WEBVTT

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I'm not going to read
any more poems which are

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in the mimeographed program.

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So there's no need to
look at it anymore.

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Well, I'm going to read,
next, a number of poems

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from something I have managed
to really put into shape

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only in the last month.

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It's going to be, I suppose,
a book of my shorter

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poems of the last five years.

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And I'm going to call
it The Back Country.

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And it is dedicated
to Kenneth Rexroth.

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The first section
of this manuscript

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is poems that belong somehow to
the West, to the western world.

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I will first read
a few of those.

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This one is called "Marin-an."

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I start out by
saying [INAUDIBLE]

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of the western world.

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And I have to
explain that Marin-An

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is a Japanese-English-Chinese
poem on Marin

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County in California, Marin.

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But also, it means
Horse Grove if you

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read half of it in Chinese
and half of it in Japanese.

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But you can write it
with the same characters.

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An means a hermitage.

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This was a place I
lived for a while,

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free, from what they say.

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Sun breaks over the eucalyptus
grove below the wet pasture,

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water's about hot.

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I sit in the open
window and roll a smoke.

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Distant dogs bark.

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A pair of cawing crows,
the twang of a pygmy

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nuthatch high in a pine.

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From behind the cypress window,
the mare moves up, grazing.

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A soft, continuous roar
comes out of the far valley

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of the six-lane highway--

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thousands and thousands of
cars driving men to work.