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-1973
PERFORMANCE
The first time I saw James Dickey
He stood at the head of the class, unzipped
His wetsuit jacket, then announced
In surplus Buckhead slur,
You don't fuck around with poetry.
Don Armstrong smiled so still
No one saw him. Bridget's perm sank.
When you're masturbating, he said,
There's that feeling just before you come . . .
-That's poetry. Donna's lovely fingers
Twirled still beneath her throat.
You'd think my history of bad acid
Would have readied me, but
I too churned in the vortex. Before
Deliverance, he'd been teaching
At Bread Loaf where Auden had only
Five students. Wystan, of friend,
He asked, How is it you have so few
And I so many? Auden told him
He'd ask a simple question, then dismiss
Those who answered wrong.
-Now he'd ask us the same:
Why do you write poetry?
I fell and froze. Two weeks back
I'd read Auden's Q-and-A.
-I'm born to. -I have something to say.
-It's in the blood. Down the row
They came, each wrong answer
Stung by the clipped dismissal:
You'd be out of the class. You'd be out. You.
Do I give the right response and blow
His cover? As if miraculous light
Poured up from the lacquered desk
To save me, he nodded past my chair.
Soon, someone hemmed
Auden's dull trimeter:
I like to play with words.