WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.840 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:00:02.840 --> 00:00:07.360 align:middle line:84% I believe the fact is, mainly, that I'm 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:12.330 align:middle line:84% one of the last remaining of the old timers. 00:00:12.330 --> 00:00:16.530 align:middle line:84% And I owe a great deal to my friend 00:00:16.530 --> 00:00:23.310 align:middle line:84% Louis Untermeyer, who from 1925 to about 1940 00:00:23.310 --> 00:00:27.120 align:middle line:84% there was the great anthologist every couple of years 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:32.430 align:middle line:84% bringing out a new anthology of current poetry. 00:00:32.430 --> 00:00:38.070 align:middle line:84% And therefore, since he was very generous with me, 00:00:38.070 --> 00:00:45.960 align:middle line:84% giving me access to a captive audience in the colleges, which 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:51.480 align:middle line:84% before 1940 had turned into also a captive audience 00:00:51.480 --> 00:00:54.720 align:middle line:90% in the high schools. 00:00:54.720 --> 00:01:00.230 align:middle line:84% So I always remember him gratefully. 00:01:00.230 --> 00:01:05.069 align:middle line:84% And I have listed the poems I should like to read, 00:01:05.069 --> 00:01:11.550 align:middle line:84% and a great many of them use a first personal pronoun, 00:01:11.550 --> 00:01:16.950 align:middle line:84% but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is a truthful record 00:01:16.950 --> 00:01:20.370 align:middle line:90% of some experience of mine. 00:01:20.370 --> 00:01:25.650 align:middle line:84% I think there are precious few writers of fiction or poetry 00:01:25.650 --> 00:01:30.180 align:middle line:84% who can possibly rely on merely their own experience 00:01:30.180 --> 00:01:37.990 align:middle line:84% to fill out the work that they were attempting to write. 00:01:37.990 --> 00:01:45.780 align:middle line:84% They have to, if they start with an experience of their own, 00:01:45.780 --> 00:01:49.320 align:middle line:84% they presently see that it's not getting anywhere, 00:01:49.320 --> 00:01:53.980 align:middle line:84% and they have to call in the imagination to enlarge it. 00:01:53.980 --> 00:01:59.850 align:middle line:84% And after three days of strife with it, 00:01:59.850 --> 00:02:02.320 align:middle line:84% they have forgotten that it's their own experience. 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:08.430 align:middle line:84% They're just trying to think it out in the terms of a fiction. 00:02:08.430 --> 00:02:11.790 align:middle line:84% And so, "The Winter Remembered" the first poem I'm reading, 00:02:11.790 --> 00:02:18.830 align:middle line:84% is I'm sorry to say, not an autobiographical poem. 00:02:18.830 --> 00:02:23.910 align:middle line:84% The young man seems to be in Alaska, or some such place. 00:02:23.910 --> 00:02:25.695 align:middle line:90% This is a sort of a love poem. 00:02:25.695 --> 00:02:29.220 align:middle line:90% 00:02:29.220 --> 00:02:34.170 align:middle line:84% Two evils, monstrous either one apart, 00:02:34.170 --> 00:02:36.600 align:middle line:84% possessed me, and were long and loath 00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:42.540 align:middle line:84% at going: a cry of absence, absence, in the heart, 00:02:42.540 --> 00:02:46.800 align:middle line:84% and in the wood the furious winter blowing. 00:02:46.800 --> 00:02:50.250 align:middle line:84% Think not when fire was bright upon my bricks, 00:02:50.250 --> 00:02:54.510 align:middle line:84% and past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter. 00:02:54.510 --> 00:02:58.740 align:middle line:84% I glowed like them, the simple burning 00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:05.520 align:middle line:84% sticks, far from my cause, my proper heat and center. 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:08.310 align:middle line:84% Better to go forth in the frozen air 00:03:08.310 --> 00:03:13.830 align:middle line:84% and wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing; 00:03:13.830 --> 00:03:18.690 align:middle line:84% because my heart was throb less painful there, 00:03:18.690 --> 00:03:24.090 align:middle line:84% being caked with cold and past the smart of feeling. 00:03:24.090 --> 00:03:27.150 align:middle line:84% And where I walked, the murderous winter blast 00:03:27.150 --> 00:03:31.980 align:middle line:84% would have this body bowed, these eyeballs are streaming. 00:03:31.980 --> 00:03:36.150 align:middle line:84% And though I think this heart's blood froze not fast, 00:03:36.150 --> 00:03:41.160 align:middle line:84% it ran too small to spare one drop for dreaming. 00:03:41.160 --> 00:03:45.360 align:middle line:84% Dear love, these fingers that had known your touch, 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:49.080 align:middle line:84% and tied our separate forces first together, 00:03:49.080 --> 00:03:53.580 align:middle line:84% were 10 poor idiot fingers not worth much, 00:03:53.580 --> 00:03:58.810 align:middle line:84% 10 frozen parsnips hanging in the weather. 00:03:58.810 --> 00:04:01.680 align:middle line:84% But that's what he tells her when he has returned to her. 00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:06.080 align:middle line:84% And so that's another tragic poem.