WEBVTT

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Thank you so much for reading.

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You return to some
of the same moments,

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like with your father
of the sequence

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that you read used that same
line over and over again.

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And it never feels
like the same thing.

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So how, across your career
and across these poems,

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do you feel like you
sustain your attention

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or what kind of drives
you back to do that?

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Thank you.

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I hope that's true.

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Ignorance drives me.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I never know.

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I write to know.

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I write poetry to know.

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I don't know what I'm thinking.

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I don't know what I really feel.

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I don't know what I really
think until I write it.

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Until I even revise
it, I don't know

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what it was that I
was actually thinking.

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There's an odd thing.

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After I write the poem,
I think, oh, OK, I

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know more now than I did before.

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But then, I don't remember
what it was that I knew.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so I go along as ignorant
as I was before I wrote it.

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I'm not trying to be
funny, but I sometimes

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feel like that guy-- it
was a Victor Hugo story.

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I think the Victor Hugo story
where a bunch of muggers

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robbed him and carved
a smile into his face.

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So every time he meets
people, they laugh.

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I don't know why-- what
are we talking about?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Ignorance, yeah.

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Ignorance sustains
me, not knowing.

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Does that answer your question?

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Hi, thank you so
much for reading.

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My question is way simple
or not too complex.

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But I was wondering how has
your vision of love shaped

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over time through your poems?

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Wow.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I write for me just
to understand love

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because I don't know.

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I think I feel it all the time.

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When I was very young,
when I was a little boy,

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I came to this country, and
everybody looked adorable

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to me.

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And I went around in my
kindergarten class kissing

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everybody.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And all through
elementary school

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until about fourth grade,
when a teacher pulled me

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aside and said, look, you
can't be kissing everybody--

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[LAUGHTER]

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I don't know what
that was about.

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Probably dysfunction
of some sort.

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I felt naturally,
somehow, that I was just

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in love with the world.

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And I tried to understand that.

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We talked about this
a little in the class.

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This word, interest,
it's, I think, French.

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It comes from inter-esse:
between beings.

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So love is that thing that
happens between beings.

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And I've come to the
conclusion that love

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is the most profound interest
you can take in another person.

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It's a form of interest.

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And of course, my own
interest has deepened, I hope.

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I had to get through a lot of
stuff-- obsession, infatuation,

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lust, desire--

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to find genuine interest in
a person, which is harder

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than one would think, right?

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You would think
that would be easy.

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I think it has to be cultivated,
genuine interest, in the world.

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My wife said this amazing
thing to me years ago.

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She said, you know,
Li-Young, I want

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you to touch me as if you want
to know me, not arouse me.

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And I said, what?

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[LAUGHTER]

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I didn't understand
what she meant.

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And I was a little troubled.

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I said, well, you could have
told me this earlier when we

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were first dating or something.

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She said, well,
I just knew that.

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So it took her many years to
be able to articulate that.

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So it seems to me that
that's a pretty good thing,

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to go through the world
wanting to know the world,

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wanting to know your beloved as
opposed to arouse the beloved

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or arouse the world or get
a reaction from the world,

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get a reward from the world.

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You want something
from the world.

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This genuine interest,
I think is good.

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So I love what you said about
writing to understand, too,

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and also, your last
poem about the singing.

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So when you start
writing to understand,

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do you kind of hear
echoes of a deeper song?

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Is it just depend?

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Do you have images?

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Or does it feels like
you're getting language

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behind the language,
trying to touch that place,

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sort of a sacred place?

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I was just wondering
if you could just

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elaborate on any of that.

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Yeah, it's all of that
and a lot of I don't know.

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That's a good approximation.

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And I would say it's all
of that to use language

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to get to the words
beyond the language.

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And I do think that there is
a deeper singing that goes on.

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I feel it in my body and
the soles of my feet.

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And I guess I'm trying
to get to hear that.

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