nsmomaday Male Speaker: The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to partner with the Library of Congress in sponsoring the Poetry Pavilion, and it is my great privilege to introduce N. Scott Momaday, who you know as a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a scholar and an artist. In 1969 his first novel won the Pulitzer Prize; that is, House Made of Dawn, a book that still has a tremendous influence and has really become a classic not just of the Native American experience, but of the American experience. Mr. Momaday, or I should say, Dr. Momaday, as he holds a doctorate from Stanford, has won so many awards that I would squander all his time to note them. But to give you a sense of not just his impact on our nation, but really on world literature, it would be worthy to note that he is the first American to teach American literature at the University of Moscow. He did that in 1974 and 1975. So just as we talk now about new cultural exchanges, understand that that was nearly 35 years ago, and what that said about the caliber of his work and what he represents not just as a writer, but as a public intellectual. He has been a trustee of the Museum of the American Indian, as it was first named, from the Smithsonian Institution. He maintains that long relationship, and indeed will be greeting at the National Museum of the American Indian in November. And we've distributed fliers about that in the back of this room. Mr. Momaday is a resident of New Mexico. He is a Kiowa by family. And as I think of the best way to describe him, and to talk about his poetry and his memoirs and his fiction, scholars and researchers say things like "Timeless." A reverence for the land comes about. In the new preface to his classic The Way to Rainy Mountain, he writes, "I was first told these stories by my father when I was a child. I do not know how long they had existed before I heard them. They seemed to proceed from a place of origin as old as the earth." And I would say that's what he gives us. He gives us truths that are as old as the earth; what William Faulkner called the old verities. And so I present to you Dr. N. Scott Momaday. [applause] Dr. N. Scott Momaday: Thank you very much. The first thing I want to do is ask you if you can hear me in the back. Am I projecting enough so that everyone can hear me? Don't all answer at once. [laughter] Can you not hear me? Okay, I'm getting this from somebody in the very back, so I'll try to project a little more. This is wonderful, isn't it? The late doctor and writer Lewis Thomas categorized language in four ways. He said there are four kinds of language. He says, first there is cocktail banter. This is the lowest form of language. It is meant only to identify yourself to someone else. "Oh, hello, I'm Scott Momaday. Yes, I'm an attorney. What's your game?" Cocktail banter. He says the next, and higher, form of language is conversation, in which the idea is to transmit information, to trade information, and that's a higher form of language. It's useful in certain ways. The next, and higher, form is mathematics; the language of mathematics, in which, I suppose, music may be included. And the first and highest form of language is poetry. I believe that, and so, you know, I'm thinking today, what could be better than to enjoy this perfect day, listening to poets, as we have listened to them today. And it's a wonderful experience, and I'm so glad to share it with you. I brought a few things that I would like to read to you, and the first two things that I'm going to read require a little bit of a preface. So let me get right to a poem entitled "Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu." And what I want to say about it is that in the early '70s I received a letter from Georgia O'Keefe, and she invited me to her home at Abiquiu, New Mexico, which is about 35 miles north and west of Santa Fe, where I live. She invited me to come and visit her. I had not met her. I certainly was aware of her painting, and I had the highest respect for her, great admiration. And so on a cold February day I drove to Abiquiu, and I was nervous to meet for the first time this very great artist. She was already in her 80s, and she was doing, at that time, what she called her rock paintings. She was very fond of rocks, stones, and the window boxes in her home were filled with stones that she had gone out and gathered from the arroyos. And she had other wonderful objects in her house. She showed me an adobe fireplace that she had made with her own hands, and there were wonderful skulls of cows and sheep about, you know, and the filaments of a snake in a glass box, and her rock paintings. Well, I knocked on the door, a little nervous, shaky, and the door opened and there was Georgia O'Keefe in a tuxedo. She affected to wearing black, with a very starched white collar, and her hands were large and beautiful; the hands of an artist. Her hair was swept back severely, and it was white, of course. And she ushered me in, and we sat down and we began to talk. And I found out very quickly that this octogenarian had a mind like a steel trap. She was very curious about everything, and she had questions for me that I had a hard time answering because they were so complex, and they were on subjects that you wouldn't ordinarily talk about on a first meeting. Anyway, it occurred to Georgia O'Keefe after a few moments that she had neglected to offer me refreshment. And we were so busy talking that neither of us had thought of that, of course. And when she said that to me I said, "Oh please, you know I'm having a wonderful time. Don't bother. Never mind." But she persisted, and she had got it into her mind that I was going to have refreshment. And she asked me what I would like, and she kept at it. And finally I said, "Well, I'll have a scotch and soda, please." So she nodded and she exited the living room in the direction of the kitchen, and she did not return. And I sat waiting and waiting, and I was getting increasingly more nervous. I wondered what had happened. And then, to make matters worse, there came a banging of metal from the kitchen like the banging of pots and pans. And so I really became distressed, and I thought, "What has happened to this 80-year-old woman? Should I go and investigate, or would that simply embarrass her? What must I do?" And I sat there, just in suspension. And finally Georgia O'Keefe returned, but she was more flustered than ever. And she said, "Oh, it's my maid's day off, and I don't what she did with the key to the liquor pantry." [laughter] Well, I was so relieved to see her, I just said, "That's all right. I'm fine." But no. She again exited in the direction of the kitchen, and she did not return. And I sat there, waiting and waiting, and beads of blood appeared on my forehead. I developed a recurrent tic, which I still have. But to make the long story short, she came in with my drink on a silver tray, and it turns out that Georgia O'Keefe had taken the pantry doors off at the hinges -- [laughter] -- with a screwdriver, and of course I had to write a poem about that. It's not about that particularly, but it is dedicated to Georgia O'Keefe. And that was the first of our meetings, and the most painful for me. I went out to have lunch with her several times, and found out that she liked goat's cheese -- she had lived in Wisconsin -- and good wines. So I would take cheese and a bottle of wine, and I would go out and we would continue our conversations. Here is the poem, "Forms of the Earth at Abiquiu." I imagine the time of our meeting There among the forms of the earth at Abiquiu, And other times that followed from the one -- An easy conjugation of stories, And late luncheons with wine and cheese. All around there were beautiful objects, Clean and precise in their beauty, like bone. Indeed, bone. A snake in the filaments of bone, The skulls of cows and sheep; And the many smooth stones in the window, In the flat winter light, were beautiful. I wanted to feel the sun in the stones -- The far-flung, ashen winter sun -- But this I did not tell you, I believe, But I believe that after all you knew. As you knew the forms of the earth at Abiquiu. And in those days, too, I made you the gift of a small, brown stone, And you described it with the tips of your fingers And knew at once that it was beautiful -- As you knew the forms of the earth at Abiquiu: That time involves them and they bear away, Beautiful, various, remote, In failing light, and the coming of cold. [applause] The next poem is an illustration, I think, of the way in which imagination works in the building of a poem. The imagination is crucial to poetry, as I probably needn't tell you, as it is important to all of writing. For a time I taught at Stanford University. I'd taken my graduate work there, and I was quite familiar with the territory. I lived in San Francisco and drove down the peninsula to Stanford, to teach. And one day, as I was driving up Fillmore Street -- I lived in the Marina -- I drove up Fillmore Street to the top of Pacific Heights, and then on out to the Bay Shore Freeway and down to Stanford. And every time I drove up to the top of Fillmore, to the top of Pacific Heights, I had to look into the rear view mirror at the splendid view behind me. I looked down Fillmore into the Bay, and across the Bay so that I could see the Golden Gates and Sausalito beyond. It was beautiful, beautiful to see from that vantage point. One day I was driving up that route, and my imagination began to work. And as I drew nearer to the intersection of Broadway and Fillmore and the top of Pacific Heights, my imagination went wild. And I thought to myself, "Wouldn't this be a wonderful place for a buffalo drive?" My mind was working like that, and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be interesting if someday the good citizens of San Francisco should be awakened by a bawling and trampling of hooves down the way, and they should go out on their patios, their balconies and see a great cloud of dust rising, down on the peninsula?" And this should be a remnant of the southern herd; thousands of buffalo approaching San Francisco. They come into the city, trampling automobiles and knocking the corners off buildings. They take the line of least resistance and go up to Broadway, where they hang a left. They go up to the intersection of Broadway and Fillmore, the top of Pacific Heights, and there, on one of the corners, the southwest corner of that intersection, there is an old man on an old horse, waving a Red Chief's blanket. And the buffalo turn down Fillmore, sliding down, tumbling into the Bay. Now, how's that for an act of the imagination, hmm? This poem is entitled "The Great Fillmore Street Buffalo Drive." Insinuate the sun through fog, up on Pacific Heights Up on the man on horseback, up on the herd ascending There is color and clamor, and there he waves them down, Those great humpbacked animals, until, their wild grace gone, They lumber and lunge, and blood blisters at their teeth, And their hooves score the street, and among boulders they settle on the sea. He looks after them, twisted 'round upon his sorrel, The drape of his flag now full and formal, ceremonial. One bull, animal representation of the sun, he dreams back from the brink To the green refuge of his hunter's heart. It grazes near a canyon wall, along a ribbon of light, Among redbud trees, eventually into shadow. Then the hold of his eyes is broken. On the farther rim the grasses flicker and blur. A hawk brushes rain across the dusk. Meadows recede into mountains, and here and there Are moons like salmonberries up on the glacial face of the sky. [applause] This is a very recent poem. The two that I've read you so far are earlier poems, and this one is very recent. It's called "The Sun Horses." The horses came, and we did not understand at first That a destiny came with them. They ranged along the ridge, dancing their shadows on the sun. Some came to us when we sang, but others kept away on the horizon. And we knew in our deepest reverence that we were who we ought to be As long as there were horses appearing on the skyline. Then one day, after we had got in their way, The soldiers fired a thousand shots. And the sun blanched, and the horses were no longer there. [applause] In the middle of the 19th century, when the Plains Indians had nearly lost all hope, the women began making cradleboards -- the older women, the grandmothers. The cradleboards were beautiful, beaded works of art. They made them for the unborn children. It was their way of vesting one last hope for a future, for survival itself. This poem is called "A Cradle for This Child." This child, who draws so near, Who has no name, who cannot see, Who waits in darkness to be born into an empty world, I make a cradle for this child. This child, whose trust we keep, Who knows of nothing but our love, Whose hands will guide our destiny into an empty world, I make a cradle for this child. This child, who blesses us, Whose words will heal and carry on beyond the silence of our sorrow, Beyond an empty world, I make a cradle for this child. This child, who will enter among us in our empty world, And stand before us in our need, And promise us the dawn, [applause] I wanted to say something to you about writing. I have a book of poems in which I also have dialogues between God and the original bear. And I call these plays. Actually, they're quintessential dramas. I call these the bear-God dialogues, and Yahweh, the name I have chosen for God -- there are older names, but I wanted an old name, and this one suffices -- Yahweh and Urset, the original bear, converse on various subjects. And on this occasion they talk about writing. I'm going to read both parts, of course. Yahweh, the creator, and Urset, the original bear engage in conversation. Yahweh has entered upon the stage to find Urset bent over a table, ruminating and applying the stub of a pencil to paper. He is both concentrated and frustrated. After mumbling a few words of unintelligible exasperation, he becomes aware of Yahweh's presence. Urset: Oh! Oh, it's you. I mean, hello to you, great mystery. Yahweh: I see that you are preoccupied, Urset. I don't mean to disturb you. Let me leave you to your work, if work it is. Urset: Oh, no. Please stay, great mystery. You do not disturb. I am just scratching here, as you see. I'm very pleased to see you, indeed. Yahweh: Why, what is the matter, Urset? You seem distressed. Urset: I -- I am caught up in a mighty struggle; a futile struggle, one I cannot hope to win. Oh, I had no idea what I was getting into. Yahweh: But you appear merely to be writing; scratching, as you say. Your struggle, Urset, is it with words? Urset: My futile struggle, my mortal struggle, my intense agony, my utter and everlasting and hopeless and unspeakable trauma, my mother of all wars, is with words, great mystery. Oh, merciless, unforgiving words. Yahweh: I had no idea. How on earth did you get into such straits? Urset: I was watching a book. Yahweh: You were watching a book. Urset: Yes. During primetime. Yahweh: And? Urset: And it took possession of me. I couldn't put it down, as they say. Oh, I tell you, it was an ambush, great mystery, an unholy thing. I hadn't a bear's chance in a berry thicket. Do you do exorcisms? Yahweh: Never mind that, but I really don't understand, Urset. Why, it sounds like a good experience to me; a literary experience. Let me tell you, when I first read Genesis, I was enthralled. Urset: Oh, don't misunderstand. The reading was all right; delightful, even. But then suddenly I got the idea that I could scratch wonder upon a surface. "Right. Why not?" I said to myself. "What is more commonplace in the world than pages full of words? A book is a cinch, a piece of cake. I will toss off a few pages before lunch. More than a few! I will scratch a novel, a play or an epic poem by teatime and have a good nap." The notion of a book tour entered my mind. Well, then the assault, the verbal massacre. I fled the field in tatters, in shame, in ursine humiliation. Why, oh why didn't you tell me about the hostility, the treachery, the sheer cruelty of words? Yahweh: Hush, Urset. So you have discovered that words have power, even the power to oppose you who employ them. That is a fortunate and fundamental discovery. Be glad for it. It enables you to live your life more intensely, to your greater enrichment, your fulfillment. Urset: But my struggle, my heroic hurt! Yahweh: My good friend, you have suffered a case of the writer's frustration, that is all. There is nothing terminal about it. Everyone who writes, even if it's an entry in one's own diary, a letter, a high school book report, encounters it. It was the same when you learned to talk; that earliest foray into language, though you probably don't remember it. Urset: Oh, I can talk. I'm a mighty good talker. I can talk up a storm. I can talk to beat the band. Yahweh: I know, Urset, I know. Urset: And I fancy I can tell a story with the best of them. Yahweh: Tell me, have you thought of the difference between telling a story and writing one? Urset: Umm. In a word, no. Yahweh: There is a critical difference. One, the telling involves the voice, the human voice, the breath of the soul. The other involves visible symbols, the incising or scratching of signs upon a surface, the abstract inventions of the mind. Both are indispensable, but the first is inestimably older than the second, and it is more expressive of our whole being. It gave origin to the second. The second has gained a certain prominence in our time. It has given us the books that contain the great literatures of all literate cultures. But there would be no books without the telling first; the immediate breath of creation. I am speaking of the two great traditions of language, Urset; the oral and the written. Urset: When you came into the room I was butting heads with the written tradition. Yahweh: Just so, and in that tradition you have mastered the art of reading. But you are at an early, tentative stage of writing. You are poised in the balance. Urset: If you don't mind, I think I will stay there. I rather like being poised. Yahweh: Readers are not necessarily writers. There is a distinction, a factor that distinguishes scratching from writing, or writing from writing. Urset: What? Say again? Yahweh: It is a factor that I imposed upon evolution in my salad [spelled phonetically] days. I'm not sure I remember the formula, but no matter, I'm rather proud of it. It's a kind of random absolute. It might be called genius or chance or the gift of God, or the scratch factor. It is the face of the unknowable, and the mask of wonder. You see, Urset, today when you dared to write, you found words alien to your expectations; full of resistance, indeed ominous. You are not alone in that. But there are others, not many; a distinct minority in the history of the world who take delight in that holy dread, who find words irresistible, prismatic, profound, wonderful beyond imagining. They take them and scratch them into miracles of meaning, of infinite possibility and grandeur. Think, Urset, just think of a Shakespare or a Dante or a Cervantes, dreaming a dance of words and shaping the glide and flow of them upon the page. How magical. How nearly divine the rendering of such majesty and music and truth! Think of Melville, conjuring the Leviathan. Think of Joyce, at the window of his mind's eye seeing snow falling into the mutinous Shannon waves. Think of Emily Dickinson, alone in that upstairs room with only her mind and her coffer of words. It is a simple equation, mind and words, but it is enough to engender immortality. Urset: Great mystery, can you teach me to write? Yahweh: I can teach you to write, Urset, but I cannot teach you to write Moby Dick. [laughter] Thank you. [applause] [end of transcript]