And I think he talked for about an hour and a half.
I'm not going to do that about.
An hour-- 50 minutes to an hour.
We talk about an hour and a half and it was all wonderful.
But he read only three short poems.
And I thought that's really getting mileage out of poems.
That's the way to do it.
I just have to go pounding along.
One of the-- oh, well, I'll get a little mileage out of this.
There was a teacher at Portland State in Oregon
who fell asleep while lecturing.
[LAUGHTER]
So I told Mark Van Doren about that
and he so easily topped me.
He said-- he said at the University of Chicago,
John Dewey fell asleep while lecturing on attention.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, back to pounding away.
It's called "At the Klamath Berry Festival."
"The war chief danced the old way, the eagle wing
he held before his mouth.
And when he turned the boom, boom stopped.
He took two steps, a sociologist was there.
The scout troop danced.
I envied him the places he had not been.
The boom began again.
Outside he heard the stick game and the Blackfoot gamblers
arguing at poker under lanterns.
Still moccasins and bashful, holding an eagle wing
before his mouth, listening and listening,
he danced after others stopped.
He took two steps, the boom caught up,
the mountains rose, the still, deep river
slid, but never broke the quiet.
I looked back when I left.
He took two steps, he took two steps, sociologists."
When I looked at this old one and down
at the bottom where it was published in a magazine,
I want to use my age here to say it was published
in a magazine at Chico in California by someone
and no one had heard of named John Gardner at Chico State.
About two years ago, I heard from the other side
of the country--
Binghamton, New York-- where John Gardner is now.
Out of Chico State his magazine was
called Mount Shasta Selections.
Someone asked for-- was looking for poems
for a magazine called MSS.
I don't know whether you say manuscripts or MSS.
And so I wrote because I knew where Gardner was.
And I said, "Is this the same old magazine
that was Mount Shasta Selection, MSS?"
So it's like two lives, a long gap in between.
So creeping into Mount Shasta Selection, creeping into MSS,
I still don't, well, I had call it "Mount Shasta Selections,"
but I suppose it's changed.
Since I read an old one called "At the Klamath Berry
Festival," I'll read another called
"The Farm on the Great Plain."
"A telephone line goes cold.
Birds tread it wherever it goes.
A farm back of a great plain tugs an end of the line.
I call that farm every year.
Ringing it, listening still.
No one is home at the farm, the line gives only a hum.
Some year I will ring the line on a night,
at last the right one.
And with an eye tapered from the phone on the wall,
I will see the tenant who waits, the last one left at the place.
Through the dark my braille eye will lovingly touch his face.
"Hello, is mother at home?"
"No one is home today."
"But father, he should be here."
"No one-- no one is here."
"But you, are you the one?"
Then the line will be gone because both ends will be home.
No space, no birds, no farm.
Myself will be the plain.
Wise as winter is gray, pure as cold posts
go facing toward what I know."
When I was reading this I thought again.
And since student generations are so brief even as here once
I want to say it again.
My contribution to the academic altitude of this occasion
is to give a truth about language.
Some syllables are more equal than others,
is this great truth?
What if it really is a truth?
And that without you knowing it and without the dictionary even
thinking of telling you about it,
when you look up definitions these syllables
make a difference.
So that if-- well, I thought of it in connection with this
because the world champion syllable
is all round through this poem.
Not because I thought of putting it there
but just because if you get on a certain wavelength
with yourself, God and everybody else
begins to help you put things together.
Sort of the feeling.
And in this poem that world champion syllable
is in farm, in home, in hum, and in other of the words.
And of course, it is that syllable om--
om-- om.
And it has so much power that people all over the world
meditate with.
It comes right in the center of you.
What if every time you say a word with that syllable in it
it's either helping or hurting?
And what if you begin to use the language so
that those subliminal helpings and hurting line up
like iron filings for you?
Then you may be doing something in language
and even you won't know what it is.
And the critics may say, "What's the idea?"
And you say, "I don't know."
I just like it.
And then later someone finds out what it was.
Well, now I want to read--
this is for friends in writing workshop and so on.
I want to read of the ideal form for a poem I just recently
discovered.
I mean, for me it's the ideal form.
It's one in which you can just keep accumulating things
and have more or less.
And you put them in any order you like.
You leave out some.
You're like, read some more.
And you'll see how it is.
Just called "Things I Learned Last Week."
"Ants when they meet each other usually pass on the right.
A man in New York has dedicated himself
to telling about injustice.
For $3,000 he will come to your town and tell you about it.
Sometimes you can open the sticky door with your elbow.
Schopenhauer was a pessimist but he flute.
Yeats, Pound, and Eliot saw art as growing from other art.
They studied that.
If I ever die, I'd like it to be in the evening.
That way I'll have all the dark to go with me and no one
will see how I begin to hobble away.
In the Pentagon, one person's job
is to take pins out of towns, hills, and fields
and then save the pins for later."
Oh, you can see how it would go on-- it could go on.
[LAUGHTER]
Turn your head certainly.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I was in the Washington DC area a year ago this last fall.
And staying with someone who lived out the outskirts
and had a nice backyard and it was in the early fall,
good weather.
Didn't have to go to work until later in the day.
We were going to various schools around there.
And we'd sit out and we'd read The Washington Post
and have a breakfast.
And one time I was sitting out there
in the sunshine in this beautiful day reading
The Washington Post when I came to a headline
that I'll never forget.
And this is it.
It was on one of the back pages.
Said, "12 minute warning of attack
needed to evacuate officials."
So while I was--
for some reason staring at that headline,
I'm thinking about sitting at the edge of Washington DC,
I heard a helicopter coming like mad out
of the center of Washington DC.
And I read the headline again, "12 minute warning of attack
needed to evacuate officials," and I
thought kind of a little haiku.
It's like this, "These people are nice
but their priorities are different from ours."
[LAUGHTER]
So then I wrote a little bit longer that got me going.
Something called "Maybe."
I don't know if it's been published.
It's called "Maybe."
"Maybe it's a fear.
Maybe someone decides.
Maybe it takes only one.
Maybe the end begins.
Maybe it has begun.
It runs through the drills fast and they all respond well
and it's over.
Then an explorer comes.
What could they have done?
They could have tried harder, they could have become meaner,
but maybe nothing.
It happened.
The explorer turns over a stone.
Maybe those who sang were the lucky ones."
Well, I hurry on to something else.
"Another Old Guitar."
"For years I was tuned a few notes too high.
I don't see how I could stand it.
You can imagine the strain.
Hours of teen parties then beach trips
with Michael Rowed the Boat.
[LAUGHTER]
And later the marches in all weather singing,
"We shall overcome."
Then I moved on.
Now I play in an Eskimo band in Alaska.
I'll never get back outside through storms.
I dream of returning under a river,
breathing through a straw, carried where the current hides
itself by being just the river.
No.
We play in the tin buildings for the Air Force
and end with a relaxed little number
that the band call their national anthem.
Someday maybe."
Well, in class sometimes you talk
about taking other points of view, adopting a persona.
And so you can be another old guitar, you can be anything
and the world turns into a various kind of place
just by a slight displacing of yourself.
And on some of those earlier ones
I was reading like "The Farm on the Great Plain"
where it says, "With an eye tapered for braille,"
and so on I stop and I try to visualize this and I realize
I'm in trouble.
But what I want to say is that sometimes it
seems to me that writing is--
or maybe any arts like pure math.
You cut loose from the real world
and you make this great big loop.
And sometimes you come out back into the real world
with tremendous velocity you wouldn't have had.
So I would like to just feel free about those things.
Whether I ever get up the velocity or not.
I want to read about four more poems
and I'll be on that 50 minute hour
that we talked about and then sociability
for those who like it.
And I wouldn't like always to be on the same kind of poem
so excuse me if I shuffle a little bit here because I
got thousands of poems.
This one I want to read slowly.
"Sometime when the river is ice ask me mistakes I've made.
Ask me whether what I've done is my life.
Others have come in their slow way into my thought.
And some have tried to help or to hurt.
Ask me what's their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait.
We know the current is there hidden.
And there are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say."
I want to hurry to one I remembered that I had here.
In fact, I think I've got the sequence.
I was at the University of Michigan
and the fellow there named Stephen Dunning
has a lot of ideas to get people to write.
He'd invited a poet named Grace Butcher--
motorcycle driver and poet.
So she had a lot going for her with her students.
And she gave-- but she gave us an assignment.
She said, "Think of something that
happened, but don't tell what happened, tell what you wish
had happened.
Or think of something you said, but don't
tell what you said, tell what you wish you'd said."
And she gave us a half an hour.
And we all began to write.
It was a workshop in which you wrote.
So we went out--
[APPLAUSE]
It's in another state.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, she added one thing that I want to put in here.
She said, "Try to use more of the senses
than you usually would think of using."
So I wrote, "One time when evening
had flowed between houses and paused on the school ground,
I met Hillary's blind little sister following
the gray, smooth railing still warm from the sun
with her hand.
And she stood by the edge holding her face upward waiting
while the last light found her cheek and her hair
and then on over the trees.
You could hear the great sprinkler arm of water
find and then leave the pavement,
and pigeons telling each other their dreams or the dreams
they would have.
We were deep in the well of shadow by then.
And I held out my hand saying, "Tina, it's me.
Hillary says I should tell you it's dark and, oh, Tina, it is.
Together now."
And I reached, our hands touched,
and we found our way home."
Well, you can see how if someone asks you use more senses,
it's a strange thing that happens.
It's almost like that pure math.
Again, as you hold back you give up some senses
in order to have others and all sorts of things
begin to happen.
I guess I'm looking around appealing for all you
writers, all you writers.
Isn't it strange?
It's strange.
All right.
Now since I had a number of fairly dismal poems,
I want to read--
I want to put in this next to last.
An old one called "Religion Back Home."
"When God's parachute failed, along about the spring
of 1945, the sky and Texas jerked
open and we all sailed easily into this new strange harness
on the stars."
This has four parts.
Part 2 of "Religion Back Home."
"The minister smoked, and he drank.
And there was a woman in the choir,
but what really finished him, he wore spats."
[LAUGHTER]
Part 3 of "Religion Back Home" is a short review of Sam--
this is a short review of Samson Agonistes he's
written for Ms. Arrington's class in Liberal High School.
"Our father who art in heaven--
can lick their father who art in heaven."
[LAUGHTER]
Well, this is the last--
this is the last of "Religion Back Home."
"When my little brother chanted, "In 1492 Jesus
crossed the ocean blue," mother said,
"Bob you mean Columbus crossed the ocean blue."
And he said, "I always did get them two guys mixed up."
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I want to read one last poem or whatever they are.
And thank you for this welcome, as I
bundle these things together and get ready for the sociability.
But I'll read one that just happens to be here
and I'll be around.
It's called "A Gesture Toward an Unfound Renaissance."
"There was the slow girl in art class,
less able to say where our lessons led.
We learned so fast she could not follow us.
But at the door each day I looked back
at her rich distress knowing almost enough to find
a better art inside the lesson.
And then late at night when the whole town was alone,
the current below the rumbly bridge at Main Street
would go an extra swirl and gurgle once by the pilings.
And at my desk at home or when our house opened above my bed
toward the stars, I would hear that one intended lonely sound.
The signature of the day, the ratchet of time
taking me toward here now.
And this look back through that door that always closes."
[APPLAUSE]