 Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Betsy Heckler and Dean of University Libraries here at Roger Williams, and I'd like to welcome you all to our inaugural campus poetry walk in celebration of National Poetry Month, which is April. The theme for the Poetry Walk is celebrating the spaces we live in. So what is a poetry walk? Throughout the center of campus, starting at the Roger statue, 18 students staff poems are currently featured on laminated posters in a walking, short walking trail through the buildings and around. Additionally, the poems are memorialized and archived as a permanent digital exhibition in the library's digital repository. Thanks to Mary Woo, our digital scholarship librarian. This afternoon's event features our esteemed guest speaker, former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, and we had the pleasure to host virtually in 2020 on zoom as part of our talking in the library series and I know some of you were there as mentioned it. Professor Adam Braver, the library's program director will be introducing Mr. Pinsky in a moment. The reading will be followed by a reception for all of you, including the featured poets and our speaker. You will also have the opportunity to purchase copies of several of Mr. Pinsky's books where Cindy is sitting in the back or the front. The campus poetry walk was a true collaboration between a group of staff from the university library and tutoring and writing centers. Post pandemic for this got together and decided we really needed to do something fun. We formed a committee and put out a call to the university community for poems. I'm actually fortunate to connect with RWU, RWU, I was having trouble saying that, alumnus Jesse Ramos, who was willing to teach two poetry writing workshops for our students during this past academic year. Graphic design student Tori Chiklis, who has been working in the tutoring center, created the design for the posters and the signs, and the digital exhibition where the poems are archived was created by Mary who manages library's digital repository. We thank everyone for being so generous with their time, and especially the poets, whose poems are simply awesome. We'd also like to thank the sponsors of the program who enabled us to fund the production of the signs, and this event, including the Provost's Office, the Center for Student Academic Success, and the university library's Mary Tiff White Endowment. And now I'd like to invite Adam Raver to introduce our speaker, Robert Pinsky. Right. When we first invited Robert Pinsky to speak today, the thought and a reasonable one, I think, was that his participation in celebrating the inaugural poetry walk was to some degree part of his part of the lineage of his 10 years US poet laureate. During his time in that role, Robert made it his mission to raise and expand the awareness of poetry beyond its most canonical realms, with perhaps his most lasting message, being the idea that poetry is among us all is among us in all aspects of our lives. Not in the sense of forms and enjambments and assonance, etc., but in the idea that our natural environment, which includes us humans as part of it, is a kind of poetry. One that surrounds us informs us, awakens us, heals us, and once seen and appreciated reflects the beauty, artfulness and grace of this world, as difficult as it may be to see at times. But on the most practical level, as poet laureate, Robert worked so hard to remind people that anyone can be a lowercase P poet, that one does not have to be dedicated to the study of poetics in order to be an active participant in engaging with the everyday poetry of the world. That was the thought when we first invited Robert Pinsky. But since that time, after reading Robert's new book, Jersey Breaks, it also seems to me a bit of fortuitous timing. A memoir told in a series of personal essays, Jersey Breaks chronicles Robert's upbringing and long branch new Jersey, asking an implicit question, how does the environment in which you've been raised make you the person who you've become. In Jersey Breaks, we see this question worked out through Robert's family, teachers, colleagues and friends, the physical spaces of his home, and even particularly fascinating to me, through the consideration of the actual names of the people we grew up around. And being who he is, Robert goes beyond the inquiry of how this descendant of a notorious long branch rogue could have ended up being a poet. But even more specifically, how he became the type of poet who he is, musical, risk taking, stubborn, mournful, playful, challenging, accessible, just to name a few. I bring this up because at heart, because at its heart, at least for this reader, Jersey Breaks is about the relationship to place, and how we find meaning within where we found ourselves. Something that of course is behind the theme of the poetry walk, celebrating the spaces we live in. Robert's book is mission and of course is deeply affecting body of work. Through this campus poetry block, not only are we able to honor the public display of poetry as a way to engage with our world, but we're also able to think about what the spaces mean to us. And most importantly, to the collective us, our community, whose borders, one hopes, through the everyday poetry of the world will keep expanding and expanding and expanding and welcoming in more and more people. In short, I can't think of a better person to celebrate this space with us. Thank you so much, Adam, for that very kind introduction. And thank you, Betsy Lerner, for your work and for taking me on the poetry walk. It was inspiring and as Adam implied, my notion of poetry is very combined with the notion of respecting the individual people one at a time. I sometimes think of the need for poetry and the to some people surprising appetite for and popularity of poetry has a lot to do with the wonderful mass media that we have. Every one of us has in our pocket or in our purse so much music and video and jokes. And that is great beyond a question. And our big huge TV screens are as good as movies. And all these things I love and use, and they are in a mass scale by the nature of the media. That is not to say it's bad. Many great things are in a mass scale. I know there's such a thing as a great sitcom. Probably even a few commercials are great. And believe me, I know that some poems are stupid. Possible to have a poem to be really boring and dull. It all depends. But the poem by the nature of the media is on a human scale. It respects the dignity of the individual. So when Betsy and I and was at Linda, Susan, Betsy and Susan and I took a walk there to see the poems walking like speaking. Everybody does it their own way. It was slightly chilly. My hopes were worried that I have enough to keep me warm. It was on a human scale. And when we say media, the mass medium. Media is the plural refers to the medium of digital devices, the medium of film. An artist has the medium of oil or water. The medium. For Paul, I believe is one person's voice. Not necessarily the not necessarily the voice of the artist who makes it. It's the voice of anyone who says it. We were talking before I came up here about the videos at favorite poem.org. And yes, there is an Emily Dickinson poem. Not read by an actor. Emily Dickinson is long dead. It's not read by Emily Dickinson. It's not read by a professor of poetry. It's read by a kind of a 12 or 13 year old American kid who was born in China. She says, I'm expected to be a perfect Chinese daughter, a perfect American kid at the work part in school. I work with my musical instruments. And then she reads twice and talks about Emily Dickinson's phone. I'm nobody who are you. So what I hope to be able to present to you is a notion of this art of poetry as having particular greatness based on the small scale of its medium. You know, medium comes in between. Something either good or bad or hard to call it's medium. And what comes between Emily Dickinson and that kid in the video. It's the kids voice is the medium for Emily Dickinson, the artist long gone. The normal procedure for an occasion like this one is somebody talks for 40 minutes. God forbid even more. And then there's questions and remarks from the audience. I have an impulse that I sometimes felt before and maybe not do it that way maybe I will pause from time to time and invite interruptions questions. Gentle remarks, gentle remarks. And if anybody has anything they want to say before I start reading from my work, that would be fun and appropriate. Yes, ma'am. We're just so glad you're here. A little bit louder, please. So glad you're here. Thank you very much. That's reassurance counts. Was this your first memoir? The question from this was this my first memoir. Yes and no, in a way, every one of my poems is a memoir. But this is the first time I ever wrote a prose book that looks like the books that people write about their life. And I was confined to Adam that I resist. I know that memoir is a retail category. That's where small appliances in the book business memoir is a category of retail. I tend to always refer to the book as an autobiography. And I think that's because in my mind, certain ideas. And in our country, which is famously polyglot, many different languages, many different times in terms of integration, those combining, I think, sometimes neglected sound mixed. Any individual list. The categories you fall out on questionnaires about your ethnicity. At least half of this field. Well, I'll say that. I'm also this. That idea and the way so often reflected in names. And the kind of town I grew up in. I grew up in a resort town. In a way was the opposite of Newport. Newport was the old now obsolete idea of the upper class. That's where they went in the summer. My home town long branch of New Jersey was very famous at its time. There's a great painting in the museum of fine arts in Boston where they've called long branch in Jersey. He was sent there by Harper's magazine to cover it. Long branch is not where the elite. The old movie when that was new board. Or maybe Saratoga Springs, New York, long branch was where show business people. No medicine millionaires. Sports people. Long branch New Jersey is where the modern idea that replaced the upper class is the modern idea of celebrity was born. Celebrities that did in long branch. Famous. I'm in Jim Brady went there with his girlfriend. I'm in. I'm in little Russell. And the first electric cars. He had a fleet of those lit up inside these two overdressed big people. Riding up and down the board. He was in grant low one branch best horses women aboard walk. It was all kind of vulgar and showy. And it's what we have now to replace the upper classes. And in my town, people were very conscious of your ethnicity and your name. So that if your name was Johnson or Robinson to me that man either you're a black person, or you're a Protestant. I'm in great Protestants were men aren't much more likely to be an Italian or Irish path like or Jewish, or in the strange neighborhood I described in my book. I lived. I lived on Rockwell Avenue. Went back to one branch high school after I got to be a big deal to people. The one thing that most impressed the students who stood on growth on Rockwell Avenue. Rockwell Avenue. I did actually right across the street from the junction with mama there. Mama they have to resolve black Rockwell Avenue was multi family houses and moving houses mostly adding some Jewish and Irish. And at my end of mama was Dr. Julius McElvey, the black doctor in the town. I've never seen him in a three piece suit. And that was sort of like one end of mama and the other of mama they have you was that highly hope cover that I tell about the book and that's where I saw the poster for the dancer little Egypt. Little did I know that for a century. Dancers called little Egypt. And as ethnicities and kinds of dancing had appeared at different stages. So eventually it was covered by Elvis Presley started with the coasters. So, in that order biographies. I try to reflect on things like the hundred year history. That's exactly the doctor McElvey I learned decades after I lived there, even active in early years of the NAACP pride unsuccessfully among other things to integrate to integrate the Atlantic Ocean. Beaches in my hometown long branch. There are many features now just about 15 or 20 features. One, you're allowed to go into that scheme. They had any African relation. God forbid the white people I get into the same Atlantic Ocean be some people both absurd and tragic and try to remember my own history. And that's why I do for the term or biographies my first order biographies. I had the honor of bookstore and wasn't the great sociologist Orlando Patterson. Orlando was sort of a conversation with me about the book. And he pointed out that that neighborhood that I lived in. Since I say in the book it was, you can call it a two segregated neighborhoods. There were two white families on Mammoth Avenue. My friend is that my friends Marty and her with their dad was Jewish junk dealer. And he had a house on Mammoth Avenue with all black neighbors and Orlando pointed out that that was a very rare time. A window before redlining really got going. Before the real estate industry discovered how powerful bit lining could be. I'll read a poem or two. I mean, quite a lot general way. And then I made just say I'm not going to cope anymore until the question. I'll have a wall and bars of silence. There's one of you now. This is the poem I chose to put first in my selected poems. It's called Rhyme. Rhyme. Air and instrument of the tongue. The tongue and instrument of the body. The body and instrument of spirit. Spirit of being of the air. A bird the medium. Each bird the medium of its song. Each song a world a containment like a hotel. Ready for us guests who inherit our compartment of time there. In the Joseph Cornell box among ephemera as its element. The preserved bird a study in spontaneous elegy. The stuff pirate art morning in its cornered sphere. Each room a stance. I was here. I was here. In a room. Rhyme. A song. In the box. In both. Each element and instrument. The body. The soul. In the box. In both. Each element and instrument. The body. The body and instrument. The body still straining with pirate. The spirit of being of the air. Somebody said in a rather kind review in the book. It's so like Robert Pinsky to write a poem called rhyme. It doesn't rhyme. It doesn't rhyme like the time you had a chime in a line. But it's tone, instrument, body, spirit, song, containment, ready, inherited, among, element, study, parrot, wrong, don't, don't, who cares. But it does right. I'll read one or two more poems to you, and then there will be questions and remarks from the audience. Or else. Samurai song. Samurai song. When I had no roof, I made audacity my roof. When I had no supper, my eyes died. When I had no eyes, I listened. When I had no ears, I thought. When I had no thought, I waited. When I had no father, I made tear my father. When I had no mother, I embraced. When I had no friend, I made quiet my friend. When I had no enemy, I opposed my body. When I had no temple, I make my voice my temple. I have no priest. My tongue is my choir. When I have no fortune, fortune is my means. When I have no means, death will be my fortune. Need is my tactic. Detachment is my strategy. When I had no lover, I courted my sleep. Adam told me, and he said to you just now, that a theme for me is in relation to place. The way that a place, I've already talked to you a lot about my hometown of Wormbrandt, the way that a place can form a person and we reflect on it. I'm going to read upon to you, that's what makes fun of that idea. Kind of a party of homes and writing about places. It falls into stereotypes and cliches so easily. So then finally, one person's memoir about all the Polish minors in my part of Pennsylvania, and somebody else's about all the Cape Verde instrument in my part of Massachusetts. And somebody else, oh yes, the Dominican neurologist that I used to know, and blah, blah, blah. And it all sounds the same. It comes part of the pattern. And that's why in the course of this poem, there's a moment in this poem where I become sort of Chinese. And I mentioned my Irish grandmother. And you don't know me, so maybe I do have. And the poem is called Window. The idea is that everybody has a window of time, place. I have a window of having born in the middle of the 20th century, the two Jewish people in the English-speaking post World War II, the United States and America. That's my window. I'm going to add it, I'm heterosexual, getting quite old. That's my space, that's my window. But I'm allowed, I propose to you, to try to look out of my window. I can never get out of a window, but I can try to look. So if I have a dear friend, who's a gay Chinese-American woman from Puerto Rican grandmother, and I read her poems carefully, and very important to one another, am I not at least those little bit of a gay Chinese woman? If not, what is all this writing for? If you can't a little bit, at least there's a vision. It's something besides that definition, that factual rectangle. So this is partly a genuine memoir, and partly laughing at the idea of memoir. Window. Our building flooded heavily through the cold on shifts of theme that the raging cold fed furnace forced from the boiler's hull. In showers of spark, the crawlies flashed careening under our cornice. My mother, Mary Benish, who came from Cork, held me up to see the snow fall out the window. Wind-holded, she called it. Sometimes, as if in Irish, it held wind-out, or showed us that wind was old. Wind-hold in Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon, spaces like brick, they worshipped Easter's rabbit, and mistletoe, that was Thor's chisel, where thunder struck the oak. We took their language in our mouth and chewed. Some of the consonants drove us nearly crazy because we were Chinese, or was that just the food my father brought from our restaurant downstairs in the fells by the falls? The old ghetto, or New Jersey, little Havana, or little Russia, I forget because the baby wasn't me the way these words are not made. However, she was teaching to talk. Snow, she said. Snow, and you opened your small brown fist and closed it and opened again to hold the reflections of torches and faces inside the window glass and through it. A cold, black sheen of shapes and fires shaking, kitchen lights, flakes that criss-crossed other lights in lush diagonals. The snow-charged traffic, sturgy and policy, red, green, white, the motion of notes and torches that at her word you reached out for, where you were, it was you, that bright confusion. Because I think everybody's a bright confusion, and the human being is a bright confusion. And now, as promised, there will be questions for long and arisen silence. I have a statement. I'm so in awe of your reading to the voice that I'm just enjoying it. And I really feel that that's what poetry is all about, which is what I'm listening to you with. Of course, I have one more training than some of the people here, but I'm just really impressed. Thank you very much. She said very nice things about it, and so forth. And she implied that, oh, you're so impressive, but you're so on the desk to say things. No, it's... Yeah. I haven't had the opportunity to be around people who are at your level often. And I really appreciate it when I was like I'm transported. It's really a wonderful thing. I appreciate you saying kind of things. I'm also embarrassed. Everybody in the world has a positive syndrome. Everybody feels I don't deserve this to have it inevitably. I don't know how I can fight in your home. I haven't made any use of it, but I see broccoli. Any time I woke up, somebody could look exactly like me except it's got white hair. Yes. I'm wondering, as an artist, as a writer, I think the freedom of expression is so important. And I wonder if it's harder to be a poet or a writer or an artist today when there are maybe external constraints on what you can say or express, you know, cancel culture and what is okay to say and what is not okay to say and that kind of impulse in society. I think you heard the question. It says, do things like incorrect speech, cancel culture, does it inhibit me and is there a problem for me? There used to be a theory, I haven't heard it very much lately, it used to be a theory that why there are so many wonderful poets that came out of the first early 20th century in Russia is that the regime was so punitive. Poets like Mandoška, they and their families were put into prison. Their works were censored. I think Polish poets who said the institution of writing from the desk are not right for publication. A great short story writer, the Russian short story writer, Isaac Bobo, was first silenced and then basically tortured to death. My problems are yours. I saw miles of history of problems that people have been on to have. And the one is, I'm inclined to not want to hear that theory. I remember when I used to hear it a lot, it used to bother me. There's enough in it to suggest that, oh, are you afraid of somebody who's going to criticize you for this or that? I don't want to smoke your fire. I figure out a way to deal with it that is not predictable. But whatever you are oppressed by internally and there are many problems inside, Robert, believe me, then there are other problems outside. Sometimes that's your job. If you don't want to work us on the table, I would be making a right about it. Keep going. So as I said to Betsy's quick, yes and no. This is a serious question to ask. There's a case getting a lot of attention in the Boston area. Have you heard about this guy in East Hampton? His name is Vito Perrone. And along the interesting names, I went to school with a lot of people. This guy's probably about 50, I'm guessing, put his pictures in the paper, but I went to school with a lot of people. I went to school with the name Vito Perrone. So to speak. And this guy, he's the acting superintendent in West Springfield. He was a principal in East Hampton. He's been a teacher, he's been an administrator. He was in the final stages of getting a job as superintendent of schools in East Hampton. And he wrote an email, his final negotiations with the person who was, I think she's the chairman of the school board and her assistant. And he's been to them. Dear ladies, I would like to have my vacation time defined differently. I would like my salary to be adjusted like this. And the chairman of the school board, the assistant later administrator from this year, I don't feel like what she does. Chairman of the school board say, you addressed us as ladies. That is a microaggression. And for an educator, not to be aware that the word ladies is a microaggression disqualifies you in this job. I don't pretend to know the justice. Anyway, there have now been hundreds of students who have been to the school board who have been to the school board and there's demonstrated on his behalf. Other people said, ah, he was, of course, there's no unanimity about it. So the school board met and they offered the job to another one of the three candidates. Understandably, she turned it down. Other things I wanted to do. This is our times. And I choose to talk to you about it because I respect the question and because I look at it as my job, my job as a teacher, my job as a poet is to think about it. And I think there are details when calling somebody a lady is undescending and insulting. And I think it needs their arguments to be made like this guy was born 50 something years ago, ladies and gentlemen, he was trying to adapt the manners of his parents or grandparents' generation. This woman was rather aggressively applying to the manners of her children's generation or his grandchildren, I don't know. And, you know, I've heard people say, so does that mean Joe Biden was the first woman? And if he had said, dear gentlemen, et cetera, this is not to be strictly played from. It's to be engaged, to be thought about. I look at it as, thank God I have things to think about. I live there. I don't have the curse of times as interesting as the times of, I don't know, a lot of it, or Pablo Neruda, a real, not just the rise of fascism, the regulament in our country, but a serious fascist government. Pablo Neruda had to deal with that. So, to be excessively complaining or mournful would be disproportionate. See, I told you, if you ask a question, I will watch the act. Any other questions before I resume? All right. Any questions? And that is the relationship of why we close poetry. And I'm thinking particularly the personal essay, there's a lot of thought that the personal essay in the poem are much closer to the personal essay. Everybody's different. And I think every writer is different in relation to prose and poetry, personal essay and writing a poem. My writing poetry goes out of starting on wanting to be a musician. And my high school graduating class, I was not voted most literary boy, definitely not most likely to succeed. I was voted most musical boy, played the hornet dances. I was on the football team. When I pick up this book, every sentence I look at it, I start rewriting. And prose never feels right to me, never feels finished. I always thought it could be better if it was this way or that way. But I pick up a book of my poems. I may look at something, think I wouldn't do it that way again. Or I'd like to try that again in a different way. But it's like something that has been sandpapered or painted. I have made it as good as I could make it. Doubtless God could make it better. I'm finished with that. And everybody's different. That's the way I feel. And it's like singing or playing an instrument. There'll be other performances. But you sang it, you were playing it at home. And I'm not presenting that as a general principle, but as my personal experience, I've probably tortured you bad enough. So I read a couple of poems to do with names. This manuscript is my book. It will be published next winter. Most of them have been published in magazines. It will probably be longer. It was a newspaper article. It's very short. It's probably about a thousand words. And. To. Most of you, the title won't mean much. It's explaining upon the title is Bronco. B R A N C A. Two Wolsters in the room may immediately think about Bronco. Ralph Bronco was the 15th of 17. This poem is not the poem of the speaker. His father was an immigrant from Calabria. These words are those of Robert Pinsky speaking. Bronco wore a doctor uniform number 13. Speaking is the punchline of a Jewish joke. Some Romans call Calabrians. Brooklyn had its own daily, the Brooklyn Eagle. At 85, Ralph Bronco learned about his mother. He was 21 when Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers. And live in I love Robinson for his daring running the bases. Feeling home. It's fire. Bronco was one of the few who befriended him. I was too young to understand his mission. The fuel of that dancing to Paul. It's your. Robinson never forgot drunk as kindness. What the old man found out about his mother is she was born a Jew in New York. He was hungry. After he gave up the most famous home run ever back in the clubhouse Bronco lay weeping face down. He gave birth to 17 Catholic children. The Giants won the pennant. 1951. Bronco means claw, a fit name for a pitcher. He made started best that he cry alone. But hope. Only my dear friend Jackie whom me so well came over and put his arm around my shoulder. The Nazis killed the ants and uncles Bronco didn't know existed until he was old. In itself a nothing of a number. The Dodgers credit Bronco to the Tigers. Grief. With its countless different ways and strains. Glory, a greater thing than success. But slower. Some of the Tigers who had been Giants explained to Bronco how the Tigers had stolen the signs from opposition catchers. The telescope in center field. Wires. Buzzers. Bronco chose not to talk about it. It's all in Prager's book. His research on earth cutting those ants and uncles. The Dodgers were taken from Brooklyn by their owner. The Dodgers were taken from Brooklyn by Robert Pinsky choose not to say his name. I didn't live in Brooklyn, but I knew the score. I knew it was a kind of underdog place. Nowadays, once a year, all major leaders were Jackie Robinson's number. 42. The person who answers the telephone at Goldberg, Goldberg and Goldberg keeps replying that Goldberg is out of the office. And so is Goldberg. All right, then let me talk to Goldberg. Speaking. Robinson spoke to Bronco. Without you, he said. We never could have made it this far. I put a special pressure and embarrassment under students. Anybody here under 25, what else the matter with you? You'd like to read? Do I like to read? Yeah. Less than I did when I was very young. I tend to reread more and more as I get older. I think when I was young. There was a kind of immersion. It was like becoming another person. Entering another world. When I was 12 years old, reading Alice in Wonderland, or take down through Treasure Island, I was dissolved into that other world. When I got more ambitious to be a writer, reading Emily Dickinson, reading Butler Gates, I was a princess. I was trying to, how do you do that? I had years of having to read things professionally. Book review, things by students. And reading is less of a delicious thing for me. And therefore I say to you, I perceive it were possibly under 25. But say to you, enjoy it while it lasts. Thank you for the question. Thank you. Thank you. The sciences were productive also. We're thinking. Indeed, this is a poem of the similar that lays in Bronca. It is called, it will probably be the first poem in this new book or next book. It is called indeed, the poem of names. The bad rain fell on Osamo Shimomura. On the walk home, it turned his white shirt black. My grandmother got me quickly into a bath. It likely saved me from death by radiation. His Ernst Bohrinsfi would not discuss his family killed by Nazis. An area I have liquidated for my mental health. His grave at Tougaloo, a kind of shrine, Stalma Begat Boaz and Boaz Begat Obed, Underground River of Passion and Retrenchment. I'm glad that you, Elin and Simon and Hazel, were wanting to talk to me about my dying someday. Bucky had been so cold when you touched his body. A compliment for me, that conversation. It almost doesn't matter what we said. I thought of Milford, your great grandpa. That time I asked him, did he believe in life after death? I guess that you were my life after death. He said, a boy named Christian at a Q&A in Texas asked me, the visiting poet, what motivates you? What gets you out of bed each day? Good question. The pride of Ernst Bohrinsfi of Mississippi. The shame of Nathan Forrest of Pillow Hill. Willie Lee Rose, Historian of Reconstruction. Congressman Peter, Congressman Pellegrino Rodino called people. It's the dead people that motivate me, Christian. Dorothy Pinsky, William Butler Yates. To your name, I remember Don Pope saying, a lot of Jewish people think they're white. But no, they're not. In some ways, Yates was a jerk. Arkbaksad begat Sala. Sala begat Aver. Oh yeah, said Ruby to Don. Well, most black people don't know that they're going. Somebody said about Rodino and Sirica. The night school guys are saving the country. Buritsky needed a job, but no white school could offer him a position. Kougaloo did. At his famous forums there, he asked his students to sit one share apart. So the white kids from Milseps said among them. Pete Seeger, Ralph Bunch, Joan Baez at the forums. Rodino in the house impeaching Nixon. Pellegrino means pilgrim. Shama Mora discovered cells that made a jellyfish glow. He garnered a million samples in Puget Sound. And a total in Iquorea, Victoria, embedded to glimmer in other life, transformed the study of living things. Years later, the Exxon Valdez oil spill left nearly all those Iquorea dead. A poisoning that Shimomura indicted. And whose grandma had washed away the ashes. I'll read one more poem for you. Very short poem. It's called Reef. And it seems approaches and I read a poem that's not related to lying, names or ethnicity. This is separate. I guess I'm just showing you I don't want to do one thing. Reef. I don't think anybody ever is really divorced, said Lenny. Also, I don't think anybody ever is really married, he said, because English was really Lenny's second language, and because of Yiddish and his displaced place in the world. He never really believed in his own prose. He wrote sentences the way a great boxer moves. Near the end, he told me, I'm in hell. Something Lenny might have said about hunting for a parking space in Berkeley. Mike, too, was himself. His last month, who weep the pain or make prints. He sat and made drawings of flowers, ink attentive to rhythms of beech rose, rasteria, lily, forms like acrobats or Cossack dancers. Mike had a vision of his body dead on his studio floor, seen from high above. He didn't feel sad or afraid at seeing it, he said, just sorry for the person who we find it. You can't say nobody ever really dies. Of course, they do. Lenny died. Mike died. The odd thing is, the person still makes a shape, distinct and present in the mind as an object in the hand. The presence in the absence. It isn't comfort. It's grief. Thank you.