So welcome and thank you for coming. Thank you for coming, students of Tassajara. Thank you for cooking the food and making the vads, and thank you guests of Tassajara for coming and eating the food and sleeping in the vads. Without you both, we wouldn't have that perfect match. It's my pleasure and honor this evening to introduce Naomi Shihab Nye. Recently, a friend of mine emailed me and said, well, isn't it dazzling to lead a workshop with Naomi? And I wrote back and said, no, not at all. Naomi is so utterly un-self-involved that the presence just flows like the creek, like a charm, something perfectly natural and at the same time intriguing and delightful.

[01:27]

And her poetic muse is exactly the same. I think myself and all the participants in the workshop would testify that somehow she magically gives us a permission to discover that we're already wonderful poets, which of course springs from the fact that she is in fact a wonderful poet. Her resume testifies to many wonderful fellowships, the Guggenheim, the Leland Foundation Fellowship, and some fellowship, Biner Fellowship of the Library of Congress. And then she brainstormed into novels, and her novel Habibi won six Best Book Awards.

[02:31]

and has been made into a play? Play. Been made into a play. And I think at this point, Naomi has taught pretty much in every country on the planet. Maybe not, have you been to Antarctica? Just about everywhere else, with great appreciation. all that to impress you by a person who is utterly impressive without any introduction. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. I'm quite dazzled to be back at Tassajara and in the workshop with you and our wonderful family of poets, and thank you all the students here for your incredibly gracious care and your spirits, which stay with those of us lucky enough to visit for a few days in the summer, stay with us all through the year.

[03:44]

I could not have imagined the first year I came, three years ago, how potent the spirit of Tassajara would continue to be in daily life. Being here for the third time, I'm confident of that now. So it's a wonderful gift just to see you again. Last summer, when my husband and Paul and I were leaving, we had a picnic on the way out, and we talked at length. We asked questions about that previous fire. What's that one called? That... The Marvel clone. The Marvel clone, right. And Paul described many things to us about fire in these mountains that we hadn't known or considered. But certainly people all around the country keep their eyes on the California landscape during fire season with great concern and care, because everybody loves California.

[04:46]

And never could we have guessed After we left, how soon fire would come here. I went home to a benefit for one of our oldest universities in our city that was struck by fire the week before I had come to Tassajara. And the entire English department had been burned. And so all of the writers of the city decided to do a benefit, at least to help the English department repurchase some of their books. But the poem I wrote for that event, which I did not bring this summer because I didn't want to bring it, was about what Paul had told us about fire and regeneration and how the mountains had stayed alive and how much was alive. And I also talked about my father's cremation and then that university in which I had taught many times with adults at night school. So the three things converged in a poem.

[05:49]

Never could I have dreamed that two weeks later we'd all be watching the websites about Tassajara and sending all of our love and hope and concern back over here. But it's marvelous to see it as it is. And thank you for all of your love for it and for helping keep it alive as it is. And I did have a funny feeling when I was leaving my house that I didn't want to bring a lot of the poems that were new, only the ones from the past week that I'd written, which is a little scary. And I just had a feeling of liberation from all the other new poems of the year. They'd all been started somehow in our workshop here last summer. And I felt so grateful to the time here that I was finally able to write about my father and about peace and justice issues in the world that he cared so much about with a new voice, with a new tone.

[06:53]

I had felt the group here giving that sustenance to one another, that was what I took away. But I didn't bring those poems back. So I will just read a few older poems and then a few very recent poems as within the last week. And thank you, those of you who've asked me to read a couple of things in particular, I will do that. But I wanted to start. It was nice to see this book in the bookstore, The Same Sky. This came out 17 years ago now. And it was my first anthology. I am shocked that my first anthology, that I was brazen enough to do a world anthology first. I don't know how I did that. I would never do it today. But I guess that's the glory of youth, that we dive into things. So I'd just like to read you three poems from this book that have been in my mind this weekend here. From Shuntaro Tanikawa of Japan, translated by Harold Wright, Picnic to the Earth.

[08:02]

Here, let's jump rope together. Here, here, let's eat balls of rice together. Here, let me love you. Your eyes reflect the blueness of sky. Your back will be stained a wormwood green. Here, let's learn constellations together. From here, let's dream of every distant thing. Here, let's gather low tide shells. From the sea of sky at dawn, let's bring back little starfish. At breakfast, we will toss them out. Let the night be drawn away. I'll keep saying, I am back, while you repeat, welcome home. Here, let's come again and again. Here, let's drink hot tea. Let's sit together for a while. Let's be blown by the cooling breeze. The intended audience for this book was, in my mind, from about third grade through college, or really through adulthood,

[09:15]

but I'm happy to say that that blurred intention worked out, and it has been used at various levels in schools as a text. I didn't say that anywhere in the book either, and publishers really don't like it when you're looking at a book in that way. This is by the great poet Yehuda Amichai of Israel. It was translated by Hannah Bloch of California. When I wrote to him, to ask him to use some of his poems. He wrote back and said, of course you may, but I'd rather you'd use this new one that no one's seen yet. And then a few years later, I was walking on the streets of Jerusalem, and he invited me home for breakfast. And this poem was very much in the room. Wild peace. Not that of a ceasefire, let alone the vision of the wolf and the lamb. But rather, as in the heart, after a great excitement, you can only talk about the weariness.

[10:20]

I know that I know how to kill. That's why I'm an adult. And my son plays with a toy gun that knows how to open and close its eyes and say, Mama. A piece without the big noise of beating swords into plowshares, without words, without the heavy thud of the rubber stamp. I want it gentle over us, like lazy white foam, a little rest for the wounds. Who speaks of healing? And the orphan's outcry is passed from one generation to the next, as in a relay race, the baton never falls. I want it to come like wildflowers, suddenly, because the field needs it. Wild peace. And once at a high school, a girl came with an odd look on her face and said, I need to meet you in the janitor's broom closet after your reading.

[11:26]

It is very important. So I went and found her there with the sink and the broom. And she said, I had no idea you lived in our city. I had no idea when I found this book on the library table what was in it. But on the day I meant to end my life, I found one poem that caused me to change my mind, and I want to tell you what it is. And it was this poem by Yanis Ritsos from Greece, translated by Edmund Keeley. The Meaning of Simplicity I hide behind simple things, so you'll find me. If you don't find me, you'll find the things. You'll touch what my hand has touched. Our handprints will merge. The August moon glitters in the kitchen like a tin-plated pot. It gets that way because of what I'm saying to you. It lights up the empty house and the house's kneeling silence.

[12:30]

Always the silence remains kneeling. Every word is a doorway to a meeting, one often canceled. And that's when a word is true. when it insists on the meaning. The meaning of simplicity. Janis Ritsos One of the gifts I discovered about making anthologies is that a family is created among the people in the book and something new happens about the relationships of the poems to one another and the writers say that later and it's quite a gift. So since this is Saturday, I think I read this in here last year, but I just wanted to read it again because Janine Lentine has been talking about listening and found poems, and they are definitely around us all the time, certainly here, everywhere. Friendly postal clerk, Saturday morning.

[13:35]

So what do poets do on weekends, huh? I guess nothing much, right? I guess every day is a weekend to you. Now, I have never felt this poem was my poem. I felt I was the conduit for the poem. It was given to me as a rescue, kind of a rescue raft when I needed it. And it was on our honeymoon so many years ago in the country of Colombia. And we had been through a rather brutal experience on a bus. and robbed of everything, but not killed. And someone on that bus was killed. And we were therefore left in a country on a continent where we had not one friend with nothing to recommend us, not one cent, not a passport, not a ticket, just wandering. And a man came up to us a few days later and was simply by his spirit

[14:43]

and his face, his eyes, kind and inquired what had happened to us. Kindness. Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things. Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, this must go. so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride, thinking the bus will never stop. The passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

[15:48]

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say, it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere, like a shadow or a friend. We've talked a bit in our group about how when you get in the habit of staring at paper and picking up a pencil, things will be given that you couldn't have predicted or intended, and there is that animated relationship.

[16:57]

And that was an oar, a little raft. And for another kind friend here, the character of Joha may be familiar to some of you, He's the wise fool in Middle Eastern folk stories. My father and the fig tree. For other fruits, my father was indifferent. He'd point at cherry trees and say, see those? I wish they were figs. In the evenings, he sat by our beds, weaving folktales like vivid little scarves. They always involved a fig tree. Even when it didn't fit, He'd stick it in. Once Jaha was walking down the road and he saw a fig tree. Or he tied his donkey to a fig tree and went to sleep. Or later when they caught and arrested him, his pockets were full of figs. At age six, I ate a dried fig and shrugged.

[18:01]

That's not what I'm talking about, he said. I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth, gift of Allah. on a branch so heavy it touches the ground. I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest, sweetest fig in the world and putting it in my mouth. Here he'd stop and close his eyes. Years passed. We lived in many houses. None had fig trees. We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets. Plant one, my mother said. But my father never did. He tended garden half-heartedly. Forgot to water. Let the ochre get too big. What a dreamer he is. Look how many things he starts and doesn't finish. The last time he moved, I had a phone call. My father, in Arabic, chanting a song I'd never heard. He took me out to the new yard. There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas. A tree with the largest, fattest, sweetest figs in the world.

[19:05]

It's a fig tree song, he said. plucking his fruits like ripe tokens, emblems, assurance of a world that was always his own. Of course, no one likes to be put into little niches and to be categorized as someone who had never planted a fig tree caused him to begin planting them furiously everywhere, even in yards where people lived whom we did not know. My son would even say to him when he was very little, Grandpa, it's strange to plant things in other people's yards when you don't know them. And he said, but think how surprised they'll be. And when I was a child, he knew only one song in English by heart, and we didn't like it. What kind of fool am I? He sang with abandon, combing his black, black hair.

[20:10]

Each morning in the shower, first in Arabic, rivery ripples of song carrying him back to his first beloved land, then in English, where his repertoire was short. No kind at all, we'd shout, throwing ourselves into the brisk arc of his cologne for a morning kiss. But he gave us freedom to be fools if we needed to, which we certainly would later, which we all do now and then. Perhaps a father's greatest gift, that blessing. Red Brocade, and I read this for the honor of being present with your immense hospitality here at the Arabs used to say when a stranger appears at your door feed him for three days before asking who he is where he's come from where he's headed that way he'll have strength enough to answer or by then you'll be such good friends you don't care let's go back to that rice pine nuts here

[21:30]

Take the red brocade pillow. My child will serve water to your horse. No, I was not busy when you came. I was not preparing to be busy. That's the armor everyone put on to pretend they had a purpose in the world. I refuse to be claimed. Your plate is waiting. We will snip fresh mint into your tea. And for all you border crossers and teachers and caring spirits, cross that line. And someone's actually sent me this concert now on a CD. At the time I wrote this poem, I had never heard it. This happened back in the 1950s, during the time when Paul Robeson was not allowed, was being punished for his outspokenness and his

[22:32]

passport was revoked, so he wasn't allowed to leave the US to go to Europe or anywhere else to sing or act. Across that line, Paul Robeson stood on the northern border of the USA and sang into Canada, where a vast audience sat on folding chairs waiting to hear him. He sang into Canada. His voice left the USA when his body was not allowed to cross that line. Remind us again, brave friend. What countries may we sing into? What lines should we all be crossing? What songs travel toward us from far away to deep in our days? People have told me, I've met three people now also, who said they sat in Paul Robeson's lap when they were little children. For whatever reason, they were in places where he was, and he liked to hold children in his lap, I presume, and took these children whom he didn't know and held them.

[23:40]

And then later, as they grew up, their parents, all three of them, told them who that was, who had held them. And for some reason, I've thought of this story here. In San Antonio lives Jacques Barzin, the great historian and professor and scholar. One of his... very rich books is, From Dawn to Decadence, about the history of art. He moved to San Antonio, I guess, 20 years ago when he retired from teaching at Columbia. When our son was very little, we were dining with Jacques and his wife, because she was one of my professors when I was in college, and they had invited us over to dinner. Jacques Bozen said to our son, do you know how to tell time yet? And he said, yes, I do. And Jacques said, well, when I was little, I was taught to tell time by the poet Apollinaire. And I said, well, I'm lying. And he looked at me calmly and said, well, he had to teach someone.

[24:41]

And our son had no idea who Apollinaire was, other than he was one of the many poets he was always hearing about and meeting. And so for years after, when someone would say, do you know how to dive yet? Or do you know how to ride a bicycle yet? Or anything to him, he would say, No, but I'm going to be taught by a pattern here. I've never told that I've written it, but I just love it. And being a leader has made me think of it. Just a couple. Don't worry about all these notes. They're not for tonight. So you describe how you became a writer. Possibly I began writing as a refuge from our insulting first-grade textbook. Come, Jane, come. Look, Dick, look. Were there ever duller people in the world? You had to tell them to look at things? Why weren't they looking to begin with? I read that somewhere and I was horrified when someone told me afterwards that in the audience had been the people whose ancestors had written the Dick and Jane books.

[25:53]

The day I missed the day on which it was said, others should not have certain weapons, but we could. Not only could, but should and do. I missed that day. Was I sleeping? I might have been digging in the yard, doing something small and slow as usual. Or maybe I wasn't born yet. What about all the other people who aren't born? Who will tell them? Passing books ought to be very touching. So here are a couple of new ones, and this one actually quotes Paul in it. Strict. That's not about Paul. Trevor likes us too much, hiding in our cuffs,

[26:56]

Paul said, our mistakes allow people to love us. I thought he said mystique. Tiny beacons shining in the dark. Flah, flah, sang a bird no one could see. White tents in Pakistan line up across a valley. More people displaced by other people fighting. Fear. Does mistake have any bearing now? How home can shift without warning and what happens to love then? To a season, a job, to everybody's hope. How people go on about their business even when they can't find it. Dark haired girls in blue uniforms lined up in desks wanted school to last longer. In that world, two kisses on the cheeks of an old man could stagger a room, people wheeling backwards, eyes wide.

[28:08]

You don't do this here. I wanted to run before a worse flap erupted. More trouble. Big, big trouble. You have no idea. You're right. I don't. And I don't want one either, if it looks that lonely. later you had time you had so much time and what do you do with it you threw it into a tunnel and where is it now still in the tunnel beneath every day you walk on inside the skin of everything you touch no wonder a lemon feels deeper than it did even the lemon tree scrolls up double speed because of the tunnel. The eyes of the woman down the street follow you when you leave her house, because one day her husband and dog went to the park, and only the dog came back alive.

[29:15]

Now the tunnel is deeper than the world you see. Maury, Daria, Johnny, Edward, Nina, Elizabeth, Aziz, Mahmoud. Four people called to say Henry was gone. Not one called to say he was ill. Still, you love them. These people walking on top of the tunnel, clutching little lists, plastic tubs of summer squash to share with neighbors, high hopes and their shadows. Sandhill cranes at the Platte River. Under their wild landing cries, echo the cry you made before you died. Something far, full of horizon. How can they sound so lonesome with all the flock around them? Rest now.

[30:18]

Gray wings wheeling toward icy water. Bellies full of corn. Alive. Dear Abby, said someone from Oregon, I am having trouble with my boyfriend's attachment to an ancient gallon of milk still full in his refrigerator. I told him it's me or the milk. Is this unreasonable? Dear Carolyn, my brother won't speak to me because 50 years ago I whispered a monkey would kidnap him in the night to take him back to his true family. But he should have known it was a joke when it didn't happen, don't you think? Dear Board of Education, no one will ever remember a test. Repeat. Stories, poems, projects, experiments, mischief, yes, but never a test.

[31:26]

Dear Joaquin Phoenix, just take a break and come back later. Dear dog behind the fence, you really need to calm down now. You have been barking every time I walk to the compost heap for two years, and I have not robbed your house. Relax. When I asked the man on the other side if you bother him too, he smiled and said no. He makes me feel less alone. Should I be more worried about the dog or the man? This is remembering Tatsuhara, the creek. Crossing the creek. Which stone do you look at? The one you're stepping onto or the next? This one's a little slick, but can't get across without it. I know, I know. We could fall in so easily. Water. swerving endlessly around the neatly laid path.

[32:30]

This is just a church sign from South Florida Street in my city last week. The enemy fights you the hardest when he knows God is going to give you something great. In this one, I just have to say the poem that started. Some years ago, I received... a poem from Manitoba, where I had never been at the time. And it was a second grader, very neat pencil handwriting, pencil writing. And he said he'd been reading some poems in another anthology had done, and he liked them, and he thought he should send a poem as a thank you. And he said, we write poems all the time in my class. It matters most to me that we do this. I do think I should tell you I have many doubts about my work. He was summoned. His poem is called Swirling and Twirling by J.D.

[33:34]

Linton. I don't think I am a real artist yet, even though I have developed swirling and twirling. Some say art is the movement of the pencil and the swirling of the paint, but I disagree with that. I think art is about the brain, its movement and feeling. There is one secret some are missing out on. Here is the secret. It doesn't matter how your art turns out. It's how much it winks at you and your mind and your mind's feeling. So I remember that I wrote him a letter back before I even took off my coat. I stood in the kitchen, got a pencil, paper, didn't know how many stamps I'd need, and wrote this note immediately and said, Mr. Linton, the answer to your doubts is in your poem.

[34:35]

Please reread your poem. I love it. It's the best thing that happened in my day. And a few weeks later, I received this brown box from Manitoba, from two other names, not him, and the cover letter said, If you liked J.D. Linton's poem, you must read ours. We are much better. We have included illustrations by our classmates. And feel free to keep the poems, but return the artwork. So I read this box. It was amazing. Poems by two boys. And they said, we are not usually poets. But in the winter, we become poets. Right. So wrote back and then said, please give this note to your teacher. So anyway, I ended up going up there and being with them all. The young poets of Winnipeg and their beautiful teacher is Lisa Siemens, who has believed in sharing poetry, number one in her curriculum of her heart.

[35:42]

Scurried around the classroom papered with poems, even the ceiling pink and orange quilts of phrase. They introduced one another, stood on a tiny stage to read their work, blessed their teacher who encouraged them to stretch, wouldn't let their parents come to the reading because parents might criticize, believed in the third and fourth eyes, the eyes in the undersides of leaves, the polar bears a thousand miles north, the sprouts of grass under the snow. They knew their poems were glorious, that second graders could write better than third or fourth because of what happened on down the road, the strange measuring sticks that came out of nowhere, poking and channeling the view, the way fences broke up winter, or driveways separated smooth white sheets birds rode on with their feet. Thank you all very much for listening and I did want to say the first two lines of a poem I won't read from another book and one is reminded of just the spirit here, the generosity and the kindness and how much is done for us without our seeing and before people come here and

[37:13]

immediately upon our departure and the kind of constant circle of hospitality. But since life sometimes doesn't feel that way in our own homes, here are just two lines. Sometimes I pretend I'm not me, I only work for me. And I'm going to read two things here, this and then one other. Accuracy. I've often said to adults, if they have trouble with their own writing, just go babysit. Go spend time with someone two or three or four. That'll refresh your mind, your language mind. Or go be with someone preferably above the age of 95 and ask a lot of questions. But this was from Lida Rose when she was two and a half. And she lives a few blocks from me. Accuracy. Lyda Rose walked through our front door and said, where is the sock monkey?

[38:18]

I need him. This surprised me. She had never shown any interest in the sock monkey before. We began digging in the tall basket where stuffed animals live. Lyda Rose said, I am two and a half now. Did you know that? Where is he? We threw out the snake, the yellow bunny, battered bear, small eagle wearing blue t-shirt, camel, and the bird that makes a chickadee sound if you press its belly. Sock Monkey was buried at the bottom. White Rose clutched him to her chest. My husband, she said, closing her eyes dreamily. I was astonished. Your husband? When did this happen? She spoke clearly, definitely. I thought of him, and I married him in my mind. She ran around the dining room, clutching her husband tightly, singing the song of a chickadee trapped in a human body.

[39:21]

How great! I am so happy for you both, I said, following her. She did not answer, lost in a newlywed swoon. I said, it is so nice that you love him now. And she stopped dancing, staring at me disapprovingly. I didn't say I love him. I said he is my husband. And I know that her mother loves that piece and her father does not. She asked it to be read to her at bedtimes by her mother. And I was staying with her the day before I came to Tata Hara and She gave me, I think, the greatest compliment I'll ever receive. She's five now, and her sister is turning three tomorrow. And she just kept staring at me with this funny, quizzical look for a very long time. And I said, what? And she said, are you a grown-up?

[40:24]

That's it. That's how I needed to get through the rest of my days. Thank you, thank you. gate a4 wandering around the albuquerque airport terminal after learning my flight had been delayed four hours i heard an announcement if anyone in the vicinity of gate a4 understands any arabic please come to the gate immediately well one pauses these days gate a4 was my own gate i went there An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. Help, said the flight agent. Talk to her. What is your problem? We told her the flight was going to be late. She did this. I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly.

[41:31]

The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, no, we're fine. You'll get there just late. Who's picking you up? Let's call him. We called her son. I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother until we got on the plane and ride next to her, southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad. He and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out, of course, they had 10 shared friends. Then I thought, just for the heck of it, why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up two hours. She was laughing a lot by then, telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamul cookies, little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts from her bag and was offering them to all the women at the gate.

[42:42]

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo, we are all covered with the same powdered sugar and smiling. There's no better cookie, except yours. And then the airline broke out three beverages from huge coolers, and two little girls from our flight ran around serving apple juice, and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend, by now we were holding hands, had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing with green furry leaves, such an old country traveling tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate, once the crying of confusion stopped, seemed apprehensive about any other person.

[43:53]

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. this can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. The question came to me at one reading. Why did she only offer cookies to the women? And I said, well, you know, now that I think of it, there were only women in the gate. I think all the men had gone to the bar. The women were too worried about missing the fight when it finally left. So we were just holding our places there by the gate. Thank you. This year at Tosahara, there were some mysteries concerning my room. And the first day, I went in and there was a cat sleeping in my bed, my door standing wide open, and he refused to leave, would not leave.

[45:01]

And today, This is what a hairbrush normally looks like. This is not mine. But today I went in and my brush had been moved from the place where it had been, placed in the center of my bed, and there are all these mysterious cotton bowls in it. And it looks like someone came to my room in my absence, perhaps that cat, and wrecked a sheep. So I'm only holding this up because it's a mystery we have not been able to solve today. And someone suggested that someone had combed a towel. But we tried that with this brush, and nothing happened. So if anyone knows about this, around each little spoke is wrapped a perfect little cotton bowl. Maybe a very zen mystery koan. So if anyone knows, we really would like to know. This is my brush. Yes, my brush. And it all happened within 15 or 20 minutes of my departure.

[46:04]

Really? Yes. Because I had just gone in there and put it back on the shelf. And I came back. It was in the middle of my bed looking completely different. I'd really like to know. What? You do? So. Any questions? Any answers? Any stories? I usually start a poem with a fragment, a little phrase, an image, a voice. Not usually with an idea, but with something smaller than an idea. Usually with just a very tiny wisp. Those are wisps wrapped around. I'm not too particular about... I think if one is in the habit of writing regularly, you're not too particular about what you put down.

[47:09]

You don't require of it that it be outstanding in any way, or sensational, certainly not. Nothing feels common or too mundane to note. And anytime you go back to a notebook, you kept, you feel so alive in that place and in those moments and just through the little bits and pieces of collection. It always seemed to me that every single person has a poetry channel in the brain and that's the remembrance channel or the ruminating channel where you turn over an image or a scene or something is as vivid as it was 50 or 20 years ago and By writing little things down, you just invite the channel to be on a little more, to be a little more active. The creative process is different, I think, because it requires a longer span of concentration.

[48:24]

And as my editor kept telling me, You know, you can't just stand on a corner and think in a novel. You might be able to get away with that in a poem or even a story, but in a novel, something has to happen. And there has to be some interactions and characters and some plot line. And I realized I really didn't like much to happen in plots. So that was a challenge. And just coming back, you know, with that kind of attention where you could sort of oversee this number of characters and their movements and their conversations. And I think there was involving novels and longer pieces of writing, there's a much more radical kind of revision that goes on too, which is quite pleasurable. My greatest day in working on my second novel, Going, Going, was the day I woke up and knew I had to drop the first 83 pages of the book entirely. They had to go. And this was the sixth draft of the book.

[49:27]

So I'd been working with them for five years at that time. But it was such a wonderful sense of relief just to cut them and have page 84 become page one, and to know that those 83 pages were things I needed to think about for my own process, but nobody else needed to think about them. No, the novels arose over longer periods of time, just more collective life experience, but wanting to create a world that felt real around a couple of... To me, they both have sort of central themes, issues, and how to create a story that would engage a young reader was the question. How to create characters that would feel real. adolescence my books are I guess for about the age of 13 to 15 especially those two novels or 13 to 16 second one or 17 maybe they're simple books but how to just how to engage them to think about the issues kind of with a sense of surprise that suddenly they're thinking about the issue but they've just been reading about these characters so that was a challenge more of a challenge

[50:51]

Yes? Right downtown, by the river? How I interact with the city? Did you live there? You're from San Antonio? Where did you live? Yeah, really different, far out. Near by the country. You're by the fields, I'm agreeing. Well, we found that living in the heart of an old city, in an old neighborhood, there is a kind of timeless quality, timeless sensation, and I feel very, very close to being in the city. We're on a strong migratory pattern of birds, and a lot of cranes and egrets come to the river right behind our house, and so there's a sense of being... with the natural world, even though you're in the heart of a big city. It doesn't really feel like that. We're under 100-year-old pecan trees, 140-year-old pecan trees.

[51:59]

So there's just a sense of being very connected to place, gravity. I try as much as possible in summers to get in a car as little as possible, to walk or bike everywhere, and I think that helps contribute to a sense of closeness with the place. And just to know the people around, the people around your house, and to be part of community. It's always seemed to me, no matter where you are, that it doesn't take a very long walk for you to discover many things that you didn't know before you went out. And just a tiny little walk around a couple blocks, you'll learn so much, or you'll start, so many thoughts will be stimulated, or you'll wonder so much. And so that's been part of my encouragement of Children's writing all these years is that we're surrounded by things that could be fascinating, could be filled with history, could be resonant with all sorts of thought possibilities, but often we just overlook them.

[53:02]

And taking a walk up to the ridge today and looking at the land here and the details of the land, the plants that have come back, and how regeneration happens. Wherever we are, that's certainly the case. But I love San Antonio. Many people here have asked me about it. I do think Californians have rather a stern opinion of Texas. And that's all right. You deserve to. But I always say I'm from the state of Bill Moyers and Molly Ivins, the late, beloved Molly Ivins. Yes, and Jim Hightower and so many great people. So the horrible last administration in no way characterized our state as we know it. And Barack Obama, by the way, won every city. in Texas during this past election. It was only suburbs and rural places. And who could know there are that many rural places? But every city went for Barack Obama. Yeah. There was one moment on that evening, on the election night, when they said, Texas is too close to call.

[54:05]

And I can't tell you how much that meant to us. There's a question over there. Yes. Well, in my own work or in our group work? Well, in my own work this past year, I found myself just really exploring the death of my father, but his continuing life so strongly in my life and in many people's lives, and all kinds of continued life of those beloved teachers and guides. So that's been a topic that's very much concerned my writing the past year. I did... a picture book that's in its seventh draft, that's set in the country of Oman, that in my heart is for my father, although he never went to Oman himself, but was very interested in it, and done a new anthology and projects like that.

[55:08]

In our group this weekend, we've talked about topics of questioning and answering and silence and language as it continually bubbles up in its beautiful, spontaneous synchronicities, counterpoint, and allowing a playfulness to stay alive in our work, and looking at words, letting words lead sometimes more than ideas lead. William Stafford, who's been a very guiding poet in my life, used to say, an artist is someone who lets the paper talk back. And how do we get to that sense of reassuring exchange with the paper? as opposed to always feeling that we're crafting something on the paper. We're in charge. We're commanding this poem or story to go where we want it to go. No, we're not. And it really gets good when we're not. So, I mean, that's when the musicality comes in. Thank you.

[56:11]

Paul, would you talk? Would I talk? I like it best when Paul talks in our group. This week, Naomi has become more and more like a Zen teacher. She turns to me and says, talk. First of all, she gave me a subject, but now I don't even get a subject. Do I get a subject? No. Okay. Okay, we're going to end like this, because we have to end very soon. So we're going to all make up very brief poems, three-word poems. And I thought... I thought, well, I want an immense topic for my three-word poems. So my first immense topic was my whole life. And here's my three-word poem for my whole life. Granite, sand, incense. And then I thought, well, that was too easy. How about a three-word poem for the life of the whole universe?

[57:13]

Bang. Wow. Oh. What's the three-word topic? I mean, what's the topic for the three-word poem? Yes, right now. Borrow ain't yesterday. Anyone else? I like that person. Silence? Silence very loud.

[58:18]

Love to all. Moon shines stars. One over here. This said love to all. Mm-hmm. See Jane Lea. Appreciation deep and wide. Appreciation deep and wide. Buddhist eats birds. Buddhist? No. Yeah, Otis. Otis. Otis. Thank you, Paul. OK. Thank you, Naomi. And thank you all for coming.

[59:00]

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