Thank you.
I feel fortunate to have either chosen
or to have been thrust into the world of 1939 as an infant.
And the place where it happened for me,
which was in a small town in rural Mississippi
with all storytelling that went on and all rhyming,
and quoting, and Proverbs, and all these things
that I was unaware of at the time
would contribute to my becoming a writer.
That's the only way you can understand
that is with hindsight, everybody is born at the time,
I think, when they're supposed to be born.
Alison made some references to moon poems
and the moon certainly comes up in my poetry quite a bit.
In fact, last night at around 3 o'clock in the morning,
at poetry guesthouse 1238 North Cherry,
I was awakened by something that kept getting into my eyes.
And I turned over in bed and I thought
I don't remember a streetlight being out there.
And I pulled back the Venetian blinds
and there was the full moon just doing its thing.
And it was funny because you wrrite
all the stuff about the moon and there it is and it's amazing.
And I told Karen this morning about,
it she says oh, yeah, the moon in the desert
has a way of just lighting up everything.
And I thought of Scott Momaday's House Made
of Dawn, his beautiful novel, and I
understood that's not metaphor, that's real: house made of dawn.
It's very beautiful where you live, I think.
So she's a fan of some of my poems
and I wrote 22 of these things in the 80s
and it was an interesting way that I did it I was--
I was in Italy doing poetry and jazz things, poetry and gospel
actually.
And I was about to go from Italy to Yugoslavia--
the former Yugoslavia, everything is the former now.
The former Yugoslavia on a Fulbright and I
bought a notebook in the Reggio, in that part of Italy,
and I wrote on the title page of the notebook: 22 moon poems.
And it was a strange thing to do, Alison said why 22?
I said, well, it's a magical number 22 and she said,
you did this?
I said, yes.
So what happened?
Well, the moon became this presence that saved me
from being afraid of what I was about to do
is about to go into Eastern Europe
and I had fears about it how you have fear about places
that you've heard so much about you haven't been there.
And so go by everybody else's story for example, we--
about 10 days ago, I was in Israel in Jerusalem
and just a few kilometers from Hebron,
and I was sitting at the Jerusalem Sheraton
looking at CNN News, and they were showing what was happening,
and I got scared because media coverage is
a very different thing than actually being there.
But the conceit of these poems was
that the moon would be someone that I
would address as I traveled through Italy and Yugoslavia.
And it would be something that you're
familiar with from home you--
you can see from all over the world.
So it was a little device for keeping track of travels
and also writing poetry.
And the truth is that I wrote more than 22 moon poems,
but in the end, I cut it back to 22 and--
and published those.
This is from the introduction, composed spontaneously
between September of 1984 and February of 1985,
while I was adrift in Italy, Yugoslavia,
New York, and California.
These moon inspired poems, moans,
and soliloquies continue to amaze me.
They are largely culled from a notebook
I kept during that wistful period when the moon sometimes
visible, sometimes not became my confessor,
companion and comforter.
My abiding affection for the moon--
its beauty, its presence, and magic-- is still
as wondrous to me as it was when I used to sit on the back porch
steps summers in the rural Mississippi night
and marvel at how moonlight could soften and brighten
my attitudes towards those very corn and cotton fields we
kids would have to be out working in once the sun began
making its rounds.
In those nights, I'd have secret little boy chats
with the man in the moon, smug in the knowledge, gathered
from active living, and looking, and from losing myself
in science fiction.
That our little green planet was only one of countless trillions
suspended in space with no strings attached, no visible
ones at least.
One look at the heavens, all jammed up
and crammed with stars, and oceans
of light and black no light.
And I knew there was something altogether marvelous
about our even being here that we'd forgotten somehow
or never knew about.
So here's one of those poems, this one
is called "Moonlessness."
It comes from a night that I looked up and there was no moon
and I had to deal with that.
Moonlessness.
You, you there you go again, disappearing on me moon
and on the ripest of days right smack
dab in the middle of all- autumn.
No sooner do I grow used to having you
around for days and nights on end
than the soothing shadow of you dissolves from the heavens.
And even the taste of your light upon the wet shiny coat
my tongue wears in this goodbye cartoon evaporates.
Hey, loony moon, don't you know that even
I, a clown for love, no savvy whatever for stately details,
would gladly form an elegant delegation of one
to swim this darkness to you?
Here in this particular now, here where you ditched me,
it's all these crazy blues, the all blues, moon, that buoy me,
where I hover at the streaky kitchen window,
soaking up the silvery orange and pale sky
across the lost green street of red headed October.
All of it blue, blue, ebulliently blue.
This is the now that keeps pulsing, and pushing,
and pulling me along this snail like switchback of a trail
I travel moonless.
Well, there's a phrase in here that intrigues me to this day,
and it's the one that says smack dab
in the middle of all- autumn, and all- autumn is hyphenated.
And I got that from a very interesting encounter.
I'm going to read a little section here
and you'll figure it out.