Then there was another question that is much more specific.
Mary Beth Riley McGreen asked if you would talk about the genesis of "Cosmology."
Well, Mary Beth, well "Cosmology" is a poem that begins by wondering about how the --
I'll just read it.
That would be perfect.
Maybe I'll just read it for Mary Beth and everybody else. It's in here somewhere.
It begins by talking about a very common image, and that is the picturing of --
before we had the laws of gravity and other scientific
bits of information to explain things, there was
a wonderment about, well the Earth is just floating in space. I mean it can't be just
floating here; it must be supported by something. And so this drew on the pictorial imaginations
of early peoples, and the results were the Earth would be sitting on something. And
the poem begins by kind of depicting one of those pictorializations.
For Mary Beth, wherever you are, and everybody else.
"Cosmology"
"I never put any stock in that image of the earth
resting on the backs of four elephants who are standing on a giant sea turtle,
who is in turn supported by an infinite regression of turtles
disappearing into a bottomless forever.
I mean, who in their right mind would?
But now that we are on the subject, my substitute picture would have the earth
with its entire population of people and things resting on the head of Keith Richards,
who is holding a Marlboro in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the other.
As long as Keith keeps talking about the influence of the blues
on the Rolling Stones, the earth will continue to spin merrily
and revolve in a timely manner around the sun.
But if he changes the subject or even pauses too long,
it’s pretty much curtains for us all.
Unless, of course, one person somehow survives being hurtled into the frigidity of outer space;
then we would have a movie on our hands --
but wait, there wouldn’t be any hands to write the script or make the movie,
and no theatres, either, no buttered popcorn, no giant Pepsi.
So we may as well see Keith standing on the shoulders of the other Rolling Stones,
who are in turn standing on the shoulders of Muddy Waters,
who, were it not for that endless stack of turtles,
one on top of the other all the way down,
would find himself standing on nothing at all."
So, when you think about how that came to pass, I probably just had that image of the
turtles and the elephants in my head for some reason or other. And then you know, having
all the time in the world, as some poets do,
if you just think about that, if your mind works in kind of a mischievous was, you can
think of some interesting substitutions.
In many of these poems, quite frankly, there's a game being played,
which the reader could play also.
I mean, you could write a contra poem to that, in which the world is being supported on the
head of Joan of Arc or Barack Obama or your sister, Diedre, you know?
I mean, anybody, and you could play with that.
So, unlike some poets, I'm not really pouring out my misery here, I'm really involved in
some playful game with language.
It's a serious game, in some ways, but it's a game too.