October 29, 1998

Prior to the trip to New Jersey, my exposure to poetry had been limited to the times at workshops when writers take parts of poems, demonstrating the rhythm in our language. In the fifth grade, I remember picking up the beat patting the dust from erasers in the back of the room as Miss Greengross recited portions of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." (Eraser dusters become quite musical after a few semesters' practice.) But the Dodge Festival was my first chance to hear poets of laureate rank read their work.

There must have been a thousand or more of us seated under the big concert tent every morning at nine to listen to the readings until 9:30 at night. Television cameras swung across one side of the stage on a long arm, taping for the Bill Moyers show. The audience varied from old grannies and graybeards to onslaughts of students and teachers on special days. All were bipeds. Just the shuffling of so many feet should have been distracting, yet for so huge a gathering, the acoustics and visibility from the floor were clear and audible.

Takes me about four days to stop gawking at people from the time I leave the ranch and to go to the city. Few in the crowd resembled the commonly held Greenwich Village Bohemian image of a poet. Most of the patrons and the participants dressed in denims and outdoor clothes. Costumes in the VIP section ran from a few professors dressed in coats and ties to dungarees and T-shirts. On the day New York City high school students over ran the grounds, more strange looking hair cuts and skin-piercing ornaments passed by than when I was in the Southern Highlands in New Guinea among the Hull Wig Men wearing human hair for headdresses. I tried to avoid staring at the gold bobs shining from the tongues and the tattooed snakes and spider webs on the shoulder blades. (Young nubile skin is perfect for tattoo art. Holds color, too.) Several times I asked the girls in the information tent direction, but the small gold specks bobbing on their tongues was so distracting, I had to request them to write things down.

At lunch, school kids raised to ride subways in New York City controlled the lines leading to the food booths. By taking turns, a friend and I were able to hold two spaces on a bench attached to a picnic table. After the meal, I stood up as straight as possible in the short distance between the bench and the edge of the table to stretch my back. When I sat down, a pirate-looking kid dressed in a slouchy black shirt and wide-legged pants had slipped under me. I said: "Whoops, beg your pardon." He responded in an outburst of street language at the correct level for a boy his age and urban bearing. I regained my composure by being grateful the incident didn't happen just before going in a tunnel on the subway in New York City.

Everybody else was friendly. I learned the parking routine the hard way. Cars were parked in meadows surrounding the grounds in the daytime, guided by attendants. However, after dark, the way back changed to paths through heavy timber, leading to a field spotted with sporadic rows of darkened automobiles. Just as I walked out of the woods to the lot, a lady behind me, the only person around, said, "I better go along with my flashlight and help you find your car." And she did, and she saved me a long walk wandering around hunting for the rent car in the darkness.

Three or four of the poets' work showed strong racial tones. One African American fellow, in particular, won over the audience with spellbinding readings, reminiscent in cadence and sound of the oldtime preachers striking the pulpits and shouting the gospel under tents in the hot Texas summers of my youth. I like ethnic food and music better than I trust ethnic causes and cases.

No way of hiding a Southern drawl as pronounced as mine. To keep myself out of a jam around the people who think of "South" as synonymous with "racism," I tell folks of all races how "energizing" I find their work. About one time out of 10, this strategy works. May not be a high rate of success, but it beats the insincerity of political correctness by several innings.

By day two, I lost contact of the drouth and the market failures at home. Lunch became a picnic down by a big pond surrounded by yellow butterflies fluttering about the wild flowers and gold and red plum colored leaves floating on the water. I didn't have to memorize one line of poetry. But I did bring home a quote from a Japanese poet written on a New Year's Day: "Fiftieth birthday; every morning from now on is pure profit."