Forlorn Meatballs

I would say the title of this was wonderfully original (sadly, I could not properly claim credit for it, even if Google had not returned a result from mid-April, 1999). Such is life. At least there are three of us on the planet who know the story of this evening's use.

It came up late during the reception for the 2006 Kingsley Tufts and Kate Tufts poetry awards (rewards, as was twice said during the ceremony). Once more it was a night that mixed the austerity of an event at which $110,000 is awarded to incredibly deserving poets, the humor that John Maguire and others always bring, and the unsurpassed reverence for the written work given voice.

I am once more in awe of the creativity of others, the anabashed drive to throw together words and images that might be mundane, might be surreal, might be outlandish. If, as Adrienne Rich commented while inaugurating a new degree program at Claremont Graduate University back in the spring of 1998, the poet's job is to reinvigorate language, language has a promising future.

Once more I was pleased to speak with Derick Burleson and Robert Wrigley, two of the eight people involved in the judging of the books submitted for these awards. Once more it was an enjoyable chat. Derick Burleson's name must appear in here at least twice so it will come up higher in searches, and he knows why this is important.

Robert Wrigley pointed out to me that poets, in order to succeed, must have the firm belief that what they are writing is worth someone else's time to read. This led me to thinking, as I sat by myself some while later, that fear is perhaps what defines the difference between the artist and the successful artist. When I mentioned this to Wrigley when he approached to say his farewells, he mentioned a fear of failure, but I think it is something that arrives earlier in the process. Maybe not, though. If failure is measured by the critical or popular success of a work, then fear of failure arrives at the end. Now, though, I wonder if fear of failure is what stops so much from ever being written. Do people fail to write because they fear they will fail to be original? It's true that most of what one finds in the realm of poetry is derivative or worse, but is that a lack of talent? a lack of imagination? perhaps a lack of courage? Well, that is a thought to measure another day.

Finally, a note on Robert Pinsky's comments early in the ceremony. Pinsky, it has struck me for two years now, has not only a great gift for poetry but an immense talent for reminding us of the most basic facts of poetry, of those things we forget because we know them, have known them for too long to recognize their importance. As we sat under the Tiffany dome at the Doheny Mansion, Pinsky commented on the beauty of physical expression all around us, above us, beneath us. Then he said something that is simple enough and that I say, albeit less eloquently, to my students: Poetry is as physical as any other art, and perhaps more durable because, as Pinsky notes, it is made of breath. In this, it is more permanent and more portable than other forms of art. Indeed, even music—let is make it more challenging and say a capella music—is not even as powerful as poetry because it takes a trained voice; poetry takes a voice. Any voice.

How incredible I find it every year to attend this award, only to find myself trolling depths of thought I rarely reach on my own. Such events are more than the words and the people and the books, though all are important. Such events are, if Robert Pinsky will pardon my deliberate choice of words, inspirational.