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GUANTE: Welcome to the stage one more time Jamee Snyder.
(applause)
JAMEE SNYDER:
These Poems, She Said By Robert Bringhurst
These poems, these poems, these poems, she said, are
poems with no love in them. These are
the poems of a man who would leave his wife and
child because they made noise in his study.
These are the poem of a man who would *** his
mother to claim the inheritance. These are the
poems of a man like Plato, she said, meaning
something I did not comprehend but which
nevertheless offended me. These are the
poems of a man who would rather sleep with
himself than with women, she said. These are the poems
of a man with eyes like a drawknife,
with hands like a pickpocket's hands, woven of water and logic
and hunger, with no strand of love in them. These
poems are as heartless as birdsong, as unmeant
as elm leaves, which if they love love only
the wide blue sky and the air and the idea
of elm leaves. Self-love is an ending, she said
and not a beginning. Love means love
of the thing sung, not of the song or the singing
These poems, she said. You are, he said,
beautiful. That is not love, she said
rightly.