WEBVTT

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Now, I'll read a
couple of poems.

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The first one, average
length and the second one,

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very short, about
certain elements

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of the grotesque in our lives.

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Elements of the grotesque about
which I feel rather strongly.

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Flannery O'Connor,
a writer whom I

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admire to the point
of worship, said

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that in order to write about
the grotesque, a novelist,

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she was talking about
novelist, I guess,

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must understand what is not
grotesque in our society

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and why.

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And I think that's very
difficult, especially

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for a poet to know the
line between the grotesque

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and the non-grotesque.

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I can tell when something's
really enormously grotesque

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pretty easily.

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I remember when I was about 19
or 20, I sat down on a toilet

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and it fell over with me.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And the water
began to shoot out.

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And I was caught in the position
of trying to get my pants up

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while being attacked
by a geyser.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Now, that's obviously grotesque.

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And I can tell immediately
that that's grotesque,

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but I can't always tell
when something is grotesque.

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[LAUGHTER]

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The element-- the grotesque
element, which, I suppose,

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caused this first
poem I'm going to read

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is grotesque in a
totally different sense.

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It's horror, I suppose.

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This is an ecological poem.

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When I was in Idaho this past
summer, I saw in the park

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in the poem two
magnificent black swans.

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I had never seen
anything like them.

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They were black, they
had curly tail feathers,

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and brilliant red beaks,
and legs and feet,

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and they were, oh,
gorgeous things.

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And I was talking to
my brother about them.

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He said, this pair of
swans you're seeing here

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is not the original pair.

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That these are very
rare birds and they

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have had to be replaced because
the original pair was killed.

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And I said, well, how
did they get killed?

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And he said, well, at night,
they come up on the bank

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and sleep.

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And the teenagers
made a sport out

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of driving down here
and driving off the road

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and chasing them around
until they ran over them

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with their cars.

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Perhaps an extreme case,
but I think, kind of,

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indicative of some of our
problems with our environment,

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the senseless slaughter.

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I really can't look a
stuffed animal in the eyes.

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I find that very
difficult to do.

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And I think when we all
reached the point where

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we can't look at stuffed
animal in the eyes,

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we will have a little
better attitude

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toward the world around us.

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This is-- this poem will
be in the New Yorker,

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which pleases me because--

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more than it would if
most were, because I

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hope some heavy industrial
type will read it maybe,

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I think, in that magazine.

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Heavy industrial types
read that magazine.

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Maybe someone will read it
and get something out of it.

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It's called Seven
Preludes to Silence

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and it is numbered
one through seven,

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but I won't read the numbers.

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Seven Preludes to Silence.

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All day, a wounded
mountain followed

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me, gentle and
crumpled like a fern.

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It was too shy to speak
of its great need.

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And what could I
have done to help it?

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The desert has forgotten
what it is waiting for,

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even sand will not
survive without a purpose.

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Can thus learn to swim?

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Will flowers be able to
repeat themselves in stone?

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We have removed
the Earth's flesh

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and torn out its bleeding veins.

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Sunlight reflects
from our knives.

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It blisters the surface of
the lake where nebula of fish

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will never return.

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A few gulls carry
their white grief

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on delicate hollow bones
from water to water.

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We have forgotten
that once there

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were black swans with brilliant
red beaks and curly tail

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feathers.

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Soon, the last birds
of desperate passage

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will ricochet through
our oily rooms.

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The stars confirm
nothing, deny nothing.

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Heads of animals
grow on our walls.

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Their hopeless glass eyes stare
down at us without reproach.

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We, who invented the clock
and the metronome cannot keep

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the calendar alive.

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We exist not on the edge
of life, but at its limits,

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asking no pardon of the
grass or the delicate shells,

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which arrive and
depart on each tide.

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In the book of our history,
it will be recorded

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that we murdered the Earth.

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With the name of a different
crime tattooed on each finger,

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we walk out into the Orchard
and find tiny mirrors

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hanging from the trees.

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Listen, the leaves are
screaming for help as they fall.

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[APPLAUSE]

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