WEBVTT

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I don't feel heir to any
particular poetry reading

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tradition.

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I think it's all up for grabs.

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Anybody can do
anything they want.

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Start off with a cold
weather poem since you all

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braved the evening to come out.

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I thought what I'd do tonight
is instead of explaining

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the poems, which is
becoming typical,

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I'm going to explain the titles.

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And the reason I'm
going to do that is

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because I don't give much
thought at all to the titles

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to my poems.

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They sort of happen somewhere
in the course of the poem.

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And not that I pick a line.

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I just sort of start
referring to it

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as the poem about Mayakovsky
or the Mayakovsky poem.

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And that's the one
I want to start off

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with a little poem
called "Mayakovsky".

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"Across the tundra,
heartbeats leave imprints.

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A drum and dying calls
for another revolution

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to be reborn.

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Nothing stir but bones
of words, ignored,

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I had been anxious
for the marketplace.

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And now, in the clamor
of verbose crowds,

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have come to love a
married woman, my anarchy.

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Comrade, our twin
lands talk of suicide.

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But I haven't the swagger
to get up and die.

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Now, "Mayakovsky"-- right,
he was the Russian poet.

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And I don't know how
this poem came to me,

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but it came to me
somehow in relation--

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did I kill it?

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There it goes.

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The use of Mayakovsky's life--

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what happened to him was he fell
in love with a married woman

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and wound up committing suicide.

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But he was the poet
of the revolution.

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And what I really want
to get into in this poem

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is the idea that we
live a private life,

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and we leave a public life.

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And there's sort of a
responsibility of a poet

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to handle, in some
way, the public,

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the political situations.

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But it doesn't necessarily
mean that the revolution

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has to be violent.

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That's what I was, in a
way, saying in my poem.

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And yet, at the same
time, I was saying

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that this whole business
about being ignored,

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anxious for the marketplace,
is that after a long period

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of writing or retreating,
you do have a great need

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to go out and do something,
to read your poems or--

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this is one of the reasons
why I'm into this program

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right now--

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the traveling to
all the high schools

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and seeing all the
Indian students.

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And we've seen Mexican-American
students and just

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regular high school students.