WEBVTT

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My grandparents where very poor subsistence farmers, 

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on my mothers side in Virginia, on my fathers side in Kentucky.  

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My paternal grandparents had a first and fourth grade education. 

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My grandfather, who was born in 1900 started driving a mule team

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at six with his father. 

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I tell you that because my father then became an agricultural major 

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at University of Kentucky, and then a veterinarian. He went to Ohio State for his DVM. 

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And earliest memoru in life, probably around the age of three

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or four was rubbing down pups after they were born in the animal hospital. 

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So I have always worked with other than human species. 

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I like you folks to, homosapiens are not so bad,

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but I tend to find deeper relationships with other animals, 

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and as Henry said I spend so much time in the field. It was so funny

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in literary studies when I say I have to go do field work 

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my colleagues look at me like what are you talking about, 

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but my colleagues who are biologists 

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in the environmental studies nod their head, off course you have to go do field work. 

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You have to go out into the woods. 

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And I am going to read you a very early poem of mine, 

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from my very first book, it is called "Wild Cherries."

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One of my jobs at the animal hospital was to bury dead animals. 

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 I was born and raised in Elkhart Indiana. It is a factory town, 

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and my father, having been a farm kid had no idea what to do and 

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his first client said, aren't you going to take care of my animal for me? 

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And we had a few wealthy 

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clients, they wanted tombstones. 

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A pet cemetery, my father really did not know what to do about that, 

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but he thought if he was going to make his business work, we better get that.  

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So we had a cemetery for uptown folks, but most of the poor folks 

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we had over an acre field, a pauper cemetery out next to the 

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old railroad tracks and that was my job. 

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And one summer we had hired a 

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highschool boy to help us out. I played basketball and so I had to be away some, 

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and he buried animals willy nilly across the field and when I came back, 

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we where very systematic, so the dogs would have rotted back, and given their bodies up to the earth, 

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and the you could come back, and I was putting shovels into 

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half rotted corpses most of that summer and retching by the side so. 

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So this is about that. 

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laughter

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Wild cherries, wild cherries. And I hope you know the native wild cherry and how bitter it is.  

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In the heat of July when I was a boy, 

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I scraped shit from the sweating floors of the kennels, 

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sick dogs, awful, always the most pungent, 

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played with boarders whose owners had headed north from Indiana, 

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to some harder time off Lake Michigan, and imagined black cherry orchards 

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just over the Michigan line. Heavy laden, bending beet red 

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until my father called me outside to the courtyard 

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where an Irish Setter lay beneath the sun, like deaths silent stone. 

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The owners, having asked for an autopsy  

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waited out front while we cut open the dogs side. 

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An aperture through which we could see all that had perished, 

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listen to the blood sloshing against the walls like an inland sea. 

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Covered by pale rubber gloves, my fathers hands fished for parasites and deffects, 

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the normal abnormalities that wither the flesh. 

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And every so often he would push aside an organ

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 offer a lesson in anatomy, or pathology, 

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then resume his rummaging. In the end, it was the heart. 

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Grown old and pithy like a peach or plum. 

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But how does one say that? I do not know what my father said, 

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never saw their faces, when they received the news

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instead I took the dog, careful not to spill any blood, 

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and buried him in the field out near the railroad tracks, 

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where we buried all of the pets for owners 

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who had no other way of disposing of their love, 

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And there, at the corner of the plot, a wild tree draped itself, 

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its fruit ripe, ready to fall, 

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So, maybe because of that, and there are other reasons, 

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but I will not get into my family history of alcoholism and addiction, 

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but death is something that I have always 

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written towards in my poems, trying to make peace with it.  

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I have an entire book called Winterkill because of that. 

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And so I will read you a sermon, a homely, from Winterkill. 

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And I should tell you, my father was raised separate baptist

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and most people do not know what separate baptist is. 

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It is like the shakers, a very small sect. They had two doors, women went in one door

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and men went in the other. They sat on pews divided

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in the church, except, this is why 

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the Shakers died out and the Separate Baptists did not, 

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they had a sparking bench, and if you are not from the south you may not 

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know that term. When you are sparking it means you are dating, but it is 

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more than just dating, it means you are moving towards marriage,

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and so they had a sparking bench for the couples there. 

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Homely, begins with an epigraph from Walt Whitman. 

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Oh I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, 

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but of the soul. And I say now these are the soul. 

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By the second week in September nut hatches capture  

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the last elderberries. Excrement purpled, and extravagant 

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sprayed drunkenly across my trucks hood. 

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I had been thinking about the God I pray to with no lasting effect, 

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and note the effortless work the stream does as it feeds these bushes, 

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My father was baptized in the green river, 

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lead by the hand in white robes to be dunked beneath the current, 

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Sometimes when mother gathers sheets from the clothesline in late summer 

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she finds the droppings of a bluebird, 

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written like a sacred text, but what saint could decipher it. 

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In the field reclaimed by clover I sprawl sideways 

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and count the small green hands of the leaves enfolding me, 

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the gentle shh, shh of the wind 

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dismisses my garbled words as they break the waters surface, 

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or cross over the low hum of bees, eventually we have to ascend to breathe, 

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excepting the uncertainty of the air above our heads, 

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At dusk a sane of geese skitters in a half formed V, 

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and a skulk of fox pups gnaw at each others throats,

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in a game to prepare for death, 

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Salvation is supposed to be sweet, 

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like the sugar of a wild grape, 

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But where would we be without the fossil record to lead, 

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all of us are worth saving, 

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despite the stint we have made since learning to walk upright 400000 years ago, 

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as a boy when a calf got scours, 

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my father would search the field for lambs ear, 

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collecting its velvet leaves to better dress the open sores that ran the length of the flanks, 

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His mother told him, mercy is all Jesus wants of anyone, 

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I believe, despite my unbelief

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when the Belgium drapes soar across the padded gate, 

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I offer him two hands of clover, I painstakingly picked. 

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So my new book is called Native Species, 

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It is a question I often pose to my students in

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our environmental studies class. Obviously we are native to the planet, we aren't alien forms, 

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but the difference between a native species and a non native 

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species, right, where do we belong originally? 

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Where I live in Pennsylvania, 

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garlic mustard is a real problem. I don't know if you have a problem with garlic mustard, 

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It is a non native invasive species, thank goodness it is an edible 

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Its fabulous to cook up and you can fight the non native species by 

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eating it. We also have Privots, and any of you students who grew up 

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with Harry Potter and Privot Lane, realize we brought 

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Privot over from Europe and started using it in 

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in landscaping. Its berry is a very hard, dark fruit 

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Birds do like to eat it but 

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it does not have the nutritional value for them, but it sure fills them up 

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and then they spread it across. So we have lots of Privot 

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Well, think of us as human species 

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maybe we are native, but are we an invasive species at this point 

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with our population issues along with our big brains and opposable thumbs 

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allowing us to do a great deal of damage. And even so, 

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I hope we do not hate ourselves, 

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I love all of you as a species still. So these questions run through this book, 

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and I will begin with a short poem from the book called Dead Letter to James Wright. 

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James Wright was a wonderful poet who grew up 

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near Martensferry Ohio, 

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and he has poem 

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where at the end he has wasted his life so there is an illusion to that 

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in this poem, Dead Letter to James Wright. 

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It has been a long time in the ditch, snow melts, and most of all

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made the river muddy, by July jewel weed blossoms, 

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the wild carrot in August, and Iron Weed in September. 

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There are so many flowers I cannot name, 

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Privot multiplies, garlic mustard colonizes the understory

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you said you wasted your life. I am still not sure what species I am. 

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And so I hunt for 

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a range of reasons. We have taken out most of our 

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natural predators. In Pennsylvania 

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we no longer have mountain lion, we no longer have wolves, 

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Through market hunting, before regulation, 

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hunted elk to extirpation, we had to buy 

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elk from the west to create our elk herd again. 

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We almost hunted white tail deer to extirpation, with market hunting 

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again they have been replenished. I do not know if you know

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at this point, and it depends on what scientific article you are reading, 

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we either have the same amount of deer 

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on the continent as we did 500 years ago before colonization 

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or we have a little more. They are very 

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aggressive species, they serve a niche in the ecosystem 

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as prey. So I hunt to try and offset 

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since most of the natural predators have been taken out. 

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I also hunt for healthy meat, but you might say I protest to much and so 

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this poem pokes a little fun at me. 

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Native Species. At work he found himself looking at 

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paintings of deer on the internet, some dead, some 

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dying, others resting in tall grass or beneath green bows, 

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the gentle sound of water rolling over stone in the stream that 

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ordered the picture and float out of the frame. 

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Tracking a doe through brier and multiflora rose, 

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he would feel the ease of the deers movements, 

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the muscle that shaped kinship with the young, 

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for him the trail was precarious 

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One boot in front of the other as he scaled steep towers or 

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sunk to his waste in the sloggy alderswamps where many took

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refuge, cold soaking skin changing his 

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own scent. While laboring with a meat saw, 

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he protested that he loved what he killed, offering elaborate prayers 

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of thanksgiving for the animal that fed his family, 

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when winter grew deep, he found the wolves and boars where they slept, 

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heat of their bodies melting the snow, and close by a shed 

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antler, like a crown removed before sleep. 

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Trimming a hangnail, he began to suspect something, 

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plate dark and thick, black as the tumulus coal

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he told his wife he banged his fingers in a door, 

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but soon his toes divided as well. Three to one side, two to the other, 

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a slant with angular curves, that made wearing shoes impractical. 

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His wife insisted he see a doctor, 

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instead he went to the woods, where his back bent and lengthened, 

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neck drawn out, eyes brought to the side, 

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dusky, and knowing. Still she recognized him

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Clasped his face under the muzzle, scolded him for procrastinating 

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while pressing her forhead to his, 

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stroking the corse hair along his chest and belly, 

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During rifle season when the family heard a shot role up the valley, 

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they ran to the porch and called his name, 

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waiting for the comfort of a tails flash along treeline, 

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his sons were careful to mark the shape of the ivory patch at the base of his throat, 

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and swore only to hunt squirrel and rabbit, 

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his daughter who loved to ride his shoulders 

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tied yellow yarn from his brow tines in a cats cradle, 

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beneath moonlight, on late summer evenings, 

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he ate the beats and clover she planted in the garden

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stamped his hoof in darks soil, 

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until a face appeared in the window, to look down on velvet 

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antlers illuminated like branches in wet snow. 

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I love, I am no physicist, I love the 

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idea in quantum physics that there is no more or less 

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energy in the universe. It is just constantly being transformed. 

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I like the notion 

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the what you eat, that life feeds your life 

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and in a sense you carry that life forward. 

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I am very concerned about our practices with the dead. 

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One, we push death out of our lives today. 

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Not many of us get to die in our own homes. 

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At one time, we all would have died in our own homes. 

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Unless we were in war or some other accident. 

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This not to bash mortuary science, 

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but embalming, putting very toxic chemicals in your body so that 

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people, for a few days, 

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can come by a casket and look down upon you. 

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And then to put that casket in the ground, and who knows how long the casket 

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may hold up, but it will not hold up forever. 

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And hose chemicals will leech into the ground, into the soil

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perhaps into the groundwater, the aquifer. 

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So, here is a poem giving a plug 

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no, we will not do that. Something we can all think about, 

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How do you want to be buried? Do you want to be cremated? That takes a lot of energy but 

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in certain areas that may be the most practical. 

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But how do you want to put your body back into the earth. This is called Taxonomy 

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I make a reference to Carl Linnaeus, the person who started 

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the taxonomic system. So Taxonomy, 

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We have been taken captive by the world, 

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named by it, taught to eat from its table, 

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the wetted blade slides through the flesh, 

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then vailed with parts to reveal what we think is the soul, 

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we set fires and burn the earth because buried canes will not

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come back without dirt as dark as the color of its feet, 

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Before the oldest trees where felled we traveled the water course

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now in the open fields we track coyote

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hoping to save the sweet lambs we tend, 

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sadly, as night stumbles down all we find are 

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clumps of wool caught in teasels fine comb, 

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more than two centuries ago, Linnaeus began to arrange 

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all the names we have given back to the world, 

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This is how we know black walnuts hulls, when crushed, smell like lemon, 

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Or when we walk through sweet fern gloss will burst into flight, 

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dragging the plants sharp scent into the air, 

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Near the stream, a true poplar blows down, 

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leaves turning the yellow of mustard and ragwart, 

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despite the order we have cultivated, the charts we have set to memory, 

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we are likely to discover our way is one of unknowing, 

00:16:59.000 --> 00:16:64.000
when we die, may we be a pleasing word 

00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:09.000
hoist in the mouth of the world. I do not know if you have thought of yourself that way, 

00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:14.000
a pleasing word that would be placed back into the mouth of the world, 

00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:17.000
so how is your energy going to go back into the world? 

00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:21.000
So enough death, enough death, enough enough death. 

00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.000
We are all going to get there we do not to get there today, 

00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:29.000
So, Coltrain Eclogue. 

00:17:29.000 --> 00:17:33.000
I hope some of you like John Coltrain, 

00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:37.000
I was a very bad saxophone player but 

00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:40.000
it helped me to appreciate folks like Coltrain, 

00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.000
And if you do not know Coltrain just 

00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:47.000
Google love supreme, and at least listen to love supreme, 

00:17:47.000 --> 00:17:50.000
and that chant, love supreme 

00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.000
is in this poem. So Coltrain Ecologue. It starts with an epilogue 

00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:59.000
by St John Coltrain himself. You can play a shoestring, 

00:17:59.000 --> 00:17:63.000
if you are sincere. With a beak of a pileated 

00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:06.000
open row of holes down the length of a snag, 

00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:10.000
wind blows across each notch, angles of breathing 

00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.000
like St Coltrain unfastening pearl and brass

00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:18.000
exhalation rushing through the neck of a saxophone, 

00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:23.000
bending into the sound that envelopes anyone with ears to hear, 

00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:28.000
I have started to chant, a love supreme, although I am alone, 

00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:32.000
more than four miles into the crease, trying to pick up the ribbon 

00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:36.000
how each lungful glides through hemlock needles, 

00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:40.000
kestrels slipping out onto the updraft with one wing beak, 

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:43.000
shifting the air ever so slightly, 

00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:46.000
and yet another woodpecker drilling the side of a dying tree

00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:49.000
a little flicker that stays just out of sight, 

00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:54.000
laying down a percussive line, I feel foolish for saying this, 

00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:60.000
but its like being reborn, a syncopation that can call down rain

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:03.000
make the bud of a shy bush unfold 

00:19:03.000 --> 00:19:07.000
unwrap the slow honest tongues of beaver, 

00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:11.000
and stamp a mooses enormous hind quarters like a base, 

00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:16.000
all the others silenced, fingers of that long bred saint scaling 

00:19:16.000 --> 00:19:20.000
gut strings before a black Bornean warbler joined him 

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:23.000
with its thin, plaintive notes, 

00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:28.000
And a Goddamned bluebird, which should seem trivial but is not, 

00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:32.000
breast puffed, raising its head towards a God

00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:36.000
that surrounds us, who opens our stupid mouths

00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:40.000
and commands us to play whatever instrument 

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:42.000
we have got. 

00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:46.000
You all have instruments and I love being in the woods because at times it 

00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:51.000
feels like a jazz combo and cacophony. Everybody likes love. 

00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:56.000
And, I hope all of you have had a good first kiss, 

00:19:56.000 --> 00:19:60.000
this is called, First Kiss. 

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:02.000
She spoke with the voice of an egret, 

00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:06.000
skin swirled with the smell of rabbit tobacco, 

00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:10.000
he hid in honeysuckle, to watch her catch dragonflies, 

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.000
blue green matchsticks with wings glistening like waxpaper, 

00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:17.000
Mama called them snake doctors, 

00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:20.000
claimed they followed all manner of slithering, 

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:25.000
stitched then 

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:31.000
the voice snared rat snakes, allowed them to slip around his wrist and elbow, 

00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:36.000
circle his waist, when the girl pasted on the path between fields 

00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:40.000
while walking to town along the wagon road, he thought of wind and 

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.000
settling muslin, the first hint of darkness on the threshing floor, 

00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:47.000
She bent to his ear in church, croaked about the 

00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:52.000
feathers of red-winged blackbirds, how they resembled the leather covers 

00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:56.000
of a bible, their whistle song like the secrets inked 

00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:60.000
on onion skin paper, the morning she took his hand 

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.000
on the way to the schoolhouse, pulled him under the bent 

00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:08.000
down branches of a hedge apple, and kissed him

00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:12.000
pecking at his lips like a flicker grubbing a snag

00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:16.000
he remembered the preacher, pushing his head backwards in the tank of water, 

00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:20.000
hollering to the congregation, that he was saved, 

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.000
So, certainly when I kiss my wife I feel like I am saved. 

00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:28.000
That story comes from my mothers side of the family, 

00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:32.000
in Virginia and I do not know 

00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:36.000
I know I use a lot of language that you might not connect with

00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.000
but if you did not connect with her kissing him like a flicker, 

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.000
or rubbing a snag, go look up a flicker or getting a snag and you will see 

00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:48.000
certain kind of kissing. 

00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:51.000
Maybe a french kiss or something like that I do not know, 

00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:56.000
I am in Oregon, and William Stafford played an enormous role in me becoming 

00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:60.000
a poet, and so I read a William Stafford poem. 

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.000
He literally came to me in a dream, it was the bizzarest thing and I 

00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:08.000
woke up and I wrote this down. You folks who are from out here 

00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:12.000
you know that there are certain species that need fire to regenerate, 

00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:16.000
certain pine species for example. The cones won't open unless we have fire so 

00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:20.000
this is called, In A Dream William Stafford Visits Me. He taught at Lewis and Clark 

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.000
College for much of his career. He was born though and  

00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:28.000
raised in Kansas, he was in the brethren tradition so in World War Two 

00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:32.000
he was a consciences objector, he had the habit 

00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:36.000
in his adult life as a poet of getting up around four 

00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:39.000
in the morning and laying on his couch with a 

00:22:39.000 --> 00:22:44.000
yellow legal pad just scribbling poems and playing with it until his family arose

00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:46.000
around six, six thirty and then he would get on with his day. 

00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.000
So, In A Dream William Stafford Visits Me, 

00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:53.000
He was walking across a field of wheat in Kansas, 

00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:57.000
grain as tall as his shoulder, and as tan as his face, 

00:22:57.000 --> 00:22:60.000
he is cupping his hands to his mouth, 

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:05.000
shouting words the wind steals and throughs into the wind like chaff, 

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:08.000
I need to know what he said and began chasing his voice 

00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:14.000
as it scuttles across the ground like a sheaf of newsprint. He to is running, 

00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:20.000
along a slender path in Oregon, cut by the hooves of ungulates, 

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.000
For someone who has been dead nearly 20 years, he is remarkably fit, 

00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:28.000
and I cannot catch him until he stops at the bottom of the hill, 

00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:31.000
Where a stream washes on towards a bay, 

00:23:31.000 --> 00:23:34.000
he says the sea knows mistakes he has made, 

00:23:34.000 --> 00:23:37.000
he says the tides have told the world about them, 

00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:41.000
he points the sky and my eyes follow into the tops

00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:45.000
of these finely needled trees, where darkness and light marry, 

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:51.000
he asked for a glass of water, and I realize he is laid on our couch

00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:55.000
downstairs, head propped on a pillow, left arm bending like a basket

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:60.000
to cradle his thick mat of hair. The lamp on the end-table sheds 

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.000
a circle of light, and he muses about what is hidden between 

00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:09.000
pinecones creased tongues, I stumbled over the latin for lodge pole, 

00:24:09.000 --> 00:24:11.000
pinus contorta, 

00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:15.000
and tell this to must have fire to release its seed,

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:20.000
he is writing on a legal pad, in his barely legible scrawl, 

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.000
I make out the words let, and 

00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:28.000
fire, and come. 

00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:32.000
And I will read a companion poem 

00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:36.000
to that because I think most of you know fire is 

00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:40.000
a naturally occurring part of the ecosystem, yes we have climate change now that is 

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000
creating other issues with that, but the main thing is 

00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:48.000
our fire suppression policy that started with the campaign with Smokey the Bear, 

00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:52.000
and that we have enormous amounts of fuel now, in our woods, 

00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:56.000
And this poem came out of the deaths of 

00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:60.000
the fire jumpers in Arizona, the 19 deaths of those smoke jumpers, 

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.000
but this is written in another area

00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:08.000
of the world. It was my way of trying to write back a fantasy 

00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:12.000
of somebody escaping such an end. And so this is called 

00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.000
Fire Suppression, and it begins with an epigraph by 

00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.000
American poet Denis Levitaugh. She said, 

00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:24.000
We humans are smaller than they, and crawl unnoticed, 

00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:28.000
about and about the smokey map. 

00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:32.000
Every time the lightning stuck the match of a fir or spruce limb,

00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:36.000
we blew it out, set back fires and dug trenches, 

00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:40.000
with the forest smudged in smoke, 

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:43.000
brittle, dryer with each summer, 

00:25:43.000 --> 00:25:48.000
I struggled not to lose my way, making the jump was easy, 

00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:51.000
floating above the visible world in a haze, 

00:25:51.000 --> 00:25:55.000
I navigated by the blue of three streams 

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.000
that braid and collect in the sink of a modest lake. 

00:25:59.000 --> 00:25:62.000
most of the fires we start are small, 

00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:07.000
you can barely hear them whisper, blue flame beneath the kettle, 

00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:12.000
the flicker of white from a candle, even a log that snaps and 

00:26:12.000 --> 00:26:16.000
sparks in the hearth is conversational, 

00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:20.000
When I heard the wildfires scream along the canyon wall, 

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:23.000
unbearable heat forming at its mouth, 

00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:27.000
I understood the meaning of profane, 

00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:29.000
first seven leapt passed, 

00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:32.000
and then a cow moose with two calves galloped by, 

00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:36.000
four bears followed, as well as eight big-horned sheep, 

00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:41.000
several mink, and picas, a herd of elk, a skulk of fox, 

00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:44.000
and to many coyotes to count,

00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:50.000
Colliding in the face of sure predation, the fire owned three sides of the scorching net, 

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.000
and like the sun, it wanted to burn itself into a circle, 

00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:60.000
I discarded my axe, my pack, the doubt that slowed my feet, 

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:03.000
in pursuit the heavy musk of excursion and fear 

00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:09.000
drowned my raged breath, and the cadence of hooves and claws tore through my voice, 

00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:14.000
echoes crossing the basin of water I had seen from the sky, 

00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:17.000
the promise we would all be immersed in its depths,  

00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:20.000
as fire seared the air, 

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:22.000
above our heads. 

00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:26.000
So yeah, I wish those 19, I wish there was some place they could have gotten safe. 

00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:33.000
I will read you a little trio here, 

00:27:33.000 --> 00:27:38.000
I would not say this is about death, and I hope you do not see it as about death, 

00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:40.000
Its more about transformation. 

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:42.000
Its called Almanac Of Faithful Negotiations 

00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:46.000
and it has an epigraph from a classical Chinese poet, Tufu, 

00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:52.000
who said, or wrote about 800 years ago, here 

00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:56.000
at the edge of heaven, I inhabit my absence. 

00:27:56.000 --> 00:27:60.000
Here at the edge of heaven I inhabit my absence. 

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:05.000
I love the Buddhist notions of you and woo, presence and absence, 

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:10.000
and the idea that you are always moving back and forth between presence and absence, 

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:13.000
and again joining that with ideas from physics,

00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:18.000
we are constantly in a state of transformation. Every seven years you have 

00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:21.000
every cell in your body is new!

00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:24.000
We are always moving between these two, 

00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:27.000
so thats why I hope its not about death, I hope its about transformation, 

00:28:27.000 --> 00:28:29.000
Almanac Of Faithful Negotiators, 

00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:33.000
On the first day we find evidence of elk, 

00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:35.000
but not the elk themselves, 

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:40.000
on the second, we see the charred and blacken sleeves fire leaves 

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:46.000
but not a single flame. By the third day the oldest trees have already ascended 

00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:50.000
but the microbial mouths buried in the dirt remain, 

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:56.000
After four days our minds flood with rivers and creeks and we find it hard to speak, 

00:28:56.000 --> 00:28:59.000
except in mud, and stone

00:28:59.000 --> 00:28:63.000
On the fifth ravens decorate a white oak snag, 

00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:08.000
croaking in the voice of our drunk uncles, remind us who's house 

00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:12.000
we live in. Six days gone, a fisher stands 

00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:15.000
on hind legs stares across the mudders expanse, 

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:20.000
dares us to approach the porcupine corpse, muzzle led  

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.000
with the bodies sugar. When the last day comes, 

00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:28.000
only minutes before dawn, circulation  of wind, 

00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:32.000
stars moving back into the invisible, 

00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:36.000
all of us wondering, when will we join them. 

00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:40.000
I don't know if you hav ever thought of your life as a faithful negotiation, 

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.000
each day we get up, will we 

00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:48.000
live the rest of the day? Will there be a cataclysmic event? 

00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:52.000
Faithful Negotiations. 

00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:56.000
And again, 

00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:62.000
death is mentioned, but its not a poem about death it is about my dear wife, 

00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:07.000
I like kissing, as I already told you, first kiss right? And so 

00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:09.000
the very last lines to this poem 

00:30:09.000 --> 00:30:12.000
are the way I think of my wifes 

00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:16.000
kisses to me. So its called Returning to Earth and 

00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:20.000
A polish poet who 

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:23.000
has pasted on has the epigraph, 

00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:28.000
trust in the light that shines through earthly forms. 

00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:31.000
trust through the light that shines through earthly forms. 

00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:34.000
I have another epigraph in here, I am not going to read the poem, 

00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:37.000
but its by a nature writing buddy of mine and an avid 

00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:40.000
bird trout fisherman like myself, his name is Christopher Comudo, 

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:43.000
he writes a regular column for Trout, the Trout Unlimited magazine 

00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:47.000
and he does the book reviews for Grey's Sporting Journal, 

00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:52.000
His epigraph is, 

00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:57.000
But I am not trying to get to heaven, I am trying to get to earth. 

00:30:57.000 --> 00:30:62.000
And if you don't pick up from those two epigraphs that I do not like Cartesian Dualism 

00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:07.000
you are right. If there is anything spiritual it sunk right 

00:31:07.000 --> 00:31:10.000
here in our earthly bodies. So, Returning to Earth. 

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:13.000
at the bottom of an abandoned row, 

00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:18.000
dug more than a century ago, the moon rises from the center of the earth

00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:21.000
a crust of ice forming around its edges, 

00:31:21.000 --> 00:31:25.000
the stand of larch outside our bedroom window sways, 

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.000
loaded needles stirring the air underneath its bows, 

00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:33.000
I open the window to hear the river sailing away, 

00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:38.000
writing the stone boat of the basin carved by spring floods, 

00:31:38.000 --> 00:31:44.000
Beyond the faint light of a candle, your voice asks if we might touch, 

00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:46.000
and remember how our children where made, 

00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:49.000
how the bodies of our parents where returned to earth, 

00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:54.000
I want our children's hands to hold the river, 

00:31:54.000 --> 00:31:58.000
to watch it spill through their fingers back to a source 

00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:60.000
older than our names for God, 

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:06.000
beneath the waxing moon we witness animals dragging their dead into the light, 

00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:09.000
tonight we imagine some suckling their young, 

00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:13.000
who were born blind in these coldest months,

00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:15.000
soon the river will freeze, 

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.000
and come morning we will break the ice in the well so we may drink, 

00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:22.000
in darks shlter, 

00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:25.000
I place the words of a prayer upon your tongue, 

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:31.000
you are gracious, saying the prayer back into my waiting mouth. 

00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:35.000
So next time you kiss somebody who you truelly love, 

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:38.000
think of it as a prayer which you are praying into their mouth and hopefully

00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:43.000
they will return the prayer right? Hopefully,

00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:46.000
I will end on 

00:32:46.000 --> 00:32:51.000
two short poems, and then we can talk to each other, maybe some Q&A, 

00:32:51.000 --> 00:32:56.000
This book, Native Species, is about these other species 

00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:60.000
and I worry about the other species. Obviously I am a human so 

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:01.000
I am rooting for us, 

00:33:01.000 --> 00:33:04.000
and I do not want to see us disappear, 

00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:07.000
But, I am also very worried about the 

00:33:07.000 --> 00:33:12.000
fact that we are not doing a great job caring for other species, 

00:33:12.000 --> 00:33:16.000
we are in the sixth wave of extinction caused by our presence, 

00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:21.000
and from the Judeo-Christian tradition, 

00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:26.000
the notion of a second coming

00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:30.000
and the Christian tradition of Christ in the book of Revelation, so this is

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:35.000
recast for the animals. Its called, And If There Is A Day Of Resurrection, 

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.000
And if there is a day of resurrection then on that day 

00:33:39.000 --> 00:33:42.000
may the water in the creek shimmer green, 

00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:47.000
a music never heard, take shape in a hatch of cactus and coffin flies, 

00:33:47.000 --> 00:33:52.000
the air brewing as the suns light drys insect wings, 

00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:55.000
and the bear skull on the ridge, 

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:57.000
the circle of porcupine quils, 

00:33:57.000 --> 00:33:60.000
the minks eye-sockets in the coyotes 

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.000
hinged jaw still clutched around the rabbits femur, 

00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:06.000
may all the bones of the living

00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:10.000
and the dead rise with skeletal praise, 

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:16.000
this ancient world being remade in their image. 

00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:20.000
And I always send off folks with a blessing and I 

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:23.000
its a poem that 

00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:27.000
has the longest title of any poem I have written, maybe thats a problem, 

00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:33.000
I do not know if you know the poet William Blake. An 18th century poet, a mystic, 

00:34:33.000 --> 00:34:36.000
Tyger Tyger burning bright, right?

00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:40.000
Or little lamb little lamb who made thee little lamb? 

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.000
So the very last lines of the poem are Blakes, or at least 

00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:46.000
It is reported he said this. The title, 

00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:52.000
A Prayer For My Sons, After A Line of Reported Conversation, 

00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:56.000
By The Poet William Blake, To A Child Seated Next to Him, 

00:34:56.000 --> 00:34:59.000
At  A Dinner Party. Long title. 

00:34:59.000 --> 00:34:64.000
And it says a prayer for my sons, its a prayer for all of you as well, 

00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:08.000
If I could send the sun sprawling from my mouth, 

00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:12.000
If each night the moonlight dropped from my eyes onto your head, 

00:35:12.000 --> 00:35:16.000
if I could reach up and take a star whos light has traveled

00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:20.000
toward you for thousands of years and place it under the bed where you sleep, 

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.000
I would do all these things, 

00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:28.000
but being the man who has seen more angels, 

00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:31.000
and at times doubts what he has been told in church, 

00:35:31.000 --> 00:35:34.000
I will simply ask what the poet asked, 

00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:40.000
that God would make this world as beautiful to you as it has been to me, 

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.000
Applause

00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:49.000
applause

00:35:49.000 --> 00:35:52.000
And yet in my poem the first level I wanted 

00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:56.000
to be a squirrel, I want to be able to name it is it a fox squirrel is it a black squirrel, 

00:35:56.000 --> 00:35:60.000
I want to be able to name the squirrel, I want the squirrel to be 

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.000
very squirrelly in my poem, yet in the same time 

00:36:04.000 --> 00:36:08.000
I am a human being, and I come with a long history. The very fact that I have a word like

00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:12.000
squirrel to describe it. Maybe I know something about 

00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:16.000
where it is in the taxonomy, maybe I have studied its life 

00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:20.000
habits, then as you said, myths, 

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.000
revolutions might be made, connections to your personal life to, 

00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:28.000
all those things are always a swirl i my palms. What I do 

00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:32.000
dislike, I'll show you my prejudice is when

00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.000
I read a writer and I can tell they really do not know anything about the

00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:40.000
creature at all, or they are only using the creature to 

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.000
and this was very Emmersonian if you have read Emmersons essay 

00:36:44.000 --> 00:36:48.000
Nature, he really was just using nature to get to 

00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:52.000
his soul, his spiritual condition. The transcendent moment of the 

00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:56.000
transparent eyeball, and thats why I liked throw better 

00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:60.000
even Throw in his late career after Walden because he became 

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.000
true naturalist, he did a lot of phonology. So, other questions? 

00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:08.000
or comments? So Christopher Comudo who I q

00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.000
just mentioned, I love what he says. 

00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:16.000
If you are truly a nature writer, not just a writer who uses nature, 

00:37:16.000 --> 00:37:20.000
you have to be in the field. It is very similar and I 

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.000
teach in an environmental studies program, and so a lot of the biologist I work with

00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:28.000
they know what I mean when I say I have to spend time in the field, I get

00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:32.000
grants from Penn State, as a 

00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:36.000
Nature Writer, to travel places to spend time in the field, 

00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:40.000
where as, and my literary colleagues are always like what how are you 

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.000
getting these grants, where as my scientific colleagues 

00:37:44.000 --> 00:37:48.000
in he field, do data collection. So I spend a lot of my time

00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:52.000
and when I say a lot it never ceases throughout the year 

00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:56.000
if I go two days without being in the woods or on the streams, that 

00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:60.000
is very unusual. In terms of when I 

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.000
do my writing, often it is in the morning, 

00:38:04.000 --> 00:38:08.000
when I had the boys still living at home I would get everyone breakfast, get them out the door, 

00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:12.000
my wife is a special education teacher, by 7:30 I could be at my desk 

00:38:12.000 --> 00:38:16.000
and would write from 7:30 to 10:30 and then get some exercise 

00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:20.000
perhaps go to the woods to, and the teaching and everything else

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.000
that goes with my profession happen in the afternoon hours. 

00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:27.000
   

00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:32.000
When I was younger, poems came sometimes all in a rush. 

00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:36.000
Not that often, but its that whole notion of being touched by the muse and its like wow! 

00:38:36.000 --> 00:38:40.000
I wrote a poem, at least a very solid draft, 

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.000
in thirty minutes, or an hour, or an hour and a half, 

00:38:44.000 --> 00:38:49.000
wow!Yes I have to do some revision but not much is going on in the revision, 

00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:55.000
now if that happens once a year I am very lucky. It is much more 

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:58.000
Piecework. Like my grandmothers one day would quilt, 

00:38:58.000 --> 00:38:61.000
I see it as a lot of piece work and 

00:39:01.000 --> 00:39:04.000
so usually within four to six weeks, 

00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:08.000
of a draft of a poem I have it to a place where its going to sit and 

00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:12.000
not change that much. And probably six

00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:15.000
months to a year before I send it out and 

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:20.000
revision continues right up until the book. Unlike most authors

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.000
I do not revise in my books, once they are there 

00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:25.000
I am ready to move on. 

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:30.000
Yeah absolutely, in that specific poem Fire Suppression it has to do with

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:33.000
The profanity is not the fires itself, 

00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:37.000
its what we have done to it, and thats why its called Fire Suppression.  In other words 

00:39:37.000 --> 00:39:41.000
the fire that is burning there is a fire of Holocaust 

00:39:41.000 --> 00:39:46.000
that would not have the same level

00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:50.000
so I know I do not name it in the poem like that but thats why the preface of

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:53.000
the fuel that we have created, the climate change, 

00:39:53.000 --> 00:39:57.000
the fact that we have not let fire burn through often for very selfish reasons 

00:39:57.000 --> 00:39:60.000
and when I say this its not to damn anyone for it 

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.000
but we have built homes into these places, we have things to be lost, 

00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:09.000
and certainly timber companies do not want to see profit go up in flames and so

00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:12.000
thats why there is profanity, and I start with all those little fires

00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:17.000
and then we get to profanity of a fire that in a sense shouldn't exist at its level. 

00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:22.000
As far as the sacred, as I mentioned with Komudos 

00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:27.000
epigraph and Miloshes epigraph, I really do see, I love

00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:32.000
the Judeo-Christian creation myths 

00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:36.000
Adam, which Adam gets his name from but, Adam the humist 

00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:40.000
and Gods breathe into it and we are told in hebrew that the word is

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.000
that a soul was created, and of course with 

00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:48.000
cartesian dualism we have this idea that even if you do not subscribe to the 

00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:52.000
mythologies but the idea that God's breath was the 

00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:56.000
good stuff, the Adam, the humist, 

00:40:56.000 --> 00:40:60.000
and when you die the soul can

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.000
float up, and thats the good stuff and the other stuff can go back to the earth.

00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:08.000
I see it all as sacred, 

00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:12.000
after Lord Tennyson and his poem In Memorium, says nature red in tooth and claw, 

00:41:12.000 --> 00:41:16.000
but he doesn't show nature that red in tooth and claw. I did not read my 

00:41:16.000 --> 00:41:20.000
really visceral poems for you because sometimes people can not handle 

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.000
well you say that but maybe the Sky Burial was for you

00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:28.000
but I have some poems that really get at the winding

00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:32.000
of flesh, the rotting back of flesh, 

00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:36.000
the life that grows out of that and I see that all as beautiful. 

00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:40.000
Not as something that that is the fallen world and the lion will lay down with the lamb, 

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.000
no, the lion is supposed to eat the lamb and there is a beauty 

00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:48.000
in it as well. We humans, well I know you do not already 

00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:52.000
but it is interesting humans sometimes look at the natural world, "Oh thats so awful!"

00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:56.000
And then I will watch them eat a hamburger and I think, you are sort of 

00:41:56.000 --> 00:41:60.000
part of the process yourself. 

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.000
It is certainly not and actually for the last decade or so 

00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:08.000
I go and spend about two weeks in Montana often in the Bob Marshall

00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:12.000
Wilderness. My parents did have a place in 

00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:16.000
Summet County Colorado from around 1982 until

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.000
I have been very fortunate in the new book

00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:28.000
has two poems actually from my experience being 

00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:32.000
a writer and resident at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest here 

00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:36.000
in Oregon, and where ever I go I am trying 

00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:40.000
to get people to teach me names, life histories, and then to just 

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.000
closely observe. There are lots of 

00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:48.000
similar boundaries that are crossed. For example I mention Oxalous 

00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:52.000
in one of my poems in the new book and 

00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:56.000
it rings 

00:42:56.000 --> 00:42:60.000
the northern hemisphere all the way around! You can be in Russia and find wood sorrel

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.000
its a species that you are going to share at a certain longitude, 

00:43:04.000 --> 00:43:08.000
and so I am always looking for commonalities as well as

00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:12.000
those exceptions and I am very fortunate cause 

00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:16.000
I do think we do need to be very much in touch with the places we call our home, 

00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:20.000
at the moment we are in them. We are a migratory species, many of you 

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.000
for work will not be able to stay maybe where you where born and raised, 

00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:28.000
I was not born and raised in central PA where I am now, but once you

00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:32.000
there I think it is very important to develop relationships with

00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:36.000
 the species that are there so you can live closely aligned with them. 

00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:40.000
So a lot of poets will say I write for myself first 

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.000
and I guess I would have to say thats true

00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:48.000
meaning my poems are not often 

00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:52.000
trying to work out philosophical conundrums or simply trying to memorialize

00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:56.000
so I do not forget many specific moments that I have observed, 

00:43:56.000 --> 00:43:60.000
maybe trying to deal with mortality

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.000
that why poets do that. But 

00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:08.000
I say that yet I do not think that way. 

00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:12.000
Who am I writing for? My father and I were extremely close 

00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:16.000
He went to a one room school house in Kentucky 

00:44:16.000 --> 00:44:20.000
and his teacher made him memorize all kinds of poems so when we 

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.000
were working with animals, often during surgeries or other things, 

00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:28.000
he would quote poetry. he 

00:44:28.000 --> 00:44:32.000
who from zone to zone, it comes from William Collundine to a waterfall he would 

00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:36.000
always quote the last stanza. 

00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:40.000
I think of my father often when I am writing my poems. 

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.000
My grandfather I think of, who only had the first grade education

00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:48.000
but was a fabulous storyteller and knew so much about 

00:44:48.000 --> 00:44:52.000
the natural world. I grew up in a factory town. I have always 

00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:56.000
lived in rustbelt places, I write for those people. 

00:44:56.000 --> 00:44:60.000
Alot of the figures in my poems, I have a poem called Burn Barrel

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.000
about a diabetic girl at a burn barrel throwing in plastics and 

00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:08.000
everything else as often country folks do. 

00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:12.000
I want to honor their lives, and I want to write a poem that 

00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:16.000
yes again I have a PhD and I know I am layering my poems quite a bit 

00:45:16.000 --> 00:45:20.000
but often in ways a common audience would not 

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.000
see. I am very interested in 

00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:28.000
opening that door so that there is a level that they go in and 

00:45:28.000 --> 00:45:32.000
they experience that if poetry does that maybe I like poetry. 

00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:36.000
So I am writing for the common person 

00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:40.000
and I am writing for all the other species to. 

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.000
It really does vary, I have started a new book called Ursus, 

00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:48.000
its all about a nondescript bear, I do not name it, 

00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:52.000
as a grizzly or black bear, 

00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:56.000
But Ursus, and its sort of in this present time up to 

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.000
events of climate change, as well as the intrusion that is greater and greater

00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:08.000
to human beings. For example I have one poem called

00:46:08.000 --> 00:46:12.000
Music

00:46:12.000 --> 00:46:16.000
For Film Before the Destruction Of A Drone, and its all about this 

00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:20.000
bear being followed around by a drone, and eventually it gets 

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.000
its paw and bringing it down, gnawing it, 

00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:28.000
and I talk about how it has had a motor removed already by a 

00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:32.000
researcher, its already been tagged

00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:36.000
and all this. A poem like that took me about two 

00:46:36.000 --> 00:46:40.000
weeks to write. Another poem, its called

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.000
Museum, and it sort of reflects 

00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:48.000
a time where in the future maybe 

00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:52.000
there is this museum and we see this bear in different states 

00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:56.000
of its skin being stripped back, and showing the muscle structure and all this, 

00:46:56.000 --> 00:46:60.000
that one is a poem that came very quickly, and only took me maybe three or four days 

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.000
to really get to a point where I thought it was working. 

00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:08.000
First off I think its

00:47:08.000 --> 00:47:12.000
maybe its a native species, maybe its in the book before that there is a poem called

00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:16.000
Memory, and yeah first

00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:20.000
off philosophical at a point maybe 

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.000
in my early 20's i was like ah, what you write is always 

00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:28.000
after the fact. Its always 

00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:32.000
memory, and so I got very interested in the notion of memory and how we carry

00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:36.000
memories forward, forgive me

00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:40.000
but I am going to grab this because it sort of reflects 

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.000
what we are talking about here. I have a poem called Noses

00:47:44.000 --> 00:47:48.000
its a very brief poem, 

00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:52.000
that addresses memory as well. 

00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:56.000
So I will read this brief poem and then I will finish the answer, 

00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:60.000
Its called noises. In the blue river made of 

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.000
snow melt that forms this valley of aspen and alder, 

00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:08.000
I fish with my sons until summer lights fade into the recesses 

00:48:08.000 --> 00:48:11.000
of a canyon. While hunting alone I entered a small

00:48:11.000 --> 00:48:16.000
cave to take shelter from a passing squirrel, and found a bone

00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:20.000
of a bear cub curled in a circle of trust. 

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.000
Someday when the white fields disappear, and only 

00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:28.000
rain falls from the heavens, this river will vanish to. 

00:48:28.000 --> 00:48:32.000
The trout we catch have throats which shine

00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:36.000
with a bright red mark suggesting the rule blood plays 

00:48:36.000 --> 00:48:40.000
in betrayel. A woman who was long dead told me

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.000
that when a river passes away, it holds the memory of 

00:48:44.000 --> 00:48:48.000
itself in the silt left behind. 

00:48:48.000 --> 00:48:52.000
When our species is extinct, what animal will

00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:56.000
carry the memory of our lives. 

00:48:56.000 --> 00:48:60.000
And I think a lot of times that we do not think about the fact 

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.000
that the course of the rest of the earths existence

00:49:04.000 --> 00:49:08.000
means very likely we may be extinct. Who will carry the memories of are lives and memories are inportant

00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:12.000
to me and yes it spurred me on to write poems, 

00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:16.000
a large impotence is this memorialization. We have odes and eulogys, 

00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:20.000
poems of praise as well as poems of morning, 

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.000
but they are both poems of remembering. And I started to write

00:49:24.000 --> 00:49:28.000
poems, I got quite smitten with poetry as an undergrad, 

00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:32.000
I wrote terrible poems, I only had one

00:49:32.000 --> 00:49:36.000
creative writing class. My undergrad institution and it wasn't uncommon

00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:40.000
in the early 80's for people not to have 

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.000
a writer in residence, and so there was no one to teach creative writing, 

00:49:44.000 --> 00:49:48.000
I went to a graduate school then, and then I studied with a Zen Buddhist poet

00:49:48.000 --> 00:49:52.000
and that furthered me along, and it wasn't until I discovered 

00:49:52.000 --> 00:49:56.000
someone like Maxinne Cummin, who won the Pulitzer Prize 

00:49:56.000 --> 00:49:60.000
but she was a New Hampshire horsewoman, and she had a poem called Excraments, 

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.000
it was all about mucking out stalls, and when that happened, 

00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:08.000
suddenly I realized you could write about cleaning up 

00:50:08.000 --> 00:50:12.000
aweful of animals? I can write poetry!

00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:16.000
So yeah, that was that impotence 

00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:20.000
and I know my fathers love of poetry really mattered, 

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.000
and think about it, a veterinarian, a guy who grew up with

00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:28.000
poor parents gave me his blessing 

00:50:28.000 --> 00:50:32.000
instead of saying Todd I really need you to go to Purdue, get your DVM, come back and take over

00:50:32.000 --> 00:50:36.000
the practice. He loved the idea that I would write a poem. 

00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:40.000
Applause

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.000
applause