WEBVTT

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I was talking with some
of the wonderful students

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here this morning
and saying something

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I'm beginning to understand
that poems help us to do when we

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write them, but
also, I believe when

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we read them, which is to go
back and look at something that

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happened, or even something
that could have happened,

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and to move beyond the
initial reaction of conflict

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or victimhood and to regard
it with a understanding.

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And I think understanding is
another word for compassion,

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both for oneself and for the
other in these moments that we

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return to.

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And I think it's a way--

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I want to believe that is a
way of healing the past, even

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the immediate past,
and bringing some

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of the clarity
and the generosity

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from that healing into the
present and into the future.

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I've been writing a lot of
poems about my first marriage,

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when I was in my 20s, married to
someone who like me, was a kid,

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ambitious.

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We both wanted to be
artists, and there

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were a lot of problems
in that marriage,

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and I felt betrayed
many times, but lately,

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when I go back to
that time of my life

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and try and compose
a poem, I can't

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conjure the feelings of anger,
or jealousy, or despondency.

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I can only see two young
people trying to become.

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And I think part of
going back to that moment

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is an unconscious desire to
heal and to say, look, I'm OK,

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and I can even be grateful.

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Maybe I'll try and find
one of those poems.

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Oh, here's one.

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This is titled Te
recuerdo Amanda,

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I remember you, Amanda, the
title of a very famous song

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by Chilean artist Victor Jara,
and begins with an epigraph

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from that song.

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That marriage was
conducted in Spanish,

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and I realize now I don't
really have the accent anymore.

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My vocabulary is crumbling.

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So just go Google the song.

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Listen to it later.

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Te recuerdo Amanda.

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I was an artist.

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The way a hatchling still
tapping at the shell

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is a goose or a duck, rather
than the mere chance of one.

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Sunup I'd roll from the mattress
atop the straw mat where

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I slept beside the husband who
taught me to pronounce huelga

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and obrador, strike and worker.

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I dressed for work.

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He went back to sleep.

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I believed in the dignity
of labor, didn't I?

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Searching Midtown at noon for a
$3 lunch, then back to the desk

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where I processed
purchase orders.

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But liberty was poetry.

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Distance bridged
by a single voice.

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Something to give your
life to, I thought, think.

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Once I forgot a Victor Jara CD
on a cafe table, which was $9

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or $12 I'd have to earn again.

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When I raced back in
to ask, the busboys

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merely shook their heads.

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Poverty was a regime.

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Love's betrayals
knocked me flat.

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I always thought
Jara's most famous song

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was about a protest,
violent repercussions

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coming down upon
the working class.

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I thought Manuel died.

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Not that he ducked out early
on a rainy day with the woman

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he loved.

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Two people can
love the same thing

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so adamantly it becomes
two different things.

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When I made it home in the dark,
my husband would be painting.

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He'd be standing there alone by
a window, smiling to himself,

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whistling something.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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