We need clowns to speak the truth, says Pacific Grove poet Barbara Mossberg.

Barbara Mossberg is worth your time in person, as well as through her poetry collections, the latest of which, Clown Cantos: Everything Is Alive In Its Own Way, Singing, was published earlier this year.

For the occasion, a Friday afternoon author’s talk and dramatic reading was in order on April 11 at the Pacific Grove Public Library – except after an introduction and clapping of encouragement, the stage remained empty for minutes. The audience – a full room – could hear someone shuffling behind a wall.

Finally, she appeared. There is a California Poet Laureate and the Poet in Residence for Pacific Grove dressed as a happy clown, handing balloons to members of the crowd. They are all under a spell by now.

“To tell you the truth, I didn’t feel so good going after a living spider,” Mossberg recites from one of her new poems. “But that is the point, we can’t have spiders.” The poet, possibly trembling, goes to the closet for a weapon. It leads to an epic and, for the most part, moral battle between the human with a broom, in this case a poet who knows well that each life is precious, and a gentleman spider who will simply not have it.

What a wonderful world Mossberg is inviting us into – a cosmos of our cultural achievements thrown into a virgin land of happy turkeys, brave spiders and tender octopi, between which poets Emily Dickinson and Virgil walk to a picnic where cake is necessarily served.

“Shakespeare tells us we need clowns to speak the truth to the power,” Mossberg comments on Hamlet and on the title of her new book, in a tone that is at once raised and whispery. She reads her poems, each one wonderful and full of surprises.

No matter how trivial the subject might seem at first – if she is dropping a box of adventurous blueberries onto the grocery floor that then spread each direction with a speed of light, storming the store in search of trouble and proving the theory of the universe’s expansion all at once – there is substance.

Mossberg is seeking in the culture and natural life around her the hope that life will be wonderful again. No one will worry about the world. If anyone can teach us how to enjoy life fully, it’s Mossberg, who came to the library event with three different costumes.

Do we have to mention that cake was served?

Clown Cantos: Everything Is Alive In Its Own Way, Singing by Barbara Mossberg is available in local bookstores.