WEBVTT

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And lastly I very
seldom write poems

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from recounting personal
experience directly.

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Here's a fairly new poem and
it's an exception to that.

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I think the reason that I
don't like to write poems

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from experiences is when
you write a poem you

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not only recreate
the experience,

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you create something new about
it and therefore you destroy

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or I feel as if I
destroy something of what

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the real experience was.

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In this case though,
I've been finding myself

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feeling very claustrophobic.

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Partly through teaching partly
through emotional circumstances

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and things like that.

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And I remembered very clearly
in an emotional way and a place

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where I desire to
be a place that

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reflected I suppose a
kind of psychic freedom

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at the time, which was a Little
Bighorn called by the Indians

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the Greasy Grass, the place
where Custer was defeated.

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Where my wife and I had stopped
on the trip from Iowa City,

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a long trip that we took camping
out on the way from Iowa City

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out to Portland.

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What I liked about
the place I think

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what remains so
strongly with me was

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that a tremendous feeling of
expansiveness relatively flat

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somewhat rolling
land high grass.

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And you could just
see just as far

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as the horizon in
every direction.

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The poem is called, "Rosebud".

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It's kind of a
talky prosaic poem.

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Basically recounts
this experience

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of the drive in a couple
of things within it

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particularly that place.

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One other thing
I should mention.

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There's a Sioux holy man
mentioned within the poem.

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This is Black Elk.

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Really gorgeous-- one of
the most profound books

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that I have ever read.

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First, because he's a
visionary and second

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because he was an extremely
human and tragic figure,

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is the biography
of a Sioux medicine

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man by the name of Black Elk.

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If anyone's interested
in getting the book,

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it's called Black
Elk Speaks and it's

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published by the University
of Nebraska press.

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He was a man who had
visions when he was a child

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and again when he was
an adult of ways to--

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mystic ways rituals to
act out to save his people

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from the White man, to recreate
the land that they were

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losing to recreate the buffalo.

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During the ghost dances,
the messianic movement

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in the 1890s, the Indians
were in such a state

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about losing their old life.

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Their culture has been
totally destroyed.

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They're in a far worse position
than any other minority

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group in this country I think.

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There's nothing of their old
culture is left essentially.

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They were doing things like the
government was providing them

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with cattle on the reservations.

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And they would instead of
simply butchering and eating

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the cattle, they would let
the steers go one by one

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and hunt them as they
had the buffalo before.

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There is something beautiful
but very tragic in that.

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They believed as a part of the
ritual of the ghost dancing

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in the 1890s which our
government eventually put

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down, stopped them from doing,
that the land that the White

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man had come to inhabit would
move out from beneath them.

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The Indians would rise up in
the air, they, their families,

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their possessions would
rise up in the air.

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The land would move
out beneath them

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and they would come down
again in a new continent which

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moved underneath them, which
would be the America that

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was before the White
man had destroyed

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so many of the
resources within it.

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And I think some sense
of whatever emotion

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is in this poem is
also about that.

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In a funny way I don't
feel close to the land

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particularly probably
because I grew up in a city.

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But I do in a general
way feel close to it.

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And the sense of us destroying
it as we are right now

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is such that you can
almost get a feeling

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that we're like among
the last people who

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will have a sense of nature.

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Who will have the opportunity
to have a sense of nature.

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And that's what this poem
is essentially about to me,

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"Rosebud."

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It refers to an--

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the title refers to
an Indian reservation

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the Rosebud reservation
where Black Elk lived.

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There is a place in Montana
where the grass stands up

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two feet, yellow
grass, white grass.

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The wind on it like locust
wings and the same shine.

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Facing what I think was West,
I could see a broad valley

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and river miles
into the valley that

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looked black and then trees.

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To the South was
more prairie, darker

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than where we stood because
the clouds covered it.

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A long shadow like the edge
of rain racing toward us.

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We've been driving
all day and the day

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before through South
Dakota along the Rosebud

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where the Sioux and now
farmers and go to school

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and look like everyone.

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In the reservation town, there
was a Sioux museum and trading

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post.

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We drove back and forth through
the town in the heat looking

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for something and stop there.

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There were some
implements inside.

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A long bow of shined wood
that lay in its glass case

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reflecting light.

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The walls were covered
with framed photographs.

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I can still see them.

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The Oglala Indians
posed in fine dress

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in front of a huge few huts
and some horses nearby.

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A feeling even in those
photographs the size

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of a book of spaciousness.

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I wanted to ask about
a Sioux holy man

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whose life I then recently
read and whose vision had gone

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on hopelessly past its time.

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I believed then that
only a great loss

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could make us feel small
enough to begin again

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and I still do though
it does no good.

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The woman behind the
counter talked endlessly on.

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There was no difference I
could see between us so I never

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asked.

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The place in Montana
was the Greasy Grass

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where Custer and the 7th Cavalry
fell, a last important victory

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for the tribes.

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Though the number of men killed
it would seem to us small,

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we have been driving
all day hypnotized.

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And when we got out to enter
the small flat American tourist

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center, we began to argue.

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And later walking between
the tall grass and reading

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plaques my wife made
an ironic comment.

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I believe it hurt the
land not intentionally.

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It was only meant
to hold us apart.

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Later I read of Ben Stein and
Ross and those who escaped.

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But what I felt then
was final, lying down

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face against the
warm side of a horse

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and feeling the lulls endlessly.

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The silence is
just before death.

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The place might stand for death.

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Every loss rejoined
in a wide place.

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Or it is rest as it was then
after the long drive, nothing

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for miles but grass
along valley to the West

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and living in history.

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It is just a way of living
gone, like our own every moment.

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Because what I have
to do daily and what

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is done to me are a number
of small indignities,

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it was important to write this.

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I think many things we all
say to each other and not

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intentional but
every indirect word

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will accumulate over the Earth.

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And now when we may be
approaching something final,

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it seems important
not to hurt the land.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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