WEBVTT

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That's a poem from
Transcendental Studies

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which is what I'm going
to read from tonight.

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It is, like many of the poems in
this book, basically a collage.

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It really started
with my being given

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a job at my school, in which
I had to direct a department.

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And it isn't that it was
a difficult thing to do,

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it just took all the
possible time that there was

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and for no very great
satisfaction, I must add.

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And it wasn't difficult.

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And so you know,
I did it a while,

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and I had to take over
when director before me

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was going batty.

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And I realized
after a few months

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that among other
things that were wrong,

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I was simply not writing
anything because there was

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no, I had no time of my own.

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It was all this job.

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And usually, since
I didn't usually

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write before midnight
anyway, I decided that I

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would make a break in the time.

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And at midnight,
I would not think

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about my job, or the school,
or anything of the sort.

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I would just end then, and
I would do my own work.

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The problem is
that if you decide

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not to think about
something, it's

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what you're thinking about.

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And that didn't get me very far.

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And at some point,
since that didn't work,

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it occurred to me
that I should do

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some kind of writing that
didn't require me to think.

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And so I decided to
do some collages,

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but of a very specific sort.

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I brought down a batch of
books of various kinds.

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But they were all
prose books, and no two

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of that we're very much alike.

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And I put these
books on the table,

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and at midnight,
I would start out

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by taking three books,
more or less at random,

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but they are always
different kinds of books.

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I might have one novel,
one psychology book,

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and one whatever
happened to grab

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when I was pulling down books.

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And I would simply open
them, and find phrases,

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and write down, and
then see what I had.

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And what I would first do
is to try to get a stanza.

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And if I felt after four lines,
well, that's sort of a stanza,

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I would say, all right, so
I'm doing four-line stanzas.

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And I would do four-line stanzas
from those same three books,

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usually using something
from each of them,

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but not necessarily.

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Sometimes, it was all from
one, sometimes from two,

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but mainly, I was
just using them.

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And after some time--

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sometimes half a page,
sometimes two or three pages,

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but not longer than that--

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I would get tired of that poem.

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And so I would--

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I was writing all
this down by pencil--

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I would take it
upstairs and type it up.

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And when I had a
group of these poems--

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oh, well, when I had all
these stanzas typed up,

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I would rearrange
them alphabetically.

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And then I would go down
and make another poem.

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And it's not a way I recommend
particularly, but it can work.

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And besides that, I
wasn't too much worried

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about it turning
out wrong because I

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knew I could always change it.

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And indeed I wasn't
trying to prove anything

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about collage, which
I had done many times

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before in different ways.

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And I had no great
questions about it.

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I didn't, it wasn't that I
thought it was the great thing.

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It wasn't that I thought
it needed to be proven.

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I was just doing
it I was looking

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for poems not for ideas.

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Eventually, actually rather
strikingly soon, I had a book.

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And so I put the poems together.

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And I forget how I got
the titles for the poems,

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but I arranged the poems then
alphabetically by their titles.

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And nobody would publish it.

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Nobody wanted this book, and
I sort of understood that.

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And that seemed, that
seemed fair enough.

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I enjoyed it what do I care
whether other people didn't

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like it.

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I went on and figured out some
other ways to use the collage

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and came up with actually three
volumes, of which this book

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Transcendental Studies
is actually the three

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volumes, plus a little more.

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Now, as I want to emphasize,
I didn't tell myself

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this is what you have to do.

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I just did it as long
as it seemed something

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that I could do.

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And when it got to the
point where I was thinking,

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oh, this is awful, I stopped.

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Why not?

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And the problem
is, one problem was

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that this job lasted
for four years,

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but anyway, it was
over eventually.

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