Garrison Keillor: 2011 National Book Festival

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC now all the writers here at the festival is this past two days these past two days have been distinguished but I've been lucky enough to draw the two who actually need no introduction whatsoever and those who were here yesterday no I I had a conversation with Toni Morrison and today I get to finish the festival by introducing Garrison Keillor I'm sure that everyone here knows that he is the longtime mastermind and performer of Prairie Home Companion now approaching 40 years as well as the man behind the writers almanac and three anthologies of poems wonderful poems by the way and this afternoon he's going to talk about his most recent collection good poems American places and so without further ado let me introduce Garrison Keillor thank you very much back in the day my little daughter we didn't pay for a bottle of water back when Elvis was alive and coffee didn't cost 395 back then there was no internet Google hadn't been invented yet there were no chat rooms for us to go to we just sat around and talk to people we knew there were no there were no seatbelts no airbags you stood on the front seat next to your dad as he drove along drinking his beer or you sat on his lap and you helped him steer every Sunday we went for a drive to see the leaves when fall arrived there was no iPod to stick in your ear your parents were all there was to hear I was autistic back in the day but I didn't know it so I was okay I had no shrink for the big black beard people just looked at me and said well he's weird and left me alone and for therapy I spent all day in the library looking up things had no iPad but I was a kid and it wasn't that bad back in the day my little child there were no playdates we just ran wild we played in the streets we played in the ruins half the time they had no idea what we were doing we ran like coyotes in big herds and learned to smoke and say bad words and jump out of trees if they dared you to my mother would have been terrified but she never knew I'm fascinated watching you show me show me drinking beer again I need to see that I represent the low-end of poetry so that's why they brought me on last I started out an idealist my people were separatists they belonged to a separatist sect called the sanctified Brethren and we held ourselves away from the rest of the world to keep ourselves pure and to keep our carnal impulses under control but I got over it early staying separate from the rest of the world only whetted my that's wedded with a nature no wedded whetted my appetite for all that the world had to offer because I learned Elizabethan poets in junior high school who were not separate from the world William Shakespeare had an unhappy marriage in Stratford and so it prompted him to go into London and become an actor and to give us those sonnets none of which were about Anne Hathaway let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments he wrote but there were nothing but impediments in his marriage to Anne there is an irony for you unhappiness leading to art but it happens all the time I learned those beautiful poets who had a very low life expectancy Robert Herrick Shakespeare Christopher Marlowe and all of their poems said the same thing that summer is brief life is brief it is so beautiful as Emily Dickinson said life is so all-encompassing there's little time left for anything else and that from someone who spent most of her mature years in her father's house and a great deal of it in her upstairs bedroom success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed to comprehend a nectar requires sorest need not one of all the purple hosts who took the flag today can give the definition so clear of victory as he defeated dying on whose forbidden ear the distant sounds of triumph burst agonized and clear so I loved the poets who wrote about love since love was what I did not have I was 13 years old I was almost 6 feet tall I weighed a hundred and thirty-six pounds I had odd half ram horn rimmed glasses I had a home haircut with the tell-tale sign that the big arc shaved up over your ears high-water pants wrist sticking out of your cuffs hand-me-down clothes most of them from my older brother some from my older sister jeans that zipped up the side so no wonder you would learn poems like come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove that this brief summer yields and we will sit upon the rocks by shallow waterfalls and listened to melodious flocks of birds sing madrigals Oh daffodils we weep to see you haste away so soon as yet the early morning Sun had not attained its noon so gather rosebuds while ye may for time is still a flying and this same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying I had no conception of mortality when I was 13 of course but you put these things into your head and then you remember them when you are of an age that you can understand them there was a time when grove and stream and every common sight had all the freshness of a dream and radiance so bright though nothing can bring back the hour of Splendor in the grass the loveliness of summer flower its glory soon is past because they had covered the high ground I then felt no obligation to try to do it myself so I wrote poems like oh what a luxury it be what pleasure Oh what perfect bliss how ordinary and yet chic to pee to piss to take a leak to feel your bladder just go free and open like the mighty miss and all your cares go down the creek to pee to piss to take a leak more gentleman of great physique who can hold water for one week for ladies who 1/4 cup of tea can fill completely up for folks in your analysis for little kids just learning this for everyone it's pretty great to urinate women are more circumspect but men can piss with great effect with terrible hydraulic force can make a stream or change its course can put out fires or cigarettes and sometimes laying down our bets late at night outside the bars we like to aim up at the stars oh yes for men it's much more grand women sit or squat we stand and hold the fellow in our hand and proudly watch the mighty arc adjust the range and make our mark on stones and posts for rival men to smell and not to come back again I was beautiful you did a beautiful job human sperm is very small five microns that's about all it's just a cell with a dangly tail not as big as the ovum but still you have to love them and they're produced in the testes of the male beneath their shiny domes they contain your chromosomes and the tail can kick just like a lake nothing could be finer than to swim up a vagina in search of a rendezvous with an egg the sperm have one ambition and that's the gained admission to the female reproductive canal and once they get in it they go a millimeter a minute along with 40 million of their pounds the sperm is no boob when it smells the fallopian tube it goes into some crazy figure Eight's about ten thousand times as those female enzymes keep egging him on to penetrate the sperm all advance and they do their little dance but only one gets through the egg membrane and the union of those two that's what led to you so be thankful that your dad did not abstain that old man in the garage once let loose a great barrage and though he is now ancient and infirm and his breath is bad children he's your dad because he contributed his sperm you can get them from a bank or from Jim or John or Frank but when it comes to fatherhood there's just one man to thank he was young and he was dumb but when things began to hum he did not withdraw he became your paw and that is where we all come from the only good reason to write a poem is to impress a woman I think Shakespeare may have felt the same way and when he wrote when in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state I think he had one person in mind his great poem about the redemptive power of love when Yeats wrote wine it comes in at the mouth and love comes at the eye and that is all we know of truth for we grow old and die I lift the glass up to my mouth and look at you inside he had someone in mind and I'm sure that he gave the poem to her as soon as he possibly could handwritten on vellum paper and watched for her reaction to have one passionate reader would be preferable to having a thousand indifferent readers and you never know who might read a poem and take it personally you could only hope for that you may crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of green and minced garlic drizzled with olive oil we ate them lovingly our legs coiled together under a table and salmon and dill and lemon and whole wheat couscous baked with fresh ginger and garlic and a hill of green beans and carrots roasted with honey and tofu it was beautiful the candles the lemon the silver the Sun shining down on our northern street me with my hand on your leg you my lover in your jeans and green t-shirt and beautiful bare feet how simple life is we buy a fish we are fed we sit close to each other we talk and then we go to bed as a sonnet that I wrote years ago years ago for someone who made me exactly that meal Margaret was the smartest girl in the 11th grade tall with dark hair tied up in a tight French braid she was the only girl I knew who read Albert Camus and for that very reason I did too I stood behind her in choir a lonely baritone but when I smelled her exotic French cologne and felt the existential heat of her body I became Luciano Pavarotti in choir when I was 17 I met the beautiful Christine the woman I adored and as the choir sang praises to the Lord I sang to the back of Christine's head many many things that could never be said I tried to invent a new form the singable sonnet the beauty of the sonnet being first of all that it is only 14 lines and so it imposes a limit on you and you discover that so often 14 lines really is enough and it carries with it a rhyme and a scheme of rhyme and meter that make it memorable which is the hope of any writer that your work might catch on somebody's memory like a like a sand burr and stick to them the way those poems did that I read when I was 13 loveliest of trees that sherry now is hung with bloom along the bow it stands along the woodland ride wearing white for Easter dye the sonnet that kicks bounces along and a beautiful in a beautiful tempo and you remember it you remember it for decades I had a stroke and one of the first things I did when I finally collected my faculties was to find out how many of my faculties I still had and did I still remember and when in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes and did I still remember out in the West Texas town of El Paso I fell in love with a Mexican girl and I did for the most part remember them and remembered my own sonnets as well in the morning when she awoke My dear lover in bed on her back buck naked I crept under the cotton sky and over a hill with Tufts of sea grass and snaked my way into a ravine and there found a delicate sea creature trembling with sensation a pink an ammonia and touched it and whoa the sound of a soprano singing French Italian and Croatian simultaneously and touched it with my tongue and tasted caviar and Cabernet and from above was sweetly sung a Puccini REO by Billie Holiday so prettily and then a shudder and a sign and we lay quietly the opera star and let me sing you one more back in the day my little daughter we didn't pay for a bottle of water this is a prayer and we can wind up with this and then if you have any questions this is an unusual prayer in that it's a prayer for the existence of God not for anything more specific than that I don't think you'll find anything of the sort in the Book of Common Prayer or hear anything of the sort in the evangelical lutheran church but you should here I am O Lord and here is my prayer please be there don't want to ask too much miracles and such just whisper in the air please be there when I die like other folks don't want to find out you're a hoax so I'm not on my knees asking for world peace or that the polar ice cap freeze and save the polar bear or even that the poor be fed or angels hover or my bed but I would sure be pissed if I should have been an atheist oh please exist one more poem which I will not do out of deference to the signers I will not do my poem which consists of the names of the 87 counties of Minnesota akin Anoka Becker Beltrami Benton based on blue earth round Carlton Carver cast Chippewa chess agua clay clearwater cook cottonwood growing to go to dodge douglas terrible three more Fillmore good new grand Hennepin Houston Hubbard Isanti Itasca Jackson can I back County oh hi kids encouraging lack of our liquor woods let's still rely on my phone I want to do the rest of it I'll just leave it right thank you so much thank you to the signers showdown showdown I just want to make it interesting for the signers that's all and glad that you were here as well I think there are microphones in here if you have a question or anything that you'd like to ask that I would know anything about yes yes my retirement plans retirement is a treacherous step for for anybody I did it once already when I was 48 46 I think and was a huge huge mistake it's a treacherous step you you you know you you think that you're gonna be free and and live a different kind of a life but by this age you only know how to live one kind of life and all sorts of things follow it's a slippery slope is what I'm saying retirement and you take that step in that and then suddenly people are calling you sir and people are reaching for your elbow as you go downstairs and you go to get into your car to drive you know after dark and people are suggesting maybe they ought to drive and then that leads to other things and before you know it you are you you they shovel you into the Good Shepherd home and and you're forced to hang out with people you've been avoiding all of your life and so it's very hard on people no my my hope is just to get other people to do the work and and to become a sort of a gray a grey eminence which I almost am now so yeah somebody standing directly behind you yeah sure when people gather under a tent in Lake Wobegon and there is a speaker he's not talking like I'm talking here today he's talking about Hellfire and damnation and and he carries that message right straight to everybody under the tent and he walks around a big tall skinny man with with with with black hair falling into his eyes and he keeps brushing it bad we have no idea who he is but he comes to town regularly and he carries an enormous black leather King James Bible like a hand grenade in his left hand and he never actually opens it because he knows it by heart everything that he wants to everything that he wants to know and you know for all I've sinned and come short of the glory of God that's what he'd be that's what he would be he would be preaching be sure your sin will find you out and him and he bears down hard on young people just like yourself you come down front come down front weeping weeping very different from today very different was your another yes I'm so oh there's another microphone over there well I I write Prairie Home Companion so I wrote yesterday's show it differs from other writing and that with other writing if I'm working on a book or I just wrote a review for The Times Book Review I consider it a point of honor to be at least two weeks past deadline and six months if possible it's a game that's played between writers and editors writing for a Prairie Home Companion you do not have that luxury and so you you write I wrote the show on Friday morning there was a rehearsal at the theater on Friday late afternoon and I realized that most of what I had written on Friday morning was was really was really not worth it and so I went home and I rewrote it but you see the point is that that that nothing is ever finished there's no such thing as finishing a piece of writing it simply is taken away from you that's all and and what Prairie Home Companion it's it's taken away at five o'clock Central time on Saturday and there is no going beyond that I have sometimes stood on stage with sharpie and I have marked up actors script as they were reading that it's not that easy not that easy to do with books it's a whole other thing I'm writing a guy noir mystery right now and it's way past over you got pleading letters from your editor and she's just weeping begging you and and and it just gives me a strange kind of pleasure and that's all yes a born-again Unitarian well that would be an amazing thing wouldn't it how would that happen you would just go to a coffee shop on Sunday morning and just it would just suddenly come over you no I I did it once as a sanctified Brethren child and and we believe that it took but we're not sure of course yes what was the origination integration the inspiration inspiration integration integration would be an interesting question how was that character integrated into public radio that that character is sort of it's sort of contrary to public radio and that was and that was really the inspiration that you know which was being aware of the constrictions of good taste and you know to find a way around it somehow so guy noir is is the only person in public radio who can who can really admire women in a frank way right I think so I mean you know she walked in and and she was tall and blond hair that fell down on her shoulders like a waterfall that any man would have been proud to go over she was skinny she her pant her jeans were so tight I could read the embroidery on her underwear it said Tuesday they can't say that on All Things Considered they wouldn't they wouldn't last one there's the there's the hole there's the whole rationale for fiction right there just being able to let loose a little bit with somebody over this side oh there you are I just want to tell you thank you I discovered you seven and a half years ago while I was sitting in my apartment after experiencing st. Thomas us we were meant to me well who you thank you sure man in the red shirt well I would I would keep any any public facility open that's in use and and so I have to assume that they were that they were that they were being used but but but the libraries have have undergone you know sharp change you know with the with the internet and the introduction of Google I mean for anybody who writes a radio show on Friday morning Google is a godsend and so I don't go down to the library and pour through volumes you know to to find out what I need to know about the migratory habits of the common loon I wanted for a little sketch and then zap but but so libraries just have to just have to reinvent themselves as the rest of us do I think they have a future as some kind of sanctuary and and I'm because of because because people who who love the Internet gradually become aware of a kind of an OCD reliance on the Internet and they need somebody to cut them off and I think the libraries have a future as a place where you will go and tall women with their hair tied back in buns wearing sensible shoes and a pencil stuck in their hair will make you get off line of course I'm here to give advice they are they are a teenage daughter is is sent to you by God as sort of divine justice to avenge your your Blessed Mother and also because they're just so dramatic and they're so interesting and their and and their English is fractured and and and they're addicted to texting and they do it so well and there's all this data going on in their heads and and that's the future so we have to we have to be in favor of the future right we have to just stand back and watch how old is she 13 the same age is mine so there you are well if it's any comfort daughters are much harder on their mothers and so look at it from my point of view Michigan the closing ensemble clothing ensemble I'm in radio and and you just you don't you don't worry about your countenance what whatsoever and you know it's dark you know it's a bright light on you you don't think about it and you never and you never listen to yourself you never I don't listen to the show and I do the show I enjoy doing the show but I wouldn't enjoy listening to it and in in the same way I don't look at photographs of myself I don't sit and study them it's it's none of my business it's it's other people's problem it's not you can only you can only take on so much trouble and and don't take on any more than then you're entitled to take on I have a 13 year old daughter yes yeah well some of your writing has sort of a regional I was wondering what kind of do you think you'd be if you had been born someplace less interesting like say the east coast I don't know where where around the east coast well the beauty the beauty of the Midwest you see is that is that is that most people in America have never been there and this immediately gives you a great deal of latitude and and and when you tell people on the East Coast including Delaware that you're from Minnesota there's a there's a long pause and they say it gets cold there doesn't it so we we are a state of mystery but we're also an iconic stage cold winter so here we are we're in we're in late September and if you are telling stories for a living you can start getting into winter in about another two three weeks we won't actually get winter in Minnesota until November maybe even early December but nobody's going to come checking on so you can you can you can put them all in a little white house that's that's you know leaning off to the southeast because the wind is out of the Northwest and and whiteout blizzards and and poor children going to catch the bus unable to see their hands in front of their faces and and and and digging caves into the snow and and and surviving there for for weeks on end and becoming feral and being raised by coyotes I mean you can you can you can tell this sort of a story and it will be half believed in in in the East Coast including including in Delaware I I have gone out east and have told a story about being in a whiteout blizzard and being picked up to go to school in a sleigh pulled by two black horses and a man with a handlebar moustache and rains wound around his forearms and the and the sleigh lying in the sleigh with other whimpering children going through the storm and and under a buffalo robe and and I just like to watch the faces of the audience as I tell this story and most they're mostly with me and then I have the sleigh go down onto the ice of the Mississippi River and swerve from side to side to avoid tattered men in gray who are hiding between rocks and trees the last remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia and still some people are with me teenagers but you know you take what you can get now it just offers such enormous advantages to be from Minnesota that I think anybody from the east coast to is a serious writer should be had head out west Minnesota South Dakota Wyoming take your pick Ohio State just one school after another that's humiliated our teams all right thanks again to our one more you know what that is could you please describe what lutefisk is is a holiday delicacy which is made of cod which has been dried so that it resembles elm bark and it's been dried with the use of lye and and so when it's when it is reconstituted and water is added to it it has a particularly pungent lye aroma about it it has to be rinsed many many many times and and even then to some people with them with a great deal of imagination it still smells of Lies so that it's it's like eating soap but but there is good good lutefisk and then there's the other lutefisk and so you want to choose your cook carefully and and that's and that's true of anything anything in life but you want to a small town and and if you find a woman in her mid to late 70s maybe early eighties a woman with an old apron and kind of loose upper arms that's your that's your lutefisk cook all right I know nothing about Nashville you would know more than I but I was there at a sort of a crucial point in my life when I was looking for something to do and I went down on assignment from the New Yorker magazine and I wrote an article about about the Grand Ole Opry and their last show at at the old Ryman Auditorium the old gospel tabernacle down in down near Broadway and Tootsie's orchid lounge and Ernest Ives record shop I was in 1974 and March Richard Nixon was in serious trouble here in Washington and he went down to to be there for the first performance out in their big suburban hall and and I wrote about their last show at the Ryman Auditorium and and out of that out of that show I looked at it and thought this would be interesting to do and being an English major I had a lifelong ambition to sing on stage in front of people and so I went up to Minnesota and I started a show that was it was it was a great time backstage at the old Ryman Auditorium Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton was singing for a beach not chewing tobacco and and Stonewall Jackson the shortest man in country music and and Loretta Lynn got off a big bus in a kind of a enormous white enormous white antebellum dress and her hair piled up high big hair beautiful singers and such sweet people we've been trying to emulate them ever since thank you so much this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 27,145

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Keywords: library, congress, nbf

Id: kulaOqRdZdw

Length: 50min 21sec (3021 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 04 2011