WEBVTT

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I'll read one more and then Gene
Frumkin will take over here.

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Why don't we look at
"War in Massachusetts?"

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I'm not going to dump on
the middle west all night.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Or make fun against Barry
Goldwater flying overhead.

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Read a poem, "War
in Massachusetts."

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Now this is kind
of a death poem.

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This is probably the subtlest.

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Not in my form,
which is free verse,

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and doesn't have subtlety
to it, which I carefully

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have kept out.

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If we're dealing with-- there's
nothing subtle about death,

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and it shouldn't be
anything subtle about--

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Imagine a poem
where a boy digs up

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coffins and cuts women's head
off done in iambic pentameter

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and a sonnet form.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It doesn't seem to
move me somehow.

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This is another kind of a death.

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The death of waiting around
where you're born in.

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Staying there, and
people around you

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are doing things and
coming home as heroes.

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And you never become a hero.

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You're either too
young or too old,

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and not in the right
place at the right time,

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or whatever it is it makes
make those accidents that

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make heroes.

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Heroes instead of flaws.

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The accidental cowardice that
makes a man fight for his life.

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Not for someone else but
to get out of a situation,

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he's called a hero.

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In other fields you don't
receive medals for killing.

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This is a poem about
my father, who never

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received a medal for anything.

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Which I'm very happy about.

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He was too young for the
First World War, too old

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for the second.

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I was too young for anything.

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And it is a statement to him.

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I address it dramatically to
him, "Father" kind of a poem.

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It is an experiment to try to
find out what was happening.

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Was anything really happening
in Massachusetts while we were

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sending men over to save Charles
de Gaulle for a second time?

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Was anything really happening?

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What are the byproducts of a
war in which people are getting

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killed, in which your own
family doesn't suffer?

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You go in and stand in a
sugar line and a butter line,

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and you make believe that if
there are two people that you

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split up and make believe
you're from different families.

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And then you get double
rations that way.

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And that is one way in
which you find out what it

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is to live on a ration basis.

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You also know what
it is when they

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have mock aircraft come over.

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And the civil defense
people look down,

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and if they don't see
any lights then they

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know that this is pretty safe.

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And then if the Jerrys ever did
come over, Boston and the area

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would be saved.

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The only trick was
that at 60 years old,

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I was never told that this
is just a practice mission.

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I've been neurotic ever since.

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And everyone is just
sitting around very calmly,

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and they say "They're
bombers, honey.

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They're bombers going over."

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And you're waiting for the
bombs, and nothing happens.

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It's very moment of anxiety.

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Angst sets in.

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So it was full few
of these peripheral,

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or outside of the major
areas of the wall,

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that I could only write about.

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I couldn't write about
the war or something

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from non experience.

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So I tried to show what it
is to have a father that

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never receives a medal but
the guy next door always does.

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How did he compensate for it?

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"Father, what was that
blackout of windows?

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Mock aircraft over Tewkesbury.

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Hushed we gathered on
the midnight braided rug

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sipping tea.

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The practice bombers
trailed off west.

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Safely we drained
our China cups,

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while you loaded
shot and mobilized.

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Grunty the pig shot
for his scarce pork.

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I ran too late to
his bleeding head.

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Blitzed by a nest
of green flies.

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I glimpsed him hanging
squatted, like a foreign spy.

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Coldly you fetched
me from his demise.

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Behind white shades
drawn against the light.

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Those mornings unlikely
soldier, your flannel red shirt

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spared your life.

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Hang it in your
own home pasture.

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You fired at nothing I could
see with untrained eyes.

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You marched me guerilla
style through fields,

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where good surrendered to our
impasse like overripe flesh.

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Each hunt I fell before
the flush, the blast.

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We walked back to peace.

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Your uneasiness while a neighbor
returned, a decorated ace,

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was paraded through
town and got jipped.

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Father, I know why in
your 50s with rage,

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you splintered your shotgun
on the basement floor."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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