0026 Listening To A Reading By Robert Hass

There are so many different postures that may be adopted while listening to a poetry reading especially one that’s being filmed - different tilts of neck and head, some natural, some chosen to suit the occasion; it’s the panelled reading-room of Berkeley – lecture desk, a couple of sofas, inappropriately satin-striped for library use; various chairs; November mid-day Bay Area sunlight filters through the high windows, the room’s comfortably full, a number at the poet’s feet, mostly younger girls and a boy whose clothes say poet; but just outside the door, pressing in like the background crowd in an 'important' Renaissance painting, a horde it seems; some fire or other precautions have kept them out, as would the prissy warnings that precede the video, that adult themes and language will be used, and ‘viewer discretion is advised’… Zack Rogow who has introduced the poet sits back relaxed – he's done a good and generous job; some sit as if they’re on screen all the time - which they are; some sit as if ‘I’m just here with him…’; the girl on the floor looks at her companion after each poem as if for validation of some frail cultural bond or fragile claim; some look as if they’re older faculty wives attending more a social occasion, except that the one who doesn't like a poet - is a poet; one girl's got a note-book and a dreamy look - she's gleaning seeds for her own poems; that girl with the perfectly chosen spectacle frames assesses the speaker 'coolly'; a girl at the back tilts her head as if already practising for the time in forty years when she’ll be a wealthy patron of the arts who can afford to be close to culture yet detached – she paid for it… and the man who’s reading to us with a smile twisted with humour and affection and humanity in a face lined with the challenge of the inexpressible is radiantly, the happiest human being in the room and - his eyes say too - loves them all and individually, just above, or just below, his love of words and speech.