WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.830 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.830 --> 00:00:06.340 align:middle line:84% This really has been a very partnered literary life, 00:00:06.340 --> 00:00:10.200 align:middle line:84% starting from their years together at Drake University, 00:00:10.200 --> 00:00:15.780 align:middle line:84% so there's going to be a lot of overlap in this introduction. 00:00:15.780 --> 00:00:18.570 align:middle line:84% It's kind of a wonderful convergence. 00:00:18.570 --> 00:00:20.730 align:middle line:84% William Olsen also received an MFA 00:00:20.730 --> 00:00:24.660 align:middle line:84% from the University of Arizona, he, in 1979, 00:00:24.660 --> 00:00:29.610 align:middle line:84% and a PhD from the University of Houston in 1988. 00:00:29.610 --> 00:00:33.720 align:middle line:84% His awards include an NEA Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, 00:00:33.720 --> 00:00:36.240 align:middle line:84% the University of Missouri Press Breakthrough 00:00:36.240 --> 00:00:39.990 align:middle line:84% Award, the Nation Discovery Award, and two Academy 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:42.300 align:middle line:90% of American Poets awards. 00:00:42.300 --> 00:00:45.780 align:middle line:84% He too teaches at Western Michigan University. 00:00:45.780 --> 00:00:49.020 align:middle line:84% His books are Vision of a Storm Cloud published 00:00:49.020 --> 00:00:53.670 align:middle line:84% in 1996 by Triquarterly, and The Hand of God 00:00:53.670 --> 00:00:56.760 align:middle line:84% and a Few Bright Flowers published by the Illinois 00:00:56.760 --> 00:01:01.510 align:middle line:84% Press in 1988, selected by David Wagoner for the National Poetry 00:01:01.510 --> 00:01:05.560 align:middle line:84% Series, and Flight, a limited edition chapbook published 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:07.900 align:middle line:90% by San Pedro Press. 00:01:07.900 --> 00:01:10.630 align:middle line:84% David Wagoner said of Olsen's poems, 00:01:10.630 --> 00:01:14.290 align:middle line:84% they are records of Olsen's own sense of surprise 00:01:14.290 --> 00:01:17.800 align:middle line:84% at the manifold wonders in a private world 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:21.670 align:middle line:84% whose links to a public world he is nearly always 00:01:21.670 --> 00:01:24.820 align:middle line:90% in the process of discovering. 00:01:24.820 --> 00:01:27.970 align:middle line:84% His capacity for making the figurative leap 00:01:27.970 --> 00:01:31.570 align:middle line:84% is indeed wonderful, and I think oddly 00:01:31.570 --> 00:01:35.500 align:middle line:84% consoling as in such felicitous figures 00:01:35.500 --> 00:01:39.460 align:middle line:84% as when the century has its final say, 00:01:39.460 --> 00:01:44.170 align:middle line:84% may the tiny motels of our voices pray 00:01:44.170 --> 00:01:49.570 align:middle line:84% or what good can our small talk do, America, all our neighbors 00:01:49.570 --> 00:01:52.990 align:middle line:90% homeless in their feelings? 00:01:52.990 --> 00:01:57.250 align:middle line:84% Robert Duncan once said that modern man has chickened out 00:01:57.250 --> 00:01:59.320 align:middle line:90% on God. 00:01:59.320 --> 00:02:03.130 align:middle line:84% Olsen has taken up the task of seeking 00:02:03.130 --> 00:02:06.820 align:middle line:84% a language for that loss, and his poems 00:02:06.820 --> 00:02:09.729 align:middle line:84% come into a kind of troubled faith 00:02:09.729 --> 00:02:13.930 align:middle line:84% that is filled with both grievance and gratitude. 00:02:13.930 --> 00:02:15.820 align:middle line:90% Please welcome William Olsen. 00:02:15.820 --> 00:02:20.230 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:20.230 --> 00:02:32.980 align:middle line:90% 00:02:32.980 --> 00:02:38.210 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] Well, it's sure nice to be here 00:02:38.210 --> 00:02:41.000 align:middle line:90% and a little intimidating. 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:44.730 align:middle line:90% 00:02:44.730 --> 00:02:45.230 align:middle line:90% It's OK. 00:02:45.230 --> 00:02:51.140 align:middle line:90% 00:02:51.140 --> 00:02:57.210 align:middle line:84% I'll read a few poems from this manuscript in progress. 00:02:57.210 --> 00:03:00.290 align:middle line:90% It's a great euphemism. 00:03:00.290 --> 00:03:03.080 align:middle line:90% And a [INAUDIBLE]. 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:06.320 align:middle line:84% The first-- the first poem is a first death poem, 00:03:06.320 --> 00:03:11.825 align:middle line:84% and the first death in our household was a cat. 00:03:11.825 --> 00:03:14.750 align:middle line:90% 00:03:14.750 --> 00:03:16.310 align:middle line:90% "Mercy." 00:03:16.310 --> 00:03:23.330 align:middle line:84% "Our dying cat trying to balance on the level stainless steel 00:03:23.330 --> 00:03:25.580 align:middle line:90% isn't able. 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:29.480 align:middle line:84% She's trying not to fall inside the noise. 00:03:29.480 --> 00:03:33.200 align:middle line:90% For 15 years, her blood is made. 00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:35.840 align:middle line:90% Inescapable face. 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:38.930 align:middle line:90% Our pet grief falls. 00:03:38.930 --> 00:03:41.900 align:middle line:84% The heaviest of the little of it. 00:03:41.900 --> 00:03:47.810 align:middle line:84% Left foreleg shaved to milk blue and none of the time 00:03:47.810 --> 00:03:53.160 align:middle line:84% does the insufferable poison mercy seem finished. 00:03:53.160 --> 00:03:56.820 align:middle line:84% It always comes back at the speed of light. 00:03:56.820 --> 00:03:59.520 align:middle line:84% It's always pretty much the same, 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:04.050 align:middle line:84% for the dead bodies of our living day sit up in the fire. 00:04:04.050 --> 00:04:07.350 align:middle line:84% Funny enough, I'm talking about friends too. 00:04:07.350 --> 00:04:13.080 align:middle line:84% The heart so old it almost outlives shame, pulls back. 00:04:13.080 --> 00:04:17.820 align:middle line:84% And yet, with a growing ease to add to the truth 00:04:17.820 --> 00:04:21.029 align:middle line:84% that we always come out to another world, 00:04:21.029 --> 00:04:26.100 align:middle line:84% its sun goes down without any shivering resistance, 00:04:26.100 --> 00:04:28.140 align:middle line:90% as it always has. 00:04:28.140 --> 00:04:31.500 align:middle line:84% The transitory that survives us seems 00:04:31.500 --> 00:04:38.400 align:middle line:84% too austere to love sometimes but has exactly our personality. 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:42.420 align:middle line:84% Each star sinks the tip of a needle into night." 00:04:42.420 --> 00:04:48.220 align:middle line:90% 00:04:48.220 --> 00:04:54.020 align:middle line:84% I spent a year working in a meatpacking plant 00:04:54.020 --> 00:04:57.590 align:middle line:84% my father actually helped to design, 00:04:57.590 --> 00:05:00.470 align:middle line:84% and I've written about it a little bit. 00:05:00.470 --> 00:05:02.900 align:middle line:84% Still trying to find my way out of it, I suspect. 00:05:02.900 --> 00:05:05.900 align:middle line:90% 00:05:05.900 --> 00:05:08.900 align:middle line:84% Holub has a poem about a slaughterhouse that 00:05:08.900 --> 00:05:11.750 align:middle line:84% has a line in it that goes something like, 00:05:11.750 --> 00:05:14.450 align:middle line:90% God is in each detail. 00:05:14.450 --> 00:05:17.690 align:middle line:84% That's a somewhat disconcerting proposition. 00:05:17.690 --> 00:05:20.580 align:middle line:90% 00:05:20.580 --> 00:05:24.320 align:middle line:90% "The Human Heart." 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:27.890 align:middle line:84% "There are concealments so deep that 00:05:27.890 --> 00:05:31.592 align:middle line:84% to survive them is to be no longer ourselves, 00:05:31.592 --> 00:05:35.930 align:middle line:84% but that is another story, almost. 00:05:35.930 --> 00:05:38.510 align:middle line:84% We could walk to our cars, but we could not 00:05:38.510 --> 00:05:41.420 align:middle line:84% retrieve every last singed hair that 00:05:41.420 --> 00:05:44.600 align:middle line:90% calls our names in spite of us. 00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:47.150 align:middle line:84% From the parking lot of the factory, 00:05:47.150 --> 00:05:52.850 align:middle line:84% some nights, clouds looked like an X rayed heart, vaporous, 00:05:52.850 --> 00:05:56.950 align:middle line:90% half heartedly material. 00:05:56.950 --> 00:06:01.270 align:middle line:84% Oh, heart of sorrows, I take it back. 00:06:01.270 --> 00:06:03.200 align:middle line:90% You were everywhere. 00:06:03.200 --> 00:06:04.780 align:middle line:90% You were there. 00:06:04.780 --> 00:06:07.930 align:middle line:84% All I can do is have you engine me 00:06:07.930 --> 00:06:13.300 align:middle line:84% back to all the squat mushers of the feed pens fattened on fodder 00:06:13.300 --> 00:06:16.510 align:middle line:84% and all the lesser mayhems of you, my heart, 00:06:16.510 --> 00:06:19.360 align:middle line:90% grumbled like strikebreakers. 00:06:19.360 --> 00:06:24.790 align:middle line:84% My eye usurious for blood and guts and travel. 00:06:24.790 --> 00:06:30.190 align:middle line:84% My endless journey into endless body and only the midnight 00:06:30.190 --> 00:06:32.440 align:middle line:90% whistle blaring. 00:06:32.440 --> 00:06:36.880 align:middle line:84% Then it was morning and back inside the blood, though 00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:38.170 align:middle line:90% who had left? 00:06:38.170 --> 00:06:41.290 align:middle line:84% Then a matter of standing in the loading dock 00:06:41.290 --> 00:06:45.730 align:middle line:84% while behind in the hide cellar slag heaps of entrails 00:06:45.730 --> 00:06:50.530 align:middle line:84% seemed to warrant some design and salt in piles 00:06:50.530 --> 00:06:53.830 align:middle line:84% high as sand dunes corroded the shovels 00:06:53.830 --> 00:06:56.920 align:middle line:90% and ate the canvas gloves. 00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:00.760 align:middle line:84% Out of the disinfected factory, I walked back 00:07:00.760 --> 00:07:03.970 align:middle line:90% into the night, my dolorosa. 00:07:03.970 --> 00:07:07.810 align:middle line:84% One of your pigs had fallen from a truck 00:07:07.810 --> 00:07:14.170 align:middle line:84% to be left there on the road for the brother crows to take back. 00:07:14.170 --> 00:07:19.840 align:middle line:84% There seemed no way out of the body, but farther into it. 00:07:19.840 --> 00:07:23.590 align:middle line:84% A pig had fallen out of a loading truck left 00:07:23.590 --> 00:07:27.400 align:middle line:84% to spill its guts on tar for days on end 00:07:27.400 --> 00:07:33.010 align:middle line:84% and be a text for the donnish crows that instructed its rib 00:07:33.010 --> 00:07:37.930 align:middle line:84% cage to open and its skull to roll back its eyes. 00:07:37.930 --> 00:07:41.380 align:middle line:84% The steam rising from its snout hurled 00:07:41.380 --> 00:07:44.480 align:middle line:90% pity right out of the picture. 00:07:44.480 --> 00:07:47.500 align:middle line:90% These black shawls of mourning. 00:07:47.500 --> 00:07:51.640 align:middle line:84% Out of the corpse came mourning, out of the eater 00:07:51.640 --> 00:07:56.230 align:middle line:84% came forth meat, out of the meat came forth 00:07:56.230 --> 00:08:02.320 align:middle line:84% those theorists, the maggots awake, dreaming in it, over it, 00:08:02.320 --> 00:08:05.800 align:middle line:84% gorging on it, grieving in and out of its skull, 00:08:05.800 --> 00:08:08.500 align:middle line:90% soaring on glorious grief. 00:08:08.500 --> 00:08:10.960 align:middle line:84% Someone somewhere in the hide cellar 00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:14.300 align:middle line:84% kept a radio on so someone else could be 00:08:14.300 --> 00:08:16.790 align:middle line:90% singing some [INAUDIBLE] song. 00:08:16.790 --> 00:08:21.920 align:middle line:84% That dime store radio and that dime store moonlight 00:08:21.920 --> 00:08:26.870 align:middle line:84% seemed cheap enough to afford some sentiment, wholly or not. 00:08:26.870 --> 00:08:31.730 align:middle line:84% And poetry likes to think it somehow better than nothing 00:08:31.730 --> 00:08:34.940 align:middle line:84% at all because nobody died there. 00:08:34.940 --> 00:08:39.470 align:middle line:84% As for all the lesser mayhems, no one was there, 00:08:39.470 --> 00:08:44.030 align:middle line:84% someone was there, and there was only the cyclonic pull down 00:08:44.030 --> 00:08:46.370 align:middle line:84% the floor drain back into the heart." 00:08:46.370 --> 00:08:55.130 align:middle line:90% 00:08:55.130 --> 00:08:55.630 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:08:55.630 --> 00:09:10.950 align:middle line:90% 00:09:10.950 --> 00:09:14.730 align:middle line:90% Sorry to do this to you. 00:09:14.730 --> 00:09:18.900 align:middle line:90% 00:09:18.900 --> 00:09:22.770 align:middle line:84% We spent a month in London on our sabbatical in Cornwall, 00:09:22.770 --> 00:09:24.990 align:middle line:84% and the only thing I could think to write about was-- 00:09:24.990 --> 00:09:28.470 align:middle line:84% of all the great grandeurs, culture in London 00:09:28.470 --> 00:09:33.878 align:middle line:84% was this fly I saw in my shirt sleeve. 00:09:33.878 --> 00:09:35.670 align:middle line:84% I think the first line, I figured this out, 00:09:35.670 --> 00:09:38.972 align:middle line:84% I was reading this today, came from that little Blake song 00:09:38.972 --> 00:09:40.430 align:middle line:84% from one of the Songs of Innocence. 00:09:40.430 --> 00:09:44.940 align:middle line:84% It goes something like, love is life, and life is breath, 00:09:44.940 --> 00:09:47.920 align:middle line:90% and the want of life is death. 00:09:47.920 --> 00:09:53.673 align:middle line:84% Then am I a happy fly if I live, or if I die. 00:09:53.673 --> 00:09:55.840 align:middle line:84% It's fun to include those things in a poetry reading 00:09:55.840 --> 00:09:57.257 align:middle line:84% because then as a reader, you have 00:09:57.257 --> 00:09:59.030 align:middle line:90% something to look forward to. 00:09:59.030 --> 00:10:03.030 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:03.030 --> 00:10:04.030 align:middle line:90% 00:10:04.030 --> 00:10:05.490 align:middle line:90% "To a Fly." 00:10:05.490 --> 00:10:07.900 align:middle line:84% "Somewhere between love and death, 00:10:07.900 --> 00:10:13.540 align:middle line:84% I find sunshine ripped from the sun, children enjoying the day. 00:10:13.540 --> 00:10:19.010 align:middle line:84% On my shirt sleeve, a fly all eyes for a face. 00:10:19.010 --> 00:10:23.410 align:middle line:84% Face, don't [INAUDIBLE] I'm fretting stupidly 00:10:23.410 --> 00:10:25.090 align:middle line:90% at the taken cab. 00:10:25.090 --> 00:10:29.080 align:middle line:84% Leave me in the dark, squinting in the rain 00:10:29.080 --> 00:10:34.900 align:middle line:84% to come steady and hard to take every direction too far then 00:10:34.900 --> 00:10:38.110 align:middle line:90% stop abruptly without warning. 00:10:38.110 --> 00:10:43.060 align:middle line:84% And sunlight, not strictly alive, bear down, 00:10:43.060 --> 00:10:47.770 align:middle line:84% light ripped and stripped of sickness and of health. 00:10:47.770 --> 00:10:54.100 align:middle line:84% Light that doesn't smile and doesn't read, bear down on punks 00:10:54.100 --> 00:10:58.120 align:middle line:84% and colourist punters and pigeons. 00:10:58.120 --> 00:11:02.170 align:middle line:84% As for the doxies, they will always be with us. 00:11:02.170 --> 00:11:07.570 align:middle line:84% Night wraps each streetlight in a shawl of olives. 00:11:07.570 --> 00:11:14.110 align:middle line:84% Life is so scrutable, so scrutable, futile, frugal fires, 00:11:14.110 --> 00:11:19.120 align:middle line:84% frugal psychologies, frugal cities. 00:11:19.120 --> 00:11:24.310 align:middle line:84% You who moonlight and moonwalk on the human self 00:11:24.310 --> 00:11:30.100 align:middle line:84% and land on the baby's brow or break up the first kiss. 00:11:30.100 --> 00:11:34.360 align:middle line:84% You who require no grip on passing things, 00:11:34.360 --> 00:11:38.170 align:middle line:84% you have your littlest voice, and that voice sings." 00:11:38.170 --> 00:11:48.780 align:middle line:90% 00:11:48.780 --> 00:11:52.170 align:middle line:84% I guess, you know, this should come with a caveat, 00:11:52.170 --> 00:11:56.470 align:middle line:84% don't try this at home or something. 00:11:56.470 --> 00:11:57.230 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:11:57.230 --> 00:11:58.750 align:middle line:84% When I was writing this poem, I was 00:11:58.750 --> 00:12:03.430 align:middle line:84% reading not a very good novel in my mind, but a-- 00:12:03.430 --> 00:12:07.600 align:middle line:84% but an interesting one, Pynchon's Vineland. 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:10.240 align:middle line:90% 00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:13.690 align:middle line:84% It was really the first thing I'd 00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:16.780 align:middle line:84% read that brought a kind of clear headedness 00:12:16.780 --> 00:12:24.280 align:middle line:84% to the drug wars, and it gave me the-- 00:12:24.280 --> 00:12:28.770 align:middle line:84% gave me that-- ah, led to this poem, basically. 00:12:28.770 --> 00:12:33.160 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:12:33.160 --> 00:12:35.080 align:middle line:84% What else do I need to tell you about this? 00:12:35.080 --> 00:12:39.070 align:middle line:84% There's an allusion to the Egyptian Book of the Dead-- 00:12:39.070 --> 00:12:42.100 align:middle line:84% there's a wonderful passage in the Egyptian Book 00:12:42.100 --> 00:12:45.220 align:middle line:84% of the Dead called a negative confession, 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:48.460 align:middle line:84% and unlike our Catholic confession 00:12:48.460 --> 00:12:52.780 align:middle line:84% where you make a gateway into heaven 00:12:52.780 --> 00:12:58.180 align:middle line:84% by confessing all your sins in a very shapely way, basically, 00:12:58.180 --> 00:13:04.540 align:middle line:84% what the negative confession does is catalog all those things 00:13:04.540 --> 00:13:09.857 align:middle line:84% you were good enough not to do in your life. 00:13:09.857 --> 00:13:11.320 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:13:11.320 --> 00:13:13.240 align:middle line:84% That had tremendous appeal to me. 00:13:13.240 --> 00:13:19.840 align:middle line:90% 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:28.270 align:middle line:84% Yeah, I guess, you know, '70s, you know, LSD. 00:13:28.270 --> 00:13:30.910 align:middle line:84% My experience of-- basically, was, 00:13:30.910 --> 00:13:34.150 align:middle line:84% you know, you sit in a room with a few people, 00:13:34.150 --> 00:13:39.550 align:middle line:84% you become vast and furious friends, 00:13:39.550 --> 00:13:42.122 align:middle line:84% and then you never see them again. 00:13:42.122 --> 00:13:45.736 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:13:45.736 --> 00:13:48.126 align:middle line:90% 00:13:48.126 --> 00:13:51.190 align:middle line:90% "Negative Confession." 00:13:51.190 --> 00:13:56.140 align:middle line:84% I razor split three hits of emerald pyramid for five of us 00:13:56.140 --> 00:13:58.720 align:middle line:84% and through a hairline crack in the dusk, 00:13:58.720 --> 00:14:02.740 align:middle line:84% pure space had broken through with everything 00:14:02.740 --> 00:14:08.140 align:middle line:84% we ever meant to be tinkering the fire pond crimson. 00:14:08.140 --> 00:14:12.010 align:middle line:84% One afterlife, and the next seeping away, even the one 00:14:12.010 --> 00:14:13.480 align:middle line:90% called shame. 00:14:13.480 --> 00:14:16.630 align:middle line:84% Phantasmal, unremembering, we all 00:14:16.630 --> 00:14:19.750 align:middle line:84% tried to act as if everything were normal 00:14:19.750 --> 00:14:24.130 align:middle line:84% while the windowed end of the world began again. 00:14:24.130 --> 00:14:28.720 align:middle line:84% A few last blackbirds thrown across the cornfields 00:14:28.720 --> 00:14:33.100 align:middle line:84% like something torn from Earth beyond our quiet, 00:14:33.100 --> 00:14:38.980 align:middle line:84% and the skeletal sycamores into the orphanage called twilight. 00:14:38.980 --> 00:14:44.110 align:middle line:84% That October sunset looked us all easy in the eyes 00:14:44.110 --> 00:14:49.490 align:middle line:84% and told us we would never die except to dread and wonder. 00:14:49.490 --> 00:14:53.570 align:middle line:84% 20 years later, if telling resurrects, 00:14:53.570 --> 00:14:57.410 align:middle line:84% then listen, oh, my heart, for we did not 00:14:57.410 --> 00:15:00.410 align:middle line:90% want a peaceful afterlife. 00:15:00.410 --> 00:15:02.990 align:middle line:84% In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 00:15:02.990 --> 00:15:07.880 align:middle line:84% at judgment, the heart is placed on a brass balance 00:15:07.880 --> 00:15:10.880 align:middle line:84% and weighed against the feather of truth. 00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:15.320 align:middle line:84% This is when, if you are lucky, your heart refuses 00:15:15.320 --> 00:15:17.930 align:middle line:90% to testify against itself. 00:15:17.930 --> 00:15:22.430 align:middle line:84% You never asked your servants to work past dawn, 00:15:22.430 --> 00:15:26.990 align:middle line:84% nor caught fishes with bait of their own bodies, 00:15:26.990 --> 00:15:30.020 align:middle line:90% nor set the homeless on fire. 00:15:30.020 --> 00:15:36.500 align:middle line:84% You never cursed your luck except in shame to yourself. 00:15:36.500 --> 00:15:41.960 align:middle line:84% I think I am afraid our best exalted intentions would not 00:15:41.960 --> 00:15:43.490 align:middle line:90% weigh a feather. 00:15:43.490 --> 00:15:48.110 align:middle line:84% We held in smoke till the seahorse exhalation swam 00:15:48.110 --> 00:15:51.410 align:middle line:84% around the Chinese lantern while the oaks, 00:15:51.410 --> 00:15:58.610 align:middle line:84% brazen with black birds, sang us down from heaven 20 years ago. 00:15:58.610 --> 00:16:02.150 align:middle line:84% Their shadows threw themselves past us 00:16:02.150 --> 00:16:07.910 align:middle line:84% as if we were stubble where in the afterlife of saying so 00:16:07.910 --> 00:16:10.430 align:middle line:90% are my almost friends. 00:16:10.430 --> 00:16:14.230 align:middle line:84% Oh, my dumb heart, why confess to you? 00:16:14.230 --> 00:16:16.400 align:middle line:90% Could you ever lie for me? 00:16:16.400 --> 00:16:18.140 align:middle line:90% Lay me down cold? 00:16:18.140 --> 00:16:22.250 align:middle line:84% Lie down in a jar of wine and still refuse 00:16:22.250 --> 00:16:23.480 align:middle line:90% the safety of dying?" 00:16:23.480 --> 00:16:32.560 align:middle line:90% 00:16:32.560 --> 00:16:33.160 align:middle line:90% Three more. 00:16:33.160 --> 00:16:39.320 align:middle line:90% 00:16:39.320 --> 00:16:43.150 align:middle line:84% I mean, Nancy and I have poems about the same places. 00:16:43.150 --> 00:16:46.003 align:middle line:90% 00:16:46.003 --> 00:16:47.170 align:middle line:90% I guess that's a good thing. 00:16:47.170 --> 00:16:50.400 align:middle line:90% 00:16:50.400 --> 00:16:50.900 align:middle line:90% You know. 00:16:50.900 --> 00:17:01.110 align:middle line:90% 00:17:01.110 --> 00:17:10.319 align:middle line:84% This is a poem set in Cornwall specifically on a trail 00:17:10.319 --> 00:17:15.690 align:middle line:84% from Saint Ives to Zennor where we lived for a while. 00:17:15.690 --> 00:17:17.710 align:middle line:90% The path had a name. 00:17:17.710 --> 00:17:20.069 align:middle line:90% It was called The Coffin Path. 00:17:20.069 --> 00:17:27.630 align:middle line:84% It was about a 1,500 year old path that was created basically 00:17:27.630 --> 00:17:31.170 align:middle line:84% to convey the dead from Saint Ives to Zennor 00:17:31.170 --> 00:17:35.400 align:middle line:84% because there was no sanctioned church in Saint Ives. 00:17:35.400 --> 00:17:40.350 align:middle line:84% And so for purposes of Christian burial, the [? 00:17:40.350 --> 00:17:43.080 align:middle line:84% coffins were ?] marched, I don't know if they were marched 00:17:43.080 --> 00:17:47.760 align:middle line:84% specifically, from Saint Ives to Zennor. 00:17:47.760 --> 00:17:53.190 align:middle line:84% And there are all of these glorious cathedrals in the area, 00:17:53.190 --> 00:17:56.490 align:middle line:84% but there was one that was really run down. 00:17:56.490 --> 00:18:00.480 align:middle line:84% It was only 100 years old, which in Cornwall is like a 7/11 00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:04.560 align:middle line:90% basically, you know. 00:18:04.560 --> 00:18:09.700 align:middle line:90% But it was utterly deteriorated. 00:18:09.700 --> 00:18:11.140 align:middle line:90% It was gone to seed. 00:18:11.140 --> 00:18:13.960 align:middle line:90% It had a tree for a roof. 00:18:13.960 --> 00:18:16.240 align:middle line:84% And it was indistinguishable when 00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:19.570 align:middle line:84% you looked at it from the elements in a somewhat 00:18:19.570 --> 00:18:22.600 align:middle line:90% disturbing way, not the way-- 00:18:22.600 --> 00:18:27.430 align:middle line:84% not the ordered way of say the prairie style architecture. 00:18:27.430 --> 00:18:30.100 align:middle line:90% 00:18:30.100 --> 00:18:32.680 align:middle line:90% "Ruin Outlasting Sorrow." 00:18:32.680 --> 00:18:35.590 align:middle line:84% "If we ever get free of our hungry world, 00:18:35.590 --> 00:18:37.900 align:middle line:90% what will we have then? 00:18:37.900 --> 00:18:39.660 align:middle line:90% The body? 00:18:39.660 --> 00:18:41.810 align:middle line:84% It wouldn't know what to do with itself. 00:18:41.810 --> 00:18:43.640 align:middle line:90% It wouldn't have a prayer. 00:18:43.640 --> 00:18:46.340 align:middle line:90% Some obliterating justice? 00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:50.360 align:middle line:84% The robin scrounging for a worm might cock its head 00:18:50.360 --> 00:18:53.180 align:middle line:90% and go back to its business. 00:18:53.180 --> 00:18:56.990 align:middle line:84% Every living memory would, gnarled and writhing, 00:18:56.990 --> 00:19:02.120 align:middle line:84% pull its stakes from the ground like the deracinated espaliers 00:19:02.120 --> 00:19:08.150 align:middle line:84% of ivy hanging to this ruined Cornish chapel looking half 00:19:08.150 --> 00:19:11.700 align:middle line:84% electrocuted, come clean of posturing 00:19:11.700 --> 00:19:15.050 align:middle line:84% but only into some last contortion. 00:19:15.050 --> 00:19:19.250 align:middle line:84% We wanted no less than to step outside our century 00:19:19.250 --> 00:19:25.130 align:middle line:84% into that chapel, walls all ivy and oak perfectly reroofing it, 00:19:25.130 --> 00:19:29.840 align:middle line:84% the nave walls root- choked, the granite altar half ripped 00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:35.720 align:middle line:84% by now, roots throttling roots for a hold climbing the walls 00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:38.120 align:middle line:90% they'd taken into their flesh. 00:19:38.120 --> 00:19:43.230 align:middle line:84% Barely distinguishable struggle between gray and green 00:19:43.230 --> 00:19:48.750 align:middle line:84% just outside where the constant sorrow bodies of cows 00:19:48.750 --> 00:19:51.600 align:middle line:90% grazing above the shipwrecks. 00:19:51.600 --> 00:19:55.950 align:middle line:84% There we were in the midst of their tonnage beyond them 00:19:55.950 --> 00:19:59.220 align:middle line:84% and ahead a village of granite hewed 00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:06.180 align:middle line:84% from cliffs of sheer catastrophe into the amnesiac Irish Sea. 00:20:06.180 --> 00:20:10.110 align:middle line:84% Church and inn and pub and piggery 00:20:10.110 --> 00:20:16.020 align:middle line:84% sat squat on pastures' green bays like chess set pieces. 00:20:16.020 --> 00:20:20.100 align:middle line:84% Nobody having made a move in centuries. 00:20:20.100 --> 00:20:25.230 align:middle line:84% The chapel around us had almost evolved into a tree. 00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:28.290 align:middle line:84% To say a few words without sorrow 00:20:28.290 --> 00:20:31.410 align:middle line:84% is one thing, but a whole sentence? 00:20:31.410 --> 00:20:35.580 align:middle line:84% Sorrow, give me a little more time. 00:20:35.580 --> 00:20:41.790 align:middle line:84% Overhead passed a dry ice glint of a jet with its businessmen 00:20:41.790 --> 00:20:45.930 align:middle line:84% and women and small camps of families 00:20:45.930 --> 00:20:48.750 align:middle line:90% and plastic cups of scotch. 00:20:48.750 --> 00:20:51.630 align:middle line:84% And when our body turns backwards, 00:20:51.630 --> 00:20:54.330 align:middle line:90% it doesn't delay the flight. 00:20:54.330 --> 00:21:00.390 align:middle line:84% On Earth, any moment we stumble into again to stare twice out 00:21:00.390 --> 00:21:04.620 align:middle line:84% of its windows is frozen beyond peril. 00:21:04.620 --> 00:21:07.830 align:middle line:84% It wasn't sorrow we were looking at. 00:21:07.830 --> 00:21:13.440 align:middle line:84% It was the slow formality of ruin, the people, and the labor, 00:21:13.440 --> 00:21:16.350 align:middle line:90% and the myth, and us. 00:21:16.350 --> 00:21:19.140 align:middle line:90% Wasn't there sufficient regard? 00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:25.350 align:middle line:84% Is this the terror of being without a last line or a body? 00:21:25.350 --> 00:21:31.080 align:middle line:84% Cows load misunderstandings by the ton. 00:21:31.080 --> 00:21:34.200 align:middle line:84% A little cloud was crawling like a snail 00:21:34.200 --> 00:21:39.030 align:middle line:84% letting the sunlight have its way with it and dispel it 00:21:39.030 --> 00:21:43.410 align:middle line:84% and turning itself inside out all white 00:21:43.410 --> 00:21:50.370 align:middle line:84% as fat like inside the black bear I once watched dissected. 00:21:50.370 --> 00:21:57.300 align:middle line:84% The pelt peeled like that to an interiority, all fat. 00:21:57.300 --> 00:22:01.170 align:middle line:84% It looked like a cloud on a gurney. 00:22:01.170 --> 00:22:03.090 align:middle line:90% It looked intact. 00:22:03.090 --> 00:22:06.390 align:middle line:84% It was almost through being purposeful. 00:22:06.390 --> 00:22:11.430 align:middle line:84% A few museum goers with special passes surrounded it 00:22:11.430 --> 00:22:15.480 align:middle line:84% with plastic wine glasses and stared 00:22:15.480 --> 00:22:19.740 align:middle line:84% as we stared out some chapel without a pew 00:22:19.740 --> 00:22:24.570 align:middle line:84% up into some cloud light like historians who stare out 00:22:24.570 --> 00:22:28.920 align:middle line:84% of their studies and judge the instant unforgivable 00:22:28.920 --> 00:22:32.010 align:middle line:90% for outlasting history. 00:22:32.010 --> 00:22:35.280 align:middle line:84% But in a dissecting room with strangers, 00:22:35.280 --> 00:22:41.160 align:middle line:84% we stared at a bear stripped even of nakedness. 00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:43.860 align:middle line:84% I still feel the desire to bury it." 00:22:43.860 --> 00:22:49.940 align:middle line:90% 00:22:49.940 --> 00:22:50.710 align:middle line:90% One more. 00:22:50.710 --> 00:22:54.010 align:middle line:90% 00:22:54.010 --> 00:22:55.000 align:middle line:90% All of my poems are-- 00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:56.755 align:middle line:90% they're kind of landscape poems. 00:22:56.755 --> 00:23:01.120 align:middle line:90% 00:23:01.120 --> 00:23:02.830 align:middle line:84% My assignment to myself in this poem 00:23:02.830 --> 00:23:11.845 align:middle line:84% was to use all that descriptive prowess towards the, 00:23:11.845 --> 00:23:13.252 align:middle line:90% you know, inside of our house. 00:23:13.252 --> 00:23:14.710 align:middle line:84% Which, you know, if our know house, 00:23:14.710 --> 00:23:16.885 align:middle line:84% it isn't necessarily a promising subject. 00:23:16.885 --> 00:23:21.373 align:middle line:90% 00:23:21.373 --> 00:23:22.165 align:middle line:90% It's a great house. 00:23:22.165 --> 00:23:24.950 align:middle line:90% 00:23:24.950 --> 00:23:27.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:23:27.040 --> 00:23:28.840 align:middle line:90% But Nancy, and I had gone to a-- 00:23:28.840 --> 00:23:31.810 align:middle line:84% we'd bought this-- one of those old black globes and that's sort 00:23:31.810 --> 00:23:35.230 align:middle line:84% of the subject of the poem, and I guess-- 00:23:35.230 --> 00:23:40.750 align:middle line:84% and you know, I like miniaturization, 00:23:40.750 --> 00:23:43.060 align:middle line:90% I mean, you know, little trains. 00:23:43.060 --> 00:23:46.000 align:middle line:84% And I like that stuff in art because it 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:50.650 align:middle line:84% provides this kind of remove from your world, basically. 00:23:50.650 --> 00:23:52.630 align:middle line:84% It allows you to imagine you can actually 00:23:52.630 --> 00:23:53.818 align:middle line:90% be removed from your world. 00:23:53.818 --> 00:23:55.360 align:middle line:84% But I was looking at this black globe 00:23:55.360 --> 00:23:57.370 align:middle line:84% and man, the thing was so beat up 00:23:57.370 --> 00:24:02.500 align:middle line:84% and something like the opposite happened 00:24:02.500 --> 00:24:08.320 align:middle line:84% or it loomed larger than I did and still seemed 00:24:08.320 --> 00:24:09.670 align:middle line:90% very insignificant. 00:24:09.670 --> 00:24:12.460 align:middle line:90% 00:24:12.460 --> 00:24:15.538 align:middle line:90% "Black Globe." 00:24:15.538 --> 00:24:18.280 align:middle line:90% "There's dust on it. 00:24:18.280 --> 00:24:21.640 align:middle line:90% Someone hasn't taken care of it. 00:24:21.640 --> 00:24:27.460 align:middle line:84% Someone has let it go from the smiling glance of fingertips. 00:24:27.460 --> 00:24:33.250 align:middle line:84% A hunk of junk with a rakish tilt. Shore's 00:24:33.250 --> 00:24:36.790 align:middle line:90% cancerous with populist dots. 00:24:36.790 --> 00:24:41.500 align:middle line:84% Seas riddled and zippered by plane routes, 00:24:41.500 --> 00:24:44.380 align:middle line:90% impaled by its axis. 00:24:44.380 --> 00:24:49.690 align:middle line:84% The southern ice cap haloed by 12 timeless 00:24:49.690 --> 00:24:56.650 align:middle line:84% giant clocks tattooed with old style planes crosshatched 00:24:56.650 --> 00:25:00.070 align:middle line:90% by dashed off demarcations. 00:25:00.070 --> 00:25:02.750 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] with puckering seams, 00:25:02.750 --> 00:25:07.190 align:middle line:84% the poor Atlantic mightily dimpled. 00:25:07.190 --> 00:25:12.350 align:middle line:84% The Caribbean has chips out of it the size of states. 00:25:12.350 --> 00:25:17.600 align:middle line:84% We bought our world from an antique shop specializing 00:25:17.600 --> 00:25:20.540 align:middle line:90% in stolen graveyard angels. 00:25:20.540 --> 00:25:22.370 align:middle line:90% $3. 00:25:22.370 --> 00:25:25.520 align:middle line:84% It's on a bureau below our silk screen 00:25:25.520 --> 00:25:31.250 align:middle line:84% from Guangzhou, a yellow silk moon spouting ideograms 00:25:31.250 --> 00:25:36.020 align:middle line:84% into a smudged charcoal flowering plum. 00:25:36.020 --> 00:25:40.640 align:middle line:84% Neither moon nor Earth are unviable. 00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:44.060 align:middle line:84% Earth can be hurt time and again. 00:25:44.060 --> 00:25:47.990 align:middle line:84% Its final mercy: its vulnerability. 00:25:47.990 --> 00:25:51.770 align:middle line:84% It lives for us and on it, we live 00:25:51.770 --> 00:25:57.110 align:middle line:84% and it can hurt and suck us in but not this globe. 00:25:57.110 --> 00:26:01.550 align:middle line:84% Its seas are tar, bituminous childish 00:26:01.550 --> 00:26:08.250 align:middle line:84% nightmares as much dark as blood pulsing beneath the temples. 00:26:08.250 --> 00:26:09.480 align:middle line:90% It is a lung. 00:26:09.480 --> 00:26:15.620 align:middle line:84% So we bought it a blue sister, a child's globe, a lawn sale find, 00:26:15.620 --> 00:26:18.140 align:middle line:90% a shrimplet version. 00:26:18.140 --> 00:26:24.200 align:middle line:84% It is alone, though, with its glow worm analemma. 00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:28.250 align:middle line:90% 50 years old, about my age. 00:26:28.250 --> 00:26:34.130 align:middle line:84% And it moans now when it spins and its spin wobbles. 00:26:34.130 --> 00:26:36.960 align:middle line:84% The beautiful names don't fall off. 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:41.210 align:middle line:84% It still spins here in this slide as my grandfather spun 00:26:41.210 --> 00:26:44.360 align:middle line:90% my childhood off the map. 00:26:44.360 --> 00:26:48.350 align:middle line:84% And if the adult can stop it, please don't. 00:26:48.350 --> 00:26:51.230 align:middle line:84% This dust ball could break the heart 00:26:51.230 --> 00:26:55.670 align:middle line:84% into a perfect heartlessness of outer space. 00:26:55.670 --> 00:26:56.960 align:middle line:90% Perfection. 00:26:56.960 --> 00:26:58.310 align:middle line:90% Perfection. 00:26:58.310 --> 00:26:59.510 align:middle line:90% Outer space. 00:26:59.510 --> 00:27:00.830 align:middle line:90% Outer space. 00:27:00.830 --> 00:27:02.030 align:middle line:90% Come in. 00:27:02.030 --> 00:27:03.410 align:middle line:90% Come in. 00:27:03.410 --> 00:27:08.240 align:middle line:84% Our satellite dishes are starved for a friendly word. 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:12.740 align:middle line:84% I can see my face, a shadow shuffling black, 00:27:12.740 --> 00:27:16.880 align:middle line:84% a little blacker without a single feature 00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:20.180 align:middle line:90% upon vast tribulations. 00:27:20.180 --> 00:27:25.850 align:middle line:84% Its words are white and ghosted, but I can read them." 00:27:25.850 --> 00:27:28.004 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:27:28.004 --> 00:27:31.988 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:27:31.988 --> 00:27:34.990 align:middle line:90% 00:27:34.990 --> 00:27:37.647 align:middle line:84% We do have both authors' books for sale, 00:27:37.647 --> 00:27:39.730 align:middle line:84% and I'm sure they'd be happy to sign them for you, 00:27:39.730 --> 00:27:41.020 align:middle line:90% and there are refreshments. 00:27:41.020 --> 00:27:43.680 align:middle line:84% So thank you very much for coming. 00:27:43.680 --> 00:27:45.000 align:middle line:90%