WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.640 align:middle line:84% It's such a pleasure for any artist to talk about one's art. 00:00:05.640 --> 00:00:09.255 align:middle line:84% That's a lot more fun than a whole set of other things. 00:00:09.255 --> 00:00:12.290 align:middle line:90% 00:00:12.290 --> 00:00:14.870 align:middle line:84% I have wanted to make each book of poems 00:00:14.870 --> 00:00:17.300 align:middle line:84% very different from what I did before. 00:00:17.300 --> 00:00:20.630 align:middle line:84% I have consciously thought, what haven't I not done? 00:00:20.630 --> 00:00:23.210 align:middle line:84% What have I not written about in the way of material? 00:00:23.210 --> 00:00:26.240 align:middle line:84% What kind of feeling have I not generated? 00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:34.210 align:middle line:84% And Jersey Rain, in a way it's the first book of mine 00:00:34.210 --> 00:00:39.020 align:middle line:84% that has the title that is not ironically grandiose. 00:00:39.020 --> 00:00:42.350 align:middle line:84% You know, my first book was called Sadness and Happiness, 00:00:42.350 --> 00:00:45.800 align:middle line:84% and my second book was called an Explanation of America, 00:00:45.800 --> 00:00:48.920 align:middle line:84% and then I wrote a book of poems called History of My Heart. 00:00:48.920 --> 00:00:54.770 align:middle line:84% So there's always this slightly teasing relation to ambition 00:00:54.770 --> 00:00:55.805 align:middle line:90% and to subject matter. 00:00:55.805 --> 00:01:01.260 align:middle line:90% 00:01:01.260 --> 00:01:04.800 align:middle line:84% I think I grew up with a skeptical relationship, 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:07.230 align:middle line:84% not only to religion but to reality. 00:01:07.230 --> 00:01:09.610 align:middle line:84% There's a kind of mental illness in my family. 00:01:09.610 --> 00:01:11.550 align:middle line:90% My mother had a head injury. 00:01:11.550 --> 00:01:13.770 align:middle line:84% To this day, I don't know how much to treat it 00:01:13.770 --> 00:01:15.672 align:middle line:90% comically or tragically. 00:01:15.672 --> 00:01:17.380 align:middle line:84% And you ought to have your head examined. 00:01:17.380 --> 00:01:19.790 align:middle line:90% Well, yeah, in fact. 00:01:19.790 --> 00:01:21.040 align:middle line:90% You should see a psychiatrist. 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:23.170 align:middle line:84% If only we had been from the right social class, 00:01:23.170 --> 00:01:26.410 align:middle line:90% should have. 00:01:26.410 --> 00:01:32.580 align:middle line:84% So that it's hard for me to talk about reality. 00:01:32.580 --> 00:01:35.460 align:middle line:84% It's easier for me to just spritz. 00:01:35.460 --> 00:01:37.920 align:middle line:84% And one of the challenges in that book 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:42.300 align:middle line:84% was to try to talk more directly and less ironically 00:01:42.300 --> 00:01:47.460 align:middle line:84% about a whole host of things-- deprivations. 00:01:47.460 --> 00:01:54.590 align:middle line:84% And I was very aware that before I had the word "artist" 00:01:54.590 --> 00:01:57.380 align:middle line:90% in my vocabulary, my daydream-- 00:01:57.380 --> 00:01:59.750 align:middle line:84% I had daydreams like other kids of being an athlete 00:01:59.750 --> 00:02:05.030 align:middle line:84% and things like that, but much of my daydream life 00:02:05.030 --> 00:02:08.180 align:middle line:84% from when I was quite small consisted of things 00:02:08.180 --> 00:02:10.280 align:middle line:90% that we would call art. 00:02:10.280 --> 00:02:12.770 align:middle line:84% Whatever it is that makes the child come home 00:02:12.770 --> 00:02:16.100 align:middle line:84% from the preschool with a paper plate on which the child has 00:02:16.100 --> 00:02:19.280 align:middle line:84% glued some dried beans and macaroni and painted it 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:23.460 align:middle line:84% and says, put it on the refrigerator. 00:02:23.460 --> 00:02:25.130 align:middle line:90% It's very strong in me. 00:02:25.130 --> 00:02:29.420 align:middle line:84% I was the kind of kid if I saw a Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire 00:02:29.420 --> 00:02:31.970 align:middle line:84% movie, I'd come out wanting to move. 00:02:31.970 --> 00:02:36.510 align:middle line:84% And I tried hard to be a musician. 00:02:36.510 --> 00:02:39.010 align:middle line:84% Probably one of the few things Helen remembers about me is I 00:02:39.010 --> 00:02:40.300 align:middle line:90% was the saxophone player. 00:02:40.300 --> 00:02:42.490 align:middle line:84% In my graduating class from high school, 00:02:42.490 --> 00:02:46.690 align:middle line:84% I was not voted most literary boy, definitely not 00:02:46.690 --> 00:02:48.690 align:middle line:90% voted most likely to succeed. 00:02:48.690 --> 00:02:54.080 align:middle line:84% But I guarantee I was voted most musical boy. 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:57.230 align:middle line:84% And as I've said before, as I said, yeah, 00:02:57.230 --> 00:03:00.980 align:middle line:84% today I would be a distinguished professional musician today 00:03:00.980 --> 00:03:03.725 align:middle line:84% if it weren't for the single obstacle of a want of talent. 00:03:03.725 --> 00:03:09.630 align:middle line:90% 00:03:09.630 --> 00:03:17.230 align:middle line:84% So in Jersey Rain, instruments play a big role. 00:03:17.230 --> 00:03:22.530 align:middle line:84% The piano that I loved, really the piano was my mother. 00:03:22.530 --> 00:03:27.410 align:middle line:84% That piano took care of me for a certain number of years. 00:03:27.410 --> 00:03:29.000 align:middle line:90% And I drowned myself in it. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:34.325 align:middle line:84% I used that piano for comfort and for escape. 00:03:34.325 --> 00:03:37.080 align:middle line:90% 00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:39.240 align:middle line:90% I write about television. 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:41.580 align:middle line:84% There's a poem about the record player 00:03:41.580 --> 00:03:43.980 align:middle line:84% as if to use an archaic expression-- 00:03:43.980 --> 00:03:44.880 align:middle line:90% phonograph. 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:47.820 align:middle line:90% 00:03:47.820 --> 00:03:52.770 align:middle line:84% So in that book a certain directness 00:03:52.770 --> 00:03:56.940 align:middle line:84% and an interest in instrumentality with language, 00:03:56.940 --> 00:04:01.350 align:middle line:84% including the alphabet as another instrument, 00:04:01.350 --> 00:04:03.750 align:middle line:84% and instruments that make instruments. 00:04:03.750 --> 00:04:07.110 align:middle line:84% So making those are all things in Jersey Rain You know what? 00:04:07.110 --> 00:04:11.400 align:middle line:84% Rain is tears, it's also life giving. 00:04:11.400 --> 00:04:14.220 align:middle line:84% My line about that title and about that title poem 00:04:14.220 --> 00:04:20.785 align:middle line:90% is that rain is like the past. 00:04:20.785 --> 00:04:24.400 align:middle line:90% 00:04:24.400 --> 00:04:28.225 align:middle line:84% It's universal, sooner or later it comes up or down. 00:04:28.225 --> 00:04:31.110 align:middle line:90% 00:04:31.110 --> 00:04:35.440 align:middle line:84% It's life sustaining, you can't live without it. 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:38.860 align:middle line:90% And it can ruin a weekend. 00:04:38.860 --> 00:04:43.210 align:middle line:84% And my past like my rain is a New Jersey past, a New Jersey 00:04:43.210 --> 00:04:44.065 align:middle line:90% rain. 00:04:44.065 --> 00:04:48.700 align:middle line:84% So those are some reflections on the nature of that book. 00:04:48.700 --> 00:04:53.990 align:middle line:90% And what I'm trying to do now-- 00:04:53.990 --> 00:04:56.457 align:middle line:84% for a long time I've had a book almost finished. 00:04:56.457 --> 00:04:58.040 align:middle line:84% In fact, there's a chapbook coming out 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:00.210 align:middle line:84% in the spring called First Things to Hand. 00:05:00.210 --> 00:05:03.240 align:middle line:84% Do I have to write a poem about the next thing I touch? 00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:05.270 align:middle line:84% Which is another form of arbitrariness 00:05:05.270 --> 00:05:07.220 align:middle line:90% like the alphabet. 00:05:07.220 --> 00:05:09.290 align:middle line:84% And there's some ingredients still missing. 00:05:09.290 --> 00:05:11.180 align:middle line:84% A lot of the poems have to do with a kind 00:05:11.180 --> 00:05:13.580 align:middle line:84% of social or political dissatisfaction 00:05:13.580 --> 00:05:14.690 align:middle line:90% with the country. 00:05:14.690 --> 00:05:16.910 align:middle line:84% I try to approach that more directly 00:05:16.910 --> 00:05:18.530 align:middle line:90% than I have in other poems. 00:05:18.530 --> 00:05:20.180 align:middle line:84% It needs something singing in it, 00:05:20.180 --> 00:05:21.950 align:middle line:90% and I haven't quite found that. 00:05:21.950 --> 00:05:23.480 align:middle line:90% There's enough in bulk. 00:05:23.480 --> 00:05:27.070 align:middle line:84% But I can sense I need to make something aah.