WEBVTT

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There's a great phrase by
the beat poet, Philip Whalen,

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to describe what they
were trying to do

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and what he was trying
to do in relationships.

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He called it
continuous nerve music.

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And there's this sort
of sense that there's

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this ongoing stream, which
has a sort of shape to it.

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And if you can kind
of practice with it,

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you can begin in the
same way that people

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who are jazz musicians,
for instance--

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and who may do a lot of
practice on their own

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before a performance
in terms of playing

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lots of different parts of
music-- but then once the music

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starts, that all the
elements of the practice

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sort of start coming together.

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So you have this sort of sense
of people basically using

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material that,
maybe at one point,

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would have been in notebooks.

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It's very notational a lot of
the time for New York School

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poets, there's
this sort of sense

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of things that have been
noticed quickly in the way

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that you get them in notebooks.

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But here, they're being
kind of collaged together.

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They're just being
brought together,

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partly by the force of the
personality of the person, OK?

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The sensibility of that person
is enough, they believe,

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to hold it all together, OK?

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And what you start
getting is, you also

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get these, like, slight--

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it's very talky.

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It's very kind of--

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it's glib, in a way.

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It's light, OK?

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There's a kind of sociability
to it, a sense of friendliness.

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But there's also
something that's

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being registered at
certain moments that's

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a little darker--

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and not disturbed in a deep
way, just kind of unsure.

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And so those lines--

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"But it is good to
be several floors up

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in the dead of the night,
wondering whether you

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are any good or not.

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And the only decision you
can make is that you did it."

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And there's something
a little dark.

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The shading there-- it's
a very, very slight thing.

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But I think that's sort of--
there's a little bit of doubt

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in the whole enterprise, right?

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It just kind of erupts.

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And it's not his job, as a poet,
to make something out of that.

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It's not his job, for
instance, to confront it.

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It's just his job to sort of
notate it as part of a living--

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and not to exaggerate
it, not to make it

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something melodramatic,
something that it isn't

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actually in everyday life.

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Because the way we
experience life seems

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more accurate in these poems.

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These poems seem more accurate
to the way we actually

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experience life in
consciousness-- which, again,

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was, like, one of the big
projects of a certain part

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of American poetry in the 1950s.

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There's something that I--

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in this stanza that
begins, "As well as

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a number of other things."

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And then he goes on to
talk about Allen and Peter.

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Allen is Allen Ginsberg.

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Peter is Peter Orlovsky.

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Joe is Joe LeSueur. 
Kenneth is Kenneth Koch.

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I've forgotten who Norman is.

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It's very easy for us now,
at this point in time,

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to read that and just to
kind of take it for granted.

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But that was not
something that had

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been done in American poetry
previous to this point, OK?

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The idea that you would
bring your friends up

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in this very casual way in
the middle of this poem--

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it's kind of an aside.

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What it has to do with
the poem as a whole--

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if you were a new critic looking
at this poem in the 1950s,

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you might say, this
doesn't have anything

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to do with the actual
theme of the poem.

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It doesn't seem overtly to have
anything to do with that stuff.

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And it's sort of-- there's
something really radical about,

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in the context of American
society in the 1950s, which

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is a society that's increasingly
organized for mass production,

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increasingly anonymous, in a
sense, the idea of blending in.

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It's an extremely paranoid,
politically paranoid time.

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This is the time of the
communist witch hunts, which

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one feels that people who
are at all different or think

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differently are being searched
out in order to be eliminated.

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And there's a sort of sense
that you should sort of

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be absorbed into the
larger goals of society

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rather than an individual.

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And yet, this is sort of
insisting on the individual.

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It's insisting on
friendship, on intimacy.

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There's something incredibly
intimate about him just

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tossing off this
aside and thinking,

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you will be interested in that.

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You'll be interested
in his friends.

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My friends are interesting.

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They are really interesting
people if you got to know them.

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You'd like them.

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And you get these sort
of conflicting tonalities

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that-- they just kind of
flicker there, as they do,

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I think, in consciousness.

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"I wish I were reeling
around Paris instead

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of reeling around New York.

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I wish I weren't reeling at all.

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It is spring.

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The ice has melted.

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The Ricard is being poured.

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We are all happy and
young and toothless.

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It is the same as old age."

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There's a sort of a sense of
contrarian contradictoriness

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a little bit.

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And there's a sort of
sense of the only thing

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to do is simply continue.

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Is that simple?

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Yes, it is simple.

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There's some strange--
it's all very light.

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But at the same time, there's a
kind of resistance building up.

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And you feel, I think,
again, those sort

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of anxieties that are just below
the surface of the personality.

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They're not being made into
a big deal in the palm.

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It's not the job of the poet
to solve the problem, OK?

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It's not a problem that
needs to be solved.

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It's just part-- that
anxiety, which is there

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in a sort of subtonal way,
is something that we all

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experience in everyday life.

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And to make it into something
that's a problem to be solved

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is false in this aesthetic.

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And in some way,
that's the risk.

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There is something heroic
in making your friends

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the subject of the poem.

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There is something
heroic in making

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your very personal
sphere a kind of place

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that the reader can kind of
enter into with pleasure.

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The assumption is a heroic
assumption, I think.

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And when you look at the poem
at the ending of the poem,

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you see that there's
no resolution to it.

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I mean, I love--

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there's a kind of
cataloging of things

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that he has a kind of affection
for or an interest in.

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And then you get this
sort of penultimate line--

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"René Char, Pierre
Reverdy, Samuel Beckett--

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it is possible, isn't it?"

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So it's kind of invoking, in
some sense, his influences.

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And he says, "I love Reverdy
for saying yes, though I

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don't believe it."

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And this is actually a
sort of spiritual sadness,

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I think, at the end of the poem.

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And it's about this
undertow that you

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can hear in the passage
that Don Draper recites.

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There is something--
to be an individual;

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to be idiosyncratic in
this culture; to be gay;

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to be an artist; to be
interested in the arts.

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There's something
lonely that's being

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registered in all of this,
and a sort of adamancy

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that it has value.

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My life has value.

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Because it's my life.

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And there's something, for me,
profoundly moving, I think,

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about all of that.

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I don't think we
have a lot of time

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to talk about "The
Day Lady Died."

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I just would say that
if you look at it,

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it begins in sort
of classic manner.

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"It is 12:20 in New
York, a Friday."

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Again, you're just having this
sort of annotation of time.

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What's being
mentioned consistently

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in almost every line
in the first stanza

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is time, has to do with time.

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And the train times, in
a way, are sort of-- they

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are markers of a commuter life.

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And the people who
are commuting are

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people who are commuting
from the suburbs,

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and business
people-- men, mostly.

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And in a way,
O'Hara's immediately

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kind of situating
us in that world--

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it's all implicit.

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You know, it's all in the way
that you would experience it

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in everyday life.

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It's not being made
into a big deal.

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The whole project
of the poem, which

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is an elegy for Billie Holiday.

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I assume that most
of you know it

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is to memorialize
Billie Holiday,

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but also to make a claim
for her art in relation--

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so if you read the
poem, what you notice

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is that all of the art, most of
the art that's being mentioned,

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is European.

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It's high art.

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A lot of it's high modernism.

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It's an art that O'Hara
has an affection for.

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And in a way, there's a
kind of implicit claim

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that's being made for
Billie Holiday singing--

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a jazz singer, the only
truly American art form--

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jazz-- invented by
African Americans.

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So in one way, this is
a deeply political poem

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about this particular time.

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And it's a poem that builds up
pressure in interesting ways.

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Because it resists talking
about Billie Holiday directly.

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You don't hear about
her, despite the title.

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The title should
tell you that this is

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an elegy for Billie Holiday--

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Lady Day was Billie
Holiday's nickname.

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So the title is a play on that--

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"The Day Lady Died."

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You don't hear about her
until the very last stanza--

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at which point, the poem kind
of turns back in time and space.

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It goes back in memory.

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And it moves into this club.

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And all of the sort
of pressure that's

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been building-- because
you have this expectation

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that he's going to start
talking about Billie

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Holiday at some point.

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And he doesn't.

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Again, he's very much insisting
on this sort of idea of,

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I do this, I do that.

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And that's all the
poem has to be about.

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All that pressure
has been building up.

00:11:12.990 --> 00:11:15.020 align:middle line:84%
And it all kind of flows
into that final image

00:11:15.020 --> 00:11:18.323 align:middle line:90%
of her singing in the room--

00:11:18.323 --> 00:11:20.240 align:middle line:84%
"while she whispered a
song along the keyboard

00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:21.410 align:middle line:90%
to Mal Waldron.

00:11:21.410 --> 00:11:24.740 align:middle line:84%
And everyone and I
stopped breathing."

00:11:24.740 --> 00:11:26.440 align:middle line:84%
And this is one of
those moments where

00:11:26.440 --> 00:11:32.885 align:middle line:84%
the beautiful is being redefined
totally and for all time.

00:11:32.885 --> 00:11:34.260 align:middle line:84%
I think if O'Hara
were here, he'd

00:11:34.260 --> 00:11:37.050 align:middle line:84%
be rolling on the floor
laughing about a lot of this.

00:11:37.050 --> 00:11:39.150 align:middle line:84%
Because I don't think
that was exactly

00:11:39.150 --> 00:11:42.120 align:middle line:90%
their conscious intention.

00:11:42.120 --> 00:11:44.640 align:middle line:84%
But again, there is a kind
of bravery, it seems to me.

00:11:44.640 --> 00:11:50.100 align:middle line:84%
And this does seem
not only to be

00:11:50.100 --> 00:11:57.870 align:middle line:84%
a deeply personal poem,
a deeply felt poem,

00:11:57.870 --> 00:12:06.480 align:middle line:84%
but also a poem that has a
kind of social mission attached

00:12:06.480 --> 00:12:09.870 align:middle line:84%
to it in some sort of
strange, oblique way.

00:12:09.870 --> 00:12:12.930 align:middle line:84%
And it doesn't often
enough, I think,

00:12:12.930 --> 00:12:15.765 align:middle line:90%
kind of get recognized as such.

00:12:15.765 --> 00:12:19.950 align:middle line:90%


00:12:19.950 --> 00:12:23.190 align:middle line:90%
I want to move on to Schuyler.

00:12:23.190 --> 00:12:25.110 align:middle line:84%
Because I think Schuyler
is about something

00:12:25.110 --> 00:12:26.445 align:middle line:90%
slightly different than O'Hara.

00:12:26.445 --> 00:12:29.870 align:middle line:90%


00:12:29.870 --> 00:12:34.250 align:middle line:84%
The painters-- the action
painters, de Kooning, Pollock,

00:12:34.250 --> 00:12:35.315 align:middle line:90%
and Kline, and Guston--

00:12:35.315 --> 00:12:37.900 align:middle line:90%


00:12:37.900 --> 00:12:43.720 align:middle line:84%
had a lot to teach the poets
about compositional methods

00:12:43.720 --> 00:12:45.550 align:middle line:90%
in the moment--

00:12:45.550 --> 00:12:48.800 align:middle line:84%
how things could
be joined together.

00:12:48.800 --> 00:12:51.130 align:middle line:84%
And I think de
Kooning in particular

00:12:51.130 --> 00:12:53.600 align:middle line:84%
was an important figure
for all of these people.

00:12:53.600 --> 00:12:56.200 align:middle line:84%
So there's this little
thing which I just

00:12:56.200 --> 00:12:59.560 align:middle line:90%
want to read quickly.

00:12:59.560 --> 00:13:04.930 align:middle line:84%
And then I'll play a recording
of Schuyler reading "February."

00:13:04.930 --> 00:13:10.450 align:middle line:84%
But this is Edwin Denby
talking about Willem de Kooning

00:13:10.450 --> 00:13:12.790 align:middle line:84%
and his painting in the
1930s, and then what he

00:13:12.790 --> 00:13:15.170 align:middle line:90%
was doing from that point on.

00:13:15.170 --> 00:13:18.970 align:middle line:84%
He said, "I often
heard him say that he

00:13:18.970 --> 00:13:21.610 align:middle line:84%
was beating his brains
out about connecting

00:13:21.610 --> 00:13:23.650 align:middle line:90%
a figure and a background.

00:13:23.650 --> 00:13:28.270 align:middle line:84%
The basic connection he
meant seemed, to me, emotion

00:13:28.270 --> 00:13:32.320 align:middle line:84%
from inside them, that they
interchanged and continued

00:13:32.320 --> 00:13:34.390 align:middle line:84%
throughout"-- so
that sort of sense

00:13:34.390 --> 00:13:41.020 align:middle line:84%
of the motion of the background,
and the motion of the figure

00:13:41.020 --> 00:13:44.470 align:middle line:84%
coming from inside them
and then exchanging places.

00:13:44.470 --> 00:13:48.010 align:middle line:84%
"He insisted on it during
those years, stroke by stroke,

00:13:48.010 --> 00:13:50.710 align:middle line:84%
and gained a virtuoso's
eye and hand.

00:13:50.710 --> 00:13:54.610 align:middle line:84%
But he wanted everything in
the picture out of equilibrium,

00:13:54.610 --> 00:13:56.980 align:middle line:90%
except spontaneously--

00:13:56.980 --> 00:13:58.820 align:middle line:90%
all of it.

00:13:58.820 --> 00:14:03.350 align:middle line:84%
That, to him, was one objective
professional standard.

00:14:03.350 --> 00:14:08.030 align:middle line:84%
That was form the way the
standard masterpieces had form,

00:14:08.030 --> 00:14:12.590 align:middle line:84%
a miraculous force and weight
of presence moving from all

00:14:12.590 --> 00:14:14.480 align:middle line:90%
over the canvas at once."

00:14:14.480 --> 00:14:18.480 align:middle line:84%
So I'm very interested,
in Schuyler's work,

00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:21.890 align:middle line:84%
how things are brought
together in a moment, kind

00:14:21.890 --> 00:14:26.140 align:middle line:90%
of somewhat fragmented.

00:14:26.140 --> 00:14:31.100 align:middle line:84%
And what one feels is sort
of the images vibrating off

00:14:31.100 --> 00:14:34.640 align:middle line:84%
of each other and
that sort of sense

00:14:34.640 --> 00:14:39.170 align:middle line:84%
that things are
out of equilibrium.

00:14:39.170 --> 00:14:45.530 align:middle line:84%
There's something sort of
slightly off scale, off kilter,

00:14:45.530 --> 00:14:48.290 align:middle line:84%
about Schuyler's poems from
this particular time period--

00:14:48.290 --> 00:14:50.780 align:middle line:90%
actually, almost all of them.

00:14:50.780 --> 00:14:52.310 align:middle line:90%
They're quite beautiful, often.

00:14:52.310 --> 00:14:55.760 align:middle line:84%
But one can't quite figure
out what makes them beautiful.

00:14:55.760 --> 00:14:57.770 align:middle line:84%
And in a sense, they're
just a great example

00:14:57.770 --> 00:15:01.130 align:middle line:84%
of this sort of art
of improvisation

00:15:01.130 --> 00:15:04.370 align:middle line:84%
and this art that really
wants to locate itself

00:15:04.370 --> 00:15:09.740 align:middle line:84%
in attention, which is a
spiritual act in some sense.

00:15:09.740 --> 00:15:13.048 align:middle line:90%
So this is Schuyler.

00:15:13.048 --> 00:15:13.715 align:middle line:90%
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

00:15:13.715 --> 00:15:15.330 align:middle line:90%
- February.

00:15:15.330 --> 00:15:18.480 align:middle line:84%
A chimney breathing
a little smoke;

00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:23.190 align:middle line:84%
the sun I can't see making a
bit of pink I can't quite see

00:15:23.190 --> 00:15:29.280 align:middle line:84%
in the blue; the pink of five
tulips at 5:00 PM on the day

00:15:29.280 --> 00:15:35.430 align:middle line:84%
before March 1; the green of
the tulip stems and leaves like

00:15:35.430 --> 00:15:40.020 align:middle line:84%
something I can't remember
finding a jack-in-the-pulpit

00:15:40.020 --> 00:15:44.190 align:middle line:90%
a long time ago and far away.

00:15:44.190 --> 00:15:48.420 align:middle line:84%
Why, it was December then,
and the sun was on the sea

00:15:48.420 --> 00:15:51.090 align:middle line:90%
by the temples we'd gone to see.

00:15:51.090 --> 00:15:54.960 align:middle line:84%
One green wave moved
in the violet sea

00:15:54.960 --> 00:15:59.580 align:middle line:84%
like the UN building on
big evenings, green and wet

00:15:59.580 --> 00:16:03.360 align:middle line:90%
while the sky turns violet.

00:16:03.360 --> 00:16:06.660 align:middle line:84%
A few almond trees
had a few flowers,

00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:09.930 align:middle line:84%
like a few snowflakes
of the blue looking pink

00:16:09.930 --> 00:16:17.010 align:middle line:84%
in the light, a gray hush in
which the boxy trucks roll up

00:16:17.010 --> 00:16:20.280 align:middle line:90%
Second Avenue into the sky.

00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:25.230 align:middle line:84%
They're just going over
the hill, the green leaves

00:16:25.230 --> 00:16:30.120 align:middle line:84%
of the tulips on my desk
like grass light on flesh

00:16:30.120 --> 00:16:33.360 align:middle line:84%
and a green copper steeple
and streaks of cloud

00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:35.860 align:middle line:90%
beginning to glow.

00:16:35.860 --> 00:16:39.360 align:middle line:84%
I can't get over how it
all works in together

00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:42.150 align:middle line:84%
like a woman who just
came to her window

00:16:42.150 --> 00:16:47.520 align:middle line:84%
and stands there filling it,
jogging her baby in her arms.

00:16:47.520 --> 00:16:49.620 align:middle line:90%
She's so far off.

00:16:49.620 --> 00:16:52.500 align:middle line:84%
Is it the light that
makes the baby pink?

00:16:52.500 --> 00:16:55.680 align:middle line:84%
I can see the little fists
and the rocking horse

00:16:55.680 --> 00:16:58.380 align:middle line:90%
motion of her breasts.

00:16:58.380 --> 00:17:01.890 align:middle line:84%
It's getting grayer
and gold and chilly.

00:17:01.890 --> 00:17:07.290 align:middle line:84%
Two dog-sized lions face each
other at the corners of a roof.

00:17:07.290 --> 00:17:10.770 align:middle line:84%
The yellow dust
inside the tulips--

00:17:10.770 --> 00:17:13.260 align:middle line:90%
it's the shape of a tulip.

00:17:13.260 --> 00:17:17.760 align:middle line:84%
It's the water in the drinking
glass the tulips are in.

00:17:17.760 --> 00:17:21.436 align:middle line:90%
It's a day like any other."

00:17:21.436 --> 00:17:22.888 align:middle line:90%
[END PLAYBACK]

00:17:22.888 --> 00:17:28.520 align:middle line:84%
So one of the things that I
think is going on in this poem,

00:17:28.520 --> 00:17:33.800 align:middle line:84%
and that goes on throughout the
New York School poets' work,

00:17:33.800 --> 00:17:39.600 align:middle line:84%
is this sort of sense that
anything or anyone, if they

00:17:39.600 --> 00:17:43.830 align:middle line:84%
are observed in a
non-judgemental way,

00:17:43.830 --> 00:17:47.010 align:middle line:84%
can be a subject for
poetry, that there's

00:17:47.010 --> 00:17:56.940 align:middle line:84%
a certain kind of
openness to anything

00:17:56.940 --> 00:18:00.870 align:middle line:84%
that comes into your view, or
anything that you encounter

00:18:00.870 --> 00:18:01.980 align:middle line:90%
during the day.

00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:06.270 align:middle line:84%
If you are open to it, you can
see, in some sense, the sublime

00:18:06.270 --> 00:18:07.020 align:middle line:90%
in it.

00:18:07.020 --> 00:18:10.150 align:middle line:84%
OK, and the other thing that's
being registered, of course,

00:18:10.150 --> 00:18:12.420 align:middle line:84%
is that that thing is
constantly vanishing.

00:18:12.420 --> 00:18:13.620 align:middle line:90%
It's not stable.

00:18:13.620 --> 00:18:15.960 align:middle line:90%
It moves away from you quickly.

00:18:15.960 --> 00:18:17.940 align:middle line:84%
All right, and so
this poem is sort

00:18:17.940 --> 00:18:21.840 align:middle line:84%
of assembling a set of details
that actually kind of record

00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:23.770 align:middle line:90%
that in a particular moment.

00:18:23.770 --> 00:18:24.810 align:middle line:90%
And it's a very layered.

00:18:24.810 --> 00:18:28.320 align:middle line:84%
And if you look at the beginning
of it, the first quarter of it

00:18:28.320 --> 00:18:31.620 align:middle line:90%
or so, it's very peculiar.

00:18:31.620 --> 00:18:33.720 align:middle line:84%
There's a device
that's being used.

00:18:33.720 --> 00:18:37.590 align:middle line:84%
It's something close to what's
called the via negativa--

00:18:37.590 --> 00:18:40.800 align:middle line:84%
the negative way, which is the
device you can use in a poem

00:18:40.800 --> 00:18:42.180 align:middle line:90%
where you say--

00:18:42.180 --> 00:18:43.660 align:middle line:84%
there's a famous
example by Marina

00:18:43.660 --> 00:18:46.800 align:middle line:84%
[? Tsvetaeva ?] when she
says, "I'm not homesick.

00:18:46.800 --> 00:18:49.980 align:middle line:84%
I'm not thinking about
the Russian language--"

00:18:49.980 --> 00:18:53.040 align:middle line:90%
and its duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh.

00:18:53.040 --> 00:18:55.770 align:middle line:84%
"I don't care if I ever
am back in Moscow."

00:18:55.770 --> 00:18:58.110 align:middle line:84%
Again, I'm paraphrasing
the poem terribly.

00:18:58.110 --> 00:19:02.810 align:middle line:90%
So you resist.

00:19:02.810 --> 00:19:06.110 align:middle line:84%
You introduce something
through resistance,

00:19:06.110 --> 00:19:07.640 align:middle line:84%
through a kind of
negative pressure.

00:19:07.640 --> 00:19:08.600 align:middle line:90%
But it's there.

00:19:08.600 --> 00:19:11.240 align:middle line:84%
Because you've actually
had to mention it

00:19:11.240 --> 00:19:13.065 align:middle line:90%
in the act of resisting it.

00:19:13.065 --> 00:19:13.940 align:middle line:90%
So there's a tension.

00:19:13.940 --> 00:19:15.380 align:middle line:90%
So you get that in this poem.

00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:17.870 align:middle line:84%
"A chimney breathing
a little smoke,

00:19:17.870 --> 00:19:21.710 align:middle line:84%
the sun I can't see
making a bit of pink

00:19:21.710 --> 00:19:24.560 align:middle line:90%
I can't quite see in the blue."

00:19:24.560 --> 00:19:27.710 align:middle line:84%
There's something that he's
trying to register that is so--

00:19:27.710 --> 00:19:30.110 align:middle line:84%
Schuyler's an enormously--
I didn't get Schuyler

00:19:30.110 --> 00:19:31.665 align:middle line:90%
myself for a long, long time.

00:19:31.665 --> 00:19:34.040 align:middle line:84%
You know, I think it's really
only in the last five years

00:19:34.040 --> 00:19:37.220 align:middle line:84%
that I started understanding
that the stuff is just

00:19:37.220 --> 00:19:39.140 align:middle line:90%
so nuanced.

00:19:39.140 --> 00:19:41.240 align:middle line:84%
And also, you can
hear how, in a sense,

00:19:41.240 --> 00:19:42.980 align:middle line:84%
there's something
really quiet about it.

00:19:42.980 --> 00:19:45.230 align:middle line:90%
You hear that in the reading.

00:19:45.230 --> 00:19:48.110 align:middle line:84%
Schuyler, I think, only
read twice in his life.

00:19:48.110 --> 00:19:52.760 align:middle line:84%
That recording is from the
late '80s just before he died.

00:19:52.760 --> 00:19:56.600 align:middle line:84%
But he was very nervous
about reading, apparently.

00:19:56.600 --> 00:19:59.660 align:middle line:84%
And there's something,
though, there's a kind of--

00:19:59.660 --> 00:20:01.640 align:middle line:84%
I mean, and you see
this thing repeated.

00:20:01.640 --> 00:20:04.490 align:middle line:84%
"The pink of five tulips
at 5:00 PM on the day

00:20:04.490 --> 00:20:07.250 align:middle line:84%
before March 1, the
green of the tulip

00:20:07.250 --> 00:20:11.087 align:middle line:84%
stems and leaves like
something I can't remember."

00:20:11.087 --> 00:20:12.170 align:middle line:90%
And then he remembers it--

00:20:12.170 --> 00:20:15.890 align:middle line:84%
"Finding a jack-in-the-pulpit
a long time ago and far away."

00:20:15.890 --> 00:20:17.510 align:middle line:90%
And so it goes on like that.

00:20:17.510 --> 00:20:20.330 align:middle line:84%
And he's basically
kind of laying out

00:20:20.330 --> 00:20:23.720 align:middle line:84%
through this sort of
strange resistant device.

00:20:23.720 --> 00:20:26.030 align:middle line:84%
I mean, he's noticing an
incredible number of things.

00:20:26.030 --> 00:20:28.760 align:middle line:84%
But he's basically saying,
I don't notice this,

00:20:28.760 --> 00:20:32.000 align:middle line:84%
or I'm not sure what I'm
seeing, if this is it exactly,

00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:33.830 align:middle line:90%
or it reminds me of this thing.

00:20:33.830 --> 00:20:36.260 align:middle line:84%
So he's constantly sort
of distracted, too.

00:20:36.260 --> 00:20:38.060 align:middle line:84%
So [? distractibility ?]
is actually

00:20:38.060 --> 00:20:43.070 align:middle line:84%
a value in some odd way in a
lot of New York School poetry.

00:20:43.070 --> 00:20:49.730 align:middle line:84%
And then you get to a
certain place in the poem

00:20:49.730 --> 00:20:52.880 align:middle line:84%
where you feel like
something happens.

00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:56.000 align:middle line:84%
There's a very odd little bit
of idiom, American idiom--

00:20:56.000 --> 00:21:01.130 align:middle line:84%
"I can't get over how it
all works in together."

00:21:01.130 --> 00:21:04.850 align:middle line:84%
"How it all works together"
would maybe be closer.

00:21:04.850 --> 00:21:08.900 align:middle line:84%
It's sort of clunky, and
intentionally so, I think.

00:21:08.900 --> 00:21:12.350 align:middle line:84%
And then that's the moment
where the figure comes in

00:21:12.350 --> 00:21:13.530 align:middle line:90%
of the woman--

00:21:13.530 --> 00:21:18.230 align:middle line:84%
so that idea of de Kooning's
of, how do you attach a figure

00:21:18.230 --> 00:21:20.210 align:middle line:90%
to the background?

00:21:20.210 --> 00:21:24.230 align:middle line:84%
OK, and you can feel an
enormous amount of energy.

00:21:24.230 --> 00:21:27.420 align:middle line:84%
And there's a spiritual energy
in the amount of attention

00:21:27.420 --> 00:21:29.390 align:middle line:90%
he's giving to this background.

00:21:29.390 --> 00:21:30.860 align:middle line:84%
But there's also
an energy in how

00:21:30.860 --> 00:21:34.250 align:middle line:84%
it's all being brought together
in this sort of strange,

00:21:34.250 --> 00:21:36.890 align:middle line:90%
somewhat--

00:21:36.890 --> 00:21:40.790 align:middle line:90%
this de-centered sort of way.

00:21:40.790 --> 00:21:42.020 align:middle line:90%
Things don't flow.

00:21:42.020 --> 00:21:43.550 align:middle line:84%
There's something
hinky about it.

00:21:43.550 --> 00:21:45.500 align:middle line:90%
It doesn't flow exactly.

00:21:45.500 --> 00:21:48.410 align:middle line:84%
So it's out of equilibrium
in exactly the way

00:21:48.410 --> 00:21:52.550 align:middle line:84%
that Edwin Denby talks about
de Kooning's paintings being.

00:21:52.550 --> 00:21:54.230 align:middle line:90%
And then you get this figure.

00:21:54.230 --> 00:21:56.390 align:middle line:84%
And there's something
really plaintive in,

00:21:56.390 --> 00:21:58.990 align:middle line:90%
"She's so far off."

00:21:58.990 --> 00:22:04.060 align:middle line:84%
Again, it's that sort of sense
of the aloneness of anybody's

00:22:04.060 --> 00:22:06.400 align:middle line:90%
life, but not melodramatic.

00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:07.810 align:middle line:90%
He doesn't stay with it.

00:22:07.810 --> 00:22:09.100 align:middle line:90%
He moves on.

00:22:09.100 --> 00:22:11.590 align:middle line:84%
And then I love the
way the poem ends.

00:22:11.590 --> 00:22:14.110 align:middle line:84%
"It's the yellow dust
inside the tulips.

00:22:14.110 --> 00:22:16.750 align:middle line:90%
It's the shape of a tulip.

00:22:16.750 --> 00:22:21.010 align:middle line:84%
It's the water in the drinking
glass the tulips are in.

00:22:21.010 --> 00:22:23.347 align:middle line:90%
It's a day like any other."

00:22:23.347 --> 00:22:24.180 align:middle line:90%
It's almost nothing.

00:22:24.180 --> 00:22:27.357 align:middle line:84%
You can understand how-- again,
mainstream American poets

00:22:27.357 --> 00:22:29.940 align:middle line:84%
would have looked at this-- this
poem was written in, I think,

00:22:29.940 --> 00:22:33.420 align:middle line:84%
the late 1950s-- and
just said, what is this?

00:22:33.420 --> 00:22:34.800 align:middle line:90%
Nothing.

00:22:34.800 --> 00:22:36.600 align:middle line:90%
It's not a poem.

00:22:36.600 --> 00:22:39.660 align:middle line:90%
This is so not a poem.

00:22:39.660 --> 00:22:40.512 align:middle line:90%
[AUDIENCE CHUCKLING]

00:22:40.512 --> 00:22:45.560 align:middle line:84%
OK, for most American
poets at this time,

00:22:45.560 --> 00:22:49.550 align:middle line:84%
this would not have
been considered a poem.

00:22:49.550 --> 00:22:55.490 align:middle line:84%
And the "it" is
never really defined.

00:22:55.490 --> 00:23:00.380 align:middle line:84%
It's totally floating in
exactly the way that de Kooning

00:23:00.380 --> 00:23:02.990 align:middle line:84%
oftentimes-- or Denby
talks about de Kooning--

00:23:02.990 --> 00:23:05.750 align:middle line:84%
the image, he says, in
a de Kooning painting

00:23:05.750 --> 00:23:08.000 align:middle line:90%
floats and expands.

00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:09.520 align:middle line:90%
And you feel that expanse.

00:23:09.520 --> 00:23:10.520 align:middle line:90%
I mean, I love the poem.

00:23:10.520 --> 00:23:12.020 align:middle line:84%
Because it has a
sort of spiritual

00:23:12.020 --> 00:23:14.270 align:middle line:90%
expansiveness at the end.

00:23:14.270 --> 00:23:16.580 align:middle line:84%
And yet it's
asserting something.

00:23:16.580 --> 00:23:23.050 align:middle line:84%
It's just saying it's completely
ordinary, but special.

00:23:23.050 --> 00:23:26.450 align:middle line:90%
Not special-- special.

00:23:26.450 --> 00:23:27.138 align:middle line:90%