SOURCE: "Something Ode, Something New," in Washington Post, October 14, 1995, p. D1.

[In the following essay, Weeks recounts Hass's first public reading as U.S. Poet Laureate.]

When the tall man in the black suit stood to introduce Robert Hass, the new poet laureate of the United States, the tall man said, "Welcome to another year of poetry at the Library of Congress."

In the back of the room someone whispered, "This reading's going to last longer than I thought."

But in truth, Hass's first public appearance in Washington revealed a witty, provocative, to-the-point guy whose conversation is poetic and whose poetry is conversational.

More than 250 people—lots of bearded, ponytailed men, and women in black sweaters—gathered in the mundane Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the library's James Madison Memorial Building Thursday night to hear Hass read for 1 1/2 hours.

Some of the poems were written by Hass, others by two poets Hass has translated—the Japanese haiku master Basho and Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who has written of poetry as an expedition "as necessary as love."

Dressed in a dark shirt, dark coat and dark tie, Hass stood behind a blond-wood lectern flanked by towering Yamaha speakers, and in a thin, lilting voice led the audience through an expedition of longing and lust, of nature and shame.

     Two Basho haikus:
 
     What voice,
     what song, spider,
     in the autumn wind?
     and
     Teeth sensitive to the sand
     in salad greens—
     I'm getting old.

The reading fulfilled one of the poet laureate's official obligations. During his tenure, Hass, who will also be poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, must mount a reading series. This fall he will bring nine poets to town, beginning with Karen Alkalay-Gut of Israel and Iowa poet Jorie Graham on Thursday. In the spring he will usher in another batch, to include poet, critic, playwright and novelist Ishmael Reed. Then, before he leaves, Hass must deliver a closing lecture. For services rendered, he'll receive a $35,000 stipend. The appointment is for one year. Some poets stay two.

As poet laureate, Hass may occasionally be given the opportunity to commemorate a historic event with a bit of verse. But the official duties are minimal, and that's fortunate. He will continue to teach two courses this fall at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has been on the faculty since 1989.

Hass has a hard act to follow. His predecessor, Rita Dove, who served as poet laureate for two years, not only fulfilled her requisite duties, but she also led a crusade to make poetry more visible and more vital. She showed up on "Sesame Street" and on Garrison Keillor's radio program. She organized a poetry reading by District schoolchildren. She did everything but recite the national anthem at the World Series. She stretched herself so thin, she was hospitalized twice for exhaustion.

On Thursday night, Hass looked pretty relaxed. He said he was excited about being in Washington. He looked out the window toward the Capitol dome twinkling in the night sky. "I get to lobby for the mind and the heart. I don't think they're in danger, but I think the country is in danger in relation to them."

He read a poem about the free-market system. "Markets don't make communities," Hass said. "Imagination makes communities. Markets make networks of self-interested individuals."

There were times when Hass's observations and his poems ran together and the audience couldn't really tell the difference. He spoke of eavesdropping on a fragmented conversation that wound up in his poem "The Beginning of September." The line he used was, "He didn't think she ought to and she thought she should."

Glasses low on his nose, a wisp of blond hair pasted on his forehead, Hass read poem after poem from his several books, including Field Guide, Praise and Human Wishes. He paused now and then for an aside or to pat his heart Cal Ripkenstyle. During his longer poems, he sometimes looked up from his text and continued reciting the verse by memory, rapt in his own words.

Many of his poems are autobiographical. He was born in San Francisco in 1941 and has spent most of his life there. He went to St. Mary's College in Moraga, Calif., and Stanford University. Besides writing poetry, he has penned essays, reviews and literary criticism. He has won a bunch of awards including the Yale Younger Poets Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He's received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship.

One of the poems that especially appealed to the Thursday audience was the unpublished "Forty Something." Hass prefaced his reading by saying, "This poem is not about me and these words were not spoken by my wife."

She says to him, musing, "If you ever leave me, and marry a younger woman and have another baby, I'll put a knife in your heart." They are in bed, so she climbs onto his chest, and looks directly down into his eyes. "You understand? Your heart."

Hass's wife, poet Brenda Hillman, was with him on his first official visit to Washington. At a luncheon yesterday she stood across the room and watched folks swarm around her husband. She explained that Hass will fly to town every other week, "and he'll do his own laundry." She has written four collections. The latest is "Bright Existence." She teaches creative writing at Hass's alma mater, St. Mary's.

The luncheon was a sunny affair. Former librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin and his wife, Ruth, were there. The current librarian, James Billington, and his wife, Marjorie, were there. So was Jack Shoemaker, associate publisher and editor in chief of the newly created Counterpoint publishing house, and Reed Whittemore, who was a poetry consultant to the library in 1984.

Over baked chicken and steamed vegetables, Hass and Whittemore moved from a discussion of mythology to personal childhood stories of dressing in capes and dashing about. Hass said he often appropriated a baby diaper and so his brother called him "Diaper Boy."

After lunch, Billington rose and said he hated to interrupt the sparkling conversation that was going on over the pumpkin tarts—"the desserts, not the people"—but he wanted Hass to say a few words about the art of translation.

Hass told of sitting down with another translator and trying to capture the excitement of a Polish poem in English. "The great truth about translation," he said, "is that foot doesn't rhyme with grass."

Hass spoke for a few more minutes, answered a few more questions, and then in conclusion said he hoped as poet laureate to do some more translation, to translate the excitement of American literature into something everyone can understand.