This is my third or fourth time here, so I managed to keep myself from going on a buying spree and skipped the signings so I didn't miss readings, though both Stern and Kunitz had important recent collections that I ought to have picked up.
[Update: no, no copies of “The Lanyard” here. But since you’re here, I tossed in some links to some of the poems that I could find. I hope you find something of interest. —Allan, 30 Sep 2002]
Gerald Stern. "Three Hearts," on New Jersey. "The Dancing," about a Filco Radio. "The Dog." The great ideal of poets is either a great large poem running several thousands of lines, or a great short poem. This is "St. Marks." A poem on Orpheus? Stern thanks Haba. "Drowning in the River." "In Time" in American Sonnets, all the poems are about (singing [to abuse the audience, more on that later]) 2 4 6 8 12 16 20 lines long (end singing) but who's counting, as Shakespeare once said. In an interview. You did know that I have the only extant copy of the Shakespeare interview, didn't you? "Cigars," though the question of whether the audience would know what a stoop is. I won't (patronize) you--that would be stu-pid. (Hah)
Amiri Baraka. Poet Low-rate. [great speech] Writers, write! Give away poems. In the market, in the square, outside the banks. Paste them up. Copy them in copy centers. No matter what you believe in. Five hundred years ago, Shakespeare wrote, and it's his words we hear, and who remembers who the Lord Mayor of London was? Show them that the artistic mind is stronger than the economic mind! As poets, write, even if it puts you in the middle. Because it puts you in the middle, fight for truth, fight for truth and beauty. "In Town," then "Understanding Readiness" for Stokey Carmichael, "Between Infrared and Ultraviolet," which started with a vocal piece after Dizzy Gillespie.
[Okay, I disagree with many of Baraka's views, but unlike Bly, he can let the poetry speak for him.]
Eugene Friesen on cello: Bach, using voice as an element. An elegy for Pablo Kassavides, the late patriarch of the cellists, in a (Kassavides) death mask and black cape.
Rita Dove (1993-1995). Thanks to Jim Haba and Scott... "Parsley," parts one ("The Cane Fields") and two ("The Palace"). Haitian workers killed by Dominican general based on how they pronounced the Spanish word for parsley. "The Island Women of Paris." "Ghost Walk: Chateau d'Elysee 1966" (I think): "...searching for his laughter and a last glass of wine." "Goethe Demimonde" (I think): "...to hell with wisdom, they're all wrong,/I'll never be through with my life." From the Rosa Parks sequence: "When the fire hits," "Claudette Colvin goes to work," and "Rosa." Newer poems, always a scary thing: "I have been a stranger in a strange land." Recently started taking ballroom dancing lessons, as an easy activity. Never worked harder in my life: "Foxtrot Fridays." "Now," my take on the glass half empty, half full. "The Sisters Swan Song," from a series of cameos: "...we all died of insignificance." "Last Words," [a really excellent piece, must find it:] "What nonsense! That's not even worth writing down."
Robert Hass. (Haba: Kunitz selected him for Yale Younger, then Hass preceded him as Poet Laureate. Started the watershed conference). Mostly new work. "Ending of other people's poems:" "...the song they did not hear." [Odysseus and silent musics] "Describing color is impossible and the one wing of the arc of desire," which I believe I heard him read at Poetry and the Public Sphere. "Supple wreath of myrtle," a meditation on Nietzsche. "Tender little Buddha..." on Whitman and his love, and Whitman and his true love, poetry. Two poems named "Etymology," I think, one about bodily fluids and the speaker being caught picking his nose, the other about finding that word he wanted in the earlier poem. "Terror of the Innings," from a series. "Habits of Paradise" "The world as will and representation," about Antibuse (anti-alcoholic drug) his fifties father and off-kilter mother, alcohol, and where one gets moral ideas as his mother gags down alcohol she cannot handle. A piece using a long line found in Horace, the Asclepedeian line, one that Hopkins used for his line about the Farrier, Felix the farrier is dead, my duty all ended. Don't think he mentioned the title. "My first wife's daughter's..." etc. That's as long a line of poetry as a line should get. Meg lost him again. "The Seventh Night," about a poetic contest at a writing colony or something. Very good; find it.
Paul Winter on clarinet, doing "Canyon Suite" or "Canyon Lullabye" or somethign like that, based on experiences at the Grand Canyon, someplace he dubbed "Bach's Canyon" and a found harmony at St. John the Divine's (the big Episcopalian church in NYC, if you're not from the area). "Canyon Shockwave"? I think he gave three different names for it.
Robert Pinsky (1997-2000). (Long Branch, he went to Rutgers, then Stanford [studying under Yvor Winters]). I am worried by Bush, saying he's doing things in my name that I don't agree with. But I am glad that this has not taken away my right to patriotism, that he has allowed me to grieve. Do not mind if I talk past your applause, I appreciate it, but I have been concerned of late about the phenomenon of applause. "Samurai Song." On Long Branch, "The Questions," speaking of how the NJ speech mannerism of "What about...?" [This gave a familial sense of the characters of Long Branch.] "The Figured Wheel," and the circular sense of history: "It's hard to read when you can't inhale." Something about connectedness and touch, and the poem, "Shirt" about a factory worker in a blaze. "Book." "Newspaper." "...the skein of days." We feel a need, an obligation to take care of our young and our old. Evil intermingles with good, and it is a life's work to untangle it: "Civic Rites." A revision of yesterday's poem [the chutzpah one, remember?], about who I am and what I owe you, all these issues tied up to being a bad boy in high school, "Immature Song." He reads it and walks away.
Stanley Kunitz. The Dodge Fest is one of the glories of the arts and of citizenship as well. Giving voice to the [disenfranchised]. It has become a gathering of the clans. And I don't mean clans with a capital K. This first poem was written 55 years after the traumatic events it describes. "The Portrait." (the father's suicide and mother's slap-on-the-cheek one). Sometimes my mother could not take care of me and so fostered me with a French Canadian family in Worcester, Mass. "1914: This is not what I remember most about it." I wanted to write the obscure legend of my youth. And I had such a difficult time writing its conclusion... and then I turned on my television to see Martin Luther King, Jr. being assassinated. About two weeks earlier, he had been telling me about the horrors that the Civil Rights movement was experiencing, the opprobrium, and he urged the poets to join their voices to their own. I saw his assassination, went into the other room, and in a few minutes the poem was finished. It is in four parts. "On my way home from school...." This next one has a reference to Meister Eckhardt, the 13c German mystic: give away all your possessions, for God scorns to show Himself among images: "The Image Maker." The ancient Vikings' funerary rites, where the boat was set adrift aflame to journey into forever: "The Long Boat." This poem was written after the loss of many friends all at once, and all my immediate family: "The Layers." ("...live among the layers, not among the litter.") This next one is on Halley's comet, 1910, 1986, 2062. This one refers to the 1910 one" "Halley's Comet." (Child in school, at dinner, in bed, on the roof) This next one reveals my gardenter's soul: "The Round." "Touch Me." (This is one of my favorites. Well, more later.) My last poem... of this evening... (Hah) is called "King of the River," about a salmon. In some cases, you may not be able to distinguish which is the man and which the salmon. Don't worry about it.
Haba: The real challenge in helping Stanley Kunitz off the stage is to get out of his way.,"
Paul Winter on the clarinet.
Billy Collins. (Catholic schools throughout education... "full metal jacket." Being selected as poet laureate was like a soft wrecking ball from outer space. A genius for not being where you expect him to be.) Thanks, Jim Haba, applause. And now back to me. Of all poetry gatherings I've been to, these four days have been the most... humid. [Yes indeed]. "Genius" recalls the wild swans at Coole (Yeats), and the need as a poet when passing swans to count them. "The Lanyard," (on motherhood). "Love." I found the first two lines in a magazine, the work of Jacques Krechion, a poet I had never heard of, living in Belgium. Since that is a fairly safe distance... the first two lines are his, but I took his idea in another direction: "Litany." "Surprise," (on Vivaldi's 350th birthday). "No Time," and it's not often one gets a laugh from an audience for a poem about your dead parents. Songs stuck in your head, this is called, "More than a woman;" it used to be called "Build me up buttercup," but... it's the only poem I know with a title that can change from day to day. "Nine Horses." Hard to follow Stanley Kunitz, or precede him, or any of the other poets on the program. "Forgetfulness," (that river in the underworld that begins with L). "Nostalgia." (for the 1300s, 1500s, 1700s, etc) I wished to write a perfectly organized poem, according to the Aristotelian parts, called "Aristotle." I feel like I'm standing between you and the rest of your lives. "Japan." Since Stanley Kunitz is apparently bringing his A-list poems, I'll follow his lead. "On Turning Ten." This next one mentions the jazz of Johnny Hartman, "Night Club."
1:34:08 AM 
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