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[Applause]
Thanks everyone for coming out,
I hear it’s been a literary filled week on campus
so I appreciate you
coming to another event.
And it's humbling to read here because
some of you...
heard very early drafts of some of these poems
while we were in class together.
So, some of them stayed and some of them changed a bit.
I wanted to read a little bit
from the, the first book from, Interpretive Work
and then move into the, the newer stuff
just to give a little bit of a, a sampler.
And...
read some very new work
as well,
and, again it’s just such a joy to be up here.
When David invited me I...leapt at the chance
and I'm not here long enough but it's really
nice to see familiar faces and
it's really nice to see the Chugach
and it's nice to see
cruddy March snow...
and I'm really happy to be here. [Laughter]
I got really obsessed with polar exploration
after having finished
a stint as a deck hand right out of undergraduate school
on boats
and it wasn't the poles so much
it was more the, the boats I thought the boats,
I missed the boats.
So I, I read
Alfred Lansing's Endurance
about Shackleton's exploration and it,
it totally gripped me and captured my imagination
and made me
long for a different life.
So I read, and I read, and I read
and then finally realized that
I should probably be
you know applying my obsession.
So I started writing some poems
and the poems of Approaching Ice
follow that obsession through various explorers
in the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Primarily the Antarctic, honestly
and I think
that's largely due to the fact that the Arctic is,
is intimidating its
complicated with human history
especially.
And...
it was a little bit more daunting.
So this, the first poem I'll read is called,
In the Polar Regions.
Long from home,
glaciers capping the hills like false teeth.
It's not just the odd meat we're carving
clawed flippers and flightless wings
or the long churned distance to any news of home
any first born or failing parent.
There are other signs this place is foreign,
the ship converses with ice packed around it
groans and squeaks
an occasional outraged crack.
It takes a particular man for this you, you know
able to be short-sighted for months on end.
The air is constantly aluminum with snow
and my mouth too tastes of metal,
salt of iron seeping from my weakened gums.
Each morning
I pack drift around my tongue
to freeze the soft flesh holding my teeth.
It all goes to slush
ground underneath our tents,
my mouth,
the knack for conversation.
Walking west
five of us have fallen to dangle alongside cliffs of ice
the thin crust
breaking into chasm easily
as if such sudden transformations were to be expected
and we're the fools to be surprised.
Only a thin rope
holds us to the surface
hanging,
there's nothing to do
but stare at the blue contours of freeze,
and tongue our loosening
teeth.
Test the stringy roots that hold them
wait for a tug from the ones left above.
The more I...
the more I read about these explorers
and what they did the more ridiculous
they became because they would have all of these
little
you know...
furthest souths or furthest norths.
And they were constantly supplanting each other
first guy to...
over winter here, first guy to cross this point here...
first guy to eat the tongue of an elephant seal
I don't know but it.
You know they would they would
come up with these things that they could use to,
basically to fund their next expedition.
If they did something
phenomenal you know they could
get more money to do it again.
So...
that's the source of this poem.
Fine-Tuning.
First over wintering first foot on the coast
leopard seal shot
whale oil rendered man gone mad.
An snow showing above tree-line
just after fresh powder had topped the peaks
ran down a slope shouting with each step.
First!
First! First!
Snow kicking up
the mark of her tracks deep and it's true
from what we could see first.
Of course she wasn't, they weren't
until we narrowed the categories sufficiently.
First woman since last snow fall to set foot here.
First time I have felt dismay
since the last time
I dismissed it. [Laughter]
This last poem is called WYSSA,
Antarctica 1961.
And you know we're moving forward in time now.
So in the sixties,
we had better
technological capability to communicate
between Antarctica and whatever mainland.
And the Australians going down to Antarctica,
had developed a way of doing wireless transmissions,
which was fantastic except that
these atmospheric phenomenon would interfere
with the transmissions themselves so they'd be
all messed up.
So you had to say what you had to say
really really fast before things got cut off.
So to deal with that problem,
the Australians adopted an existing phrase code.
Called the Bentley Phrase Code
that had been used in the military
for Antarctic work.
And in that phrase code you have these five-letter codes,
like WYSSA, W-Y-S-S-A
that would mean something.
Everyone had this big list
and WYSSA meant all my love darling.
So they have all these really great,
really great codes.
And in the poem,
there are some of the actual
codes and
right following the code itself is the definition.
WYSSA Antarctica 1961.
Compressed for Morse,
compressed to better the odds this first,
flimsy signal might send sense across ocean unbroken,
I type just WYSSA
which you know means all my love darling
in this telegraph of foreseen longing.
In further news
YIHKE
I have grown a beard which is generally admired,
and with it
will tease the soft hollow between your hip bones
as you lie in the green field beyond our gate, or,
if dislike the beard,
I will lay my head in your lap
and let you cut it from me,
cut away my months gone
and burn them
acrid and bitter.
WUYGT
elephant seals are breeding,
and although their heaving is nothing like
our shadows against cabbage rose wallpaper,
I am aroused.
They are the only flesh here,
and they slap against each other with unrelenting fervor.
YOGIP
please send details of bank account.
Do you have enough?
Has my time here at least fattened something?
Can I afford to say WYSSA again?
YAYIR
fine snow has penetrated through small crevices in the buildings.
I am cold.
And although we decided this code
with your breath still against my neck,
you're heat anything but distant,
believe that my heart's capacity has,
if anything, expanded in this chill.
YONOY
from now on,
all I hammer
against the sounding metal of this small machine
is WYSSA.
All of it.
You have, you have to go look up
the Bentley phrase code if you haven't
it's really fun.
Thank you [Applause] [Laughter]
Thanks, thanks for coming does anybody have questions?
I'm happy to answer and chat
or chat by the table, yeah?