>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> It is a great honor to introduce
Billy Collins at this book festival.
Mr. Collins served two terms
as the U.S. Poet Laureate,
has published over 10 books of
poetry, and has received a number
of fellowships from such
institutions as The Guggenheim
and the National Endowment
for the Arts.
In addition to those achievements,
he has brought whimsy
and humor into poetry.
And he has reintroduced us to
our own delight in small things:
a bar of soap, say, or an
afternoon picking strawberries.
Our tent this year at the
book festival is metaphorical,
which is apt since no one has done
more to expand the metaphorical tent
of poetry readers and
appreciators than Billy Collins.
That said, let's welcome
to the stage Billy Collins.
[ Applause ]
How are you?
Well, it's very good to be
breaking some fire laws --
that's always good -- without --
without having to light
a cigarette particularly.
And of course I'm delighted
and honored to be part
of the Festival of the Book.
I was thinking about what to say
about books, and I remembered
in "A Hard Day's Night" you
might remember there's that kind
of creepy light motif of Ringo's
granddad, who chastises Ringo
for always having his
head in a book.
And Ringo responds with the
simple, but unforgettable,
defense of reading by
saying, "Books are good."
So I'm with Ringo.
Okay, so I'm going
to read some poems.
We'll leave a little -- when the
person here says we have 10 minutes
left, I'm going to turn it over to
you and you can ask some questions.
I feel like I'm in a hurry here,
but I'm never going to leave.
It's a control freak here.
So let me start with a
poem about the reader.
And it's simply called,
"You, Reader."
"I wonder how you are
going to feel when you find
out that I wrote this instead of
you, that it was I who got up early
to sit in the kitchen and mention
with a pen the rain-soaked windows,
the ivy wallpaper, and the
goldfish circling in its bowl.
Go ahead and turn aside, bite your
lip and tear out the page, but,
listen, it was just a matter of
time before one of us happened
to notice the unlit candles and
the clock humming on the wall.
Plus, nothing happened that
morning -- a song on the radio,
a car whistling along
the road outside --
and I was only thinking about
the shakers of salt and pepper
that were standing side
by side on a placemat.
I wondered if they had become
friends after all these years
or if they were still strangers
to one another like you and I,
who manage to be known and unknown
to each other at the same time:
me at this table with
a bowl of pears,
you leaning in a doorway
somewhere near some blue hydrangeas
reading this."
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Somebody needs to design a
podium that has a drink holder.
I'm giving that idea away free.
Remember how long it took to put
the suitcase and the wheel together?
We had the wheel for some time.
And lugging stuff from
one place to another,
that was done for some time.
Poem called "1957."
"In the old joke, the marriage
counselor tells the couple
who never talks anymore to go to a
jazz club because at a jazz club,
everyone talks during the bass solo.
But of course, no one starts
talking just because of a bass solo,
or any other solo for that matter.
The quieter bass solo just
reveals the people in the club
who have been talking all along.
The same ones you can hear on
some well-known recordings.
Bill Evans, for example,
who is opening a new door
on the piano while some guy
chats up his date at one
of the little tables in the back.
I have listened to that album
so many times I can anticipate
the moment of his drunken laugh
as if it were a strange
note in the tune.
And so, anonymous man, you have
become part of my listening,
your romance, a romance lost in
the past, and a reminder somehow
that each member of that
trio has died since then.
And maybe so have you
and, sadly, maybe she."
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
I like to think of myself as a dog
person, but I'm missing a dog now
and a cat has come into the house.
So -- and I've actually --
she's there all the time.
And it's just hard to ignore a
creature that's constantly there.
So I wrote a poem about her.
I have not gone over
to the other side;
I've just -- this is just one poem.
It's called "Lucky Cat."
"It's a law as immutable as the
ones governing bodies in motion
and bodies at rest that a cat,
picked up, will never stay
in the place where you
choose to set it down.
I bet you'd be happy on
the sofa or this hassock
or this knitted throw
pillow are a few examples
of bets you're about to lose.
The secret of winning I have found
is never to bet against the cat
but on the cat, preferably
with another human being who,
unlike the cat, is likely
to be carrying money.
And I cannot think of a better time
to thank our cat for her obedience
to that law, thus turning
me into a consistent winner.
She's a pure black one, quite
impossible to photograph and prone
to disappearing into the night or
even into the thin shadows of noon.
Such an amorphous blob
of blackness is she.
The only way to tell
she is approaching is
to notice the two little
yellow circles of her eyes,
and then only one circle
when she is walking away
with her tail raised high.
Something like the lantern
signals of Paul Revere
and another opportunity
for a sure thing.
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
And here are a few shorter poems.
And one, this is just
nine lines long.
It's called "Irish
Spider, Irish Spider."
"It was well worth traveling this
far just to sit in a box of sunlight
by a window in a cottage
with a cup of steaming tea
and to watch an Irish
spider waiting at the center
of his dewy web pretending
to be just any spider at all,
a spider without a nation, but
not fooling me for a minute."
That's all right.
And here's -- I mean sometimes you
get -- I get hung up on just --
you know, you look at language in
a kind of cold or objective way
and you see all these
odd things about it.
And I was thinking about the
expression "the naked eye."
It's just an odd thing
to call an eye naked.
You never hear anybody
say, "You know,
you couldn't smell it
with the naked nose."
So it's only six lines long.
It's called "The Naked Eye."
"There was no lid to clothe the
naked eye, so she covered herself
with some scenery, a
meadow she liked to look
at when the other eye
wasn't looking."
This is also five lines long,
and this is actually lifted
quite directly and wholly
and uneditedly [phonetic]
out of actual experience.
It's called "Feedback."
"The woman who wrote from
Phoenix after my reading there
to tell me they were all still
talking about it just wrote again
to tell me that they had stopped."
[ Laughter ]
This adds new meaning
to the expression
"passive aggression" I think.
And here's another fairly short
poem called "A Note to T.S. Eliot --
A Note to Thomas Stearns Eliot."
"I just dared to eat a really big
peach, as ripe as it could be,
and I have on a pair of plaid shorts
and a blue T-shirt
with a hole in it.
And little rivers of juice
are running down my chin now
and dripping onto the pool deck.
What is your problem, man?"
It's like eat the damn
thing; I don't know.
A poem called -- or it begins by --
it's called and begins with a
big migratory bird phenomenon
that happens in America.
It's called "The Sandhill
Cranes of Nebraska."
"'Too bad you weren't
here six months ago,
" was a lament I heard
on my visit to Nebraska.
'You could have seen the astonishing
spectacle of the sandhill cranes,
thousands of them,
feeding and even dancing
on the shores of the Platte River.'
There was no point in
pointing out the impossibility
of my being there then because
I happened to be somewhere else,
so I nodded and put on a
look of mild disappointment,
if only to be part
of the commiseration.
It was the same look I remember
wearing about six months ago
in Georgia, when I was told
that I had just missed the
spectacular annual outburst
of azaleas, brilliant against
the green backdrop of spring,
and the same in Vermont six months
before that when I arrived shortly
after the magnificent foliage had
gloriously peaked, Mother Nature,
as she is called, having touched the
hills with her many-colored brush,
a phenomenon that occurs
like the others
around the same time every
year, when I am apparently off
in another state, stuck in a
motel lobby with the local paper
and a Styrofoam cup of coffee,
busily missing God knows what."
[ Applause ]
I don't know if you know
the work of Howard Nemerov,
former poet laureate
and wonderful poet.
And wish I'd met him, but he --
behind that poem is a
word that he invented.
And we all tend to
invent words now and then.
And the word is a verb, and
the verb is "to azaleate."
And to azaleate someone means
to commiserate needlessly
with some visitor about a
local natural phenomenon
that they just missed 'cause they
arrived too late, or they will miss
because they're leaving too early.
So you probably all have
azaleated and been azaleated.
Here's a poem about another poem,
or that was the idea at least.
And I wanted to write a version, the
way poets often do, of another poem.
And the poem was a beautiful
poem called "Drinking Alone"
by the Chinese poet Li Po.
So I did what you're supposed to do.
I used the same title, "Drinking
Alone," and then underneath
that I wrote the expression "after
Li Po" to admit my indebtedness.
And then I just stared
at the expression
"after Li Po" for way too long.
And so the result was this.
"Drinking Alone after Li Po."
"This is not after Li Po the way
the state is after me for neglecting
to pay all my taxes, nor the way I
am after the woman in front of me
on the long line at the post office.
Li Po, I am not saying "After
you" as I stand holding open one
of the heavy glass doors
that divide the centuries
in a long corridor of glass doors.
No, the only way this
is after you is
in the way they say it's
just one thing after another,
like the way I will pause to
raise a glass of wine to you
after I finish writing this poem.
So let me get back to sitting in
the wind alone among the pines
with a pencil in my hand.
After all, you had your turn,
and mine will soon be done,
then someone else will
sit here after me."
[ Applause ]
And here's a poem called
"Cheerios" in which I admit a bit
of personal information
had to be included.
"Cheerios."
"One bright morning in a restaurant
in Chicago, as I waited for my eggs
and toast, I opened the
"Tribune" only to discover
that I was the same age as Cheerios.
Indeed, I was a few months
older than Cheerios, for today,
the newspaper announced, was
the 70th birthday of Cheerios,
whereas mine had occurred
earlier in the year.
Already I could hear them
whispering behind my stooped
and threadbare back, 'Why, that
dude's older than Cheerios,
the way they used to say, 'Why,
that's as old as the hills.'
Only the hills are much
older than Cheerios,
or any American breakfast
cereal, and more noble
and enduring are the
hills I surmised as a bar
of sunlight illuminated
my orange juice."
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
And here, a little
subject goes a long way,
Nelson Auburn [phonetic] said,
and I think that's true of poetry.
They don't want to be
burdened by subject matter.
But this takes on -- salt shakers
and Cheerios are sort of my speed.
But this takes on a rather
thorny subject matter,
and that is adolescence.
Adolescence started in 1955, as
some of you know, with the release
of "Rebel Without a Cause."
Before that, people would just
sort of -- they just became --
boys became men and girls
became women overnight somehow.
And now, of course, adolescence
can be extended, thanks to the help
of graduate school,
well into your 30s.
Anyway, this poem is directed at
the quintessence of adolescence,
someone who is in mid-adolescence.
Committing adolescence,
as one friend of mine
described his children.
And it's called "To My Favorite
17-Year-Old High School Girl."
"Do you realize that if you had
started building the Parthenon
on the day you were born, you'd
be all done in only one more year?
Of course, you couldn't have
done that alone, so never mind;
you're fine just as you are.
You are loved for simply
being yourself.
But did you know that at your
age, Judy Garland was pulling
down $150,000 a picture, Joan of
Arc was leading the French Army
to victory, and Blaise Pascal
had cleaned up his room?
No, wait, I mean he had
invented the calculator.
Of course, there will be time
for all that later in your life,
after you come out of your
room and begin to blossom,
or at least pick up all your socks.
For some reason, I keep remembering
that Lady Jane Grey was Queen
of England when she was only
15, but then she was beheaded,
so never mind her as a role model.
But a few centuries later,
when he was your age,
Franz Schubert was doing
the dishes for his family,
but that did not keep him
from composing two symphonies,
four operas, and two complete
Masses as a youngster.
But of course that was in Austria
at the height of romantic lyricism,
not here in the suburbs
of Cleveland.
Frankly, who cares if Annie
Oakley was a crack shot at 15
or if Maria Callas
debuted as Tosca at 17?
We think you are special
by just being you,
playing with your food
and staring into space.
By the way, I lied about
Schubert doing the dishes,
but that doesn't mean he never
helped out around the house."
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
Now, to assure you that I
haven't completely lost it,
I'm going to read a
couple of dog poems.
So here's a little doggy soliloquy.
It's 12 lines long.
The dog is thinking or
speaking or writing,
if you want to imagine that.
And the dog is a sensitive creature
and contemplating one aspect
of his relationship to his owner.
And it's called "A
Dog on His Master."
"As young as I look, I am
growing older faster than he,
7 to 1 is the ratio
they tend to say.
Whatever the number, I
will pass him one day
and take the lead the way I
do on our walks in the woods.
And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest shadow I
have ever cast on snow or grass."
[ Applause ]
You know that little
sound you made there?
That's the trouble with
writing poems about pets is
that it creates that little sound.
It's a nice sound, but it's sort of
the sound you'd make if I brought
like a box of kittens onstage.
"Aw, aw." Anyway, what
it means to me is
that the poem has lost
ironic traction.
[ Laughter ]
And has gradually slipped backwards
into a ditch of sentimentality.
So in this poem, I
try to avoid all that.
And I set myself up
a kind of challenge
to write an unsentimental
poem about a dog.
It's called "The Revenant."
"I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle
of oblivion, come back to
tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you.
When I licked your face, I
thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling
yourself dry, I wanted to leap
and unman you with a snap.
I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit
in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap,
a knife in your hand.
I would've run away,
but I was too weak,
a trick you taught me while I
was learning to sit and heel and,
greatest of insults, shake
hands without a hand.
I admit the sight of the
leash would excite me,
but only because it meant I was
about to smell things
you had never touched.
You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, hated the rubber
toys, disliked your friends,
and, worse, your relatives.
The jingling of my
tags drove me mad.
You always scratched
me in the wrong place.
All I wanted from you was food
and fresh water in my metal bowls.
While you slept, I watched you
breathe as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.
Now I am free of the collar,
free of the yellow raincoat,
monogrammed sweater, the
absurdity of your lawn.
And that is all you need to know
about this place except
what you already supposed
and are glad it did
not happen sooner --
that everyone here can read and
write, the dogs in poetry, the cats
and all the others in prose."
[ Applause ]
Thank you very much.
Well, let me get back to
a couple of tiny poems.
I don't think anyone reads a
book of poetry front to back.
What I do if I get -- I treat a
new book of poetry like a flipbook.
And what I just flip through it
with my thumb the way you would --
like you could have a flipbook
and you watch the cowboy
and the lasso or something,
you know.
And usually I'm looking
for a short poem,
as I think that's always
a good place to start.
So here's a four-line poem that
makes no sense without the title.
It's called "Divorce."
"Divorce. Once, two spoons
in bed, now tined forks
across a granite table and
the knives they have hired."
That's a good sound
there; I like that.
You get that poem.
Ouch! And here's a -- this is nine
lines also, based on, you know,
just hearing Paul Auster
talk about being in France
and not hearing English
on the street
and missing these snippets
of conversation.
That actually Joyce, originally when
he came up with the word "epiphany,"
right, for a revelation -- or
he didn't come up with that,
but he borrowed it
from church liturgy --
but originally it was in
hearing a snatch of conversation.
And he felt some of those little
snippets can take you right
down a shoot into someone's life.
So here's a little something
that you overhear, well,
with a certain -- some regularity.
The title is "Oh, My God!"
exclamation point.
The speaker you'll
see is very naive.
"Oh, My God!
Not only in church and nightly
by their bedsides do young
girls pray these days.
Wherever they go, prayer
is woven into their talk
like a bright thread of awe.
Even at the pedestrian mall,
outbursts of praise spring
unbidden from their glossy lips."
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
Okay, somewhat -- I mean
somewhat recently a new --
not a wing, but at the Metropolitan
Museum, there was a new gallery
for Greek and Roman statuary
with a translucent roof.
So it showed the white marble
off in just stunning soft light.
And this is the poem.
Most of the statues were
missing parts, as they tend to do
if they're drawn from antiquity.
"Greek and Roman Statuary" "The
tip of the nose -- excuse me --
the tip of the nose
seemed to be the first
to be lost, then the arms and legs.
And later the stone penis, if
such a thing were featured.
And often an entire head followed
the nose, as it might have done
when bread was baking in the
side streets of Ancient Rome.
No hope for the flute once
attached to the lips of that satyr
with the puffed out cheeks,
nor for the staff the
shepherd boy once leaned on.
The sword no longer gripped by
the warrior, the poor lost ear
of the sleeping boy and whatever
it was Aphrodite once held
in her severed hand.
But the torso is another story.
Middle man.
The last to go.
Bluntly surviving, propped up on
a pedestal with a length of pipe.
And the mighty stone
ass endures, so smooth
and fundamental no one
hesitates to leave the group
and walk behind to stare.
And that is the way it goes
here in the diffused light
from the translucent roof.
One missing extremity after another.
Digits that got too close
to the slicer of time.
Hands snapped off by the clock.
Whole limbs caught in
the mortal thresher.
But outside, on the city
streets, it is raining.
And the pavement shines with the
crisscross traffic of living bodies.
Hundreds of noses still intact.
Arms swinging and hands grasping.
The skin still warm and
foreheads glistening.
It's anyone's guess when the day
will come when there is nothing left
of us but the bare, solid
plinth we once stood upon.
Now exposed to the open air,
just the wind and the trees
and the shadows of clouds sweeping
over its hard marble surface."
[ Applause ]
It's all about death, right.
I tell students, "You
want to major in English?
You're majoring in death basically.
Just get used to it."
That's why I'm not a
guidance counselor.
I was relieved from my duties.
And so now, at the end
of August, we're just --
we're kind of three weeks past
the high-water mark for this kind
of activity this poem called
"The Lanyard" describes.
But we're not that far away from it.
And plus, it's good -- it's
like Martha Stewart said,
it's good at holiday
time or anytime.
So I start this poem by
telling you how it started.
"The Lanyard.
The other day as I was ricocheting
slowly off the pale blue walls
of this room, bouncing from
typewriter to piano, from bookshelf
to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the L section
of the dictionary where my eyes
fell upon the word "lanyard."
No cookie nibbled by a French
novelist could send one more
suddenly into the past, a past
where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake learning
how to braid thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift
for my mother.
I had never seen anyone
use a lanyard or wear one,
if that's what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from
crossing strand over strand,
again and again, until
I had made a boxy red
and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her
breasts, and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick
room, lifted teaspoons of medicine
to my lips, set cold face-cloths
on my forehead, and then led me
out into the airy light and
taught me to walk and swim.
And I, in turn, presented
her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands
of meals, she said,
and here is clothing
and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little
help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a
beating heart, strong legs, bones,
and teeth, and two clear eyes to
read the world, she whispered.
And here, I said, is the
lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to
her now, is a smaller gift,
not the archaic truth that you
can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that
when she took the two-tone lanyard
from my hands, I was as sure as
a boy could be that this useless,
worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be
enough to make us even."
[ Applause ]
Great, great.
I thank you so much.
I'm going to read just one
more poem and then we'll have
about 10 minutes for questions.
Okay, so here's a poem with
I think a helpful title.
I like really simple titles, like
"Ice" or "Monday," or big titles.
My favorite title of any poem is
Thomas Gray's poem called "Ode
on the Death of a Favourite Cat,
Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes."
I mean that has me
right there, you know.
I mean like I had you
from ode, Thom.
And this is called "I Chop
Some Parsley While Listening
To Art Blakey's Version
Of '"Three Blind Mice.'"
"And I start wondering
how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they
could be brothers and sisters.
And I think of the poor mother,
brooding over her sightless
young triplets.
Or was it a common
accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion,
a firework perhaps?
If not, if each came to his
or her blindness separately,
how did they ever manage
to find one another?
Would it not be difficult
for a blind mouse
to locate even one
fellow mouse with vision,
let alone two other blind ones?
And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run
after a farmer's wife, or anyone
else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.
Just so she could cut
off their tails
with a carving knife
is the cynic's answer.
But the thought of them without
eyes and now without tails to trail
through the moist grass
or slip around the corner
of a baseboard has the cynic,
who always lounges within me,
up off his couch and at the window,
trying to hide the rising
softness that he feels.
By now, I am onto dicing an
onion, which might account
for the wet stinging in my own eyes,
though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"
which happens to be the
next cut, cannot be said
to be making matters any better."
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Thank you very much.
Well, there's one.
>> A simple, not deep question.
What books were you reading?
>> When?
>> Now, today.
>> Oh, now.
That's a good -- I'm reading Geoff
Dyer's first novel called the
"Colour of Memory."
I'm a big Geoff Dyer fan.
And you can see the seeds of his
-- you don't know -- D-Y-E-R.
He's like the funniest guy writing
and very -- so that's basically --
I just read one book at a time.
>> Actually what I
meant was what books
of yours are we -- you
reading to us today?
>> You see how selfless I am?
Oh, you want me to do
like an infomercial?
Well, "Aimless Love: New and
selected poems," 22 -- oh, anyway.
Two books, that one, "Aimless
Love," and then the other new
and selected called "Sailing
Alone Around the Room."
I can offer you a twofer here, but
I believe they're for sale here.
Yeah. So those books
and a few new ones.
But you should still
read Geoff Dyer.
Yes, ma'am?
>> So I'm interested in what the
inspiration behind the "Oh, My God!"
poem and the poem about
adolescence are because they're both
about young girls who seem
to be at the same age.
>> Yeah. Well, girls that age
were the inspiration for it.
There are so many of you
-- or them, yeah, or them.
I don't know.
I mean, you know, I -- they're
just all over the place.
And you hear it -- you
just hear it all the time.
You hear -- I have a poem
about "like," you know.
"I was -- I was like
give me a break.
I wasn't exactly give me a break.
I was just similar
to give me a break.
As I said, I was like
give me a break."
No. I'm just fascinated with
adolescence as a period of life
and all the tics and self --
I mean the poem about the
17-year-olds is really --
I mean it's not so much
a parody or making fun
of the 17-year-old
slacker you might say.
It's just is making just
as much fun of the parent
with these unreasonable
expectations,
comparing her to Maria
Callas and Joan of Arc.
So the poem I hope cuts both ways.
But I know reading --
I've read it at schools
and I've stopped reading
it at schools.
They're not -- they're
not charmed by it at all.
Anyway, thanks.
Yeah.
>> Hello. I was wondering if you
could talk about the importance
of solitude in your
creative process.
>> Well, I can -- I
can write anywhere.
I mean I can write on an
airplane or somewhere.
So I don't have to be alone.
It helps to be alone, but -- and
I've never gone so far at least
to a writers retreat, you
know, in pursuit of solitude.
But usually I write when I'm alone.
And my -- but the poem takes
place when always I'm alone.
I mean I could be writing
a poem in Times Square.
In fact one poem I was
caught without a --
I had a little beginning of a
poem going I thought in my head.
And I didn't have a pen or anything
to write on; that's my fault.
And I was walking; it
was in Midtown, New York.
And I went into a bank and I got
out some deposit slips and I wrote
with the little pencil on the chain.
And I tried to look like I was
making a really serious deposit,
you know, but -- so I can write
under all those kinds
of circumstances.
However, the mood of the poem, my
persona is usually deeply alone.
And there are very few
people in my poems.
I mean my persona is
usually unmarried.
I mean he might mention it
occasionally, but not often.
But without family and without --
there are not friends in the poems.
There's not mom and dad and grandpa
and all that stuff because I want
to be alone with the reader.
And the fewer people
you have in your poetry,
the more alone you
are with the reader.
And if you have a lot
of people in your poems,
you should stop writing poetry.
You should write a
memoir or a short story.
There's plenty of room
for aunts and uncles
and kids and everybody in there.
But in a poem I want
just two people.
You know the occupancy
rule for fire laws?
Occupancy of a lyric poem:
two, me and you, right.
So, yeah. Yeah?
Oh, I'm sorry.
>> I want to thank you
for the work you do.
It has helped our son appreciate
poetry and not just prose.
And I also want to
thank you for the poem
"Another Reason Why I Don't
Keep a Gun in the House."
>> Uh-huh.
>> Because many times I think
of the part for barking dog.
>> Okay, good.
That was about a poem
about being annoyed
by a neighbor's dog
barking incessantly.
But it was written so long ago,
that dog has presumably
been silenced by --
-- by death.
Or it's the oldest dog in the world.
Yes?
>> My name is Roberta Berry
[phonetic] and I'm a member
with you of the Haiku Foundation.
>> Oh, great.
>> And I just wanted to
say thank you so much
for your introduction
to this great book.
And could you talk a little
bit about your feelings
about haiku in mainstream poetry.
>> Sure. I mean let me read
you one haiku before I do that.
Mine are all 17 syllables.
It's a very violent haiku.
"One more dead-calm day.
I listen to the wind chimes
I smacked with a broom."
[ Laughter ]
Here's another one of mine.
"So many nicknames for you, but
none as lovely as marijuana."
>> -- your book "She
Was Just Seventeen"?
>> Oh, well, I -- yeah.
I have a book -- it's up
here actually -- of haiku.
It's called "She Was Just
Seventeen," which is part
of the adolescent theme again.
Well, I love writing haiku
because of the resistance.
Because I always do 17 syllables
exactly, there's something
between you and the form then.
Of course this happens with the
sonnet or any other inherited form.
But instead of having -- instead
of just having your self-expressive
wishes come true or fulfilled,
you have the haiku staring back
at you saying can't
you count, you know?
I mean that's -- dummy, that's six
syllables, right, you need five.
And then you make these
adjustments and you fall into a kind
of negotiation with the haiku so you
have a -- you're not alone anymore.
It gets your mind off yourself
'cause you're dealing with form.
And so you have you, full of
self-expressive desires and thinking
about your haiku career,
and then you have the haiku
that doesn't care about
any of that stuff.
So anyway.
I'm afraid it says overtime there.
I know, make that pouty face again.
Anyway, you've been
a great audience.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.