[061109mcnair]{.underline}

Patricia Gray:

Good evening, good evening. Welcome to the Library of Congress
(Library). I am Patricia Gray. I am in the \[laughs\] Poetry and
Literature Center at the Library. Excuse me, just saw a friend. Anyway,
this evening, we're going to be transported. Our guests are two New
England poets, Maxine Kumin and Wesley McNair, who, through the magic of
poems, can take us out of the nation's capital and into nonurban, even
small towns, rural settings.

I've been reading their books all week, and it has been almost like
taking a bus trip into the country, passing through towns here and
there, soaking up the landscape, petting animals, meeting vets and
farmers and the people who still live outside the beltway and outside
the other big interstates that cut off our connections with the
day-to-day life of the land.

Both poets, our own former poetry consultant, Maxine Kumin, as well as
the newcomer to this venue, Wesley McNair, have been getting a lot of
press lately.

We'll begin tonight with Wes McNair. His latest book is called "The
Ghosts of You and Me," and it is his seventh poetry collection. His
first book appeared in 1984. "Ghosts" appeared this year. Wes has been
writing steadily, honing his craft, and recently received a second
Rockefeller fellowship. He has also held Fulbright, Guggenheim and NEA
fellowships. Among his other awards have been the Devins Award for
Poetry, the Jane Kenyon Award, the Robert Frost Award, the Theodore
Roethke Prize, and an Emmy. I have to ask about that. Wes has twice
served on the nominating jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

He is published widely, writes essays as well as poetry, and has edited
three anthologies that feature Maine writers, that is to say, writers
from the state of Maine. And, he lives in Maine with his wife at Mercer.
And so, I'm eager to hear Wes tonight, and I know you're looking
forward. Let's welcome.

\[applause\]

Wes McNair:

Thank you, Patricia, for that kind introduction, and thank you all for
coming. What a pleasure to look out on this crowd and see so many of my
friends. And of course, it's a distinct pleasure for me to be reading
poems tonight with my old friend, Maxine Kumin, whom I respect so much
as a poet, and as a person, for that matter. And, because of this
pleasure I feel in reading poems to you tonight, I thought I would read
a handful of poems of praise and celebration, sticking with that theme
alone.

So, I want to begin with a poem in praise of my dog.

\[laughter\]

This is a dog Maxine knows well, actually. My wife Diane and I got this
dog at the pound when he was half grown. I don't know if you've ever
done this before, gotten a dog when it was half grown at the shelter,
but if you have, you'll know you're in for some surprises. I'll put it
that way.

This poem is titled "Charles by Accident."

> Named Charlie for the relaxed
>
> companionship we expected,
>
> he became Charles for his butler-like
>
> obedience, though he went off-duty
>
> the morning my wife walked back
>
> from the mailbox watching him
>
> toss what looked like a red sock
>
> gloriously into the air,
>
> seeing it was actually the cardinal
>
> she had been feeding all winter.
>
> Why did she scream like that
>
> was the question his whole,
>
> horrified body seemed to ask, just
>
> before he disappeared, back soon
>
> at the door, black coat, white collar,
>
> all ready to serve us: who was
>
> that other dog, anyway? Who,
>
> on the other hand, was this one,
>
> chosen at the pound for his breed
>
> and small size, now grown into three
>
> or four different kinds of large
>
> dogs stuck together. It wasn't his fault,
>
> of course, that in the end he wasn\'t
>
> Charlie, or even, considering the way
>
> he barked at guests and sniffed them,
>
> Charles exactly. Besides, it couldn\'t
>
> have been easy to be whatever
>
> sort of dog he was. Part retriever,
>
> he spent his winters biting ice,
>
> and summers dirt out of his tufted paws.
>
> Part Collie, all he ever got to herd
>
> were two faux sheep: a wire-haired terrier
>
> that bit him back and a cat that turned
>
> and ran up trees. An accidental sheep-dog,
>
> Charles by accident, and our dog only
>
> after he'd been disowned, he understood
>
> that life is all missed connections
>
> and Plan B \-- the reason why, perhaps,
>
> no one could quite pat him or say
>
> good boy enough, and why sometimes,
>
> asleep, he mourned, working his legs
>
> as if running to a place he could never
>
> reach, beyond Charles or any other
>
> way we could think of to call him.

Well, as you've just heard, I've come down here to Washington from a
little town in Maine called Mercer. And my next poem of praise happens
to be about a couple of people who live there, namely, an old woman and
her son who lives with her, and who himself is not that young. I mean,
he's old enough to have gray hair. And once, a neighbor told me this odd
story about the two of them. He said that once a week, on wash day, the
mother washes the son's hair. And I had to write a poem about that. But
the thing was, when I sat down to write this poem, the poem decided I
wasn't going to smirk about these people, even though the neighbor had
done this, because as I worked on this poem, I came to see them as they
really were, as two old Yankees who wouldn't be caught dead touching
each other under normal circumstances. But, they developed this weekly
ritual, which allowed them to do just that, touch each other.

The poem is titled, "Making Things Clean."

> One would hardly recognize him like this,
>
> the high-school shop teacher, glasses off,
>
> bent over the kitchen sink. Nearby,
>
> house dresses and underpants flutter
>
> in the window of the Maytag he bought
>
> for his mother. Its groaning is the only
>
> sound while she washes his hair,
>
> lifting the trembling water in her hands
>
> as she has always done, working foam up
>
> from his gray locks like the lightest
>
> batter she ever made. Soon enough,
>
> glasses back on, he will stand
>
> before students who mock his dullness;
>
> soon, putting up clothes, she'll feel
>
> the ache of a body surrendering to age,
>
> A little longer let him close his eyes
>
> against soap by her apron, let her move
>
> her fingers slowly, slowly, in this way
>
> the two of them have found to be together,
>
> this transfiguring moment in the world's
>
> old work of making things clean.

In August of 1999, I had all my hair buzzed off, including a little sort
of comb-over that I had on the top. And I sat in the barber chair, and I
looked down at this comb-over and I thought of all the noble service it
had provided over the years. And, I actually felt sorry for the thing.
So I was telling my friend, Bill Rohrbach about this. And he said, "Wes,
you should have saved the comb-over."

\[laughter\]

He said, "You could have put it in the science building of that college
where you teach, behind glass next to the stuffed birds, with a little
plaque next to it that said 'Professor McNair's comb-over, August
1999.'"

\[laughter\]

I actually wish I had saved it, but I didn't think to save it. So what I
did instead was to write this poem to celebrate comb-overs, wherever
they may be.

\[laughter\]

So this new poem is called "Hymn to the Comb-over."

> How the thickest of them erupt just
>
> above the ear, cresting in waves so stiff
>
> no wind can move them. Let us praise them
>
> in all of their varieties, some skinny
>
> as the bands of headphones, some rising
>
> from a part that extends halfway around
>
> the head, others four or five strings
>
> stretched so taut the scalp resembles
>
> a musical instrument. Let us praise the sprays
>
> that hold them, and the combs that coax
>
> such abundance to the front of the head
>
> in the mirror, the combers entirely forget
>
> the back. And let us celebrate the combers,
>
> who address the old sorrow of time\'s passing
>
> day after day, bringing out of the barrenness
>
> of mid-life this ridiculous and wonderful
>
> harvest, no wishful flag of hope, but, thick,
>
> or thin, the flag itself, unfurled for us all
>
> in subways, offices, and malls across America.

\[laughter\]

While I am praising, ladies and gentlemen, I want to praise old movies,
the kind that have Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in them, smoking
cigarettes. And while I'm at it, I want to praise the cigarettes, too.

This poem is titled "Smoking."

> Once, when cigarettes meant pleasure
>
> instead of death, before Bogart
>
> got lung cancer and Bacall's
>
> voice, called "smoky," fell
>
> into the gravel of a lower octave,
>
> people went to the movies just
>
> to watch the two of them smoke.
>
> Life was nothing but a job,
>
> Bogart's face told us, expressionless
>
> except for the recurrent grimace,
>
> then it lit up with the fire
>
> he held in his hands and breathed
>
> into himself with pure enjoyment
>
> until each word he spoke afterward
>
> had its own tail of smoke.
>
> When he offered a cigarette
>
> to Bacall, she looked right at him,
>
> took it into her elegant mouth
>
> and inhaled while its smoke curled
>
> and tangled with his. After the show,
>
> Just to let their hearts race and taste
>
> what they'd seen for themselves,
>
> the audiences felt in purses,
>
> shirt pockets, and even inside
>
> the sleeves of T-shirts, where packs
>
> of cigarettes were folded, by a method
>
> now largely forgotten. "Got a light?"
>
> somebody would say, "Could I bum
>
> one of yours?" never thinking
>
> that two of the questions most
>
> asked by Americans everywhere
>
> would undo themselves and disappear
>
> like the smoke that rose
>
> between their upturned fingers,
>
> unwanted in a new nation
>
> of smoke-free movie theaters
>
> malls and restaurants, where politicians
>
> in every state take moral positions
>
> against cigarettes so they can tax them
>
> for their favorite projects. \[laughter\] Just fifty years
>
> after Bogart and Bacall, smoking
>
> is mostly left in the hands of waitresses
>
> huddled outside fancy inns, or old
>
> clerks on the night shift in mini-marts,
>
> or hard-hats from the road crew
>
> on a coffee-break around the battered
>
> tailgate of a sand truck---all paying
>
> on installment with every drag
>
> for bridges and schools. Yet who else
>
> but these, who understand tomorrow
>
> is only more debt, and know
>
> better than Bogart that life is work,
>
> should be trusted with this pleasure
>
> of the tingling breath they take today,
>
> these cigarettes they bum and fondle,
>
> calling them affectionate names
>
> like "weeds" and "cancer sticks," holding
>
> smoke and fire between their fingers
>
> more casually than Humphrey Bogart
>
> and blowing it into death's eye.

I couldn't resist going outside the movies and bringing in the working
poor, you know, the underprivileged, to praise them, too. On the other
hand, Walt Whitman, the great-great-great-granddaddy of all American
poets, would have wanted it that way, I feel. Walt Whitman \-- who said
in my favorite passage of the 1855 edition of "Leaves of Grass" \-- this
about standing up for the underprivileged. He said, you may remember,
"Stand up for the stupid and the crazy."

So, I want to read you a praise poem now about retarded children or
mentally handicapped children, or whatever we may be calling them this
week or month, we who are in charge of the names, maybe to make
ourselves feel better about them. The thing is, the retarded children
don't care what we call them. They're just who they are. And, the
retarded children of this poem are doing perfectly well for themselves,
even though there are people inside, in the poem, who think they need
help.

This poem is titled "The Retarded Children Play Baseball."

> Never mind the coaches who try
>
> to teach them the game,
>
> and think of the pleasure
>
> of the large-faced boy
>
> on second who raises hand and glove
>
> straight up making the precise
>
> shape of a ball, even though
>
> the ball's now over
>
> the outfield. And think of the left
>
> and right fielders going deeper
>
> just to watch its roundness
>
> materialize out of the sky
>
> and drop at their feet. Both teams
>
> are so in love with this moment
>
> when the bat makes the ball jump
>
> or fly that when it happens
>
> everybody shouts, and the girl
>
> with slanted eyes on first base
>
> leaps off to let the batter by.
>
> Forget the coaches shouting back
>
> about the way the game is played
>
> and consider the game
>
> they're already playing, or playing
>
> perhaps elsewhere on some other field,
>
> like the shortstop, who stands transfixed
>
> all through the action, staring
>
> at what appears to be nothing.

A few years back, my mother-in-law had a terrible stroke, which
paralyzed her entire left side and greatly traumatized her and greatly
traumatized the family, as you can imagine. And after she was let out of
the hospital, she came to live with my wife, Diane, and me. And every
afternoon, in a certain room of our house, the two of us would come
together, and I would help her with her physical therapy, you know, the
massaging and the exercises through which we hoped to bring her left
side back to life. And this poem is about one of those afternoons.

And it's titled, "If You Had Come."

> If you had come into that room
>
> after her stroke to find
>
> my mother-in-law Sue Reed
>
> and me, our heads bent
>
> toward each other, making faces
>
> so her face would remember
>
> what it had forgot
>
> of the expressions for surprise
>
> and dismay, or if
>
> you had come in the moment
>
> when I tried to teach her lips
>
> by forming small lips
>
> and making them breathe,
>
> first to the left, then
>
> to the right of my nose
>
> until she began to laugh,
>
> and laugh because she couldn't
>
> on one side, and both
>
> of us laughed, you might
>
> have imagined what we did
>
> had less to do with instruction
>
> or sorrow than the antics
>
> of lovers, she giving me
>
> her hand then, I taking it
>
> in mine to stroke it
>
> over and over in the pleasure
>
> of being together in the room
>
> where you might have come
>
> to imagine the two of us
>
> together, just as we were.

Well, I am pleased to tell you that my mother-in-law was at last able to
move her left side. She was even, back at home, able to stand up and
walk. It wasn't a perfect sort of walking, but we wanted to celebrate it
anyway. So, came along a certain Sunday, and we decided to take her out
to dinner. So we packed her and her quad cane into the passenger seat. I
am driving. Diane's in the back. We go over to pick up her sister, Dot,
a large woman then in her 70s, who dearly loved to eat, so we had to
take Dot along. And we got in the parking lot of the restaurant,
beautiful day, and something disastrous happened. We couldn't get Dot
out of the back seat. This is the truth. No matter how much we pushed
and prodded and rocked her, she was lodged back there. So I address this
poem to Diane, who was even more distressed than I was to see Dot lodged
in the back seat that way.

And the poem is titled "Happiness."

> Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back
>
> seat of her sister's two-door, her freckled hand
>
> feeling the roof for the right spot
>
> to pull her wide self up onto her left,
>
> the unarthritic, ankle--why
>
> does her sister, coaching outside on her cane,
>
> have to make her laugh so, she flops
>
> back just as she was, though now
>
> looking wistfully out through the restaurant
>
> reflected in her back window, she seems bigger,
>
> and couldn't possibly mean we should go
>
> ahead in without her, she'll be all right, and so
>
> when you finally place the pillow behind her back
>
> and lift her right out into the sunshine,
>
> all four of us are happy, none more
>
> than she, who straightens the blossoms
>
> on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out
>
> once in awhile, and then goes in to eat
>
> with the greatest delicacy (oh
>
> I could never finish all that) and aplomb
>
> the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp
>
> and ice cream, just a small scoop.

So that would be Dot.

I think, you know, one of the principal aims of poetry, at least as I
practice it, is self-acceptance. And, as they say, I'm cool with that.
Only, there's a part of me, to tell you the truth, that I have always
had a little trouble accepting. And that's my big feet, which I happened
to bring along tonight, actually.

\[laughter\]

Everybody looks. These feet that came to me in an explosion of growth in
adolescence, and I have carried with me ever since, you know, up and
down the eastern seaboard, as far west as California, as far south as
Chile. Actually, that gets into the poem a little. So I decided finally
to write a poem to make peace with my feet.

And I want to encourage to you make peace with your own body part,
whatever body part it is that you may need to make peace with, while I'm
reading this poem called "Poem For My Feet."

> O feet, when they called me "Beanstalk'
>
> at 14, meaning my body was what suddenly happened
>
> after the planting of magic beans, my arms
>
> startled branches, my head looking down from the sky,
>
> I scarcely heard, stunned as I was by what magic
>
> had done overnight to you. Bad enough I now owned a penis
>
> so unpredictable I had to put books
>
> on it walking down school halls, I had your long
>
> arches and toes, which, whatever I put on them, stuck out
>
> all the more. Great pedicles, those first cordovans
>
> were the worst, deep maroon dream shoes
>
> that floated footless on their page in the catalogue
>
> I ordered from, and arrived dead weights
>
> in a huge box, so red and shiny
>
> and durable, their names lasted through two years
>
> of high school; Clodhoppers, Platters, Skis.
>
> And years later, when I took you to dinner parties
>
> where they were too polite to name you
>
> and just stopped talking altogether\--when I sat
>
> with legs crossed holding my teacup in that parlor
>
> in Chile and suddenly noticed the small people
>
> seated around me were staring at how the pulse
>
> lifted my big foot as it hung there in front of them,
>
> was I any better off? How could I tell them
>
> that I understood they had all they could do
>
> not to begin crossing themselves right there,
>
> that inside my foot and my outsized body,
>
> I only wanted to be small, too? But peace,
>
> old toe-lifters, if I couldn't accept you then,
>
> if just last month I stood barefoot before my family
>
> and called you in jest my "Oscar Meyer five-pack,"
>
> wiggling a big toe while singing, as in
>
> the commercial, "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener,"
>
> forgive the bad joke and the accusations, this
>
> has never been your fault. Unconcerned with fitting in,
>
> all you ever wanted was to take me in the direction
>
> of my own choosing. Never mind the hands
>
> getting all the attention as they waved to others
>
> on the street, this is not their poem,
>
> but only yours, steady vessels, who all along
>
> have resisted my desire to be like everyone else,
>
> who turn after the hands are done and carry me
>
> with resolute steps into my separate life.

Just three more poems. Speaking of self-acceptance, I want to read you a
poem about my early marriage, my early family life. Marrying my wife
Diane was probably the best thing I ever did, and yet we probably got
married too young, also. And, we had two children from Diane's earlier
marriage, and we quickly had two more. And, it was a wild period. What
can I say?

So this poem about that wild period is called "The Rules of the New
Car."

> After I got married and became
>
> the stepfather of two children, just before
>
> we had two more, I bought it, the bright
>
> blue sorrowful car that slowly turned
>
> to scratches and the flat black spots
>
> of gum in the seats and stains impossible
>
> to remove from the floor mats. Never again,
>
> I said as our kids, four of them by now,
>
> climbed into the new car. This time,
>
> there will be rules. The first to go
>
> was the rule I made for myself about
>
> cleaning it once a week, though why,
>
> I shouted at the kids in the rearview mirror,
>
> should I have to clean if they would just
>
> remember to fold their hands. Three years
>
> later, it was the same car I had before,
>
> except for the dent my wife put in the grille
>
> when, ignoring the regulation about snacks,
>
> she reached for a bag of chips on her way
>
> home from work and hit a tow truck. Oh,
>
> the ache I felt for broken rules,
>
> and the beautiful car that had been lost,
>
> and the car that we now had, on soft
>
> shocks in the driveway, still unpaid for.
>
> Then one day, for no particular reason except
>
> that the car was loaded down with wood
>
> for the fireplace at my in-laws' camp
>
> and groceries and sheets and clothes
>
> for the week, my wife in the passenger seat,
>
> the dog lightly panting beside the kids in the back,
>
> all innocent anticipation, waiting for me
>
> to join them, I opened the door to my life.

So all praise to opening doors in life when you had no idea that you
would open them.

And onto my next-to-the-last poem, a new poem called "My Town." I wrote
this poem, "My Town," because it occurred to me that I'd spent \-- this
gets back to Patricia's introduction \-- I had spent my whole life
living in little towns nobody ever heard of. And I want to try to figure
out why that was. As a matter of fact, my town of Mercer is so little
and so obscure, you often don't find it on a map anywhere. And that
issue gets into the beginning of this poem, actually, which is about my
town, but I hope about other towns, whether they're in Maine or
somewhere else in America, in some way.

> "My Town"
>
> Where it belongs on the state\
> tourist map, well above the red lobster\
> on the coast and in between the man\
> skiing down the slope and the shining dome\
> of the capitol building, you\'ll find nothing\
> except a moose standing in the grass.\
> But who would come to this place
>
> to see the three-foot long spotted\
> yellow butterflies faithfully displayed\
> on the side of LaFlamme\'s house, or gather\
> with the others in the Grange Hall to hear\
> old Ethel Chadwick recite with a lisp\
> and the dazed, oddly beautiful look\
> in her eye \"The Cremation of Sam McGee\"
>
> in its entirety on Old Home Day?\
> Anyway, what (as people from the city\
> might say after straying off Route 2\
> to find our few houses thrown downhill\
> among the trees) do they do here\
> for work? Nothing important, as you might\
> guess from how early in the morning
>
> they start up the hill to do it, driving\
> to the shoe shop two towns over,\
> or the paper mill, or just down the road\
> to the store, where Betty DeCarlo stands all\
> day at the counter asking the same question:\
> \"Can I help you?\" I\'m the one waiting\
> in line behind the couple with the skis
>
> on their minivan who don\'t even notice her alert,\
> genuine eyes, on their way through Eyeblink,\
> Maine, to someplace they\'ve heard of,\
> and I\'m the one lying awake listening\
> to the cars struggling up our hill in the darkness\
> of 5 o\'clock a.m. to start their long day,\
> and at twilight sitting down in the old parlor\
> with the Redlevskis, that\'s me, with a bag\
> of rhurbarb I\'ve just picked from my garden\
> for the two of them. On the television\
> in the corner a frowning man, on mute,\
> mimes all the news of concern to the nation.\
> Meanwhile they are talking about how good\
> it is to eat fresh sticks of rhubarb raw, a concern
>
> so small you wouldn\'t care much about it\
> unless you could be there to see the face\
> she makes for the taste, a mixture of sorrow\
> and pleasure that seems to have her whole life\
> in it, and to hear, in the lamplight, the intimate\
> twang of their voices telling me this news\
> at evening in my town, as I\'m telling it
>
> to you now, in this only other place I know\
> where unexpected things can happen, off the map

The only other place where unexpected things can happen off the map is
the poem, of course. So, I hope you'll find some of those unexpected
things in this last poem, too, which is called "Love Handles." And, I
wrote this poem because I began to be aware of the little ways ordinary
people express love to each other every day. And I wanted to celebrate
those little unsung moments. Love handles, well, I guess I don't need to
tell you, older lovers tend to have them. In fact, this is a kind of
love poem for older lovers. So if you're one of those, this poem is
especially for you. It begins with the image of a biker.

> "Love Handles"
>
> If the biker's head where the hair was
>
> shines in the sun while he blows
>
> into his helmet to get the heat out
>
> of it, she doesn't mind. It's not him
>
> with the bald spot, it's just him. And she likes
>
> feeling the fleshy overhang in the front
>
> when she climbs on behind and takes him
>
> into her arms. How else could he carry her
>
> up and up the wild, quick, five-
>
> note scale that they float off on? Anyway,
>
> who doesn't love a belly? Forget the revulsion
>
> we're supposed to feel looking at the before picture
>
> in the diet ad and remember the last time
>
> you asked a good friend you hadn't seen in years,
>
> What's this? patting where the shirt
>
> stuck out. Or think of feeling somebody's
>
> back, like the two old lovers lying in bed, she
>
> turned away from him inquiring over her shoulder
>
> with her finger, What's that, right there, is it
>
> a bug bite or a mole? And he, the one trusted
>
> with this place so private not even she
>
> can see it, touching it, not skin or flesh
>
> in this special, ordinary moment but something
>
> else, something more, like the hand the hunched
>
> old lady has in hers going across the fast-food
>
> parking lot. Beside her an old man, the hand's
>
> owner, is walking with what you and I
>
> might think of as a sort of kick
>
> over and over, but what they don't think of at all,
>
> balancing each other like this so they can arrive
>
> together to get a burger. The point is, you can't
>
> begin to know how to hold another body
>
> in your eye until you've held it a few times
>
> in your hand or in your arms. Any ten couples
>
> at the Fireman's Ball could tell you that. Put aside
>
> your TV dreams of youth running its fingers
>
> over the hood of a new car, or the smiling
>
> faces of Tammy the weather girl and Bob on sports,
>
> she with the unreal hair and he with the hair
>
> that's not real, and imagine the baldies
>
> with their corsaged wives under the whirling
>
> chunks of light at the Ball. Think of their innocence,
>
> all dressed up to be with the ones they've known
>
> half their lives. See how after those years
>
> of nudging and hugging and looking each other all over,
>
> they glide, eyes closed, on love handles across the floor.

Thank you. Thank you.

\[applause\]

Patricia Gray:

Oh, those love handles.

\[laughter\]

There are some unused seats over here if some of you want to come over.
Well, if not, we'll go ahead.

Maxine Kumin, I'm learning, was one of the most approachable and popular
poetry consultants ever. She served from 1981 to 1982, and was a live
presence in the Poetry Office. Because of our declining funds, that
hasn't happened maybe since. I'm not quite sure. But it's been a long
time since we've had a poetry consultant poet laureate here full time,
and it will still be a long time, I think.

Anyway, Maxine Kumin had already won acclaim when she was nominated and
when she became the consultant here at the Library of Congress. She had
won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and she has continued to receive
all kinds of accolades. She's received at least seven honorary degrees.
In 1999, she won the Ruth Lilly Prize from "Poetry Magazine." Her 15th
poetry collection came out in 2005. It is called "Jack and Other New
Poems."

"Jack" is a poem about a dear old horse who comes to a less-than-ideal
end. Another of my favorite poems from that book is "The Apparition."
It's about an old dog and the day he has to be put down by the vet. That
night, the old dog scratches, as usual, at the door, and the poet finds
that some flap of ear or fur seems to swim out of nothingness to be let
inside that night. But I'll not tell you the rest of the story. You'll
hear, I hope.

Yet, her poems are not, by any means, limited to just life in the
country, or the subject matter of dear animals on a farm. Whatever
subject she tackles, she is fearless. When you read poems such as
"Eating Babies" or "The Rapist Speaks: A Prison Interview," and others,
you will find that fearless, honest voice at work. Maxine Kumin's range
of topics is extensive and her unflinching eye can peel the skin right
off of an onion, layer by layer. This startling ability is matched only
by her compassion for our human and animal predicament. Her voice is
direct, wise and often tender. Maxine Kumin.

\[applause\]

Maxine Kumin:

Well, I want to say how sweet it is to return to read at the Library of
Congress after more than 20 years. My thanks to Don \[Donald Hall\] for
inviting me, to Patricia Gray for her warmth and efficiency, and to my
good friend, Wes, for preceding me.

Because I don't expect to pass this way again very soon, I'd like to
open by reading a few new poems from a new manuscript that will be
published next September called "Still to Mow." I took it from some
words of the late John Gardner, who said in an interview, "When you look
back, there's lots of bales in the field. But when you \-- but ahead,
it's all still to mow."

I'm going to open with the first poem in the manuscript, "Mulching."
First, I'm going to take my watch off so that I don't exceed my time.
We're already running behind. You know that. No place to put it. Stay
there.

This is called "Mulching." It's in \-- it's in triplets, but I'm not
sure that you can hear the break. But we'll see.

> Me in my bugproof netted headpiece kneeling
>
> to spread sodden newspapers between broccolis,
>
> corn sprouts, cabbages and four kinds of beans,
>
> prostrate before old suicide bombings, starvation,
>
> AIDS, earthquakes, the unforeseen tsunami,
>
> front page photographs of lines of people
>
> with everything they won heaped on their heads,
>
> the rich assortment of birds trilling on all
>
> sides of my forest garden, the exhortations
>
> of commencement speakers at local colleges,
>
> the first torture revelations under my palms
>
> and I a helpless citizen of a country
>
> I used to love, who as a child wept when
>
> the brisk police band *bugles Hats off! the flag*
>
> *is passing by*, now that every wanton deed
>
> in this stack of newsprint is heartbreak,
>
> my blackened fingers can only root in dirt,
>
> turning up industrious earthworms, bits
>
> of unreclaimed eggshell, wanting to ask
>
> the earth to take my unquiet spirit,
>
> bury it deep, make compost of it.

The next poem \-- if I can get the pages apart. Oh, yeah. Here is
another garden poem, "The Year Is 1804." And it's a villanelle, for
those of you who want to know these things. You don't need to know them
to listen to the poem. But, in a villanelle, you get to repeat the first
and third lines. It's a \-- let's see, 19-line poem. And, you know, it's
in triplets all the way down. I seem to be very fond of triplets.
Anyway, I read Dorothy Wordsworth's journal and I was just blown away.
What fun. You can get it in paper back.

So, I called this "The Domestic Arrangement."

> *Wm went into the wood to alter his poems*\
> writes Dorothy. *I shelled peas, gathered beans,*\
> *and worked in the garden.* This is Grasmere\
> \
> where she picked and boiled gooseberries,\
> *two lbs. of sugar in the first panfull*\
> while *Wm went into the wood to alter his poems*\
> \
> a trip he makes almost daily, composing\
> the lines she will later copy. Mornings\
> she works in the garden at Grasmere\
> \
> *which looked so beautiful my heart*\
> *almost melted away,* she confides\
> while Wm\'s in the wood altering his poems.\
> \
> On one of their daily walks she observes\
> helpful details of Wm\'s famed daffodils.\
> Then it\'s back to the garden at Grasmere\
> \
> where she ties up her scarlet runner beans\
> and pulls a bag of peas for Miss Simpson.\
> Leave Wm in the wood to alter his poems;\
> praise Dorothy in the garden at Grasmere.

Why am I having such trouble getting these apart? And, Wes did his dog
poem, so I have to do this one. This is a slightly irregular sonnet.
It's called "Xochi's Tale." Xochi is X-O-C-H-I. And the "tale" is
T-A-L-E.

"Xochi's Tale." And it's in his voice, because we, too, like Wes and
Diane, take in the unwanted.

> Is it my fault I'm part rat terrier, part
>
> the kind of dog who lives in a lady's lap?
>
> I didn't ask to be bottom mutt in the pack
>
> that runs untamed through the twisted trash-strewn streets
>
> in Xochiapulcho, I didn't ask to be plucked
>
> up by a pair of gringos. First, they took
>
> away my manhood. No more sweet reek
>
> of bitches, no hot pursuits, no garbage rot.
>
> When they packed up to go back to the USA
>
> I thought they'd cry, then dump me out, but no.
>
> *Macho mestizo*, my entry papers say.
>
> Who dines in style and sleeps the sleep of kings
>
> ought dream no more of his rowdy half-starved days...
>
> I dwell in heaven but without the wings.

\[laughter\]

This poem about a horse sort of appropriately follows. Actually, it's
about a painting of a horse by \[George\] Stubbs, who, you know, was
famous for his horse paintings, and this painting is called
"Whistlejacket," and it's wonderfully enormous.

The title is "Perspective."

> *First learn perspective*, Leonardo said,
>
> *then draw from nature*.
>
> Stubbs's Whistlejacket answers
>
> on a canvas nine feet tall
>
> commissioned in 1762
>
> by the second Marquess of Rockingham.
>
> This horse looks out
>
> at any who look in, looks out
>
> prickeared, exaggerated mane and tail
>
> caught in a half-levade, hocks behind heels.
>
> O horse of my heart, hang on at this still point
>
> as all around us open-air markets explode,
>
> body parts rain down and families
>
> rush to collect them, else no afterlife.
>
> The priest insists that animals are sinless,
>
> have no souls, won't appear in heaven,
>
> *his* heaven, not the paradise
>
> of expectant virgins. Where
>
> Whistlejacket went is
>
> not revealed, into the ground,
>
> perhaps, in his final pasture,
>
> O horse of my heart, full nine feet tall.

I didn't anticipate I was going to have problems getting these papers
apart.

Here is a water poem of memory that looks back in unrhymed couplets.
It's called "The Lower Chesapeake Bay."

Whatever happened to the cross-chest carry,

the head carry, the hair carry,

> the tired-swimmer-put-your-hands-on-my-shoulders-
>
> and-look-in-my-eyes retrieval, and what
>
> became of the stride jump when you leap
>
> from impossible heights and land with your head
>
> above water so that you never lose sight
>
> of your drowning person, or if he is close enough, where
>
> is the lifesaver ring attached to a rope
>
> you can hurl at your quarry, then haul
>
> him to safety, or as a last resort
>
> where is the dock onto which you tug
>
> the unconscious soul, place him facedown,
>
> clear his mouth, straddle his legs and press
>
> with your hands on both sides of his rib cage
>
> to the rhythm of *out goes the bad air in*
>
> *comes the good* air and pray he will breathe,
>
> hallowed methods we practised over and over
>
> the summer I turned eighteen to win
>
> my Water Safety Instructor\'s badge
>
> and where is the boy from Ephrata, PA
>
> I made out with night after night in the lee
>
> of the rotting boathouse at a small dank camp
>
> on the lower Chesapeake Bay?

I'm going to read three of my \[unintelligible\] torture poems. In the
book, they're in a section called "Please Pay Attention, as the Ethics
Have Changed." I won't read that poem, because it has expletives in it
that might bring the ceiling down.

\[laughter\]

So, I'm going to read three. And this first one is a villanelle, again.
I think when I have to write about hard subjects, or subjects that I
love, I take to form.

> "Entering Houses at Night"

None of us spoke their language and

> none of them spoke ours.
>
> We went in breaking down doors.
>
> They told us to force the whole scrum
>
> \--men women kids\--into one room.
>
> We went in punching kicking yelling out orders
>
> in our language, not theirs.
>
> The front of one little boy bloomed wet
>
> As we went in, breaking down doors
>
> Now it turns out that 80 percent
>
> of the ones in that sweep were innocent
>
> as we punched, kicked, yelled out orders
>
> The way that we spun in that sweltering stink
>
> with handcuffs and blindfolds was rank.
>
> We went in breaking down doors.
>
> Was that the Pyrrhic moment when
>
> we herded the sobbing women with guns
>
> as punching, kicking, yelling out orders
>
> we went in breaking down doors?

And this one is a pantun that also requires elaborate repeat lines. I
won't try to explain it. I mean, this is a kind of perversion, to take
these old \-- this is a Malaysian form. But the villanelle was an
Italian form that came over into France just a little post-Renaissance.
And I loved \-- I know it's a little bit of a perversion. But in a way,
I think it preserves these old forms, so I like being able to do it.

This is called "What You Do."

> "What You Do"
>
> when nobody's looking
>
> in the black sites what you do
>
> when nobody knows you
>
> are in there what you do
>
> when you're in the black sites
>
> when you shackle them higher
>
> in there what you do
>
> when you kill by crucifixion
>
> when you shackle them higher
>
> are you still Christian
>
> when you kill by crucifixion
>
> when you ice the body
>
> are you still Christian
>
> when you wrap it in plastic
>
> when you ice the body
>
> when you swear it didn't happen
>
> when you wrap it in plastic
>
> when the dossier's been there
>
> when you swear it didn't happen
>
> for over a year now
>
> when the dossier's been there
>
> for the ghost prisoner
>
> for over a year now
>
> where nobody's looking
>
> for the ghost prisoner
>
> when nobody knows what
>
> you do when you're in there
>
> where nobody's looking.

Needless to say, of course, that's an actual event and based on an
actual event, as is the "Entering Houses at Night." The Internet is a
wonderful resource in this respect, because you can go back and document
these things.

Okay. This is \-- that was two. This is the third one, and then I won't
read any more. This is called "Extraordinary Rendition." You remember
that term? A euphemism for shipping suspects to certain torture in other
countries where they don't observe the Geneva Convention.

> "Extraordinary Rendition"
>
> Only the oak and beach hang onto their leaves
>
> at the end, the oak leaves bruise the color of those
>
> insurgent boys Iraqi policemen captured
>
> purpling their eyes and cheek bones before
>
> lining them up to testify to the Americans
>
> that no, no, they have not been beaten. . . .
>
> The beach leaves dry to brown, a palette of cinnamon.
>
> They curl undefended, they have no stake in the outcome.
>
> Art redeems us from time, it has been written.
>
> Meanwhile, we've exported stress position, shackles,
>
> dog attacks, sleep depravation, waterboarding.
>
> To rend: *to tear (one's garments or hair)*
>
> *in anguish or rage*. To render: *to give what is due*
>
> *or owed*. The Pope's message
>
> this Sunday is the spiritual value of suffering.
>
> Extraordinary how the sun comes up
>
> with its rendition of daybreak,
>
> staining the sky with indifference.

Now I've got to find the water that Wes poured for me. It's water time.

I think this is the last one I'm going to read from the new manuscript.
It's a very discursive poem. It becomes very polemical. I don't know
what's happened to me.

\[laughter\]

I think the world situation has had a pretty heavy impact on my poems.
This is called "Though He Tarry."

> "Though He Tarry"
>
> *I believe with perfect faith in*
>
> *the coming of the Messiah*
>
> *and though he tarry I will*
>
> *wait daily for his coming*
>
> said Maimonides in 1190
>
> or so and 44 percent
>
> of people polled in the USA
>
> in 2006 are also waiting
>
> for him to show up in person\--
>
> though of course he won't [be]{.underline} a person.
>
> Do we want to save our planet,
>
> the only one we know of,
>
> so the faithful 44 percent
>
> can be in a state of high alert
>
> in case he arrives in person
>
> though of course he won't [be]{.underline} a person?
>
> According to Stephen Jay Gould
>
> *science and religion are*
>
> *non-overlapping magisteria.*
>
> see each elbowing the other
>
> to shove over on the bed
>
> they're condemned to share?
>
> See how they despise, shrink back
>
> from accidental touching?
>
> It's no surprise that
>
> 60 percent of scientists
>
> say they are nonbelievers.
>
> But whether you're churchy or not
>
> what about the planet?
>
> Damn all of you with dumpsters.
>
> Damn all who do not compost.
>
> Damn all who tie their dogs out
>
> on bare ground, without water.
>
> Damn all who debeak chickens
>
> and all who eat them, damn
>
> CEOs with bonuses,
>
> Corporate jets, trophy wives.
>
> Damn venal human nature
>
> lurching our way to a sorry
>
> and probably fiery finale. . . .
>
> If only he'd strap his angel wings on
>
> in the ether and get his licensed
>
> and guaranteed ass down here\--
>
> though of course he won\'t [be]{.underline} a person\--
>
> if only he wouldn't tarry.

Let's see how we're doing time-wise. I wanted to read a couple of poems
from "The Long Marriage." I think I won't read that, because time is
passing. Maybe I'll just read \-- I'm discarding as I go.

I'm going to read the title poem, "The Long Marriage."

> The sweet jazz
>
> of their college days
>
> spools over them
>
> where they lie
>
> on the dark lake
>
> of night growing
>
> old unevenly:
>
> the sexual thrill
>
> of Peewee Russell's
>
> clarinet; Jack
>
> Teagarden's trombone
>
> half syrup, half
>
> sobbing slide;
>
> Erroll Garner's
>
> rusty hum-along
>
> over the ivories;
>
> and Glenn Miller's
>
> plan going down
>
> again before sleep
>
> repossesses them...
>
> *Torschlusspanik.*
>
> Of course
>
> the Germans have
>
> a word for it,
>
> the shutting of
>
> the door,
>
> the bowels' terror
>
> that one will go
>
> before
>
> the other as
>
> the clattering horse
>
> hooves near.

I'm going to read a poem called:

"Three Dreams After a Suicide"

> \--Ann Sexton, 1974
>
> 1\.
>
> We're gathered in the funeral home, your friends
>
> who are not themselves especially friends,
>
> with you laid out on view in the approved fashion
>
> wearing the bright-red reading dress with cut-glass buttons
>
> that wink at the ceiling, when you spring
>
> like a jack-in-the-box from the coffin
>
> crying Boo! I was only fooling!
>
> 2\.
>
> After the terrible whipping, you are
>
> oddly pleased with yourself,
>
> an impenitent child, the winner.
>
> It's Daddy Death who's quit.
>
> Once more you've worn him out
>
> from all his lifting and striking.
>
> His belt lies shredded in his meaty fist.
>
> 3\. We are standing together in a sunless garden
>
> in Rockport, Mass. I'm wearing the hat
>
> the artist painted you in
>
> And suddenly swarms of wasps
>
> fly up under the down-turned brim.
>
> *O death, where is thy sting?*
>
> Tar baby, it is stickered to me; you
>
> were my wasp and I your jew.

Now I'm going to read some poems from "Jack." I didn't think to bring
"Bringing Together," so I'm not going to be able to read from that. But
that's all right. It will be full of fresh surprises.

The opening poem is, again, a slightly irregular sonnet. This was an
incredible experience; it never happened again to us. This was, what, I
think two or three winters ago. These are Redpolls, and they're an
Arctic bird, or a sub-Arctic bird. What they were doing in New Hampshire
is a great mystery.

I called it "The Highwaymen."

> It's true, you wake up one morning and they're gone,
>
> a flock of a hundred redpolls who swept in like Huns
>
> with their tiny red caps and black mustaches,
>
> their breasts freckled and stippled like thrushes'.
>
> An eruption of redpolls you haven't seen in a decade
>
> and may never see again in the disorderly parade
>
> of your lifetime. How they intimidated the chickadees,
>
> the titmice, even the needle-nosed nuthatches.
>
> batting your year-round faithfuls away from the feeder.
>
> How they chattered, snatching and flapping, rapacious
>
> yet charming in their little red yarmulkes. . .
>
> you shiver, remembering, refilling the cylinder.
>
> The sunflower seeds glisten like ebony.
>
> Oh, merciless January, where have the highwaymen gone?

And here is another winter poem. This feels like it happened a million
years ago. It's dated February 7, 2003. It's just called "New Hampshire,
February 7, 2003."

> It's snowing again.
>
> All day, reruns
>
> of the blizzard of '78
>
> newscasters vying
>
> for bragging rights
>
> how it was to go hungry
>
> after they'd thumped
>
> the vending machines empty
>
> the weatherman clomping
>
> four miles on snowshoes
>
> to get to his mike
>
> so he could explain
>
> how three lows
>
> could collide to create
>
> a lineup of isobars
>
> footage of state troopers
>
> peering into the caked
>
> windows of cars
>
> backed up for white
>
> miles on the interstate.
>
> No reruns today
>
> of the bombings in Vietnam
>
> 2 million civilians blown
>
> apart, most of them children
>
> under 16, children
>
> always the least
>
> able to dive
>
> for cover when
>
> all that tonnage bursts
>
> from a blind sky.
>
> Snow here is
>
> weighting the pine trees
>
> while we wait for the worst:
>
> for war to begin.
>
> Schools closed, how
>
> the children
>
> love a benign blizzard
>
> a downhill scrimmage
>
> of tubes and sleds. But who
>
> remembers the blizzard
>
> that burst on those other children?
>
> Back then we called it
>
> collateral damage
>
> and will again.

This is called "The Sunday Phone Call." It's kind of a dialogue.

> "The Sunday Phone Call"
>
> Drab December, sleet falling.\
> Dogs loosely coiled in torpor.\
> Horses nose-down in hay.\
> It\'s the hour years ago\
> I used to call my parents\
> or they\'d call me.\
> \
> The phone rings. Idly\
> empty of expectation\
> I answer. It\'s my father\'s\
> voice. *Pop!* I say*, you\'re dead!*\
> *Don\'t you remember\
> that final heart attack,\
> Dallas, just before\
> Kennedy was shot?*\
> \
> *Time means nothing here,\
> kiddo.* He\'s jolly, expansive.\
> *You can wait eons for an open line.*\
> Time gets used up but\
> comes back. You know.\
> Like Ping-Pong.\
> \
> Ping-Pong! The table in\
> the attic. My father, shirtsleeves\
> rolled, the wet stub of\
> a burnt-out cigarette\
> stuck to his lower lip as\
> he murdered each one\
> of my three older brothers\
> and me yearning under the eaves,\
> waiting for my turn.\
> \
> *You sound \... just like yourself,*\
> I say. *I am myself, goddammit!*\
> *Anyway, what\'s this\
> about an accident?*\
> \
> *How did you hear about it?\
> I read it somewhere. Broke\
> your neck, et cetera.*\
> He says this vaguely,\
> his shorthand way\
> of keeping feelings at bay.\
> \
> Now I\'m indignant.\
> *But I almost died!*\
> \
> *Didn\'t I tell you\
> never buy land on a hill?\
> It\'s worthless. What\'s\
> an educated dame like you\
> doing messing with horses?\
> Messing with horses is\
> for punks.* Then, a little\
> softer, *I see you two\'ve\
> put a lot of work into\
> that hunk of real estate.*\
> \
> *Thanks. Thanks for even\
> noticing. We love it here.\
> We\'ll never sell.*\
> \
> *Like hell you won\'t!\
> You will!*\
> \
> *Pop*, I say, tearing up,\
> *let\'s not fight for once.\
> My only Poppa, when\
> do I get to see you?*\
> \
> A long pause. Then,\
> coughing his cigarette cough,\
> *Pupchen*, he says,\
> *I may be dead but\
> I\'m not clairvoyant.\
> Behave yourself.*\
> The line clicks off.

\[laughter\]

And this is called "Summer Meditation." It's funny, I came to write this
poem because my dear friend, the poet Robin Becker, who frequently
visits, said, "I'm giving you an assignment: write about all this and
call it 'Summer Meditation.'"

> It isn\'t gunfire\
> that wakes me\
> but the rat-a-tat-tat\
> of hickory nuts raining\
> on the tin roof\
> of the trailer barn.\
> Then the barred owl\
> in the blackness, calling\
> for company, who\
> who cooks for you-u-u?\
> and suddenly\
> it\'s morning.
>
> In the bathroom\
> the tiny phallic\
> night light\
> still flickers.\
> Black spots\
> of gnats, moths\
> folded in slumber\
> with one swipe\
> of the washcloth\
> reduce to powder.\
> An earwig to flush.\
> Two mosquitoes\
> lurking in the shower.\
> Killing before\
> breakfast
>
> and killing after:\
> Japanese beetles\
> all green and coppery\
> fornicating on\
> the leafy tops\
> of the raspberries\
> piggybacked\
> triplets and foursomes\
> easy to flick\
> into soap suds.\
> Their glistening\
> drowning selves\
> a carpet of beads unstrung\
> spit Bad Buddhist!
>
> At the pond\
> naked, pale\
> I slip between\
> two shores\
> of greenery\
> solitary\
> back in the murk\
> of womb while\
> there goes mr. big\
> the brookie\
> trailed by mrs. big\
> wispy silhouettes\
> darting in synchrony\
> past the deep pool\
> by the great rock
>
> the great rock\
> that is always dark\
> on its underside\
> the one I used to dive\
> from, aiming to come up\
> in the heart\
> of a cold spring\
> rising exultant\
> time after time\
> into the fizz\
> of lime-green light . . .
>
> At sundown the horses\'\
> winter hay arrives.\
> The dogs raise\
> an appropriate racket.\
> Always the annual\
> hay supply comes\
> at suppertime\
> on the hottest day\
> of August.
>
> Eddy and Tim, oily\
> with sweat, grunt\
> bucking hay\
> heaving\
> 40-lb. bales up\
> crisscrossed like\
> Pick-up-Sticks\
> so air can circulate.\
> They stand around after\
> holding their elbows\
> that noncommittal\
> Yankee gesture\
> that says friendship\
> same as last year.\
> We chat, exchange\
> town gossip\
> the usual, except\
> Eddie\'s son\
> is in Iraq.
>
> Afterward\
> the sweep-up.\
> Hay clings to everything\
> like rumor.\
> The full barn\
> cries summer, a scent\
> I suck into myself.\
> Big red sundown\
> induces melancholy.
>
> I want to sing\
> of death unbruised.\
> Its smoothening.\
> I want to prepare\
> for death\'s arrival\
> in my life.\
> I want to be\
> an advanced thinker -\
> the will, the organ donation,\
> the power of attorney -\
> but when my old\
> dead horses come\
> running toward me\
> in a dream\
> healthy and halterless\
> - Gennie, Taboo, and Jack -\
> I take it back.
>
> If only death could be\
> like going to the movies.\
> You get up afterward\
> and go out\
> saying, how was it?\
> Tell me, tell me how was it.

This is called "Women and Horses," and it has an epigraph from Theodor
Adorno, who said, "After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric."

\["Women and Horses"

*After Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric*.

Theodor Adorno\]

After Auschwitz: after ten of my father's kin---

the ones who stayed---starved, then were gassed in the

camps.

aAfter Vietnam, after Korea, Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti,

Afghanistan.

After the Towers. This late in the life of our haplessly orbiting

world,

let us celebrate whatever scraps the muse, that naked child,

can pluck from the still-smoldering dumps.

If there is a lyre around, strike it! A body, stand back, give it

Air!

Let us have sparrows laying their eggs in blue bird boxes.

Let us have bluebirds insouciantly nesting elsewhere.

Lend us navel-bared teens, eyebrow- and nose-ringed

prodigies

crumbling breakfast bagels over dog-eared and jelly-smeared

texts.

Allow the able-bodied among us to have steamy sex.

Let there be fat old ladies in flowery tent dresses at bridge

tables.

Howling babies in dirty diapers and babies serenely at rest.

War and detente will go on, detente and renewed tearings

Asunder,

We can never break free from the dark and degrading past.

Let us see life again, nevertheless, in the words of Isaac Babel

*as a meadow over which women and horses wander.*

I think there are just going to be two more poems. I think I'll read
this one first. I wanted to pay homage to the late Stanley Kunitz, who
died, as I'm sure all of you in this room know, just this year at the
age of 100. He was a wonderful friend to me down the long corridor of
years. And in 1968, the National Endowment for the Arts asked me to go
to Provincetown and evaluate the then-brand-new Fine Arts Work Center,
and this poem refers to that.

> "For Stanley, Some Lines at Random"
>
> *You, Sir, with the red snippers*
>
> *who twice saw Halley's comet fly,*
>
> *you, who can identify*
>
> Coprinus, *chanterelle and sundrey*
>
> *Others of the damp-woods fleet,*
>
> *whose broadside "The Long Boat"*
>
> *produced on handmade paper*
>
> *woven from your discards \--*
>
> *here, the delivery boy declared*
>
> is Mr. Kunitz's laundry \--
>
> *hangs in my study*,
>
> *it's forty years since I, a guest*
>
> *in your Provincetown retreat*
>
> *arose from what you said*
>
> *had once been e. e. cummings's bed*
>
> *to breakfast on an omelet*
>
> *fat with choice boletuses*
>
> *that had erupted in*
>
> *your three-tiered garden*
>
> *perhaps under one of your dahlias*
>
> *the size of a dinner plate,*
>
> *a garden that took decades to create.*
>
> *Luck of the alphabet,*
>
> *since 1961 we've leaned*
>
> *against each other, spine*
>
> *on spine, positioned thus.*
>
> *Upright or slant, long may we stand*
>
> *on shelves dusted or not*
>
> *to be taken up by hands*
>
> *that cherish us*.

And then I'll close with the title poem.

"Jack"

> How pleasant the yellow butter
>
> melting on white kernels, the meniscus
>
> of red wine that coats the insides of our goblets
>
> where we sit with sturdy friends as old as we are
>
> after shucking the garden's last Silver Queen
>
> and setting husks and stalks aside for the horses
>
> the last two of our lives, still noble to look upon:
>
> our first foal, now a bossy mare of 28
>
> which calibrates to 84 in people years
>
> and my chestnut gelding, not exactly a youngster
>
> at 22. Every year, the end of summer
>
> lazy and golden, invites grief and regret:
>
> suddenly it\'s 1980, winter buffets us,
>
> winds strike like cruelty out of Dickens. Somehow
>
> we have seven horses for six stalls. One of them,
>
> a big-nosed roan gelding, calm as a president\'s portrait
>
> lives in the rectangle that leads to the stalls. We call it
>
> the motel lobby. Wise old campaigner, he dunks his
>
> hay in the water bucket to soften it, then visits the others
>
> who hang their heads over their Dutch doors. Sometimes
>
> he sprawls out flat to nap in his commodious quarters.
>
> That spring, in the bustle of grooming
>
> and riding and shoeing, I remember I let him go
>
> to a neighbor I thought was a friend, and the following
>
> fall she sold him down the river. I meant to
>
> but never did go looking for him, to buy him back
>
> and now my old guilt is flooding this twilit table
>
> my guilt is ghosting the candles that pale us to skeletons
>
> the ones we must all become in an as yet unspecified order.
>
> Oh Jack, tethered in what rough stall alone
>
> did you remember that one good winter?

Thank you all.

\[applause\]

\[end of transcript\]