Following Oprah’s reading of David Wagoner’s poem Lost, the poet updated us on the varied apperances of this popular verse.

“The poem has had a very strange history in addition to David Whyte‘s promotion of it. It’s been used as the basis of a sermon by the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Seattle as well as ministers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lexington, Virginia; it’s been put on greeting cards without my permission and on several college T-shirts; two Alaska kayak organizations have made their clients memorize it before excursions; Garrison Keillor has used it twice on his Writer’s Almanac; it’s been set to music at least three times; James Whitaker, the first Western Hemisphere climber of Mt. Everest, told me he recited it halfway up on his second successful climb to celebrate his 65th birthday; and the in-house magazine of Boeing printed it on their front page and attributed it to a 19th Century Northwest Coast Indian shaman. Oprah is certainly a welcome addition.”

Lost appears in David Wagoner’s book Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems. His new book, A Map of the Night, will be published in August 2008 by the University of Illinois Press.