 It is wonderful to see so many people here to celebrate this beautiful book, Healing the Divide, Poems of Kindness and Connection. Thank you for coming. At the Urgence and Encouragement of James and Megan, I'm going to start off with a poem of my own. It's hanging up for Poems of... Oh, sorry. I'm going to start reading a poem of my own. That is... It's hanging up on the window of Katie's Jewels. It's here for Poem City. My name is Samantha Colbert, and this is Love and Water. A full body massage. My body is an ocean. I swim inside it. I saw the Creator there. No. I felt the Creator. No. I knew the Creator. And she was a pool, and I wanted to dive in, swim in her too. It's all back to water, back to whence we came, back to large life, liquid, listening to what we're made of, love and water. Many more beautiful poems are in this book, and I'm so excited to have here tonight James Cruz, the editor, along with Vermont Poets, Mary Elder Jacobson, Megan Buchanan, Allison Prine, Patricia Fontaine, Laura Foley, and Carol Cohn. They're all featured in the book, alongside such amazing great poets such as Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, W.S. Merwin, and Naomi Shihab Nye. And it's what I love about this collection that there's such a diverse array of voices with our emerging and local poets paired with some wonderful known poets. And I'd like to thank James for conceiving of this book and thank Greenwriters Press for publishing it. I do urge you all to get your own copy tonight. They're available at the front counter. We will have Q&A and time for book signing after the reading. A few housekeeping items. The bathroom is located at the back of the store to the right of the back door. And we do lock the front door to keep down the disruptions. So in case of an emergency, if you need to leave the back door is open and the back door is this way. If you haven't already, please mute or turn off your cell phones. And I'd like to let you know about some upcoming Bear Pond Books events. Next Tuesday, April 23rd, we're hosting an event called In Defense of Butterflies, a migrant justice poetry reading with Niko Amador, Cynthia Dewey-Oka, and Natalie Centres-Zapaco. Then on April 30th, we host local author Jennifer McMahon for a book launch for her newest novel, The Invited, which is a fun ghost story set in Vermont. You can find out about these events on our website, bearpondbooks.com. You can follow us on Facebook or Twitter or sign up for our newsletter in the clipboard that's being passed around. I'd like to thank Orca Media for being here tonight to film the event and Poem City Montpelier for featuring this and many of our poetry events in their Poem City program. Since we have so many guests this evening, I'm going to introduce the editor of the book and for biographies of all of our readers, I encourage you to look on our website or to buy the book and read about the poets in the back of the book. James Cruz is a regular contributor to the London Times literary supplement and his work has appeared in plowshares, Crab Orchard Review and the New Republic, among other journals. The author of two collections of poetry, which we have here tonight, the book of What Stays and Telling My Father, he lives on an organic farm in Shaftesbury with his husband Brad Peacock and teaches creative writing at SUNY Albany along with poetry and mindfulness workshops that one day I hope to attend. Please help me welcome James Cruz. Thank you so much, Samantha. I'm so glad that she agreed to read one of her poems. I think the response she got, maybe we'll convince her to do that again in the future. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the anthology and read a couple of poems and then I'll turn it over to my fellow poets. So I just have to tell you, it's a little surreal still to see this in real life because I conceived of it probably about a year and a few months ago and I've never had a project come to fruition so easily, so quickly and just with so much encouragement and support. And so it's, I do know that I did a lot of work for this. I definitely remember all that. But it just flowed. And so I think that's when, that's sort of what has made me realize that there's a hunger for conversations like this about kindness and there are poems of grieving and sorrow in the book, but they are more life-giving to me than a lot of other work or things that you'll see in the media. And so definitely if you can't buy it tonight, borrow it from a friend or whatever, I really believe that poetry is life-giving, especially at a time like this. And so that was the driving force behind this. And really the idea just came to me in the shower one day. I was getting out, the title came to me and as I often do, I started to talk myself out of the idea. I'm like, no, you know, I really need to focus on my own work and all of this. But luckily I have a very supportive husband who's like, you know, it sounds like you're really into this idea. Why don't you just do it and maybe see what happens? And what happened was everything really fell into place. So maybe that can be encouragement to all of you if you're pursuing your own projects. I'm always happy to answer any questions that you guys might have about the anthology or the work that comes up, anything like that. I'll read my poem in the anthology and it's the title poem of my latest book, Telling My Father. I found him on the porch that morning, sipping cold coffee, watching a crow dip down from the power line. Into the pile of black bags stuffed in the dumpster where he pecked and snagged a cam tab, then carried it off, clamped in his beak, like the key to a room only he knew about. My father turned to me then, taking in the reek of my smoke, traces of last night's eyeliner I decided not to wipe off this time. Out late was all he said and then smiled, rubbing the smile of my back through the robe for a while before heading inside, letting the storm door click softly shut behind him. Later when I stepped into the kitchen again, I saw it waiting there on the table, a glass of orange juice he had poured for me and left sweating in a patch of sunlight so bright I couldn't touch it at first. The book Telling My Father is about losing my father, it's been about 20 years, but it took a long time to write this book to process that grief and one of the regrets was that I wasn't able to actually tell my father that I was gay to come out to him. But I sort of realized after a long time and a lot of kind of processing of it that he did know and that there were many moments like that when it came out and when he was able to show me that kindness and that acceptance. And so there are a lot of poems like that in this book. I'll read one more that came out of that particular time of just kind of combing through memories and settling on these moments of connection between us. This one is called Chor. Too young to help, I watched my father hack and dig at the old oak stump, pulling up tap roots whose prickly hairs clung to bits of red clay they brought into lake chilled air. He chipped away at heartwood, gone soft in rain until it became a pile of pulp around a hole in the ground filled with soil and seed. Smelling of sweat and tobacco now, he took off his t-shirt, wiped his face. We worked hard today, didn't we? He said, I think we deserve a little rest. And I nodded. We lay back among clumps of rye grass as dusk spread across the field and a fine mist fell over us like a net, pressing our bodies closer to the steaming earth. So this is the last poem I'll read. This one was another poem where I kind of realized that my own attempts to be kind and take care of my father were perhaps a little overbearing and in vain because as he was ill, he had a hepatitis C from tattoos that he had gotten when he was a young guy. And so eventually he couldn't really have salt. He wasn't supposed to. So I went to the grocery store and did my best to stick to that diet. So this is called strict diet. Though the doctors said no salt, salt was all my father craved. His body bloated, skin waterlogged and gray. Still, he wanted potato chips, honey baked ham, greasy slabs of Polish sausage from Pikotowski's deli. He begged for pepperoni pizza, garlic butter, ribs slathered in sauce. But when I did the shopping, I searched only for labels that said low sodium, no preservatives. Instead, bringing home heads of broccoli, turkey burgers, shredded wheat. Poor dad. And when he died anyway, guilt nod me like an ulcer. How could I have denied him those few final pleasures? Until I found Big Mac rappers stuffed under the car seat, jars of pickles in the hall closet, and hidden among wads of tissues near the nightstand his stash, a half used canister of salt. I sat down on his mattress, now stripped of sheets and studied that blue label with the girl in the yellow dress, holding her umbrella against a rain of salt still falling from the sky. So thank you all so much for listening. Please welcome our other poets. So we're gonna be going in the order in which we're seated. So we'll start with Laura Foley. Thank you, James. And thank you, James, for making this book. Looks really beautiful. I'm going to start out with the poem from the book. Can you hear me? Is this good? Not too well? Closer in like that? Yeah. Okay, okay. So my granddaughter is now three years old and she had a bit of a rough entry into the world. This is called Neo-Natal ICU prayer. Let us be gentle as we tend you. Let us hear the mechanical whirrs and hums you do. Feel the vibrations of our coming and going. Let us not walk briskly by, but abide breathing in unison. Close our eyes or open them wide as you do, smallest and most trusting of all of us needing care. Last week, my first grandchild healed here. May the same be true for all of you, our tiniest kin in sheltering globes. So I thought I'd read a poem about Paris. But I think it's in many of our hearts and minds these days today and yesterday and going forward. So I spent quite a bit of time in Paris when I was younger and we practically lived there for many, many summers. Film noir. In Paris with my professor and his shy teenage son, not much younger than I, whose presence I try to fence from my awareness, our apartments and atelier, our courtyard shaded with trees of heaven I look down on before descending the new brass elevator, clanging through the ancient stairwells stinging depths to sip bitter espresso and smoke filterless cigarettes as if I were born doing it all that summer pretending I'm someone else. So often in the summers I'll find a chrysalis, a monarch chrysalis and bring it inside and watch it open, become a butterfly. So it's a process and this year I did that also. I found one in, must have been in September. So it didn't open until October and this poem is about, and we ended up naming this butterfly Octubre. I'm trying to learn Spanish and so one word by word. Octubre, if you saw me driving in this pelting rain, you'd never guess my errand to buy lilies for my butterfly. He'll savor the aroma of flowers this cold November day since wild blooms have faded into memory if he has one. Octubre lives in a screened in cage because I couldn't let him out at last week's snow, could I? He seems content, his feet sticky against the screen, pleased to drink when I uncurl his proboscis with a toothpick, dip it in honey water while he sucks through his trunk-like tongue. I say he because he has two spots like eyes on his hind side that mean boy. Good for our family of two lesbians, two bitches, a shepherd and a lab, and 30,000 girl bees who spend the whole autumn dragging the hairy drones out of the hive, killing them, dumping the corpses in a heap underneath. I'm just saying it's good to have some masculine energy present, even if it's just one monarch who hangs upside down all day and sometimes flutters his gorgeous wings. So last May and June, my wife and I hiked the Camino in Spain. We managed the 500 miles. Our name, we were given the name as we sat defeated weeping on a bus having given up for the day. We knew what we were called or in a coffee shop faces bright and eager before dawn backpacks slung by our sides or collapsed resting in the shade leaning over a bridge staring down limping to Vespers on aching knees crossing a wet poppy field toward others of our tribe having lost the way or getting sick rude side or striding through small towns, locals running out, saluting us, calling us by our one God given name pilgrim requesting that we bless them. And one more, this is for Mary Oliver. It matters, it matters that Mary Oliver woke early and walked along the bay as morning sun toward the sheets of darkness from the sky. It matters that she carried a notebook and cared to look into a Kingfisher's soul to dig in wet sand for clams in which she later tasted the salt sea erupting in her mouth like sex that she let the soft body of her body love what it loved, which was Molly. It matters that she loved a woman. It matters that we each wake to stride our own snow dunes that we find in each day something of value. Even the last ash leaf hanging on a winter limb shivering a bit, then falling into stillness over and over to lose ourselves into something larger, something better. It matters that I clutch my stack of her books, those fields of light, now that her body has gone into the cottage of darkness. I'm happy to be here and I was fortunate to attend quite a while ago one of James's workshops. Hold the microphone up. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was happy to attend one of James's workshops a few years ago and have been following his writing ever since and I think it's had an influence on me but it's a pleasure to be here with all of you. The first poem I'm going to read is the one from the book. It's called Revisit and it's called Revisit and it's dedicated to my younger son. What do you do? What do you see when your baby comes home at 50? Do you remember the child who couldn't sleep a single night for two endless years who wouldn't eat most foods, who pushed your hugs away, who gave kisses to no one? Slowly the years passed without a hug, a visit, a Christmas card yet whatever brought the epiphany, his father's death, a mid-life crisis or realization that half of life had passed him by much too far. He came home at 50, erasing years of separation just to visit an experiment still prickly but ready to talk to reach out an inch or two perhaps to build a fragile bridge across those missing years. Still working on it. And the second poem comes from another anthology that I'm proud to be part of. This is called, the book is called Birch Song, Poetry Centered in Vermont, volume two. And I was happy to be one of the editors as well. This is called Summer Residue. The porch light has burned out. I climbed the ladder to replace it, a good time to wash the globe for a new season of light. But the globe holds a handful of soft, pale wings. Furry fragments of those gentle creatures last summer who sought warmth and safety who came but could not leave. It seems cruel to wash them out and clean the glass once more yet I cannot put the tattered bits together. I could only remember the fragrant summer nights when clouds of moths will come again. Try to enter Heaven's gate and fail. Or possibly their greatest goal is really sacrifice, self-immolation, one brief night of flight and freedom before a glorious fiery death. I like to think the choice was theirs. And the last poem is called Angels. Angels. I don't really believe in angels, but sometimes I wonder if they are around somewhere. Do they look like the dandelion seeds that float on the breeze on a summer day? Or the seeds from the milkweed pod that burst open in early fall? Silky, soft, fragile, but strong enough to spawn another generation next year. Are there more angels in a cemetery guarding the dead? Are there more in a church listening to the choir nodding accord with the servant, spying in and out of the steeple, tugging the bell ropes in a sudden windstorm that blows through the town? Are there food-covered angels watching to ensure the hungry fill their bags with enough to feed the family next week? Because it is going to snow and there are no jobs and the baby is sick and the car broke down yesterday. Maybe they meet at the park and sail up and down the skateboard ramps where robes trailing behind like sails on a ship just for a little fun in between saving and guarding and comforting and watching. Maybe they meet at the animal shelter to hold the kittens and puppies to throw a frisbee before the dog and scratch a cat's stomach and whisper to them that someone will come to take them home and love them forever. I would like to think that there is an angel with long, elegant wings of soft white feathers, a loving smile, grateful hands, graceful hands, her flowing down caught by the wind, watching me write a poem about angels, wondering if they really exist and why, who might send me a message, perhaps a crimson sunset or a breath-stopping full moon or just a whirl of milkweed seeds to say, yes, we are here, believe. I hand you the magic wand. Good evening, everyone. Look at all these faces in here tonight, beautiful people. It is such a wonder and an honor to be part of this anthology and again, thank you to James and to all the amazing forest of Vermont poets that are part of this anthology. So I'm doing the five poems in five-minute challenge. And the first is from the anthology. It's called Squirrel Rescue. I know who you are, but you weren't introduced. So may I introduce Patricia Fonte. Thank you, Bernadette Rose. Squirrel Rescue. Gray squirrels have taken apart the feeders, one completely demolished, another with its green chain uncoupled. I fixed it. When I next look out, one of the grays dangled, hind ankle wedged hard in the notch of the feeder. On went heavy gloves, a red wool jacket, boots. I'm here to help you, I said, a gravelly hiss. I reached out, pushed up, squirrel, glove a tangled royal, suddenly squirrel, high in the air, twisted cat-like, landing, pause out on a cedar. Nearby my heart was quiet. A shimmer in the place where we met, where the me flickered out for an instant, rescued from its invisible, shuttered knowing. So sometimes things just get to you, and this is called rattled. Here's a small truth. If one doesn't stop when most rattled, we keep rattling harder. Looking for the lost, I feel old engines turn over, rev into fear of the mind thinning. A blank field of hot uncertainty, fiery and numbing. Walk circles room to room, reopen drawers, rummage through paper dregs in the blue bin, try to recall what I may or may not have done. Like looking for cast stones in a murky pond, just out of reach, or perhaps in a different pool entirely. Looking out, I see the lake has cobbled together the frozen flows that yesterday rose and fell in the hard north wind. When the door opens, the shock of cold is welcome. Quiet, and the quiet settles like another lost thing, found. Sleeping with stones for Holly. On the fall forest path, fierce wind has taken grown leaves and laid them down in an even mosaic. I said, my fear tears at my sleep. She said, the pressure to end it older than she is sometimes does not rest. I asked us to stop and notice what is still as a forced teacher might. We named the dirt, the stones, a metal railing that framed the drying ferns, skinny cedars, lightly tossing lake. She told me she sleeps with stones. What kind, I asked. Depends on whether you want to hold or be held, she said. Tonight I retrieved a stone, smooth and two-toned, cold with night air. I will sleep with it in my palm. Fear can move to its heavy, rounded house and be warm, lighthouse. The Island lighthouse has a sturdy round tower, a thick beam, intelligent. It skims the pointy furs, tireless path, sweeps over my rumpled bed out to see where those more lost than I can follow the flash to harbor. Once I climbed up stones, I climbed the stone spiral up to the glassy crown. The light itself, a huge jewel with a cool burn. Ready, turning effortlessly round and round, the minute dark came, heartening, constant. Constant, and the last one is called lifted. We'll be a few familiar names in here. Car dead this morning, the gristle of not wanting this or anything to change, renews itself in my mouth like a cud, like threads of stale celery that don't break down but catch and choke in the throat. Ashamed, the insignificance of this trouble stirs such grief. Like my mother would say, there are people with no feet. Tow truck en route, I weep as if the car was a person forever lost from me. In the green light along the north branch, I remember about turning towards suffering. It feels old and powdery. The birds are quiet in the gold weight of late morning. Turn right over the arched bridge. Follow the river upstream. A bird flies in and out of new leaves, hurt, hums into the heavy heads of the grasses. Follows pollen as the trees loosen their yellow dust. There is a fracture in the bone of the heart. And yet, I am able to walk holding it like this. Mary Elger. Cheek. It might be easier to write a poem than hold a microphone like this. I've never had to do this before. Hi everybody and it's so kind of you all to come and connect in this way. It's a very big honor to be in this book. It might be a bigger honor to be a part of something that is such a huge not a part of the problem. And thank you James for putting this out there and collecting these poems are really keepers. I think there's a poem in this book by Jane Kenyon called Otherwise That I've Lost Count of how many people I've given that poem to. Some people in this room I've given that poem to when they've gone through certain kinds of losses or struggles. So I think you probably find a lot of poems to keep and give. I'm gonna read three poems and the first poem is the book of the poem that's in the book which is for my son who is now 20. Parenting has moments that move as slowly as molasses and some are as fast as a lightning bolt. And the day before my son turned 18 I went for a walk and I suddenly realized oh my God he's going to be a legal adult tomorrow. And in my family the women when we have thoughts like that we can suddenly have a catharsis. But I was interrupted from my catharsis by this moment. Taking a walk before my son's 18th birthday. Not too far from home I spotted a painted turtle toddling along heading across the dirt road. I paused there in the hush and just stood still so I could watch and held the dog back on his lead. When I heard an engine louden along the road then rev uphill behind me I shifted a little, worried a bit then moved myself over and waved. Flagging down the sky blue pick up with its gravelly rumble until the driver with his lowered window finally slowed to a stop. His eyebrows raised looking quizzical. So I pointed out the small pedestrian in the road and the old man gave me a nod, cranked his wheel and curved around us leaving behind the steady turtle who made it and me still mesmerized by a moving shell. This poem is a little bit more maybe imagistic it kind of came to me like a collage might like fragments over time and I didn't know what I was going to do with all of them things that I held on to and then the actual thing that's at the beginning happened where I was by a lake and a dragonfly landed on a floating birch leaf. And I should tell you in case you don't know it there's a word in here chain mail which is the interlinked armor that the medieval knights would wear. So I use that in here. Dragonfly. Late morning one settles down on a leaf afloat plying his chain mail oars his little raft a fragile boat. My father would say darner where I saw a dragonfly. Who knows any longer what a darner is. Time flies. Late afternoon lakes hem unraveling sun squints toward dusk leaning in to finish her day's stitches. Evening now I listened to one upstairs window closing as I turned to open up another letting a luna moth go then watch as my father grown tired senses the fading light above the fabric knee patch he's been sewing. Handing me his spool and needle he smiles just to see how easily I swim his thread through the oh so tiny eye. My father passed away about 17 years ago. So this palm is a kind of a it's a conversation so it'll be it's a mother daughter conversation. I'll try to change my voice a little bit as I do that. In the form of it is a guzzle which is from the eastern eastern literature Arabic Turkish Persian and so it's written in couplets and one word gets used over and over again as the last word on the second line of each couplet and also gets used as the last words of the both lines in the first couplet and then at the very end in the last couplet the author usually puts their name as a kind of signature on the palm. So this is sorry a guzzle forgive me my bad big pardon I'm sorry it's a never ending list I think so many ways to say sorry. Mom I say how about we don't say sorry today. What's that dear I can't hear you she says I'm sorry I'll be right back one sec let me get my hearing aid. I rethink repeating myself what's one more sorry. Moving past 80 now my mother's begun to fail and as she leaves the room I begin to feel sorry. I can hear her humming but then oh gosh she says looks like my battery died she's back with I'm sorry sweetie my eyes aren't what they used to be here maybe you could help me again I'm sorry sorry to be such a bother it's gotten so trying it's no trouble mom really it's me who's sorry I can't help more I can see what you mean it is hard here try this that should do it now no more sorry's okay thank you you always were so good at fixing things just like your father oh there I go forgive me sorry I do go on I'll stop I've just been missing him so I know they're there it's okay don't be sorry we hug each other tightly and long if I could fix it all I would I say I'm sorry you know I can see your father still in all his children it's too bad he can't see you now Mary aren't we both sorry I'm Megan Buchanan and okay so I'm totally welled up from all the poems and I feel like the brook is like has it this reading has a different feeling than any other reading I've been to it's like I feel like there's this sort of cloud that's like coming off of her already who's who all of us having responses to these poems that are like these beautiful very moving poems so anyway I'm feeling your poetry love cloud so thank you James for making this book and to bear pond for having us all here I published a little book in 2017 and some of the poems I put in my book were I felt confident about and some of them I just wasn't you know like I just felt like it was kind of they're so personal and interior but I just put them in anyway because I just kind of went for it and so the poem that James asked me to asked if he could publish for this collection was one of the sort of more interior poems that I felt like was sort of a private poem and it's a sonnet and it's called my daughter's hair and I just was looking through the table of contents here and it's like daughter, daughter, daughter, daughter so I wasn't sure what you were up to at the time but now I get it so anyway here's my sonnet called my daughter's hair and I just came back from visiting this daughter and she's now three inches or four inches taller than I am and she's in divinity school so she turned out great but she was always great here she goes okay sorry too much talking my daughter's hair I haven't yet been able to find words a sentence for what happens when I brush my daughter's hair and divide into thirds enough hair for a family of four one barber said the rare one I trusted there we go honeycomb colored braid she's out the door for school green coat pink backpack and rushing right on time little Virgo to the bus one woman's show with harmonies alone amazed bowed down deep inhale oh the joy contained in waves and waves a shimmering song my daughter's hair sings as she floats each afternoon high up into a tree against the clouds she climbs far beyond me it's my secret poem that's now in the book okay I'm going to read two other ones and this little tiny one is called pocket and I think this is sort of my connection with what I call the great I don't know what or God pocket and I'm here again hanging out in the pocket of God's favorite shirt in worn blue flannel filtered light and sound I'm suspended along for the ride tag along tiny human I'm held in warm horizontal against heartbeat I can't see the sky and I'm going to read a guzzle too and you gave the lesson already so little couplets that have a repeating word I didn't do all the like wheelie popping at the end with my name and everything like that but it's okay okay and I'm reading this because of the title really it's called almost spring in everyone here we go almost spring at dawn aspen shimmer brand new beneath dreaming blue peaks one heart speaks and beats against another spine bright as forest fire oh holy breakfasts potatoes and coffee bacon in this new dream we climb trees rock faces crisscross railroad yards to later find spring water singing in our first language the old stone carver leans through coffee's blue steam whispers this beneath our skins lives animal nature visible to him recognition lifts me like a kite a flower crown lifts off the ground carried south by a crow released onto a rooftop a blue healer and my long-legged child dream in quilts below the tiles blue evenings I find answers in rain clouds runes made of cinders or incomplete strangers a baby leans over her father's shoulder slowly raises a hand anointing me thank you the wonderful allison prine thank you it's been so great to hear everybody's poems thank you it was great to hear your poems man that was a treat thank you bear pond and poem city which is one of my favorite events it's such a wonderful thing there's just just so beautiful to see so many people here together celebrating poetry and celebrating this amazing book change that you put together and I think we're all hungry for this and needing it which is probably why you tapped into something that's needed right now so I'm gonna read the poem that james chose which is a love poem that I wrote for someone I've loved for the last twenty six years my wife Kelly it's called naming the waves above the harbor these clouds refused to be described except in the language with which they describe themselves I stand here in the morning stillness which is of course not stillness the sky spreading open in the east with amber light while drifting away to the west here I can sense how the world spins us precisely in its undetectable turn somehow both towards and away the blue of the harbor holds the sky and its calm gaze this is a love poem be patient between you and me nothing leaves everything gathers I will name for you each wave rolling up on the harbor sand this is the first breath of sleep this the cloth of your mother's dress this the cadence of our long conversation I want to show you how everything on this harbor has been broken shells glass rust bones and rock crushed into this expanse of glittering sand immune to ruin now rocking in the slow exhale of the tide read another poem that I wrote on the same harbor it's called Watermark this morning I noticed congregations moorings sanderlings even rubbish seems to have a being together an affiliation through proximity a jet tears through the clouds giving the sunrise a beautiful scar every landscape is autobiographical I recognize my own industrious rhythms in a gathering of blackbirds on the sand boat in bird noises like kitchen music from childhood efficient clip movements of a woman who raised me but has long been gone the difference between the ocean and a picture of the ocean distracting inflatables a foghorn car engines the piercing cry of an old herring gall burn of salt in the eye or sting of sand fleas ropes clinging against masts a dog barking insistently in the distance on and on without pause maybe in distress or pleading or announcing something of great importance over the harbor over the sand and out to the sea I would like to speak to the man in charge the racket is like a drawer of silver clattering to the floor this morning outside my kitchen window a sharp shinned hawk tore apart a yellow bird in the apple tree what do you propose we do when our questions become useless every day I forgive you these messes goodness is not a false positive the bloodline is not a false positive nor are the ghosts who raise me go ahead and wield your mighty blankness I too can sing into my pillow with a poem called Yard Sight which in Judaism is a the anniversary of the death of a a loved one often a parent or important family member grief lifts almost imperceptibly from a boulder to a stone for a while I'll carry it in my fist people like me do not want things to go too quickly standing still eyes closed breeze tossing a few strands of hair across my face I smile to myself when people ask for my help because they want to be normal what is it called when you don't try to be very good or very bad dear lonesome normal each night dreams ruin you what other animal has learned to hate itself the summer the Eiderduck's got sick we walked down Jeremy Point and saw how evenly apart chose their spots to die finally answering the question how close how far we are here for your questions answers and I know we're all kind of awash we're kind of awash in images right now so if you don't have anything we understand pure intuition so just so the question was what was the formula for choosing the poems that went in the anthology and so was pure intuition I just really trusted whatever kind of came across my desk or whatever I came across and it was just this little jolt and there are poems that I couldn't include because I have a very very small budget so I wanted to include a Mary Oliver poem for instance but that was four hundred dollars and we just couldn't afford it totally worth it but we just couldn't afford it first of thank you to everyone who read and thank you for putting this anthology big anthologies are important because of the way they can meet people many years down the line but for you specifically James what you read from your collection to your father did you think of any of your poems as letters or if not maybe just think just a few thoughts and this could be for anyone as well about writing a poem to someone that isn't going to speak back but can't speak back yeah I hadn't actually thought of it that way the poems kind of to my father were about him as being epistolary or letter poems but I think that's absolutely accurate you know I think another poet maybe Louise Gluck said something like you can only really understand a relationship once it's closed and so when someone passes away or when you know a love relationship ends that relationship is closed and you can then kind of go back and have the perspective to really understand what happened or really understand what that relationship was like and so a lot of those poems about him helped me do that but I also want to say that I think of a lot of the poems in the anthology if not all of them as kinds of letters I mean they were all for me about connection whether with self the natural world or with other people and so you know they do have this sort of quality of reaching out to the world or you know specific people if there's nothing else then we'll hang around happy to chat I know it's a lot of pressure to ask a question but we will be here if you come up with anything else but otherwise thank you so much for coming tonight and listening