WEBVTT

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Thank you, Lois.

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Yesterday I went
to a poetry class

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here on the campus and
somebody was talking

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about my first book,
and asked me if I still

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liked it of course, I love it.

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Actually I had occasion not
long ago to read from it,

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and I was astounded
at how shitty it was.

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And enormously embarassed--

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[LAUGHTER]

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I was reading in front of
my students and I was here

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I was reading a book
that I'd written

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when I was 10 years younger
than they were, and they were

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sitting before me-- and I
was in-- and I was sweating

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and it was awful.

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And so Steve Orlen
the other day asked me

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if there was anything
in the book I liked?

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And there are a couple of
poems that I like a great deal,

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and I thought I'd
read at least one

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of them, which is
the one he referred

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to-- he asked me if I still like
this poem and it said I did.

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I hadn't written
many love poems,

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I guess I'm just not much
of a lover and I mean,

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I could find out--

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[LAUGHTER]

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but I've never really asked.

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There's a great
gag in old Mailer,

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in Mailer's novels the men
always turn to the woman

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and say, how was it?

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[LAUGHTER]

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And that's really what
the novels are about,

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the women are asking how it was.

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The men are asking and the
women are like unbelievable,

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but I've never asked.

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I sheltered myself
from a lot of truths.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so I've written-- but
let me read this love poems,

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very serious poems to
my wife, which makes it

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one of the most unusual love

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poems--

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[LAUGHTER]

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In the Western world
really called "For Fran."

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She packs the flower
beds with leaves, rags,

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dampened papers, ties
with twine the lemon tree.

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But winter carves its
features on the uprooted stem.

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I see the true vein in her neck

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and where the smaller ones
have broken bluing the skin

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And where the dark
cold lines of weariness

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have eaten out through
the winding of the bone.

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On the hard ground
where Adam strayed,

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where nothing but
his wants remain,

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what do we do to those we need?

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To those whose need of us
endures even the knowledge

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of what we are.

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I turned to her whose
future bears the promise

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of the appalling air.

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My living wife,
Frances Levine, mother

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of Theodore, John, and Mark.

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Out of whatever we have
been we will make something

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for the dark.

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