Reading Report (Bernadette Mayer, Columbia University, April 27, 2016)

I must tell you that W.H. Auden said that Rilke is the Santa Claus of loneliness.

I know it’s very easy to think Rilke’s a jerk—but just go there a little.

I want all of you to write a conversation with your house.

I was flying back from Chicago … first class … with The New York Times Magazine with my poem in it … isn’t that how life should be? It’s taken me 70 years for life to be this way.

In this case, grown-up work means, like, very confused work.

A good thing to learn at school is how to eat properly.

Everybody was a guy. They thought of me as a person to fuck. So my poetry was never taken seriously as poetry. I’m sorry to say this to you, since you’re a man, but one of the things I learned is that men are assholes.

Everyone thinks it’s so cute when a baby makes no sense and then falls down. But it would be just as cute if adults made no sense and then fell down.

Poetry means the same thing as engineering. You make something out of nothing.

Let’s put all these geniuses together in a home.

I’ve been thinking about animals quite a lot … I mean, that’s weird, right?

Favorite time of day, let’s see … evening because the colors are changing … and they can be so different.