WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.840 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.840 --> 00:00:04.200 align:middle line:84% That was a very kind introduction I received. 00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:10.980 align:middle line:90% It skipped one distinction. 00:00:10.980 --> 00:00:17.670 align:middle line:84% I think that I am probably the only American poet currently 00:00:17.670 --> 00:00:22.836 align:middle line:84% with a city council resolution passed against him. 00:00:22.836 --> 00:00:27.670 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:00:27.670 --> 00:00:33.490 align:middle line:84% I come from a small town between Gary and Chicago originally. 00:00:33.490 --> 00:00:37.510 align:middle line:84% And my high school class had a 20th reunion in 1964, 00:00:37.510 --> 00:00:39.190 align:middle line:90% and I couldn't go. 00:00:39.190 --> 00:00:42.580 align:middle line:84% But I thought about it, and I should 00:00:42.580 --> 00:00:48.648 align:middle line:84% explain that my hometown is in Standard Oil of Indiana, 00:00:48.648 --> 00:00:49.690 align:middle line:90% not the other way around. 00:00:49.690 --> 00:00:57.040 align:middle line:84% Because Standard Oil is larger, richer, stronger 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:03.700 align:middle line:84% in all kinds of ways, certainly with its odors. 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:10.560 align:middle line:84% And it has been automating recently, 00:01:10.560 --> 00:01:15.090 align:middle line:84% and a lot of the people that I used to know 00:01:15.090 --> 00:01:17.760 align:middle line:90% are losing their jobs. 00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:22.110 align:middle line:84% So I thought about that, and I wrote this poem, 00:01:22.110 --> 00:01:23.130 align:middle line:90% and it was published. 00:01:23.130 --> 00:01:27.840 align:middle line:84% And the Chicago Sun Times reprinted it 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:30.390 align:middle line:84% in their Sunday supplement and did a special issue 00:01:30.390 --> 00:01:35.460 align:middle line:84% about my hometown using excerpts from the poem as captains 00:01:35.460 --> 00:01:38.160 align:middle line:84% for awful photographs of this place. 00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:41.130 align:middle line:90% 00:01:41.130 --> 00:01:45.120 align:middle line:84% And the newspaper was subsequently boycotted. 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:50.880 align:middle line:84% And there were all sorts of commotions involved with it. 00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:53.800 align:middle line:84% Let that be a kind of explanation. 00:01:53.800 --> 00:01:56.925 align:middle line:84% This is called "A Valedictory to Standard Oil of Indiana." 00:01:56.925 --> 00:01:59.730 align:middle line:90% 00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:02.670 align:middle line:84% In the darkness east of Chicago, the sky 00:02:02.670 --> 00:02:06.180 align:middle line:84% burns over the plumber's nightmares red and blue. 00:02:06.180 --> 00:02:10.560 align:middle line:84% And my hometown lies there, loaded with gasoline. 00:02:10.560 --> 00:02:14.130 align:middle line:84% Registers ring like gas pumps, pumps like pinballs, 00:02:14.130 --> 00:02:16.740 align:middle line:84% pinballs like broken alarm clocks. 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:21.480 align:middle line:84% And it's time for morning, but nothing is going to work. 00:02:21.480 --> 00:02:24.510 align:middle line:84% From cat-cracker to candleshop, from grease works 00:02:24.510 --> 00:02:27.900 align:middle line:84% along the pipeline, over storage tanks like kings 00:02:27.900 --> 00:02:30.150 align:middle line:84% on a checkerboard ready to jump the county, 00:02:30.150 --> 00:02:34.200 align:middle line:84% the word goes out with refined regret. 00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:38.310 align:middle line:84% We suggest you sleep all day in your houses shaped 00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:39.900 align:middle line:90% like lunch buckets. 00:02:39.900 --> 00:02:43.260 align:middle line:84% And don't fill up at the automated gates. 00:02:43.260 --> 00:02:46.470 align:middle line:84% Something else will tap the gauges without yawning 00:02:46.470 --> 00:02:49.230 align:middle line:84% and check the valves at the feet of the cooling towers 00:02:49.230 --> 00:02:53.170 align:middle line:90% without complaining. 00:02:53.170 --> 00:02:56.800 align:middle line:84% Standard Oil is canning my high school classmates. 00:02:56.800 --> 00:02:58.600 align:middle line:84% And the ones who fell out of junior high 00:02:58.600 --> 00:03:00.790 align:middle line:90% or slipped in the grades. 00:03:00.790 --> 00:03:04.210 align:middle line:84% What should they do gassed up in their tempests and comets, 00:03:04.210 --> 00:03:07.870 align:middle line:84% raring to go somewhere, with their wives scowling in front 00:03:07.870 --> 00:03:10.210 align:middle line:90% and kids stuffed in the back. 00:03:10.210 --> 00:03:13.300 align:middle line:84% Past drive-ins jammed like car lots, 00:03:13.300 --> 00:03:18.010 align:middle line:84% trying to find the beaches but blocked by freight for hours. 00:03:18.010 --> 00:03:19.760 align:middle line:84% Stopped dead in their tracks where 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:22.870 align:middle line:84% the rails, as thick as thieves along the lakefront, 00:03:22.870 --> 00:03:27.100 align:middle line:84% lower their crossing gates to shut the frontier. 00:03:27.100 --> 00:03:28.480 align:middle line:84% What can they think about as they 00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:31.780 align:middle line:84% stare at the sides of boxcars for a sign, 00:03:31.780 --> 00:03:35.380 align:middle line:84% and Lake Michigan drains slowly into Lake Huron. 00:03:35.380 --> 00:03:38.020 align:middle line:84% The Mills level the dunes, and the eels 00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:40.210 align:middle line:90% go sailing through the trout. 00:03:40.210 --> 00:03:42.640 align:middle line:84% And mosquitoes inherit the evening, 00:03:42.640 --> 00:03:45.280 align:middle line:84% while toads no bigger than horseflies hop 00:03:45.280 --> 00:03:48.490 align:middle line:84% crazily after them over the lawns and sidewalks. 00:03:48.490 --> 00:03:53.710 align:middle line:84% And the rainbows fall flat in the oil they came from. 00:03:53.710 --> 00:03:58.960 align:middle line:84% There are two towns now, one dark, one going to be dark, 00:03:58.960 --> 00:04:02.440 align:middle line:84% divided by cyclone fences, one pampered 00:04:02.440 --> 00:04:07.060 align:middle line:84% and cared for like pillboxes and cathedrals, the other vanishing 00:04:07.060 --> 00:04:12.310 align:middle line:84% overnight in the dumps and swamps like a struck sideshow. 00:04:12.310 --> 00:04:16.180 align:middle line:84% As the laureate of the class of '44, which doesn't know it 00:04:16.180 --> 00:04:22.630 align:middle line:84% has one, I offer this poem, not from hustings or barricades 00:04:22.630 --> 00:04:25.660 align:middle line:84% or the rickety stage where George Rogers Clark stood glued 00:04:25.660 --> 00:04:31.390 align:middle line:84% to the wall but from another way out like Barnum's This Way 00:04:31.390 --> 00:04:34.450 align:middle line:84% to the Egress, which moved the suckers when 00:04:34.450 --> 00:04:36.910 align:middle line:90% they'd seen enough. 00:04:36.910 --> 00:04:37.795 align:middle line:90% Get out of town. 00:04:37.795 --> 00:04:40.585 align:middle line:90% 00:04:40.585 --> 00:04:42.565 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:04:42.565 --> 00:04:49.010 align:middle line:90% 00:04:49.010 --> 00:04:50.420 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:50.420 --> 00:04:53.840 align:middle line:84% That poem kept a number of public relations men 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:57.050 align:middle line:90% busy for some months. 00:04:57.050 --> 00:05:03.080 align:middle line:84% If giving gainful employment to American industry is a virtue, 00:05:03.080 --> 00:05:06.040 align:middle line:84% I'm one of the more virtuous poets.