Syracuse University. - Now go out there (and get curious)

Australia HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd. Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada www.harpercollins.ca New Zealand HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive Rosedale 0632 Auckland, New Zealand www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF, UK www.harpercollins.co.uk United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 195 Broadway New York, NY 10007 www.harpercollins.com Cover design by Robin Bilardello The Art of MemoirLitSinners WelcomeCherryViper RumThe Liars ClubThe Devils TourAbacus A slightly altered version of this speech was given at Syracuse Universitys Commencement on May 10, 2015. NOW GO OUT THERE.

Copyright 2016 by Mary Karr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. FIRST EDITION Art by Gregg Kulick ISBN: 978-0-06-244209-3 EPub Edition APRIL 2016 ISBN 9780062442109 16 17 18 19 20 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For George Saunders, colleague at Syracuse for two decades, wise man, wiseass, scrivener, editor, kind man, bro. My goal in high school was to stay out of the penitentiary, so if I can go from there to standing up here, yall can all get yourselves gainful employment of some kind.

Yes, those are your parents clapping. When I told my pal Doonie I was getting an honorary doctorate, he quipped, Being a doctor who cant write prescriptions is like being a general in the Salvation Army. This made me a few notches less terrified about today, which is how poetry worksyou start in a scared place and get zip-lined somewhere truer. The real purpose of poetry, W. H. Auden said, is disenchantment.

Not throwing fairy dust in your eyes. Its stripping away whats false so you can see whats true underneath. I like to say poetry has to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. So Ill start with a Mothers Day poem for the proud mamas out there. After decades of food prep and tuition payments, I hope youre feeling the magnificence of your kids accomplishments. And your own.

Lets give it up for mamas. Go, mamas. Magnificent job out there, mamas, and single dads playing mamasactually and dads, too. I remember my own son reaching the age of sixteen, and the day he drove away in a car. Honest to God, if I had seen a giraffe drive away in my vehicle, I wouldve had more confidence that Id see animal and vehicle come back in one piece. A BLESSING FROM MY SIXTEEN YEARS SON I have this son who assembled inside me during Hurricane Gloria.

In a flash, he appeared, in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled. Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras. Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous. Look at the muscled obelisk of him now pawing through the icebox for more grapes. Sixteen years and not a bone broken, not a single stitch.

By his age, I was marked more ways, and small. Hes a slouching six foot two, with implausible blue eyes, which settle on the pages of Emersons Self Reliance with profound belligerence. A girl with a navel ring could make his cell phone buzz, or an Afrod boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell creatures strange as dragons or eels. Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel arcane as any oracles. Dante claims school is harshing my mellow. Rodney longs to date a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman willing to do stuff shell regret.

Theyve come to lead my son into his broadening spiral. Someday soon, the tether will snap. I birthed my own mom into oblivion. The night my son smashed the car fender, then rode home in the rain-streaked cop cruiser, he asked, Did youand Dad screw up so much? Hed let me tuck him in, my grandmothers wedding quilt from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Dontblame us, I said. Youre your ownidiot now. At which he grinned.

The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy took it hard. Hed found my son awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights, where hed draped his own coat over her shaking shoulders. My fault, hed confessed right off. Nice kid, said the cop. Thank you for loaning us your nice kids. And kids, thanks for being here.

A university is a city of ideas, and were grateful you became citizens of our city. Whether your degree is in architecture or exercise physiology, law or journalism or mathematics, by being here youve added something to the conversation that this city runs on the way the body runs on breath. In the words of great mathematician G. H. Hardy, what youve added differs in degree only and not in kind from the contributions of the great artists and doers and great thinkers and doers across historyfrom Shakespeare to Toni Morrison, Einstein to Carmelo. And Im not just talking to the A-makersthe valedictorian and salutatorians. And Im not just talking to the A-makersthe valedictorian and salutatorians.

Im addressing the squeakers, too, the people who showed up today as if sliding into a base, maybe dragging a few incompletes behind you. Good for youyou made it! I hope you all learned what you came for and what you didnt. If youre lucky you fell in love here, and if youre really lucky, you had your heart broken, because that made you a deeper person and maybe forced you to find friends to lean on. Syracuse is now your alma materyour souls motherand we hope coming back here will always feel a little like coming home.