WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.860 align:middle line:90% Thank you, and good evening. 00:00:01.860 --> 00:00:03.780 align:middle line:84% That was such a beautiful introduction. 00:00:03.780 --> 00:00:05.580 align:middle line:90% I didn't want to get up here. 00:00:05.580 --> 00:00:08.100 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.100 --> 00:00:11.160 align:middle line:84% This is the second time that I've been here in Tucson. 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:15.360 align:middle line:90% I was here in 1983. 00:00:15.360 --> 00:00:19.680 align:middle line:84% If you had asked me, I would have said 1988 or something 00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:20.580 align:middle line:90% like that. 00:00:20.580 --> 00:00:24.780 align:middle line:84% But I've reached the point where if I think it's two years, 00:00:24.780 --> 00:00:25.690 align:middle line:90% it's five years. 00:00:25.690 --> 00:00:29.040 align:middle line:84% If I think it's five years, it's 10 years, and so forth. 00:00:29.040 --> 00:00:34.170 align:middle line:90% And may you reach such maturity. 00:00:34.170 --> 00:00:38.580 align:middle line:84% I'd like to thank the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry 00:00:38.580 --> 00:00:43.140 align:middle line:84% Center, Alison Deming, Karen Falkenstrom, and all of you 00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:48.280 align:middle line:84% whose names I don't know who are responsible for my being here. 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:52.350 align:middle line:84% And I'd like to thank all of you who are before me for giving up 00:00:52.350 --> 00:00:55.380 align:middle line:84% a television show, or something that you have to study for, 00:00:55.380 --> 00:00:57.780 align:middle line:84% or something you have to write and coming 00:00:57.780 --> 00:00:58.830 align:middle line:90% to spend an hour with me. 00:00:58.830 --> 00:01:02.160 align:middle line:84% And I'll try to make it worth your while. 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:07.470 align:middle line:84% Without you, I, like any artist, am nothing. 00:01:07.470 --> 00:01:14.700 align:middle line:84% And as I mature, I appreciate this increasingly. 00:01:14.700 --> 00:01:18.840 align:middle line:84% I thought I would open with some prose, 00:01:18.840 --> 00:01:25.920 align:middle line:84% but I hope it's poetic prose for you to just introduce my origins 00:01:25.920 --> 00:01:27.510 align:middle line:84% and how I got interested in poetry. 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:30.390 align:middle line:84% I've spent quite a bit of time running 00:01:30.390 --> 00:01:35.580 align:middle line:84% around this state talking about poetry and its importance. 00:01:35.580 --> 00:01:41.760 align:middle line:84% The fact, for example, that it's enjoying an explosion right now, 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:46.680 align:middle line:90% a vitalization, revitalization. 00:01:46.680 --> 00:01:49.260 align:middle line:84% Not since the 19th century has poetry 00:01:49.260 --> 00:01:54.880 align:middle line:84% been so dynamically present in North American life. 00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:56.355 align:middle line:84% Many people don't know this, you'd 00:01:56.355 --> 00:01:59.790 align:middle line:84% know if you read Dana Gioia, among others. 00:01:59.790 --> 00:02:04.200 align:middle line:84% The 19th century was actually a wonderful time 00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:05.835 align:middle line:90% for poetry in America. 00:02:05.835 --> 00:02:08.370 align:middle line:90% It sold like crazy. 00:02:08.370 --> 00:02:11.490 align:middle line:84% Whittier got rich writing it, Longfellow got rich writing it. 00:02:11.490 --> 00:02:16.380 align:middle line:84% When Longfellow went to Buckingham Palace 00:02:16.380 --> 00:02:19.470 align:middle line:84% at the invitation of Queen Victoria, 00:02:19.470 --> 00:02:21.750 align:middle line:84% she not only wanted him to autograph 00:02:21.750 --> 00:02:28.270 align:middle line:84% her morocco-bound copies of his books, Hiawatha and so forth. 00:02:28.270 --> 00:02:31.020 align:middle line:90% But all of the-- 00:02:31.020 --> 00:02:36.450 align:middle line:84% she has in her journals that the maids 00:02:36.450 --> 00:02:39.780 align:middle line:84% and the people who worked around the palace, 00:02:39.780 --> 00:02:42.390 align:middle line:84% they had their little cheapo editions of his works. 00:02:42.390 --> 00:02:44.160 align:middle line:90% They wanted autographs, too. 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:47.115 align:middle line:90% So he was cooking. 00:02:47.115 --> 00:02:51.450 align:middle line:84% But I mention that just because people think of poetry 00:02:51.450 --> 00:02:54.150 align:middle line:84% as being rarefied, and I think you can really 00:02:54.150 --> 00:02:57.870 align:middle line:84% get that impression if you are around the Poetry 00:02:57.870 --> 00:03:00.690 align:middle line:90% Center, or an MFA department. 00:03:00.690 --> 00:03:03.810 align:middle line:84% And I just want to remind people that poetry belongs 00:03:03.810 --> 00:03:06.450 align:middle line:84% to everyone and to no one, and it is one 00:03:06.450 --> 00:03:08.460 align:middle line:90% of the primal human languages. 00:03:08.460 --> 00:03:11.280 align:middle line:84% And this is how it came into my life. 00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:12.960 align:middle line:84% This is from a piece from Drowning 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:16.470 align:middle line:84% in the Sea of Love called "Somebody Done 00:03:16.470 --> 00:03:18.780 align:middle line:90% Hoodoo'd the Hoodoo Man." 00:03:18.780 --> 00:03:21.490 align:middle line:84% And I'm only going to read a portion of it. 00:03:21.490 --> 00:03:23.460 align:middle line:84% Some of you might recognize that title 00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:26.940 align:middle line:90% as being from Junior Wells. 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:30.720 align:middle line:84% Junior Wells was one of the second generation-- 00:03:30.720 --> 00:03:33.660 align:middle line:84% member of that second generation of South Side Chicago blues 00:03:33.660 --> 00:03:34.170 align:middle line:90% people. 00:03:34.170 --> 00:03:36.330 align:middle line:84% The first generation properly starts 00:03:36.330 --> 00:03:41.250 align:middle line:84% with the migration from Mississippi Delta as early 00:03:41.250 --> 00:03:43.980 align:middle line:84% as the late 1920s, but principally 00:03:43.980 --> 00:03:47.460 align:middle line:84% in the '30s, which gave us people like Muddy 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:49.350 align:middle line:90% Waters and Howlin' Wolf. 00:03:49.350 --> 00:03:51.420 align:middle line:84% Well, the second generation was people 00:03:51.420 --> 00:03:55.380 align:middle line:84% like Junior Wells and James Cotton, and people like that 00:03:55.380 --> 00:03:58.110 align:middle line:84% who electrified the blues and who 00:03:58.110 --> 00:04:00.450 align:middle line:84% gave the Beatles and the Rolling Stone 00:04:00.450 --> 00:04:04.700 align:middle line:84% a head start on their American counterparts. 00:04:04.700 --> 00:04:07.670 align:middle line:84% I grew up in homes where the verbal jam 00:04:07.670 --> 00:04:11.840 align:middle line:84% session was a floating and usually festive fixture. 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:15.530 align:middle line:84% Clusters of people were forever talking with one another, 00:04:15.530 --> 00:04:19.160 align:middle line:84% telling stories, sharing experiences, observations, 00:04:19.160 --> 00:04:24.680 align:middle line:84% jokes, riddles, conundrums, and swapping lies. 00:04:24.680 --> 00:04:27.140 align:middle line:90% Our talk was musical. 00:04:27.140 --> 00:04:30.020 align:middle line:84% The old folks often quoted scripture 00:04:30.020 --> 00:04:34.280 align:middle line:84% and we all mimicked the voices and gestures of others, 00:04:34.280 --> 00:04:36.950 align:middle line:84% marbling the fat of our utterance 00:04:36.950 --> 00:04:42.080 align:middle line:84% with lean strips of proverbial wisdom. 00:04:42.080 --> 00:04:49.190 align:middle line:84% A dog that'll carry a bone will bring you one. 00:04:49.190 --> 00:04:51.690 align:middle line:84% They used to say stuff like that and we'd look at each other 00:04:51.690 --> 00:04:55.990 align:middle line:84% as kids, what are they talking about? 00:04:55.990 --> 00:04:59.140 align:middle line:84% Much later I would become aware of the Kenyan proverb that 00:04:59.140 --> 00:05:04.090 align:middle line:84% goes, talking with one another is loving one another. 00:05:04.090 --> 00:05:06.130 align:middle line:84% For then it was enough to take delight 00:05:06.130 --> 00:05:09.880 align:middle line:84% in the pictures and emotions that flooded my imagination as I 00:05:09.880 --> 00:05:13.450 align:middle line:84% went about learning, by ear and by heart, 00:05:13.450 --> 00:05:18.850 align:middle line:84% the nature of the world that lay beyond my childhood walls 00:05:18.850 --> 00:05:20.800 align:middle line:90% and fields. 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:23.470 align:middle line:84% I used to curl up on floor pallets in a corner, 00:05:23.470 --> 00:05:27.250 align:middle line:84% or in warmly quilted beds with the door ajar, 00:05:27.250 --> 00:05:30.250 align:middle line:84% and while pretending to be asleep, listen 00:05:30.250 --> 00:05:33.400 align:middle line:84% to the grown folks carry on into the night 00:05:33.400 --> 00:05:37.930 align:middle line:84% by kerosene lamplight with crickets, or rain, 00:05:37.930 --> 00:05:43.510 align:middle line:84% or wind in the background way back up in rural Pachuta, 00:05:43.510 --> 00:05:48.640 align:middle line:84% Mississippi and other distant settings. 00:05:48.640 --> 00:05:51.340 align:middle line:84% Language and its stitched together 00:05:51.340 --> 00:05:55.660 align:middle line:84% patterns of sound, and beat, and melody, and pitch, 00:05:55.660 --> 00:05:57.760 align:middle line:90% was real for me. 00:05:57.760 --> 00:06:00.430 align:middle line:84% Those crazy quilt patches of bright 00:06:00.430 --> 00:06:04.930 align:middle line:84% and somber and giddy sound formed the literal fabric 00:06:04.930 --> 00:06:08.730 align:middle line:90% of my tender world. 00:06:08.730 --> 00:06:13.410 align:middle line:84% They were to be taken every bit as seriously as the very tree 00:06:13.410 --> 00:06:18.180 align:middle line:84% stump by the side of the dust road winding into town, 00:06:18.180 --> 00:06:21.150 align:middle line:84% that stately chinaberry stump where 00:06:21.150 --> 00:06:24.000 align:middle line:84% Uncle John, my maternal grandfather's brother, 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:28.890 align:middle line:84% boasted that he'd seen a hair-raising haint trot past one 00:06:28.890 --> 00:06:35.200 align:middle line:84% autumn long ago, hundreds of midnights before I was born. 00:06:35.200 --> 00:06:41.770 align:middle line:84% He was riding on a moon-white steed, said uncle John. 00:06:41.770 --> 00:06:47.770 align:middle line:84% And he was as close to me as you sitting from me now. 00:06:47.770 --> 00:06:49.120 align:middle line:90% Old Jack seen it, too. 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:51.040 align:middle line:84% Like to scared him half to death. 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:56.030 align:middle line:84% Reared back, commenced to bucking and jecking so bad, 00:06:56.030 --> 00:06:58.510 align:middle line:90% I got goose flesh. 00:06:58.510 --> 00:07:00.650 align:middle line:90% But I knew Old Jack. 00:07:00.650 --> 00:07:05.270 align:middle line:84% He was still alive, and he was Uncle John's favorite riding 00:07:05.270 --> 00:07:06.710 align:middle line:90% mule. 00:07:06.710 --> 00:07:09.290 align:middle line:84% And I knew what papa, my grandfather, 00:07:09.290 --> 00:07:15.370 align:middle line:84% meant when he'd haul off and say, in the dead of winter, 00:07:15.370 --> 00:07:20.260 align:middle line:84% I'm tired of hurrying down there to see about John's mules. 00:07:20.260 --> 00:07:23.680 align:middle line:84% Only thing John's mules suffering from 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:26.910 align:middle line:90% is the miss-meal colic. 00:07:26.910 --> 00:07:30.300 align:middle line:84% It was all as clear and mysteriously evident 00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:34.020 align:middle line:84% as lightning bugs pinpointing the summer-starred nights, 00:07:34.020 --> 00:07:38.460 align:middle line:84% winking out their starry morsels of code. 00:07:38.460 --> 00:07:42.300 align:middle line:84% My cousin Jesse and other kids even held long discussions 00:07:42.300 --> 00:07:44.520 align:middle line:90% about this. 00:07:44.520 --> 00:07:46.620 align:middle line:84% That was probably the way fireflies 00:07:46.620 --> 00:07:48.300 align:middle line:90% talked with one another. 00:07:48.300 --> 00:07:52.560 align:middle line:84% We figured there had to be some luminous cipher involved that 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:54.660 align:middle line:90% was none of people's business. 00:07:54.660 --> 00:07:58.440 align:middle line:84% All the same, we spent hours trying to break the lightning 00:07:58.440 --> 00:07:59.460 align:middle line:90% bug code. 00:07:59.460 --> 00:08:02.880 align:middle line:84% That is, when we weren't dashing around trapping them 00:08:02.880 --> 00:08:08.670 align:middle line:84% in mason jars to make our own special flashlights. 00:08:08.670 --> 00:08:12.500 align:middle line:84% The rise and fall of locust choirs on sizzling afternoons 00:08:12.500 --> 00:08:15.510 align:middle line:90% was equally magnetizing. 00:08:15.510 --> 00:08:18.510 align:middle line:84% Locusts, in fact, provided the background music 00:08:18.510 --> 00:08:21.840 align:middle line:84% for a signal incident that buzzes through my memory 00:08:21.840 --> 00:08:24.840 align:middle line:90% circuits to this day. 00:08:24.840 --> 00:08:26.970 align:middle line:84% I'd just finished feeding the chickens 00:08:26.970 --> 00:08:29.760 align:middle line:84% and was resting on the edge of the back porch, 00:08:29.760 --> 00:08:32.580 align:middle line:84% lazily scrawling letters in the yard dirt 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:37.559 align:middle line:84% with a prized stick when an old raggedy, smiling hobo 00:08:37.559 --> 00:08:39.360 align:middle line:90% appeared out of nowhere. 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:42.270 align:middle line:84% He wore a faded floppy straw hat and was 00:08:42.270 --> 00:08:45.330 align:middle line:90% carrying a burlap croaker sack. 00:08:45.330 --> 00:08:48.600 align:middle line:84% I stood, startled, and looked at once 00:08:48.600 --> 00:08:51.210 align:middle line:84% to see what Claude was going to do. 00:08:51.210 --> 00:08:57.100 align:middle line:84% Claude was our sleek, black farm dog, whose jet, 00:08:57.100 --> 00:09:00.300 align:middle line:84% keen nose usually picked up everything. 00:09:00.300 --> 00:09:02.370 align:middle line:90% But Claude didn't stir. 00:09:02.370 --> 00:09:06.300 align:middle line:84% He didn't let out so much as a low growl. 00:09:06.300 --> 00:09:08.760 align:middle line:84% That tattered stranger armed with nothing 00:09:08.760 --> 00:09:11.070 align:middle line:84% but a grin crouched at the porch steps 00:09:11.070 --> 00:09:13.230 align:middle line:84% were Claude had been dozing and, nodding 00:09:13.230 --> 00:09:16.800 align:middle line:84% a friendly hi do in my direction, 00:09:16.800 --> 00:09:19.860 align:middle line:84% patted the dog on his tick-tortured head 00:09:19.860 --> 00:09:25.200 align:middle line:84% just as gently as anyone in the family might have done. 00:09:25.200 --> 00:09:29.910 align:middle line:84% Mama, my grandmother, was coming from her garden 00:09:29.910 --> 00:09:33.930 align:middle line:84% with an apron full of fresh cut okra, snap beans, 00:09:33.930 --> 00:09:36.090 align:middle line:90% and green tomatoes. 00:09:36.090 --> 00:09:39.060 align:middle line:84% I could see she was as puzzled as I was. 00:09:39.060 --> 00:09:41.460 align:middle line:84% Nevertheless, she put on a smile, 00:09:41.460 --> 00:09:44.580 align:middle line:84% walked around to where we were, and she and the hobo 00:09:44.580 --> 00:09:46.980 align:middle line:90% exchanged pleasantries. 00:09:46.980 --> 00:09:50.580 align:middle line:84% He wasn't asking for a handout or odd jobs to do. 00:09:50.580 --> 00:09:54.570 align:middle line:84% He was only passing through and had somehow lost his way. 00:09:54.570 --> 00:09:58.950 align:middle line:84% Mama, her gold tooth fittings flashing in the late sunlight, 00:09:58.950 --> 00:10:03.210 align:middle line:84% patiently rerouted him, invited him to pluck a few figs 00:10:03.210 --> 00:10:08.090 align:middle line:84% and gather some pecans, then sent him on his way. 00:10:08.090 --> 00:10:10.860 align:middle line:90% He seemed harmless enough. 00:10:10.860 --> 00:10:15.600 align:middle line:84% But when he was gone, she studied Claude and looked at me, 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:19.000 align:middle line:84% then stepped into the shadows of the porch. 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:21.520 align:middle line:84% Narrowing her elusive brown eyes, 00:10:21.520 --> 00:10:28.430 align:middle line:84% she said, I do believe that old rascal must've 00:10:28.430 --> 00:10:31.440 align:middle line:90% hoodoo'd that dog. 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:34.170 align:middle line:84% She said this low under her breath, 00:10:34.170 --> 00:10:38.010 align:middle line:90% just loud enough for me to hear. 00:10:38.010 --> 00:10:40.890 align:middle line:90% Hoodoo, I said. 00:10:40.890 --> 00:10:45.420 align:middle line:84% I must have been seven, maybe eight. 00:10:45.420 --> 00:10:49.440 align:middle line:84% I'd heard the term, but never from her lips until now. 00:10:49.440 --> 00:10:53.880 align:middle line:84% Its meaning had long been hidden from me. 00:10:53.880 --> 00:10:57.280 align:middle line:90% What's Hoodoo, mama? 00:10:57.280 --> 00:11:04.290 align:middle line:84% Hoodoo, she repeated with a slow smirk that wasn't easy to read. 00:11:04.290 --> 00:11:09.210 align:middle line:84% Oh, that's the kind of magic, what you call conjure. 00:11:09.210 --> 00:11:13.230 align:middle line:84% You burn candles, you mix these powders, 00:11:13.230 --> 00:11:16.170 align:middle line:84% get a hold to a lock of somebody's hair, 00:11:16.170 --> 00:11:23.320 align:middle line:84% or a piece of their clothes, and say these words over and over. 00:11:23.320 --> 00:11:25.580 align:middle line:90% It's magic. 00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:28.550 align:middle line:90% But it's the devil's magic, see? 00:11:28.550 --> 00:11:33.680 align:middle line:84% God got his magic and the devil got his. 00:11:33.680 --> 00:11:39.230 align:middle line:84% Myself, I don't like to be fooling with them hoodoo people. 00:11:39.230 --> 00:11:41.550 align:middle line:90% Never did. 00:11:41.550 --> 00:11:46.230 align:middle line:84% Well, how come you say that man done hoodoo'd Claude? 00:11:46.230 --> 00:11:51.390 align:middle line:84% Because that dog ain't got no business laying up letting 00:11:51.390 --> 00:11:54.480 align:middle line:90% that Negro pet him like that. 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:58.800 align:middle line:84% Didn't bark, didn't even budge hardly. 00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:04.860 align:middle line:84% But mama, how could the man put a hoodoo on Claude 00:12:04.860 --> 00:12:08.280 align:middle line:84% if he hadn't even seen him before? 00:12:08.280 --> 00:12:09.735 align:middle line:90% That's what we don't know. 00:12:09.735 --> 00:12:12.640 align:middle line:90% 00:12:12.640 --> 00:12:16.690 align:middle line:84% He could have slipped round here one night while we was sleep 00:12:16.690 --> 00:12:20.890 align:middle line:84% and sprinkled around some goofer dust. 00:12:20.890 --> 00:12:24.730 align:middle line:84% Might have even had some in his hand or up his sleeve 00:12:24.730 --> 00:12:27.670 align:middle line:90% just now for all we know. 00:12:27.670 --> 00:12:30.700 align:middle line:84% There was a song that was popular around this time 00:12:30.700 --> 00:12:35.440 align:middle line:84% by a Chicago blues man named Willie Mabon who, I think, 00:12:35.440 --> 00:12:37.628 align:middle line:84% has lived in Europe more or less ever since. 00:12:37.628 --> 00:12:39.670 align:middle line:84% And it was a Chess record called, "I Don't Know." 00:12:39.670 --> 00:12:42.910 align:middle line:84% And one of the lines, which will illuminate goofer dust 00:12:42.910 --> 00:12:47.250 align:middle line:84% went something like, getting sick and tired 00:12:47.250 --> 00:12:53.220 align:middle line:84% of the way you do, one of these days papa going to poison you. 00:12:53.220 --> 00:12:56.340 align:middle line:84% Sprinkle goofer dust all around my bed, 00:12:56.340 --> 00:13:00.750 align:middle line:84% wake up one of these mornings find your own self dead. 00:13:00.750 --> 00:13:03.300 align:middle line:90% You get the idea. 00:13:03.300 --> 00:13:06.300 align:middle line:84% But mama, wouldn't we'd have heard him sneaking around 00:13:06.300 --> 00:13:08.730 align:middle line:90% the house here at night? 00:13:08.730 --> 00:13:10.710 align:middle line:90% Don't know that either. 00:13:10.710 --> 00:13:13.950 align:middle line:84% Them kind of folks know all this low-down stuff. 00:13:13.950 --> 00:13:15.810 align:middle line:90% That's all they study. 00:13:15.810 --> 00:13:18.390 align:middle line:84% The man could have run up on Claude back there 00:13:18.390 --> 00:13:23.860 align:middle line:84% in the woods someplace and hoodoo'd him then. 00:13:23.860 --> 00:13:28.480 align:middle line:84% But why would he want to hoodoo Claude in the first place? 00:13:28.480 --> 00:13:31.630 align:middle line:84% Mama trained her gaze on the chickens and the chicken coop, 00:13:31.630 --> 00:13:34.030 align:middle line:84% and said, can't answer that neither. 00:13:34.030 --> 00:13:36.200 align:middle line:90% But I can tell you one thing. 00:13:36.200 --> 00:13:40.630 align:middle line:84% If I hear any kind of devilment going on in the night, 00:13:40.630 --> 00:13:44.200 align:middle line:84% y'all will hear me shooting my pistol. 00:13:44.200 --> 00:13:48.370 align:middle line:84% This was the same woman who moaned, and hummed, 00:13:48.370 --> 00:13:51.610 align:middle line:84% and sang spirituals all day long while she worked, 00:13:51.610 --> 00:13:54.160 align:middle line:84% and who taught me table blessings 00:13:54.160 --> 00:13:57.570 align:middle line:90% and the beautiful 23rd Psalm. 00:13:57.570 --> 00:14:01.500 align:middle line:84% It was in such settings that poetry began for me. 00:14:01.500 --> 00:14:05.340 align:middle line:84% Perhaps it is children who understand poetry best. 00:14:05.340 --> 00:14:08.100 align:middle line:84% I know for certain that unlike most people, 00:14:08.100 --> 00:14:12.780 align:middle line:84% I never outgrew the need or magic, or the curative powers 00:14:12.780 --> 00:14:14.540 align:middle line:90% of language. 00:14:14.540 --> 00:14:17.840 align:middle line:84% The quiescent greenness of those pastures 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:23.040 align:middle line:84% in which I pictured myself lying down is more vivid than ever. 00:14:23.040 --> 00:14:26.750 align:middle line:84% And I can see the shapes of cloud and sky reflected 00:14:26.750 --> 00:14:29.450 align:middle line:90% in those still waters. 00:14:29.450 --> 00:14:33.440 align:middle line:84% I do not take John lightly when he declares, 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:38.510 align:middle line:84% in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. 00:14:38.510 --> 00:14:41.780 align:middle line:90% And the Word was God. 00:14:41.780 --> 00:14:45.680 align:middle line:84% Even now, in the nuclear era when we're constantly 00:14:45.680 --> 00:14:50.780 align:middle line:84% only a microchip blip away from graceless extension, 00:14:50.780 --> 00:14:53.960 align:middle line:84% even at a time when the functions of poetry 00:14:53.960 --> 00:14:58.700 align:middle line:84% have been denigrated and trivialized, when post literate 00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:03.500 align:middle line:84% societies largely regard poetic expression as a mere amusement 00:15:03.500 --> 00:15:07.400 align:middle line:84% at best, I've come to view creation itself 00:15:07.400 --> 00:15:12.220 align:middle line:84% as the actualized speech of the divine. 00:15:12.220 --> 00:15:14.830 align:middle line:84% Such lofty realizations have never 00:15:14.830 --> 00:15:18.280 align:middle line:84% been uncommon among traditional pre-literate peoples, 00:15:18.280 --> 00:15:21.610 align:middle line:84% nor among the so-called civilized. 00:15:21.610 --> 00:15:24.670 align:middle line:84% Hindu, Daoist, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, 00:15:24.670 --> 00:15:28.540 align:middle line:84% and Islamic cosmologists abound with them. 00:15:28.540 --> 00:15:33.640 align:middle line:84% Leslie Silko opens Ceremony, her fecund novel about Indian life 00:15:33.640 --> 00:15:37.720 align:middle line:84% on a New Mexico reservation with a poem that begins, 00:15:37.720 --> 00:15:43.870 align:middle line:84% Ts'its'tsi'nako, Thought-Woman, is sitting in her room. 00:15:43.870 --> 00:15:48.980 align:middle line:84% And whatever she thinks about appears. 00:15:48.980 --> 00:15:52.580 align:middle line:84% And in his moving book, Eskimo Realities, 00:15:52.580 --> 00:15:54.860 align:middle line:84% the humanist, anthropologist, and filmmaker 00:15:54.860 --> 00:15:58.710 align:middle line:84% Edmund Carpenter notes, in Eskimo languages, 00:15:58.710 --> 00:16:02.900 align:middle line:84% the word to make poetry is the word to breathe. 00:16:02.900 --> 00:16:07.550 align:middle line:84% Both are derivatives of "anerca," the soul. 00:16:07.550 --> 00:16:10.940 align:middle line:84% That which is eternal, the breath of life. 00:16:10.940 --> 00:16:15.080 align:middle line:84% A poem is words infused with breath of spirit. 00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:19.340 align:middle line:84% Let me breathe of it, says the poet maker, and then begins. 00:16:19.340 --> 00:16:23.870 align:middle line:84% I have put my poem and order on the threshold of my tongue. 00:16:23.870 --> 00:16:27.770 align:middle line:90% 00:16:27.770 --> 00:16:28.270 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:16:28.270 --> 00:16:36.810 align:middle line:90% 00:16:36.810 --> 00:16:38.570 align:middle line:90% Thank you.