WEBVTT

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I'd like to read a few
new poems and then let

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you get out of this hot room.

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One of the problems I had
when I finished my second book

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was that I felt I had
exhausted a subject that

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was very important to me.

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And I wasn't sure what
was compelling enough

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to write about.

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I knew that having
compelling subject matter

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was what makes
poems great poems.

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And I was going through
a period, I felt,

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of transition where I was unsure
of myself in lots of areas.

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This poem is called
The Subject Matter.

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How elusive.

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What we want to speak of.

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A face reflected in water.

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The buzz of a bee
from flower to flower.

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Or was it mother, weeping by
the campsite at all the family

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outings.

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The drift of incidents
builds and builds

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like the fire that makes so
many shapes and shadows we don't

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know what to make of them.

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Yet, there were moments we
seem to cohere to one another,

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to huddle close, or hug
after long absences.

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The season for memory is
brief and clouded over,

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but it strikes you
that the sun was out.

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You took the family photograph
and the family soon dispersed.

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Later on, the images and
details seemed so real.

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An explanation of the hillside.

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But you can't find
yourself in the picture

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and the flowers
growing over the meadow

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now are not the ones
we wanted to preserve,

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the ones we meant to pick.

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Well he's very ambivalent about
telling people not to applaud.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I'm always ambivalent about
telling people to applaud.

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Guess you know what
kind of guy I am.

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