That was so nice.
I'd like to read you part of the poem that's unfinished.
Just to pick on Martin.
I've never done this before.
I realized today I was talking to people
there is a finish to this poem.
But it was just that it's National Poetry Month.
Something we should all celebrate alone in our bathrooms
with our poetry books I think.
So this will eventually finish itself.
But it's called A Poetry Reading,
and it starts: And this is the way
it had been done for years in the provinces
with the nice young assistant decked out in tweed and denim,
standing up at the beginning to evoke
some rusty liquidity or baroque Valentine of the curriculum
vitae.
To tweak the vanity of the esteemed visitor, who would just
then be wringing from a backpack a handful of faded books,
and the new precious one
that had just from the soul been freshly delivered and pressed
in the black binder from which the taut syllables would soon
come springing.
And this would be as a wonder to some.
Four who had already heard what was
to be spoken and loved or dismissed it.
12 who had dreamed of the ones they
had heard of attending, who would take off
their clothes for anyone.
Five who knew the name, but not the work they
had characterized often as promising or derivative.
And two who had blundered into the wrong room thinking
to learn of crocodile habitats or cult heresies of the Spanish
Inquisition.
And still others would be here except that tomorrow they
would be called on to name the elements, trample a sonata,
or defend a thesis.
If it did not happen on the night of the tournament,
or on a day when debaters were flapping
like puppets from our grittiest and most altruistic intentions.
Or on a night when Christian body builders had
donned crucifixes and greased pectoral standmount
scaffolds at the center of the coliseum
and hunched in such oddly hopeful positions.
But perhaps, the university is not the place for poetry.
Picture that venerable line of shamans, bards, and nervous
wrecks hauling themselves up from the sticky kitchens
of Bohemia.
And now, one drones or whinges or signals with a fist.
It is especially icky when the poet';s more virile in his
photograph.
The African's too pale.
The lesbian is insufficiently militant,
or the lights make that noise of frying fish.
After all, not much happens in this lounge or small auditorium
under the library.
Yet those who are here hear, don't
they, among these lubricated delicacies
for the auditory senses, a thing that is right and singular
to the heart.
Oh, it does not always have to issue
from guilt, or some lingering inferiority to the British.
It can be performed plainly or in elaborate meters.
And afterwards, after exegesis, and tea,
someone shy and unlikely who loves Bishop, Whitman,
and Wilbur may actually go into a room alone and read it.
I'm going to try to compress the last two stanzas of that poem
into about three words.