WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a number
of poems tonight that have

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strong patterns of repetition.

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And the poems I think of them
in two general categories.

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I think we repeat things,
we return to things

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because we want to preserve
them, because we love them

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we want to hold on
to them and memory.

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And in that sense, the
principle of repetition

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is a principle of desired
possession and possessiveness,

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holding on.

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But some things we repeat
because we're trapped by them--

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they were characteristics we
have that we can't escape,

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they were memories that
trouble us that we'd

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like to forget
but we can't, they

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keep coming back in our minds.

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To the extent that we are
free, we choose what to repeat.

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To the extent that we're trapped
by our own personalities,

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we're compelled to
repeat certain things.

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So I'm going to read two
kinds of poems both, as I say,

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with patterns of repetition.

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But one pattern of repetition
shows and freely-willed repeats

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and returns and the other I
think you'll sense is patterns

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of obsessive repetitions as
if they cannot be escaped.

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"Remaining Blue."

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"I am vanishing
into my own life.

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The bland early light
and the blue milk glass

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belongs anywhere.

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I have lost my grip on the
hatreds that defined me,

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the old sorrow seeking
sexual revelation, fantastic

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how the usual becomes me.

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Repeating the change that
has ceased to take place here

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in the same house, at the same
table set with blueberries,

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with the same loves asking only
to be what already they are,

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what can I bring you that
these merging days have not yet

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brought?

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A new rug woven with blue
flowers like the sage outside,

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a bluebird house for the
garden, the same clay furrows,

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and the same slope of
the repeating hill.

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Blue, I am vanishing into blue.

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I am son, husband,
and father still

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as they were, the
same animal circling

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through his day sleeping
back into his genesis,

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gathering myself again to go
on in the same blue stride

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under the sun.

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I am no one.

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I am everyone before me.

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I go on in my
children's lives as they

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vanish into the same blue air
that unfolds me and keeps me

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and tells you again, that you
can find me only in yourself

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day by blue day."

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