WEBVTT

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And this is a letter I wrote
to the poet Elizabeth Bishop.

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But I didn't really
write it to be written.

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That sounds weird, doesn't it?

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But a friend had an
art show in a gallery.

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It was dedicated to
Elizabeth Bishop.

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I thought it was a
little weird, but I

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guess it was Bishop's
anniversary or something.

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And she asked me to come
and sit-in the gallery

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at a round table in
the middle and to type

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in an old fashioned, heavy,
black, Remington typewriter

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to add some personal touch
to the art that was around.

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It was a very small gallery.

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And I said, I'd be happy to.

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So I tried to dress like
I was out of the 1950s.

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And I was happy to use the
typewriter because I still

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use a typewriter.

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But I didn't know what
I was supposed to type.

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So I decided I would write
a letter to Elizabeth,

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which is-- so this is unedited.

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And I wrote it in the
gallery and it just

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stops because the
gallery was closing

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and I was so happy to go home.

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Letter to Elizabeth Bishop.

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Dear Elizabeth, Margot,
whom you have never met,

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says that my outfit is one you
would not be caught dead in.

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But as you are dead,
I am of the surest

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that you would be happy to be
seen alive in it if you could.

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I am writing you from
Saratoga Springs, New York.

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And it is not even the coldest
spring, but the worst February.

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The light is not strong enough
to walk across the room.

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We are here celebrating
your life and letters.

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And I suppose the poems
are the most of it,

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but they celebrate themselves.

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And I am not here to
say anything about that.

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However, I know you will be
interested in the things that

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have changed poetry,
not being among them.

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But when one is of a certain
age and has thought it all night

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about death, one
eventually realizes

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that one wants
not to die because

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of never seeing one's beloveds
again, shameful as that is.

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But because one wonders what
the cars will look like,

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what assassinations will
happen and where and when,

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how all manner of things
in and of themselves

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will change, the
shape of objects,

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newer and newer food, and
shoes and hats and such.

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All the stuff of the world--

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the thingness.

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For instance, there
is a substance

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called Velcro, a kind
of cloth with a raised

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texture of a baby
porcupine, one whose quills

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have not quite hardened.

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And two pieces of this
cloth, when held together,

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create a bond, eliminating the
need for zippers, buttons, laces

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and ties.

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One would think
we had an abiding

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human need for an interest
in buttons and laces.

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But apparently not.

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Things go the way of things.

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The way of flesh goes
the way of flesh.

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Oh, Elizabeth.

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I'm sorry to say we
are also now living

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in the end of the age of
paper, another substance that

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is fast to float
downstream in the direction

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of some final extinction.

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This will be hard
for you to believe.

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Yet, remember the letter
you once wrote, not to me?

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Your letters you will
be aghast to hear

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have gone and gotten
themselves published?

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I don't know whom to blame.

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Well, in one letter you said,
writing from Brazil to Boston,

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that if you did not own a
blackwatch plaid wool blazer,

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you would positively die.

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And you sent a little
picture of one in the letter

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and asked them to send you one
right away, enclosing presumably

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enough money to cover the cost
of the blazer and its postage

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to the Southern hemisphere.

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Well, I saw two days ago
in a jumble heap of woolens

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at the thrift store--

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charity shop to you--

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a very long, woolen scarf,
at least three feet long

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of blackwatch plaid
made in Scotland--

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the match to your jacket.

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And I did not buy it,
though I toyed with the idea

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in your honor.

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No, Elizabeth.

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I left it there
in the dirty heap.

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Why?

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Because the age of the
blackwatch plaid has passed.

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No one wears it anymore.

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You would not be caught dead
in it even if you were alive.

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It is as charming
as ever, that plaid.

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But its existence
harks back to the time

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before women alive
today existed.

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Why does it still
exist, you may ask?

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And it exists precisely
because it is useless.

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Like all beautiful things,
Elizabeth, your poems

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and jacket among
them, they persist

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in their secret obscurity.

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They go on and on, wearing
the shoes of a ghost who--

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