 We are going to get started. My name is Andrew Liptak. I am the events coordinator for bear pond books and would like to welcome you to tonight's event Before we get started. I just want to make a couple announcements of some upcoming events that we have for the rest of the month for the good of the order So we have obviously have tonight's tonight's event with Neil Shepherd Stephen Kramer and Karen got a gotchelle Okay I just a couple of the other because it's National Poetry Month. We have a couple of other poetry events coming up on April 26th. We have the 19th annual open poetry night on April 30th, it is independent bookstore day where we will also be Celebrating a Veruca's birthday. There'll be a whole bunch of Giveaways some cake other things like that. So come on by it'll come celebrate your local store and On the 5th, sorry the 3rd of May We have after the haiku of yasa boosan with David Budbill all of our events during the week are at 7 p.m the independent bookstore days all day long and Yeah, that's what so that's we have coming up in the next couple of weeks. We hope to see you soon So tonight's event is the night of poetry with even Neil Shepherd Stephen Kramer and Karen got so Neil Shepherd is an American poet essayist professor of creative writing and literary magazine editor He has his BA from the University of Vermont MFA from Colorado State University and a PhD from Ohio State University Sorry, Ohio University his latest book is Vermont exit ramps there is Actually, I don't have Quick so I can get the titles right They'll be reading from their their their books are here. So his latest book is Vermont exit ramps, too Which presupposes a one? Yes, we we also have the first we also have the first one as well, which she is modeling right now Next up we have Stephen Kramer who is first book of his first book of poems Shiva's drum was selected for the National Poetry series and was published by the University of Illinois Press From the hip which follows the history of hip-hop in a series of 53 sought I'm sorry 56 sonnets came out in 2004 Sorry 2014 from Windridge Press and his latest book is Bone Magic, which we have several copies of which you grishly brought in Oh I misread that sorry bone music. Sorry not bone magic. Yeah, but magic's kind of cool though And Karen Gutshell is a poet and fiction writer who teaches poetry writing at Middlebury College He also directs the New England Young Writers Conference at Breadlove She received her BA with an emphasis in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in writing from Vermont College And her latest book is the River Won't Hold You which won the Ohio State University Press and Journal Wheeler Prize and is now available So take it away. Okay, he's back to you And Hi everybody, thanks for coming out and It's a really great lineup. These two other poets are fabulous I'll try to keep up And I'm gonna read just from The new book the newest of the new books. There were two books published in 2015 The others for sale called hominid up and that one is by an Irish press called salmon poetry press And this one is by a Vermont press called Green Writers Press out of Brattleboro And it's fitting that that press published Vermont exit ramps, too Which is a big book with a lot of Photographs by this wonderful photographer friend of mine who has photos in the Vermont life and Vermont magazine We've known each other since college and he drove up and down the highways with me and took the photographs and I wrote the poems and Only occasionally had to outrun the police who were after us as we were at these ramps so I'm going to read five poems and I'll start with the Title poem this one is more of the overview. It's called Vermont exits Who will claim the kingdom of exit ramps and Cloverleafs on the hillsides of I-89 these realms of birch and pine Rippling and mountain wind on a spring day Domains of quiet forgetfulness Places ravaged and recovered these little domains of bed straw and clover Harboring deer and bear who stare at cars grinding past a Driver's hands crossed around the curve a Driver's mind attuned to the bend and merge of traffic motoring down hillsides to the towns Perhaps a deer lifts its head from grazing its jaw grinding sideways Its ears alive to the downshift of gears or simple wind along the ridge line Beach leaves scratching over moss and duff You might slow or stop here for a quick piss or a picnic of wood sorrel and rib grass young dandelion and fiddlehead or You might imagine a small cabin of clay and wattles made Claiming this place. No one claims the heavy machinery having rattled past and gouged a pasture elsewhere And so that one is an overview but a lot of these are specific to a particular exit ramp and they sort of combine personal memory of a place with history and as well as adding all kinds of other things snippets of literary texts Historical pamphlets Chinese fortune cookie fortunes that I picked up at various restaurants along the way anagrams that have been scrambled like you feed Montpelier into an anagram scrambler and you ask for two and three word permutations and you get something like Triple omen which is or polite or man or something like that. Okay, so I'm gonna read actually since we're in Montpelier I'll read the Montpelier exit And you will hear a little bit of it and it mixes fact historical fact with a lot of fiction. Here we go I-89 exit 8 Montpelier route to 302 May 18th 145 p.m. Hazy Sun and clouds. That's the title Capital exit ahead Gold dome Every capital mind is a mind in progress for progress until it's not Pet project for the interstate Mile rent ops for new billboards the band be damned We need to fatten our calves and our coffers Many a false step is made by standing still Well, let's hope polite or men prevail Today the Winooski swells with spring runoff Glinting below as you slow Bridgework, please merge early Merge toward Montpelier where in the red is ugly in the black beautiful Merge toward a name. That's contraction and contradiction Montpelier Montpelier Shorn hill is what it means Really, it's a glacial bowl half empty half full Depending on the plumbing of the waterworks on dog River Road to keep the affluent from the affluent That's where farm runoff meets town runoff. That's where suburbs end on that road Attractor wobbles along hauling a fertilizer spreader an enormous mutt perched on the tailgate At the last stop sign of the last suburban curb cut it lifts the leg into the pea lit mourn relieved Toward what piece of backwoods are they retreating? Montpelier lost its last clothespin store in 2007 the last in America before it burned Today's primary business is fire and life insurance and government Senators serve best who bring home the bacon the dairy subsidy the maple syrup tariff To reach them follow the guardrails off the ramp like centurions off some processional formal columns and great walls of granite guiding you down No place to stop and consult the map before the force of the long curve turns the steering wheel in your hands the build-up Bank pressure triple omen and Suddenly you're straighting out gliding into the capital with a swelled river a Glistering dome a library with a copy of the freeze from the Parthenon and signs Painted all over town keep the billboard ban vote the progressive party They really do have a copy of the The Parthenon from the freeze of the Parthenon don't they here at the library Exit 6 Southbury There's a sign as you come in granite quarries next right Ravens loop the high air above this exit one of the wild settlements in Vermont Don't kill it with a poem Never mind. No one reads except the words in chisel stone for a burst hero a Pile of birch length stacked at the end of the Glen as if someone's home Where can I pull off legally? nowhere Six miles the descent to the valley and up the other side the pyramid mountain in the eastern distance Out there brown dust and the famous depths the berry quarries granite drilled Dynamited dragged away Clank belch and roar of steam shovel bucket loader dump truck He who throws dirt is losing ground Here a hilltop swamp Balsam fur and cattail Wetlands with red wings wheeze swamp sparrows sowing needle call Under the overpass three massive cement pillars culverts with white PVC pipes to divert runoff beside it sumac yellow birch yellow sign saying merge a Flatbed goes by hauling an old stagecoach. What's my time zone in? In 1810 the basic work was sawmill Gristmill everyone poor everything moved with a wooden wagon 1812 the first granite carved from quarry hauled off with a wooden wagon stone soup starvation a full century past before richness came with the railroad and With it a means of moving granite on a grand scale Words chiseled in cemetery stones from berry to wherever death required it He who throws dirt is losing ground to berry and they increased It's death or us Did I say that and they increase its breath or us? It's how it should be breath or us spelled in an anagram is Barry South Barry I'm going to read two more and there are sort of longish pieces and one the first one is called romaine teni and Romain teni was a real character a farmer who lived earlier in the in the 20th century and I read about him in Yankee magazine and then I did more research and I extruded it through the poetic Imagination came out with this poem Yes, this is the one where the exit goes through his farm This is the one where the exit actually goes right through Romain teni the poor man It must mean it's a good poem Romain teni Hello black fly Thanks for the welcome Now I know what romain teni cursed and loved here on teni hill road This sting inside blossoming the black bother at the center of the eye bent on spring beauty Teni knew what was coming and it came The interstate that brought the commerce in and with it the quick buck with its quick made in quick fading values It didn't value teni's enterprise on a hill hill farm that was collapsing around him He lived in the mudroom L of his old family home with gingerbread eaves and wraparound porches sagging lawns and meadows stretching in all directions in The mudroom he was closer to his animals 30 milking cows 20 laying hens two teams of war courses some sows some goats and for herding dogs He lived for them and for himself as days folded into days And he daily tilled the soil or tinkered with machines that made the farm hum He ate simple oatmeal Biscuits beans he drank switchell or spring water He watched over his fields He watched the workers up valley gouged the land to make the interstate He studied a document eminent domain He said no to the ten thousand they offered No to the 13,000 simoleons. They said were his last chance He said no value you can place on this place that birthed me and gave me my daily bread My milk and eggs my purpose on earth. I ain't leaving. You'll have to throw me off And that's how the sheriff found him when he came with his men on a Friday in September to empty the house in the barns Tenny was gentle as always Sadly smiling eyes pulled blue as he watched the dismantling of whatever it was to have an estate seized by the state Yes, Tenny knew what was coming and it came the highway That is whizzing by beyond the park and ride where I stand today Shaded by a Tenny maple says the plaque Rooted roughly in the middle of his farm rooted 200 years ago when his grand kin settled in Tenny might have winced at Wally's road extending from the park and ride with a sign Private property no entrance Tenny tried that once Private property little good. It did with government bent on progress It was progress and plain misfortune When a surveyor with a gouging road crew at the end of a long day laying road and right before sunset Saw Sun glint off the weather vane on Tenny's barn as he squinted down valley for the way forward and said We'll sight the road there straight through the middle of that man's farm Yes, this must have been a sweet piece of land back then Now it's a four lane with a median cars going south would have driven straight through his cow barn Northbound traffic would have run him over in his iron bed Now the place is nothing or the saddest spot in Vermont where a man lived 60 years Before he burned it up burned it down He loved it all the animals the husbandry Never married. He wedded the fields and the woodlots The land was his and he was the lands and time had nothing and everything to do with it Time in which generations could pass with the without the least change to road or rail bed Time to talk across a roadway or lawn to kith and kin or Taurus from the cities to the south who sought a real vermoner Lanky bearded rye with a gentle light in his eyes a light content with his self-made life and only himself to praise or blame for a problem or a cure in 1964 the highway came straight through his home The sheriff came to move him off the farm in some time after midnight in his 64th year Tenny set loose his animals Set the farm on fire Trudge back to his bed and closed the door on autumn Bolted it spiked it shut Loaded a shotgun and triggered it as the house smoked and blazed Self-immolation was his only protest the hillside burned for a night in a day Afterwards the road crew worked in a stupor the surveyor drank and the state The state never tendered a note of condolence to his next of kin nevermind an apology They just progressed And there's a a post script by his sister rosemary tenny who says he was born there He loved the land. He loved farming. He loved. I'm talking truly loved He worked hard every day seven days a week and it was all out of love not out of duty or commitment or need It was the love of the land. That's all it was Says rosemary tenny who herself apparently was a poet Okay, and then the last poem I'll read is I-91 exit 14th Fetford and it's near sunset and here's what happens when a sunlit vistas on Vermont Highways Interact with a poetic imagination and there are two women who make an appearance a former lover and grace Paley and grace Paley as you know is one of it was at one point the Vermont State Poet and She's one of the great short story writers in America in the world in fact and she had a second home in Thetford Lit vistas on the highway between Norwich and Thetford Plenty of room for cumulus glow and mind-lit memory to play this life against another Nature's first gold in the trees Chartreuse pastures dandelions zoned liminal against Marshmere gold our car climbs toward hillsides flooded with sun Her hair was gold her gold wire rims her gold fillings glinting in a laughing mouth Delapidated cabin of a fourth-class road a leaf covered path a piano out of tune in one room a sagging double bed in the other But what gold tones it hummed in the Thetford heat North of White River exits expand and leisurely cloverleafs More land more leisure For instance Thetford Academy's handsome holdings on nearby Thetford Hill a small village of stately Colonials edge by equestrian zones Gentlemen farms and two boys teams on the playing field kicking soccer balls tossing soft balls. I Never played with her kids Funny the things a marriage sheds the boys stayed with their father and We wandered the midnight trails to find glowworms phosphorescence hood owls call a sudden rush of wings and a moonless night right before us Nearby grace Paley made a second home a long way from Brooklyn. I Can hear her accent in the woods. I can hear the cadence of her prose I can see her laughing eyes her mess of white hair her jaw always chewing something Sometimes just an idea or an injustice which the forest knew nothing of But she knew it and brought it here and the forest had to listen Just as she had to listen to the forest I'm confused by vistas that led in too much light My mind can't make sense of more than a few perspectives. I wish I could multitask Like my daughter who comes out of the shower Singing a new pop song and announces. She loves existentialism Finds baseball boring has a yeast infection and she's writing a paper on code switching among the urban Wolof Can I even get this all into a poem? The clouds are moving fast and grace is gone from Thetford from Brooklyn from anywhere I can name but her name is on the cover of city lights publication number six just one beat book away from Ginsburg's howl and I imagine her lighting up the sky just now as she crosses toward her next destination and That woman I mentioned in lines five through nine is long gone from my life I don't know if she's walking with grace or with her own grown kids or with a new man I hope she never returned to her husband That story was over before I arrived at I 89 exit one or I 91 exit 14 or any of the other exits that were my entrance to a sunlit column of time Through the blasted granite where we laughed together and parted Finally because of time our mismatch ages and another flash of gold that turned my head to other opportunities What a convenient evasion other opportunities. Sorry about that East Thetford is ruined by route five trucks rumble by outside the trembling houses But further afield on hillsides and along the lakes the land's dearer the habitations trimmed and ornamented I Never traveled to Thetford Center five winding miles off highway But I bet the light glows there in a town with a real town center a village green fenced with split birch and lilacs purpling late daylight. I just bet it and Grace and that woman I found before the time of fireflies when the ground was still pregnant with glow worms are there too That's how vistas work That's what we imagine Thank you Does Steven get an introduction? No, I think we did the introductions, right? It's gonna do what I just Do I see it to like So actually so my friend Mike I think was telling me about a time. He went to a concert in college And there was a woman who was like Right see this here. This is my boogie space Ain't nobody better getting my boogie space And I think I just needed another like six inches of boogie space back here before I could you know do this anyway No, come back come back Thank you to bear pond Obviously, thank you to Neil and Karen. I'm so happy to be reading with you guys I love both of these poets work and it's just a pleasure to be Be doing this with you guys so Hey, you saw we can do our thing real quick. You're gonna come up real quick. Come here. So this is my daughter. He says she's five years old and Issa, how do you fix a broken jack-o'-lantern with a pumpkin patch? She she's ready she's ready for this so There's a new book It's still like two weeks old and I'm still like feeling how silky it is on my cheek And so I'm still in this kind of enamored space with with the new with a new work here I do have to tell you before I start reading from this about the cover image This is a skull or an x-ray of a skull And the story is that in the 1950s in Russia Russian hipsters had a difficult time getting their hands on Some new music, right? Right from from the United States So you couldn't get your hands on any of the budding rock and roll couldn't get your hands on any of like miles Davis or or bebop And so what they found was if they could get a copy of one record bootleg record They could make a copy of it on X-rays X-rays were just the right width and texture that they could make records on it So this what you see on here is actually a record That could play eat like I said either bebop or rock and roll or something like that And so yeah People would dumpster dive behind hospitals And just get hundreds thousands as many x-rays they possibly could get So that they could make music and I just love the idea of music being spun out of our bones, you know And so I will Read that poem a little bit later, but that was the that was the gist of this This title here. So I'm going to start with a poem called cold was the ground Um And it's named after the blind Willie Johnson song that is uh somewhere up in space on the spacecraft voyager Which has that gold disc with all sorts of sounds from planet earth just in case there are Um aliens out there who would like to hear what we're like and uh get a sense of what earth is like So cold was the ground Amon dragged across gravel the guitars metallic complaint and shimmy These sounds rattle the zodiac they wail to the mute eruption and flare of a collapsing star Dark was the night cold was the ground by blind Willie Johnson Three minutes and 15 seconds of bruised spiritual is touring the cosmos alongside the brandon bird concerto And john would be good on the spacecraft voyager The music flanked by a slew of natural sounds Surf and thunder Crickets a kiss a heartbeat an oral primer to planet earth The world is phonic What is matter blueberry back hoe the back of your hand But the shards of that primeval sound when the universe detonated from the ghost of a pebble On this journey any one man's history is dwarfed by boundless gulf and pulsar Voyager long past pluto is a hundred thousand years from the next system But here you are on earth And so it matters that when johnson was seven his stepmother aiming for his father Cast lie into his face the price for his father's infidelity Blinded he was resigned to a street corner The dull rattle of tips pooling in a cup A woman passing to another running catalog of bouquets Husk of sweat at first then salt then almonds her bodies continuous assertions grown hyperbolic He could smell moods their delicate swerves evident as each nuance of skins pit and swell He could smell the fur before it brushed his arm Before the woman backed away in a clatter of heels And years later he could smell the stench of soaked char In the ruined pit of his house Turned away from the hospital after the fire that gutted his roof He returned to a rain soaked bed of newspaper and soot And pneumonia killed him in the ashes beneath the ceiling not of wood or plaster But of stars What are blues with no human to hear What is a kiss or a heartbeat to that grand sweep of interplanetary ash but molecules bumping molecules Stranger unimaginable intergalactic pilgrim who's never even heard of a tongue If you've found this note curled in our million dollar can Here the absurdity of our glory and our pain Transmute it into we know not what Space dust star kindling Restore us back to sound So it's hot Still trying to figure out what to read and orders and things like that I don't know I think I think I'll do this um This is called giving blood And just one thing you need to know due to complications. I had multiple transfusions at birth That ultimately saved me. I was not in good shape And I actually had a clergy do last rites over me when I was days old Which I'm pretty sure means that I can do whatever the heck I want to and I'm good to go So I don't know but that's up for debate. We can talk about that afterwards if you want to So this is called getting blood The quick pin prick opens the smallest window in my skin The needle tapped into my arm to begin the long glide into the surrogate vein Liquid poppy coiling the cute the tube Occurrent in a way a man is absolutely delirious at least that's how it sounds from his protest that he don't want the blood of You fill in the blank a spic a rag head a fag to pollute his straight white heart He works up a storm of curses He's all scold and back talk and the head start to turn when he threatens to jet for the dorm But instead he's lost his breath. He collapses and I hear the cot take his weight Even from here the my cool arm. I'm sorry my arm cool with alcohol The artery swollen the pint siphoned off from its pouch I can tell he's in bad shape I'm thinking a car accident more than a brawl And before I know it part of my life has been wheeled away to be bar-coated refrigerated then drawn into another body where it will flood muscles and remember how to cruise in its favorite commute View to view turn at fingertip the tug back to the heart repeat repeat Hands off the man yells. I wasn't dragged into this hole to be infected I walked in here to give away the most valuable thing I hold To spread myself out so I'd walk the street and wonder if part of me was with the girl on the bench with angel Inked across her shoulders or maybe the man straddling the avenue swinging his cane like he's gonna hit the next cab out of the park But for all I know my blood will pulse through this man's sour tongue And for a moment I want that bag of my life back Then I recall how my blood isn't my own How transfusion after transfusion at birth I was delivered into embrasure A mix of race and creed colliding in my cells So now I want that crowd sleuthing inside this man I want transfer and mixture unending until at least in ourselves We won't be able to tell who's who until we're all gliding each other's veins So there are a bunch of poems in this book um Uh, I think eight poems that are in form That are about jazz musicians. So haikus sonnets villanelles mouse davis Chet baker, uh, and and some other guys. So I will think I'll read one of those Uh This is a sonnet ending with a line by miles. I don't really do a very good miles interpretation I'm not gonna try right? Okay, thanks So train coltrain, right? Train of course could start with a phrase and keep shattering it until he'd been through every shuffled combination Until fracture upon fracture. He blew the phrase from every different angle the run collapsing back into itself The quick transit of his fingertips blurred by the sweep of those furious calisthenics The man had truth to play and the truth's culmination is hard. So he tended to carry on When he asked his colleague miles train was still a sideman How to end a solo miles only laughed took a swig and rasped You take the damn horn out your mouth True no no lie You take the damn horn out your mouth So this next one is about saffo um I think that many people who are into poetry at least know that a lot of her Fragments were found wrapping mummies in egypt um And so you unwrap the mummy you get portions of a saffo poem, but of course a lot of the Wrappings just disintegrated right so you get all these um Gaps and leaps which make these poems that are 1300 years old Um oddly modern, you know you read these and they are they have these modern leaps which are just so incredible um So this is called saffo in egypt Mummified crocodiles Her shredded songs curved with the dry sticks of their tongues Strip by torn strip unknowing servants applied them to the mummy's solemn ribs And what ancient paste could have saved them from sifting to trays of shriveled olives and pomegranate Her songs restored thus Unraveled to vacancies whole sections traded for an arid hush Slender omissions erupting into strains of a nervous lover My tongue breaks up and a delicate fire runs through my flesh Her body ravaged by a need so deep only this forged rhythm could keep her from breaking down From seeing that the fires which raid inside which rage inside us are a kind rehearsal for death And how to edge closer to that mystery than such silence Her town market preserved its teeming inventory Oyster wine flask figs and golden bracelets The punctured intervals erasing half her city. So the streets are lent anew imposed syncopation ankle bone cups honey chickpeas Each piece parceled and perfect as if it were the first time sounds were used to signify the world Crocodile pomegranate the words curving still wet on my tongue so i'm thinking I like when people give a A Notice like right i'm going to read one more poem i'm going to read two more poems and uh, what was it now? I always forget but one will be the alien that's right So, uh, who was it? Do you remember who was? Who was it? remember Saw a poet read one time it was so great. He was like I'm gonna read one last poem The Iliad I'm gonna read two and it won't be the Iliad in the Odyssey and these are a little bit shorter. This is um, this is uh Called chicken when I first moved to vermont, um I had lived in new york city for 10 years My first couple books were all about new york city and I that was my subject matter and when I came here I was like What am I what am I doing? What am I gonna do here? Um Anyway, so this is called chicken now. We do have chickens now joanne and I have five awesome chickens But uh, that was not how we started off 10 years ago Chicken at the harvest festival When we were celebrating with pumpkin tarts and cider an older farmer who asked what I was into Oh, i'm sorry an older farmer asked what I was into And maybe my answer was muffled a bit from the ciders tang Because he started talking passionately not about his favorite poet or the use of weather in haiku But about his chickens White leghorns silky bantams road island reds buff orpingtons How in corporate agriculture the birds are bred so big that their legs cripple beneath them and isn't that a shame I tried to break in to tell him he had misheard But he shook his head and held up his finger. That's not the case with his birds When his hens are laying he puts oyster shells in their grit to give them extra calcium for their own shells His birds are free range not de-beaked and stuffed two dozen to a pen Freedom makes all the difference in the world. You can taste their happiness. He said even see it There are yolks of rich almost tangerine color not pale like those you get from the grocery And he was starting to get out of breath From excitement and by this time to tell you the truth. I was just hoping he didn't ask about my birds Because I don't know if I could have broken it to him Poetry I said Not poultry And so this last one is the the title poem bone music, um Again, there's this Which I have to say real quick. I was lucky enough to get this cover image from a museum in Hungary And uh, I emailed them, you know, I finally got a Curator's name and I emailed them got no response a week later. I emailed them no response. Then I was like steve kramer. You're stupid Me mail it in hungarian. So I google translated it into hungarian and the next day. I had a response and Got this pretty cover. So i'm pretty happy with that All right Inky aquariums ghost windows With vinyl scarce We couldn't even bootleg songs until some back alley genius first scavenged dumpsters behind hospitals for this unlikely savior The eddy and churn of snow gravel under boot And then among syringes and bandages beneath battalions of rubber gloves and masks this stashed blessing of discarded x-rays Ah to bring them home these slides where bodies are reduced to city maps A cobalt fog inscribed with knots of calcium collagen streaks We've scissored each sheet into a circle and used the blooming end of a cigarette to burn a center hole Then repressed the contraband of ellington armstrong and bacy Onto each until a trumpets ragged helix shimmied on a broken femur The cloud of a skull with its zipper of teeth the stacked totem of a spine When the state caught wind slides through scarce as Siberian mangoes And we scrounged for our own cap scans ultrasounds And so fias mri is a colman hawkins Notes escaping like smoke from the cage of her ribs Bring on winter bring on disease and rot and fracture Because the more broken we become the more music we can spin out of our bones Thank you You can you can move the podium wherever you want. Oh, yeah, I can create my own my own boogie space here Um, I'm happy with the boogie space that you created here. Um, well, thanks everyone for for being here and I'm really Uh pleased to be in your town and in this beautiful bookstore that I have loved for a very long time It's an honor um to read here and um, so thanks bear pond for having us and um really Honored to be reading with um, Stephen and neo poets that I um admire greatly. I know that I Mentioned this the last time I read here with Stephen But um, he he's actually when he was editor of the green mountains review He's the first person ever to publish a poem of mine. So and that was 20 years ago this spring actually and uh, it was a while after that before Um, I had another publication. So that sustained me through those through that lean time and Oh, yeah, no, that's sorry neil. It was neil. Yeah, not Yeah, we go back a long way too, but so anyway, I want to thank you for um for that The first publication in a magazine that I loved and um And who knows where I'd be today if I hadn't um So I'm going to read um some poems from um from this book that came out last year Um, and it's national poetry month. So I've been repeating myself a lot with these Poems, which is fine except that Karen McCann is here and I read with her recently and um, she heard all these same poems So I might try to mix it up a little bit Clifton here. Yeah, that's true. Um Well, if I'm brave, I'll maybe I'll mix it up a little bit if I can I might chicken out Trying to read something that I haven't practiced, but we'll see. Um So, um, I'm going to start with a poem called earthquake When I tell you my childhood was wasted at sea you should bear in mind. I may be an unreliable narrator When I say I spent a year in military school disguised as a boy be skeptical though. In fact, I did Each morning we polished our boots to an oily sheen and ran through the spruce woods with empty guns When I tell you I love white wine It's the plain truth as is the fact that my mother was a painter and my father a cellist Or a physicist. I get the two confused I get confused about the relative weight of my loneliness. It seems so heavy, but where is it? Did you know I survived shipwreck that I was marooned and lived a long time on the island? Surely that explains this hook-shaped scar my love of salt I ask for no help with these burdens the earthquake rocked rocked the building's foundation and the bed posts swayed like masks We set off from port All my lies are like that they travel so far over the horizon Then finally come back my sea weary long lost kin um, okay Going off script here a little bit. Um, this is called conception Pearl curled around your book go outside to the tamaracks untie your shoes remember the story On the night you were conceived your mother dreamt of obedience your milk teeth all buried beneath that tree In the church yards brides and birds preen your white cake tasting like wax. He will undress you Or you will row a frail boat to a harbor near ruin temples where honey is gathered The sting on your heel is soothed by sav of the flower the bee sucked Loosen your hair It doesn't matter which you begin with either way your words are sealed with burnt sugar In the end you will have to forgive yourself This one's called luxury A letter arrived from wales and I never opened it. That's wales the country not wales I mean, I would love to give a letter from a whale, but wales A letter a letter arrived from wales and I never opened it That was my one luxury before the cherry blossoms opened in the park It was the spring I had a broken heart and a neighbor who played green sleeves every night on her violin I died my hair blue Then bluer I think of wales as a country of sailors and shepherds My ancestors came from there long ago and once I visited a castle on the edge of the irish sea Very delicate cups of tea The sheep were so shy on the hillside. I think I am generalizing I don't even know for sure that it was a letter I thought of the bells and the pints of beer the sailors The envelope was thin and white as a petal A blossom from a distant tree My one luxury it was enough. It was addressed to me So I'll tell you a secret about this poem, which is um, I like it. I like this poem, but actually I wrote it um At a point where I was so sick of my poems that I That I um, I was like, I'm just gonna write a caron gotchle poem like I'm just gonna like write like Like the most caron gotchle poem in the world and it's gonna have me dying my hair blue and a letter from wales So I wrote it and then I showed it to some people and they were like, this is great Yeah, and I so I've come to kind of like, I don't know. Um This one's called more lies Sometimes I say I'm going to meet my sister at the cafe even though I have no sister Just because it's such a beautiful thing to say I've always thought so ever since I read a novel in which two sisters were constantly meeting in cafes Today for example, I walked alone on the wet sidewalk wearing my rain boots expecting someone might ask where I was headed I bought a steno pad and a watch battery the store windows fogged up Rain in april is a kind of promise and it costs nothing I carried a bag of books to the cafe and ordered tea. I like a place that's lit by lamps I like a place where you can hear people talk about small things Like the difference between azure and cerulean and the price of tulips. It's going down I watched someone who could be my sister walk in shaking the rain from her hair I thought even now florists are feeling their coolers with tulips $5 a bundle all over the city. There are sisters. Any one of them could be mine Okay, um, this one's called even even 40 And I wrote it in response to a big a big birthday Um, just a few years ago now, but even 40 I'm still just a girl just a donkey of sorts. I have this soft mouth In the morning for two full hours. I resemble my mother I am a woman in space a space walker My first jewel was beveled plastic. I stand in the lamp light wearing a slip It's winter and the raccoons are hibernating rose hips drum against the aluminum shed They were sent into space the satellites and they died Wink wink. There's a blue light blinking above the clouds. I haven't got a string of pearls No lovers no magazines. I gave them away to the saints This one's called arrows and the reader which um It's a it's a bookstore kind of poem. Um, it's about books The sad truth is I have wanted to live inside a novel more than I have wanted to live inside my own life This has been the case since the very first novel I read which involved a love affair between a girl and a pig That old story Since then a lifetime of stirring coffee with diner spoons thinking this is so like something in a novel A lifetime of moments too nothing like those in books eating sweet potatoes for dinner every night letting the cat stand on the table There was one summer. I worked in a kitchen sweating through my tank top. I was reading the brontes and I grew very thin Another summer I was so in love. I could think of nothing except my nails on his skin But he didn't want me and I went back to reading Proust I studied French because it's a language so frequently spoken in books I bought myself a scarf that wound 12 times around my neck because a girl in a book. I read had one Then I let it hang loose dragging at my feet waiting for my waiting for the hands that would carefully loop it under my chin How many times have I practiced running on flagstones and sealing letters? I'm forever sealing letters slowly stirring sugar into coffee Falling in love and buying apples There are not enough swans around here though. There are not enough heaths or swales I lack for trains and painters whiskey and sunday mornings horseshoes Hurricane lamps cast iron pots revolvers and gentle deft hands winding my scarf This is kind of fun Reading poems that I wasn't expecting to read See what else Could go south really quickly, but um This one's called um Maybe I'll read a couple of sort of ghost Story poems. This one's called yellow house poem Leave unexcavated from the narrow strip of garden the matchbox cars the lego astronauts the fingers of dolls Unlisten to the zing of unplugged telephone static and no red windbreakers snag in the trees Unpride the floorboards between whose Sloping joints are collected nickels stuck as though through a jukebox slot to needle the house's hits Or release cool sugar There's a memory in the basement Unpretty seven ish. She burns her clothes each evening in the furnace and is unreachable through weegee There's another in the master bedroom pregnant wisp holding her belly Leave undug the backyard the base of the utility pole standing like a priest with a direct connection to the forces Of electricity tirades and greenish skies Leave unglast the windows where rain leaks in and streaks the wall with exhaust There is no crack in the stairs The teeth of vacant winters have gnawed the burrows of historic mice and slivers in the kitchen collect unswept Meter readers do not visit this street. No fat letters are dropped in the mail slot No owl nests in the garages dry rafters. No wisdom. No midnight who there are no children here to soothe Just a couple more from this book and then I'll I'll end with With a couple of new poems This one's called ghost story At 2 a.m. The lamp came on by itself And I sat in my t-shirt in the circle of yellow light asking the spirit what it wanted Leaves shifted in the gutter. How long have I lived in this house long enough to have worn out my boots Long enough to have used up the vinegar I don't remember very much from our first autumn here Just the sound the wind made in the wall before we had it fixed We all have to moan sometimes We all need some attention I made the spirit a promise. I said I would leave the lamp on I said I would stay At 3 a.m. The light clicked off again just as I'd begun to drowse and dream about the characters from a book I thought I'd forgotten I walked back to bed in the dark the pads of my feet flat against the wooden floorboards Two white hands floated before me in the blackness and they scared me even though I knew they were my own hands Okay, um The reason I say it could go south is I mean there are a lot of like sad poems in this book And like I realized that when I start to like put her reading together like I'm trying not to just like depress the hell out of everybody so Okay, this one's called um Um, well, it's got a running title. So the title goes into the first line Tell your phone to stop calling me from the bottom of the river Tell midnight to stop coming in strange cities where the bells sound emptier and heavy Tell mary her hands are too open already. She may not have noticed. There's no one to fill them Your phone has debased itself It's pad of numbers a set of little soft fingertips sealed in plastic its contact list kicked downstream I wished something once I almost forget it had to do with you It had to do with the vowels of my name blue water warm to sink into It didn't work out that way Tell the moon I admire it for conserving its energy Tell the river if it wants to talk there are certain courtesies It should empty its mouth of stones. It should fall on its knees So I'm giving away all my secrets tonight that this poem is actually about butt dialing Um, you know like somebody calls you and like you just hear this like So that's what that's about Okay, so now I'm gonna end with um two two new poems. This is a two poem warning These are recent poems still kind of in progress But It's fun to finish with newer work. So this is called um tame The feral cat I've tethered since september to a supply of fancy feast still has all her distrust intact Who can blame her with nights this cold? As for me, I learned the alphabet like it was edible and I've been hungry ever since I am still not quite familiar with myself either. I guess I get lost in the cemetery looking for my ancestors tripping on roots What I've always liked about my family is the way no one ever says how they really feel So it is possible to imagine anything I make sure to tell the cat I love you so she will not have to become a poet like me She moves like a girl who has never been burdened with her own reflection I remember that I used to like my shoulders and growing up it seemed like boys liked them too But it has been a long time since I gave them much thought It's a shame when the particulars of yourself start to disappear into the routine of days You didn't make and seem to have little stake in These days I tell my students the point of discomfort is interesting to investigate But I know that I am usually not that brave I'm a house cat really I swore off heart heartbreak after the last one carved me up in the standard way I told myself I'd die if I'm not tamed I said kitty. This is your bowl your very own Behind the house the weeds are full of greek mythology and the last full moon kept me up for two nights straight But the frost is coming I I creep closer and closer to the wood stove Soon I will be all the way inside Dossel to the point that anyone might put a match to me and be warmed by my burning for a long long time Finally this is called origin story Lake michigan dreamed me I think in the winter of 1969 its long currents combing shipwrecks and where was my mama then She was wearing a red moomoo And where was my father then he was fishing for steelhead No one dreamed you stupid girl the seagull said you came straight from the belly of your granddad's school mascot You wore plaid skirts and bruised your knees and lived across the street from the motorcycle shop I remember dropping dimes in the jukebox. I remember embers in the sand Once I saw god himself A small boy running across the rv park with a toy sword in his hand I dreamed we all lay down on the beach and the dunes moved over our bodies It took 10 000 years of whispering, but we finally slept And before that the seagull asked Before that I found comfort in the fur of animals and the movement of a boat on the water I was warm in my mother's arms Before that I was a sonic boom over wisconsin and before that fire Thank you Thanks to bear pond for having us and uh Maybe you want to help them out by purchasing a few books We have books Steve and Karen Yeah We have books we'll have to sell you. Um, that's all we have for tonight. Um, they have we'll be happy to sign any copies that you might have Um, that's all. Have a good rest of the evening. Thanks