This morning I had the pleasure of introducing the poet Ed Roberson who gave a reading at The Louisville Conference. Here are my remarks, which include a snippet of one of his fine poems.

 *

Ed Roberson is the author of  seven books of poetry including the National Poetry Series Winner Atmosphere Conditions and most recently City Eclogue.  Among his many awards and recognitions are a Lila Wallace Readers Digest Award and a Lenore Marshall Award. 

It was while reading his 1994 collection Voices Cast out to Talk Us In that a certain fact caught my eye. In his forward, Andrew Welsh tells is that Ed Roberson “crossed the nation on a motorcycle.”

Now as my friends and students know, I am a keen motorcyclist myself so when Alan Golding offered me the chance to introduce Ed, I happily agreed.  For when I was young and naive, I imagined every third (or fourth) poet would ride a motorcycle.  Well, I’m older and wiser now and though I still hope to hear Ducati lover Frederick Seidel someday read his poetry, I know that such chances are in reality  rare ones.

Indeed the last opportunity I recall is when I heard Thom Gunn read, and though I saw him read several times never once did I hear him read from his motorcycle poems.  So I hope I am forgiven today for seizing the bull by the horns right now and reading a few lines from Ed’s poem “The Motorcycle Crossing”:

It takes nothing,   a stone.

            So aint nothing happenin

In the office             and you lay it down

            Mean it

                        All going down inside

 ***

Your face   a landscape

            Singing quiet to yourself

                        Every little thing

Gonna be alright

No snake  no slick  no stone

I just laid it down.

“Laying it down”: itself a smooth stone of words among motorcyclists, made smooth through repeated terrifying use-- but here in Roberson’s poem the familiar lingo seems new to me and full of resonance, coming as it does right before a phrase like it “Mean it”—which to me evokes Elizabeth Bishop’s famous sestina “one art” with its command to its author that

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

But the collision of such associations Roberson executes is no train wreck.  In addition to Bishop I hear the growl of Muddy Waters, the deep symbolist resonance of Mark Stand and behind him James Wright, the laconic turn of phrase mastered by Louise Bogan, not to mention the wheelhouse of the great moderns that must be mentioned-- Wallace Stevens, Pound, Olson and Zukofsky.

This, to me, is one of the chief pleasures of reading Roberson but it is a pleasure that sharpens to an end.  That end is, I think, the sense that you could and indeed must talk to this poet about what you just read.  And the subjects on you mind will be two things: the craft of poetry and the world.  And so if motorcycles don’t strike your fancy, well then, while you listen I am sure  you are going to hear something that does, and after all, isn't that is why we are here this morning?  So please join me in welcoming Ed Roberson.

***

PS: Red Roomer Evie Shockley was in the audience too!