the reading

We found the place well, and parking was easy. I drank free wine and ate free cookies. Very nice. Small free bottles of Arrowhead water.

Jane Hirshfield has lots of interests in common with us--zen buddhist, she cooked at Greens for three years. She's friends with our ex-teacher's husband and mentioned he's the one who called her when Milosz died.

I liked three-fourths of three-fourths of the poems, which is very sucessful compared to many readings I've been to. Readings are hard, because I'm a visual learner. At one point I thought, "Oh yeah, I don't like readings! Why are we here?" But there is something to it, an event, getting out, especially when it's free and everything comes together so easily.

I don't like between-poem-chatter, but it does let the mind relax. And I don't like q-and-a at the end, though everyone else in the world seems to.

We both hated the introduction. As far as I'm concerned, long introductions are immoral. Every moment they speak is a moment taken away from the whole reason everyone is there.

She's a very smart person, and it's a pleasure to hear a very smart person talking. Here's a really brilliant one, I think the one she read second.

For What Binds Us
by Jane Hishfield

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.