 Thank you for coming. It's really an honor to be here and this town is beautiful. So there are two mystic stories I have already because I was wandering around the town. One 13-year-old-ish, maybe 11-year-old-ish boy bumped by a car because his head was in Pokemon. And then yelled at by the driver. He was uninjured but bumped. And the driver had no idea what he was doing. And the second was this pretty old woman who said, This heat is so hot I should have come out naked. Right? Right? Am I right? I said, Yeah, you're right. You're right. You're right. You should have come out naked. So I guess I could say that up here. So that was kind of my introduction to, you know, what it feels like to be in town here. So you should go walk off campus a little bit to see what you can find. So I am, because you're all, you know, here writing new stuff, I'm going to read some new stuff. The book is not, you know, completely new although it's, you know, it was just out. But I'm going to read a new essay also. So this is its first unveiling and it's, you know, so I'll be scared properly. And in putting together the essay or in reading together essays and poems, the strange realization happened and it's that the poems, although they're about this big, work like essays and the essays, though they honestly move from left margin to right margin, work more like poems. And so this confuses me, it pleases me, it's, I don't know, it's puzzling. But I recognize that they're impersonating each other or the forms are impersonating each other. As I said, these poems are really short. I'm going to read maybe half of them twice, which I've heard has been a helpful thing and a good thing because they go by really quickly and they're kind of dense. So I'll talk around them a little bit. The belief behind these, behind this form was that brief things do not need to be art forms that capitulate to our supposedly short attention spans. They can be experiences of depth. And so that's what I sort of trusted in this form and trusted what happened. And there's a lot, they're sort of written with a sense of a lot of space around them. Okay, so I'll read a couple of them twice so they don't get too lost. Belief. Light being wavy and particulate at once is instructive. Why wouldn't other things or states present as both and? For instance, I both believe and can't. Holding these together produces a wobble. I think it's time to take seriously as a stance. So this is a sort of poets do physics poem. In case there are too many poets to add up to like one physicist out there. And apparently I got the word wobble more or less right in this poem. There isn't, you know, wobble in physics. And whenever a physicist comes up to you after reading, it's always a very scary moment. You never know which way that one's going to go. Belief. Light being wavy and particulate at once is instructive. Why wouldn't other things or states present as both and? For instance, I both believe and can't. Holding these together produces a wobble. I think it's time to take seriously as a stance. This next one is called uncertainty. It's not a place, but I'm grateful to be in it. We're endings and known things complicate. And I, the judge I know myself to be, go to review the very heavy declarations I so often lay down like law. It's not a place at all. I just practice there, assemble some beliefs, disturb others, and put the extras into a pile for mosaics. One of my big projects for the future. The tiles in that main building there sort of made me think of a project I wish I'd be able to do. Talisman. The act of granting powers to a rock so it can be used to conjure luck. It worked before. It might again. How small and irregular this matter of millions of years of compression and icebergs melting, ending here, deep in a pocket at work on the course of a diagnosis. So I was sitting out on these rocks earlier today, and some of you saw me, maybe I was unknown at that point. I wasn't sleeping. I was thinking deep thoughts. But I was thinking about this poem and I was thinking about reading this poem, and I thought in so many ways as a human I don't really understand time very well. And I'm trying to get better about that. And the stone holding me, the rock holding me up, suddenly sort of felt like it knew really a hell of a lot more about time, those millions of years collecting under my body. So it was a really peaceful, powerful moment. It was a little hybrid peaceful, powerful moment. Talisman. The act of granting powers to a rock so it can be used to conjure luck. It worked before. It might again. How small and irregular this matter of millions of years of compression and icebergs melting, ending here, deep in a pocket at work on the course of a diagnosis. Devices. I dedicate this to that kid who got bumped by the car. Time was different. If it was dead, we filled it with thoughts. Trees along the interstate we occupied by seeing. And power lines rising and dipping, we wore those by trying on a phrase they necklace by. There weren't so many ways to counter the distance everywhere. It was just fine being human and lonely. He was not fine being by himself. He needed to find creatures and hold them in his pocket. Okay, so this one I'm... Oh, okay, I'll have to read this one after. Probability. Most coincidences are not miraculous, but way more common than we think. It's the shiver of noticing being central in a sequence of events that makes so much seem wild and rare. Because what if it wasn't? Astonishment, nothing without your consent. So this poem on probability brought in an email from a mathematician who was writing a book called The Math of Coincidence and Fate. And as usual, the first three lines sort of sent cold shivers. Hi, I'm a mathematician. Oh, crap. But he wanted to use this poem as the sort of epigram to his book, which was an unbelievable thrill. I felt like I had jumped some math bar that I had never been able to jump ever. And I did read up on coincidences, and yes, they may be statistically one thing, in other words, not miracles, but I am convinced that the way they live in us is a completely different matter. And I think Emerson wrote on astronomy or on the stars or something, that only the poet knows astronomy. So if you're a poet you love to hear. It's just me, I know how to do that. But that sense that there are many kinds of knowledge that need to be patched together to make some form of holistic understanding about anything. So, probability. Most coincidences are not miraculous, but way more common than we think. It's the shiver of noticing being central in a sequence of events that makes so much seem wild and rare. Because what if it wasn't? Astonishment's nothing without your consent. Just a few more problems. Gratitude. It softens want into nothing mean, and lack is not so dark anymore. Things can be a little dim, less than ideal, and still amaze, as when there's been enough grief and you aren't any longer bowing to it. One day the pain having stopped isn't a moment. It isn't brief. It keeps going. Redbird in snow. You can choose to stop short, or have it not matter. Not weigh the brightness. Not hold very still, and be known to yourself again. A thing fills with exactly the radiance you accord it. And I'll read this last poem. Time. Having only a little means you take what you've got, or because it's not worth enough, you don't. Like not picking up a penny, because it's only a little luck. So that poem requires a confession on my part. So I follow, this is a big confession, I follow free will astrology in city paper in Baltimore, which is nationally syndicated Rob Brezny. He speaks directly to me. I'm not kidding. I'm really not kidding. Okay, so a couple months ago, I pick up the paper. Pisces. In her poem, Time, Pisces and Poet, Lea Perpera. This is in the paper. Okay? Wonders about not picking up a penny, because it's only a little luck. Presumably she's referring to a moment when you're walking down a street and you spy on almost but not quite worthless coin lying on the concrete. She theorizes that you may just leave it there. It adds next to nothing to your wealth, right? Which suggests that it also doesn't have much value as a symbol of good fortune. But we urge you to reject this line of thought in the coming weeks, Pisces. In my astrological opinion, you'll be wise to capitalize on the smallest opportunities. There will be plenty of them, and they will add up. So I'm reading my horoscope, which is my poem, and I'm supposed to listen to myself in the next few weeks. When I wrote this poem, you know, like a year ago. So these are only, these are only some of the odd things that can happen to you. As a poet in the world, I wrote to Rob, but he has not written back yet. Because really, how freaky is it that he should get a note from the poet that he's quoting or the poet herself has to read her own poem in? Which is weirder? Rob. So those are the poems. And now I will read the essay. So essays are, for me, gathering spots. Not, they're not necessarily idea-driven, but idea-seeking. Others go about very different, go about it very differently, right? You might be an idea-driven type. I'd rather bump into things or have things sort of add up and reflect back to me something I had no idea was about to cohere. I walk a lot, and walking helps with that kind of work. It helps the accretion happen. It helps continue the work away from the desk. It helps bind things together in really surprising ways. So I would advise, and as much as I advise anything, that you consider some of your work as up and away from the desk and out and in motion. You can take a little pad with you. My dog is so accustomed to me taking out the little pad that when I do it, she just sits. It's this great reaction. So this is called Walk with Snowy Things. And it was not only helped along by a walk, but it tracks the accretion of things on an actual walk, which is unusual, I understand. Walk with snowy things. That wasn't snow, but it should have been. Looks to be. Lacy with dirt, side of the road, gouged and firmed by the melt-trees cycle. What was it I passed? 60-something degrees in late December, not proper snow, but a snarl of gray cotton covered and cinched in the snowy habit of catching flung grip. And what's this? A block later, a snow-colored egg shell, also wrong in December, resting as fallen shells rest in the grass gently and up. What happens with eggs is not at all gentle that breaking apart of a known world for another. The not-egg shell is a packing chip. In pasta terms, an orichetti, a little ear. Or when I was a kid, the half-shell I loved, all that delicious foam for licking, venuses floating hair for braiding, and I'd help her down into scallopy waves and swim with her body to body, fully the animal I knew myself to be. There's more not snow on the east side of the neighborhood. This handful, so much cotton today, spotted with blood like a sick x-ray lung part of a rough tableau on the grass, sifted round with packets of sugar, a burned plastic bottle, and inside the bottle a needle. Addicts, too, have their weird, tidy gestures, like anyone fitting the cap on a jar before tossing it out. Hard to imagine this wasn't a range, just come upon already a story. Light gently touching the shoelace tourniquet, sugar for cutting, matches for cooking. Someone's next moment gauzed up in this spot. A sweet, blameless hour, soft with no edges hastening back, the fog world easeful and grainy and fat. And here's the full mess of that piece. Around the corner, a single, not snowflake in a sidewalk crack where it won't unmelt whatever it is confetti far from its parade or a fallen snow planet. It's not meaning I'm looking for in the way these things come. If indeed they come from anywhere or were set on arriving and being seen or speaking to me in a language we share. All I know is I'm the sight of I'm where they meet under pretense of snow suggestion of snow under snow's wing or a snow scene setting up calling the snow like in, down and here. Practice snow snow attempts and alerts where the white bits found and arranged their thinking got bent on patterning up into order I get to be a gathering spot like a ring of rocks in clear shallow water where trout float over their pearly young. Such are the happier snow-like things, snow-like betters, stuff not made of waste or grief. This stand-align held in its final white phase unblown, geodesic still wrong in December but so unto itself there's no need to translate it out of garbage and junk. Either way though so much is given all these versions of looking into what's always been there and suddenly the filling commences. There are relations one comes as another things are rekind. A vision is nothing a person chooses A vision comes flying, comes landing unwalled, light-laved if you make of yourself a hospitable place that won't melt a thing. Step on, step over or proceed with the business of a day which so often means nothing to see on this walk just keep going enough with the stopping and sniffing move on. But if things pile up and as they do, if allowed then here we go. Tufts of white dog hair combed out or shed Husky fur, collie fur dry and nest ready Once I found a nest made entirely of human hair so perfectly bark-colored, soft and expandable that air and light weave imagine how easy it was to work with a dream though as a nest a total mistake too sheer no sticks or mud mingled in. There it was the extravagant thought or evidence of a mind being new to a task the technique coming clear after going so wrong the bird light blinking on the way obvious now a bird reviewing its failed meant to decide you've done this too revising a thought something like oh right I get it twigs then work some hair in but only a little here's a piece of popcorn ducking behind a blade of grass it looks at first like chewed gum or a molar and then more like cotton raw from the field first time I saw the real thing I asked my friend to stop the truck right there side of the road so I could get out and walk into the field and touch it I was in my mid 40s a mid 40 year old person who had never seen cotton not those gray photos in the Britannica list of major state crops not packed tight in a blue first aid box but a form that moved into the neck and back bent to the task in the gut and then it became a whole different drive my fresh cotton rough in its bowl in my hand the weight of it gone entirely strange very dense sort of cold like holding a bullet for the first time this is bird shit rain thinned on the sidewalk a splotchy snow shadow gathering as all this stuff is for the eye training and for the mind to be able to move towards it offerings that come once the frame is constructed likenesses finding a home vision forming out in a field where I'm to meet it out in a field where I'm also the field I don't know what the moment's thinking but it's telling itself things are alive or remote goes the poem but everywhere being clothed with what itself adorns how I understand the truth of that yes but also how I read the word first as adores being clothed with what itself adores turning the corner this little stone rabbit corralled with stone frogs in a garden scene is hunched in a position called sniff the ground and show off my white tail forever the white tails more cotton and up comes the moment when as a kid the words first pulled apart cotton and tail and it wasn't one single blur of a word cotton tail just some sounds that meant rabbit how often I missed things so clear to everyone else adult versions persist still having a hard time saying Westgate not waistcoat and dropping that sea in victuals so as to be one with those who know vitals say vitals and mean it or as we said growing up roast pan since it belonged to the roast alone was not itself roasting as the more proper roasting pan suggests I got corrected on that some years ago but I'm sticking with the original my language my peoples roast pan and here's my big white dog named Ruby go figure leaning in head to head discussing something with one of the decorative stone frogs in our neighbor's pastoral compound inside hers a dog thought generations post wild still here she is a big white lump of frog that's got something delicious to say to her so goes my white spotted world neighborhood at least and all the walk found things that came to me came to be held hear that be held the intensified form the stand back so as to see the light version or angle that promises by holding a thing you'll be held by it that attention swings both ways at once and what to do with that thought I think go on briefly is a reasonable plan I'm nearly home now here's a black locus pod whose inner white bed isn't full white but cut with cream fuzzed like young antlers in low sun and the whole thing softened me so unexpectedly that I couldn't tell which came first the velvety sheen or that it approached without words and went something like hey that's how I feel about a beloved friend I hardly ever get to see and in this next pod one loaded with seeds here's how I feel with her around multiplied and fed loathed and fished then up comes a compact pod for two which might also be a dinner table a diner table is more precise since we like to eat bacon and eggs together or it's a skiff skiff is old timey or bark or dory or best of all coracle since these fit her sensibility and she'd get a kick out of it if I said pointing down with my toe look there's our boat get in let's go because you can do that with some people row so easily far from shore so here this pod is how distance breaks up how loss softens leads back little gift embedded in litter and leaves is how a letter the day wrote me arrived all these letters arriving I keep being read to so much comes in and arranges today whitely come shining comes thin in pangs and shocks rounded fat wet or sharp and piercing so much figures forth I must be wanting I believe it takes a very great yearning to call down so great a giving thank you am I to stand up here and be questioned I am if you don't we're discovering we're always trying to put the table just to make sure there's one fold un-discovered yes I think I think that's really well said we stand in life at a certain point in your development or trajectory and the different qualities I'm just going to respond back the different qualities of reflection that take place and maybe part of what you're suggesting or some of what I'm hearing is as you get older there's a drive to make a story something sort of cohesive about your past and yet at the same time whatever is ahead of you remains deeply uncertain still we hope I hope it is in some ways you know because you know that sense of the this sort of carpet just rolling out ahead of you in totally prescribed ways deadly so you know to write that weird balance between having to make certain decisions that are certain on the page and also remaining which is what you're saying right remaining open to surprise the curiosity or mystery set it really well well there's a huge variation some poems in here literally like came down you know received like you know like stained glass right down there from that hand right here and and others you know still this big you know took years and I don't mean years of everyday work sometimes you know you reach a peak of frustration and put the thing aside and think oh for God's sake you know you're hopeless but there's a little there's a little bit of light still shining right so you don't like put it in a big metal filing cabinet you just let it sit there for a while and then you know look at it every now and then and so that process can actually you know can take years even up until the point of publishing the thing so I had a final line on one of these poems that I thought was really good and I thought it was like kind of just tough and this editor you know took the poem and he said I really like this but without the last line and I literally you know I was like I read the email I was like Steve and then I read it again with these you know kind of new eyes and I thought whoa that's kind of good without that last line which I was so deeply attached to so you know sometimes you have to remain radically open to the end and I guess I can't I guess the word product also I can't I can't use so final little entity soul being creature because they still feel alive that's why I would change the word oh I'm a terrible picker really awful I'm the worst yes you were there sorry told ya I am I mean it's it's like an actual creature that I face love with you know yeah it's like a big warm body that works into the work in ways that I don't really think about consciously and then I'm told wow you work a lot with time conceptually or time frames and that's always interesting to me it's not really you know a planned project but when I look back on it and when people read it pick it up and put it in their newspaper it appears that way to them too but that's a kind of interesting way to work to not necessarily have such a clamped vision of what your project is and to hear from other people what they think is going on and to be open to being surprised at what others are saying about your work you know you think you're doing this one thing and then others are hearing some other reverb that's really important which is a good thing you're here because I'll tell you that kind of thing yeah formally that I was conscious of wanting to work really short and feeling that short things could rightfully be an experience of depth and not an experience of simple brevity, getting get out, don't linger as Raymond Carver said so I was really conscious of receiving images and impressions from the world and moving them into knowing that this thing would be just that thought or just that image worked over but just that not spun out not explored in pages and pages I really wanted a lot of space around this kind of you know moment to be part of that moment I wanted the space and the thought space to be part of the poem so I was very conscious of keeping it really short these are supposedly called lyric essays whatever little subgenre that is apparently I do that and I say apparently because the sort of genrefication for a writer can be kind of a limited feeling it feels like you're being marketed in some way I'm very nervous I have a few people editors or whatever you're sitting there that sounds like the anthem but I myself like to think I write essays but I start with we start and work you know many years but the thought and then sort of movement especially the stretch of the line you're going to see the habits of the poet and so that's a lot of what's going on rhythms and shapes very very pretty way out here I don't know how to do this I said that I wanted to say with a short almost or little word I feel like when you tell a story you know and then where it is where you're thinking I think you need some space around it and I kind of like the single part maybe there's there's all these different genres do you think it's important for the writer to try to understand what genre they're in I think both really I think yes do what you want to do and let somebody else call you something on the other hand if you discover there's a subgenre out there and it aligns with what you're doing and therefore there's lots of interesting rich work there that's revelational too so you can say wow I've been doing this I didn't know there was a name for it I thought I was the only one all those revelations so in that sense it's really helpful I think okay thank you so much