Kicking things off, and so consider
yourselves kicked, is our reader today Paul E.
Dickey. Mr. Dickey comes to creative
writing or maybe back to creative
writing from a career in data processing
and from degree work in the world of
philosophy. In fact he teaches at
Metropolitan Community College up in
Omaha and what he teaches is not
literature or creative writing but
Introduction to Philosophy, Critical
Reasoning, Introduction to Ethics, so that
might be interesting talking points for
some of you as you're milling around and
purchasing his book and chatting with
him after the reading. Oh, he's also, this
is interesting, too, doing theatrical work.
He's written full-length plays, one-act
plays, and what his vita calls ten-minute
plays. I'm all in favor of that by the
way. In fact I've written some one minute
plays and I'm thinking of pioneering the
world in which I actually write deficit
creative writing. Flashier fiction and no
minute plays and then readers have to
pay me money for the amount of time they
haven't spent reading my work. Just
tell me what you think about it when
you're milling around afterwards. In addition to poems
in a number of journals, there's a long
list here, some of the best-known of
which would be Crab Orchard Review,
Midwest Quarterly, the Southern Poetry
Review, Mr. Dickey is the author of a
number of books, the most recent of which
is the rather nice-looking They Say This
is How Death Came Into the World, it is
with a few of
titles on that table available for sale.
Those of you who are in an MFA program
and dream of doing a book of your own
one day might want to keep in mind that
what goes around comes around. I don't
know what Mr. Dickey is going to be
reading today, it may be newer work, it
may be older work, but I can tell you for
a fact that there's some formally
interesting stuff in this book. It's a
book of poetry but a lot of it takes the
shape of prose poetry some of it perhaps
resembles flash fiction and in fact one
of the poems for the end of the book is
called, Class, is This a Prose Poem or
Flash Fiction? and many of the poems have
that kind of wry, ironic twist to them
bringing together a wealth of topical
reference that goes from well-known
classical philosophers, to people from
out of contemporary popular culture.
Frank Sinatra, Lennon and McCartney, they
take their place in these poems along
with Heidegger, for instance, so it's a
lively mix. I suspect it's going to be a
lively reading and I would like
everybody to turn off your cell phones...
or I'll hurt you... and put your hands
together for a very warm welcome to Mr. Paul Dickey.
Thank you, Albert. Thank you, Margaret and
Melissa, for inviting me to read today.
I'm very, very pleased to be reading
today at Wichita State University. This
is really where I began a dastardly act
of writing poetry, I started as an
undergraduate here at Wichita State
University I took my first poetry
workshop here in 1968 with the poet
Michael van Walleghen, I hope some of you know him. He
just talking to recently retired from
Illinois. That was before there was an MFA
program here. If you know Michael you
will know that I probably got a very
heavy dose of Rilke and W.D. Snodgrass, he
was Michael van Walleghen's instructor,
so there's probably some confessional
trend in these poems but these poems are
not, I repeat, not autobiographical. There
are two absolute no-nos in Van
Walleghen's workshop back in 1968 and that
was first of all your poems should never
be clever, never be clever. I think I'm
going to violate that today.
They should also not be sentimental and
one of the things that he kept preaching
that Snodgrass had solved for us is the way
to be personal without being sentimental.
Well I might violate that too. After
graduating from WSU in 1970,
I went to Indiana University and
studied philosophy of science. It was a
great experience I learned a lot, met a
lot of contemporary philosophers, but I
never got over the bug of writing. I
wanted to write and not do philosophy so
I came back to the WSU in 1973. Van Walleghen
was gone but I met Ben Santos. If
you know much about Ben Santos, he was a
excellent instructor, very encouraging
and helped me make a transition from
lineal poetry, some old kind of poetry,
confessional poetry, even into prose, and
fiction. Ben gave me the credit that to
give myself permission to write and
that's what I think was highly of
important at the time. I also studied
poetry with Bruce Cutler was here and
these are the early days the formation
of the MFA program if you're familiar
with the history. At the time I was
really more interested in some of the
new poets, Greg Kuzma, James Tate, and some
young poet named Albert Goldbarth.
At that at the time you probably would
have seen Albert all the time in the Ark
River Review which is a journal that
was put out by some professors at Wichita
State and he hogged all of the space
and I couldn't get into it. Ok I won't bore you
anymore with all of those stories
but if you wanted to talk about that
catch me after the the reading I'd love to talk.
I'm going to start reading today some of my
prose poems out of my book, They Say
This is How Death Came into the World.
The first poem is entitled A Bad Break.
It's a poem about the New York Yankees
and Lou Gehrig, who, Lou Gehrig said I'm
the luckiest man in the world, I just got
a bad break. This is called A Bad Break.
Lou Gehrig is crying. Lou Gehrig is crying
for every story in New York City. Lou
Gehrig is wiping down every bleacher
seat in Yankee Stadium with his salt. Lou
Gehrig. Lou Gehrig. He has the right. He
banged everyone the homer. DiMaggio
can't believe the greatest ballplayer he
ever played with is crying. Gehrig once hid
behind Babe. Lou Gehirg is crying.
It fills every stein and mug in the
Bronx. Gehrig wanted to play in every game.
DiMaggio wants a hit in every game.
DiMaggio marries a bomb who will sleep
with a president. Lou Gehrig is crying up
and down Broadway. He just got a bad
break, he says he is the luckiest man in
the world. The Babe and Gehrig are hugging
like sisters. They don't speak to each
other. Gehrig's mother said something once
about Babe's wife. Lou Gehrig is crying.
DiMaggio still loves Marilyn. He is
laying flowers on a grave. They were
going to be married again. Lou Gehrig is
crying. Lou Gehrig is crying down the
financial district where someday the big
bucks will build our future of the
World Trade Center. Casey says DiMaggio
won't play ball if he can't play ball the
way Joe DiMaggio is expected to play
ball and it's only to take the money.
Joe DiMaggio is an American hero.
Joe DiMaggio's father was named
Giuseppe, in San Francisco, in 1942, that
took guts. Lou Gehrig is crying. Ruth. Gehrig.
DiMaggio, now the Commerce Kid, like Babe,
wants to hit a home run off every broad
in the city. His dad gave him a
baseball when he was hours old but
sometimes Mickey Charles preferred a
bottle. The Mick needs your liver, Al.
He and Billy and Whitey for a while
drank up all of Gehrig's tears.
The next poem I'll read is entitled, Because
It Is My Heart, I'm sure you'll recognize that
as Stephen Crane. I noticed, as I was
preparing today, that your MFA reading
list includes a complete poems of Crane,
doesn't say if it means Stephen or not
but I'm just, I'm going to think it does.
This poem is entitled Because It Is My
Heart. I was to have lunch with the
complete poems of Stephen Crane. the
department chair had arranged everything.
I didn't know if I would recognize
Stephen anymore. For many years no one
seemed to know what had happened to him.
Some even thought maybe he had died. Some
of the new faculty thought maybe he had
never lived. Stephen was late,
didn't bring all the poems and wouldn't
say grace but the world wars that it
had intervened since we had last met appeared
to have been kind to him. He glared at
the maitre d' and the menu. Three little
birds in a row, pitched perched on his
shoulder. All hour they sang and they were
about to sing,
they coaxed me also to sing, to raise my
voice in the spirit of Whitman and
Dickinson but no longer in chorus with
the divine. I told him I wanted to raise
a toast to the supreme fiction to the
Wallace Stevens century and write this
poem someday. The birds laughed out loud
at me. He muttered mostly to himself,
"And to think Howells called my lines
prose poems." I could not help but notice
the bus boy, aged about 14, was me.
George's mother did not know he was here
she had dropped him off at church school
just a few hours before a few blocks
away. George, I call him that because that
is the boy's name whispered in hushed
tones. Stephen Crane. Oh Stephen Crane. I
know where the little church is. The
apartment were mohter's God once lived.
Okay, so Wichita, Kansas the home of the
BTK killer, right? It's an interesting story
to me and very personal too because I went
to school with his wife for my fourth
grade through senior in high school and
her name was Dietz and my name is Dickey.
So you can imagine what unimaginative
school teachers with our alphabetical
seating charts did. I usually sat next to
her in class for a long time, so I tried in
this very short prose poem to
establish some of that terror. The
Husband's Blocked Backyard Shed. I would
tell you what he keeps there if I knew.
My sisters say I would deny that snow
all winter covers the metal shed for the
shiny lock has been opened time and time
again. Their eyes snap. Girl, there have
been murders in the neighborhood.
All I know is all that I do not know is
the next best thing to love and that when
his hands surprise me in the dark and he
says something ordinary at last he is close,
closer than whatever it is he is.
Now this next poem has a lot of unsavory
characters in it. Characters such as my
wife's image of me, my image of myself,
a poor image of me, those kind of unsavory
characters. This poem's entitled, Images of.
My wife's image of me and my image of
myself met for a drink and to have a
heart-to-heart. We were going to get
things ironed out, but at the club we
bumped into the lovers, my image of
her and her image of herself but
surely were not expecting to see us.
They were with their boyfriends,
her image of him and his image of himself.
His image of himself said something rude
to my image of myself and that seemed to
be in cahoots with my wife's image of me.
My image of her seemed to be embarrassed
and ashamed of my image of myself and
then she went home with her image of me.
His image of her walked in the door at
the time, at that time, and wanted to have
it out with anyone who wanted to have a
talk with them. The only one that did was
my image of her. My wife and I arrived
shortly thereafter but left right away
because of all the commotion. If at all
possible, I particularly wanted to avoid
running into my wife's image of herself.
When it all comes down to the last
resort our star leader is truth.
Although on occasion we may keep him
warming up in the bullpen, rest his
knuckleball, doubt that he exists, fine
him for showing up late for pre-games
consult with a general manager about
our options on his contract. After all,
dear, it is our life and no we didn't
mean to have it all happen like this, so
what right does he have signing
autographs for the little kids to sleep
with, when we may be going into extra
innings, I confess he sleeps with the third
baseman's wife. The manager knows these
things but I have a team to think of.
How You Prove Anything and Everything.
Faith prowls the accident scene
hawking its wares, a shyster in search
of clients. Police scour for evidence.
Anthropologists dig for
Darwinian Theory, anything to tell the
press, but the facts are two people were
dead and a stranger called 911 and saved
my life tonight. Yes, two people, one I
will never know and the other forever
all my life and she me all her life.
Creationists say God's will, isn't it
obvious but witnesses say that this oil
has existed millions of years made this
car skid. I can't buy the theory in
this marketplace. A kid in ice cream
truck rings a bell and sings along with
the tune hey come on you gotta have
faith. Pascal tries to lay down a bet
but before he can people fight and shove
like Christmas about the kids inventory
on credit.
Pascal's bet is the argument for the
existence of God that if God doesn't
exist and you believe in him what have you
lost? But if God does exist and you don't
believe in him, then you've lost everything.
That was Pascal's bet, okay, now I'm
going to read one more prose poem. To play you
need to get your MFA reading lists for
because it makes a lot of references to
the items on that. Okay, the Thought of What
America Would be like If. Remember you
don't know me. This isn't just one of
those tricks we pull off in America, walk
in the safeway 15 seconds apart in both
buy 10 12 can packs of Dr. pepper for
dollar ninety each, when the limit is
10 per customer and then meet at the
trunk of our car to stow away the goods.
You don't know me, really. I have a
thought of what America, I have a thought
what America would be like, what America
would be like if, the police record the
world. Now, quick.
Ruth is beautiful. Our beautiful Ruth.
That is all you know and all you need to
know. Or as Lily Tomlin put it, if
truth is beauty how come no one has her
hair done in the library. Well I'll be
there if you need me, getting a shade and
being fitted for a new suit and wig but
don't tell the police that if you can help it.
It'd be great in tact as you have been
untaught. Ask them in for a cup of coffee.
Call in the media to advise to see or
not to see. Ask them that, will you?
As all we see or seem but cream with in a
cream, I'll use the precious seconds to
escape by the name of Annabelle Lee, my
beautiful Annabelle Lee. It's okay dear,
you and I weren't right for each other
anyway.
She lives with no other plot and to love
and be loved by me and what America
would be like if so much depends upon
the red SUV outfoxing the white cop
cars, two roads divulged a yellow road
where the evening is spread out against the
sky I sing America next to of course God
I do not find they were safe from me.
Congress is the Emperor of pipe dreams
Martha in the bar pointing is that this
morning the very talk of a board was a
Key West a kingdom by the sea at the
Little League game I heard of fly buzz
before the side was retired. If the classics
had a wide circulation, Emily, we could
not be to be. Ergo I am home and lumpy
I just went out for a pack of Lucky
Strikes to the Safeway. Oh well, it
troubles my sleep. I shall be the
telling this with a sigh, ages and ages
hence, when the evening is spread out
against the sky, I, too, sing America, what
America would be like, if, nevermore
Ruth is beautiful, our beautiful Ruth, that's
all you know and all you need to know.
Okay, I'm gonna read one poem that I
sneaked in the book as a prose poem but
probably can't be distinguished from a
flash fiction and it's entitled Lennon and
McCartney and it's basically going off
on the idea of what would have happened
had what happened not gotten away. Lennon
and McCartney. 62 year old Paul McCartney,
a bankrupt businessmen of Liverpool
strolled down Penny Lane watching children
laugh behind the back of a banker with a
motor car. He worried how he was going to
pay the rent due next week on his flat across the
hall from Father McKenzie. He carried an
old transistor radio that he had
pilfered from the junk shop down by
Strawberry Fields. It was all he had now
on which to listen to the BBC, a new tune
came on the waves and he quickly flipped
off. He didn't want to listen to it. He
remembered when he was a lad listening to
the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly but
the music just didn't seem to go
anywhere after a while and Mr. McCartney,
he got on in business but now that had
failed him, too.
Besides Holly he had like that bloke Bob
Dylan, but American folk music got old
and Dylan by himself couldn't take it
anywhere modern. If only Paul had listened to
his mum who had wanted Paulie himself to
take music lessons. He laughed maybe he
could have merged Dylan's stuff
together with the Everly's then the
music would have gone somewhere, not that
tinny penny here on the BBC these
days. But Paul knew that you could drive
yourself crazy wondering about what
could have been. He crossed paths that day with
one John Lennon, aged 64, an unkept
street painter losing his hair with
birthday greetings and a bottle wine in his
pocket.
20 quid for a portrait, sir? Paul McCartney
wasn't used to be called sir
and he thought about it but he didn't
have the 20 quid.
Mr. Lennon, already was walking down
Abbey Road whistling, he was on his way
home. It was October. It was the year
2004 and John Lennon was
simply happy to be alive.
I'm going to read a few poems
now that are not prose poems are more
linear poems. This first one's titled
Delivering to the Client. All afternoon
within the cubicles it has been raining
requirements. Code meanders down screens,
a river depositing content to reservoirs
and large cities. The river is muddy.
Testers look for unintended consequences,
silt, small towns from nowhere sapping
resources on the banks. Driftwood and
beavers filling dams. Their will is to
break everything. That they could miss
the isolated farmstead, where man in the
way works on the tractor. Inside him is a
boy who insists that tomorrow when
it stops raining he will
go fishing.
Ok, the next poem is Photographs of
Door County. Door County is a resort area
in northern Wisconsin, along Lake
Michigan. This poem again is not
autobiographical. Photographs of Door
County. At last Joni and I meet James.
Fumbling, he shows his photographs of
Door County. In the first, Lake Michigan
is black as glass but with his single
sail somehow in the center. The only
sound I hear is the awkward Canada geese.
In the next there, was a family in the
distance, he did not know yet, having been
there only one day. A girl and a boy and
fishing poles, it seems to me the father
struggles to get the boat into the water
while the wife loads the final needs. My
daughter acts casual,
but her eyes wink that this may be it.
Begs me to study his next carefully, his
next photograph even more carefully, not
knowing James sits in her mother's chair, she
she has been gone now a full season.
Joni's cream and sugar voice sails into
the room with coffee though there is no tide.
This afternoon there's little wind
although the waves still come in. They go
out and they come in.
Okay, I'll read one more of these.
Somewhere Wants a House. We could have
lived anywhere, strung light and power
around a tree. You could have dried your hair.
We made money in the wind, caught for a
minute on limbs and blow away. Yes, dear.
We stand. Arguing which debt could go
first or stay years. Proposed bets until
our pockets were bare. Invited birds to
spend the night, to nestle in your blouse,
whipped into rags by a clothesline, while
we slept, but no, we lived in this house.
Okay, my book came out in January so most of
these poems I've written
probably least two or three years ago
many many some even much more than that
so I'd like to give an idea, a bit of an idea
what I've been writing since the book
came out, the first one here we get on
some of the advice get in Richard Hugo's
Triggering Town. Also on your MFA reading
list. Okay, this poem is entitled
Bankruptcy in Ellettsville for Richard
Hugo. The bank's vault loaded with
once-friendly girls and cash dropped off
the map last night. Men in black suits
were seen on the outskirts, struggling
without tomorrows, snuggling without tomorrows, sorry.
Hymnals fled of state passing
yan and virtuous fields of sweet air. We
went home for our axes, broke open the
safe to claim what was rightfully ours
but by time we got there the metal hummed
the trains sad whistle, the corn grew
back taller than ever in its sweet time,
produced sons and daughters though our
wives that night had run off with any
moon or star that would have them.
Pebbles
In the middle of love there was a large
stone. Soon there were little pebbles all
over. What was once a green valley was
becoming a rocky hillside. There was one
thing to do, but we would not hear of it.
Rather we bought wine buckets at great
cost gathered the small pebbles and
collected them. One small bucket at a
time. We pounded the large stone with
hammers made more pebbles of which we
were always proud and carried them away to
a place by the church and by the river,
through it all the stone remained
large. By the time the sun was down and
the day was done and the moon was up
there were more pebbles than ever
before, but we were tired then and
laid down.
Let me read you a couple prose poems and
if we have enough time I'll read you one more.
Closing Plants Still
Manufacturing Dwight Eisenhower. They say
America is no longer the manufacturing
superpower it once was. Bottom line, Harry
and Ike are not creating the new jobs
they promised America. Physicists say
Harry S. Truman mattered. He was a solid
at room temperature, a concrete brick
with drilled and engineered holes used to
build skyscrapers. As was Dwight David
Eisenhower. They had recognizable mass
and occupied clearly defined space. They
travel at a given and predictable rate
of speed. You could recognize photographs
of them and not mistake them for
Brigitte Bardot or Sophia Loren. It is the
days before charisma, but they had
presence. Now, Harry Truman and Dwight
Eisenhower are liquids. The volume remains
fixed but you're not sure where they
stand on the current war or on health care
or the national debt. The photos are
digital. Sometimes they look like Paris
Hilton and sometimes they look like
Miley Cyrus. Their shape is the shape in
which they are contained.
Their particles are free to move about the
cabin. They say Harry Truman and Dwight
Eisenhower soon will be nothing but
vapors of gas. They are no longer at room
temperature. The volume of a gas is
negotiable. It does not attach images of
itself to expand. It takes up space so
the particles are uniformly distributed
in air. You can friend Harry and Ike on
Facebook but the websites
inflict your hard drive with
Trojans. You may mistake them for ladies,
but they're not ladies and with no names you can
call them in public. In the future, young
people will have to find jobs in
something other than Harry S. Truman and
Dwight David Eisenhower.
And this poem is entitled Hacking Rilke's
Phone. This needs to be the last one.
Hacking Rilke's Phone and it uses
some quotes from with Rilke's novel
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. Rilke
won't play ball with us they said but we
got the scoop. He had no clue what our
thugs are now capable of. He thought it a
scandal that his patronm Werner Reinhart
would put him up in a drafty castle,
but now we can tell you why he did. It
was just modern journalism. We got this
on tape from the man professing silence
of the world even the so-called solitude.
One must see many cities, men, and things.
One must be able to think back to the
days of childhood that are still
unexplained. The parents hadn't wanted to
hurt when they brought joy into not
grasp it. Although admittedly we ache to
get them on primetime cable news for the
ratings, we cannot imagine or abide his
hypocrisy or treason.
He got away in the end with nothing from
us even though we continued to protest
and it's not yet enough. One must have
memories of many nights of love, none like
the others. One must have been beside
the dime, set beside the dead in the room with
the open window and the fitful noise, not
to think can happen that in the most
rare hour the first word goes forth. Thus
ashamed, nah, we are proud of ourselves.
Elbowed out of the news cycle, we thought
the world would lose interest in this
minor bohemian poet. We had bugged his
room. We had bugged his roses with thorns for
the sake of a single story. I think that's
good. Thank you very much.
Thank you.