WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.560 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.560 --> 00:00:06.450 align:middle line:84% This newest book of poems arises in many ways from bird 00:00:06.450 --> 00:00:10.200 align:middle line:84% watching and noting in spring the way 00:00:10.200 --> 00:00:13.530 align:middle line:84% that various birds built their nests, which 00:00:13.530 --> 00:00:16.470 align:middle line:84% is not of anything they make but of what they 00:00:16.470 --> 00:00:24.960 align:middle line:84% find, be it all dead grass, mud, grocery seeds, tinsel. 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:28.200 align:middle line:84% And it struck me that the notions 00:00:28.200 --> 00:00:32.070 align:middle line:84% that I had learned to think about poetry as voicing 00:00:32.070 --> 00:00:35.040 align:middle line:84% of some original thing and myself was perhaps 00:00:35.040 --> 00:00:38.040 align:middle line:84% wholly mistaken and that I was doing 00:00:38.040 --> 00:00:40.770 align:middle line:84% this other activity, a very birdlike activity, 00:00:40.770 --> 00:00:44.340 align:middle line:84% a nesting activity, of taking these words that everyone 00:00:44.340 --> 00:00:45.360 align:middle line:90% speaks-- 00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:50.280 align:middle line:84% all of us share 99.9% of our vocabulary-- 00:00:50.280 --> 00:00:52.410 align:middle line:84% and finding a way to stitch it together 00:00:52.410 --> 00:00:56.340 align:middle line:84% that it became not just a thing of thought or beauty 00:00:56.340 --> 00:01:02.160 align:middle line:84% hopefully, but a place of dwelling, a place of nesting. 00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:06.000 align:middle line:84% It also made me realize that it became a foolish thing to value 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.970 align:middle line:84% words that I wrote over words others wrote, 00:01:08.970 --> 00:01:11.670 align:middle line:84% and that somehow, it could be a valid thing 00:01:11.670 --> 00:01:14.640 align:middle line:84% to write a poem by pulling in texts 00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:18.750 align:middle line:84% from other people, other sources, and simply having them 00:01:18.750 --> 00:01:23.020 align:middle line:84% there and find a way to stitch them all together. 00:01:23.020 --> 00:01:27.930 align:middle line:84% And so this book is not only a sort of collage in that way 00:01:27.930 --> 00:01:30.330 align:middle line:90% but itself mimics the structure. 00:01:30.330 --> 00:01:35.610 align:middle line:84% There's three sections, each with a fourth part 00:01:35.610 --> 00:01:39.360 align:middle line:84% that twines together all the themes that it mentions, 00:01:39.360 --> 00:01:41.640 align:middle line:84% the first section being in some way 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:44.820 align:middle line:84% just the sheer wonderment of being in a world that 00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:48.420 align:middle line:84% apparently exists, and the second part being worried 00:01:48.420 --> 00:01:52.560 align:middle line:84% about that apparently, and the third part 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:58.500 align:middle line:84% trying to do a work of finding a way to think about the, 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:04.830 align:middle line:84% as Oppen would say, baffling hierarchies of word and world. 00:02:04.830 --> 00:02:08.610 align:middle line:84% I don't have any good way to read this book. 00:02:08.610 --> 00:02:14.400 align:middle line:84% And so I'm just going to kind of choose a path through. 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:18.300 align:middle line:84% You'll hear words that aren't my own. 00:02:18.300 --> 00:02:22.560 align:middle line:84% And you'll maybe give me credit that isn't mine. 00:02:22.560 --> 00:02:28.170 align:middle line:84% There's sections from Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, 00:02:28.170 --> 00:02:31.890 align:middle line:84% in particular, her paying attention to the difficulty 00:02:31.890 --> 00:02:34.890 align:middle line:84% and illness, the fever that William 00:02:34.890 --> 00:02:37.590 align:middle line:90% would feel in composing. 00:02:37.590 --> 00:02:40.830 align:middle line:84% There is Milton, in particular his letter 00:02:40.830 --> 00:02:46.050 align:middle line:84% that recounts his going blind, Dickens from Little Dorrit. 00:02:46.050 --> 00:02:48.300 align:middle line:84% Thoreau is littered throughout here, 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:53.760 align:middle line:84% as are Emerson, Simone Weil, Martin Buber, Wittgenstein, 00:02:53.760 --> 00:02:56.970 align:middle line:90% Heidegger, Edward Taylor. 00:02:56.970 --> 00:02:58.250 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:02:58.250 --> 00:03:02.550 align:middle line:84% I kept track someplace, but I don't know. 00:03:02.550 --> 00:03:04.470 align:middle line:90% There's an index. 00:03:04.470 --> 00:03:09.210 align:middle line:84% It's probably faulty as my indices tend to be. 00:03:09.210 --> 00:03:14.500 align:middle line:90% 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:18.920 align:middle line:84% "A fine wild innocence, not ease. 00:03:18.920 --> 00:03:22.160 align:middle line:90% We hear when we cannot see. 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:25.730 align:middle line:84% The wood deep shade where the aster grows, 00:03:25.730 --> 00:03:27.740 align:middle line:84% William went into the wood to compose. 00:03:27.740 --> 00:03:31.230 align:middle line:90% 00:03:31.230 --> 00:03:34.140 align:middle line:90% William cut wood a little. 00:03:34.140 --> 00:03:38.280 align:middle line:84% William wrote out part of his poem and endeavored to alter it 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:40.940 align:middle line:90% and so made himself ill. 00:03:40.940 --> 00:03:44.150 align:middle line:84% William composing in the wood in the morning. 00:03:44.150 --> 00:03:46.720 align:middle line:90% William had slept better. 00:03:46.720 --> 00:03:50.050 align:middle line:84% He fell to work and made himself unwell. 00:03:50.050 --> 00:03:53.170 align:middle line:84% William, sadly tired and working still. 00:03:53.170 --> 00:03:57.520 align:middle line:84% William was very unwell, worn out with his bad night's rest. 00:03:57.520 --> 00:03:59.470 align:middle line:90% He went to bed. 00:03:59.470 --> 00:04:02.920 align:middle line:84% I read to him to endeavor to make him sleep. 00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:05.770 align:middle line:84% William slept well, but his tongue is feverish. 00:04:05.770 --> 00:04:17.670 align:middle line:90% 00:04:17.670 --> 00:04:21.000 align:middle line:90% Deep within I turn from reading. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:24.030 align:middle line:84% The day outside the page, a sort of rainbow 00:04:24.030 --> 00:04:27.870 align:middle line:84% seemed to obscure it through which the birds flitted 00:04:27.870 --> 00:04:32.190 align:middle line:84% with a sort of sleepy heaviness, their bright bodies interwoven 00:04:32.190 --> 00:04:32.880 align:middle line:90% with it. 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:38.130 align:middle line:84% Some ashy light in my eyes forced me to put down my book 00:04:38.130 --> 00:04:40.320 align:middle line:90% in my ambitions therein. 00:04:40.320 --> 00:04:46.440 align:middle line:84% My eyes, both night and day, and my comfort, if comfort it was, 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:50.640 align:middle line:84% I saw in the pages that closing, narrowed the whole day 00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:54.690 align:middle line:84% into a minute quantity of light as if through a crack. 00:04:54.690 --> 00:04:57.360 align:middle line:90% And I had no way to speak of it. 00:04:57.360 --> 00:04:59.660 align:middle line:90% And then it was done." 00:04:59.660 --> 00:05:05.000 align:middle line:90%