WEBVTT

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I'm going to read
three more poems.

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This next poem is
a poem called "Ode

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to a Lebanese Crock of Olives".

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[LAUGHTER]

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I guess this poem
allows me, technically,

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to be called a romantic poet.

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And-- it's a kind
of hymn to my sense

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of the beauty in the world.

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The poem is dedicated
to my friend

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Walter Hamady's Aunt Libby,
who lives in Lebanon.

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And I can't believe that
anyone in the United States

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ever has any decent
food so, constantly,

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since Walter and Mary,
his wife, packages

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of delicious and wonderful
food from Lebanon.

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And it was on the receipt of
one of these packages of olives,

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nearly all of which
I consumed, [LAUGHS]

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that I was inspired
to write this ode.

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Actually, Walter said he'd
never let me visit again

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if I didn't do something to
replace the olives that I

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consumed.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Ode to a Lebanese
Crock of Olives".

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"For Walter's Aunt Libby's
diligence in making olives.

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As some women love jewels
and drape themselves

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with ropes of pearls,
stud their ears

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with diamonds band
themselves with heavy gold,

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have emeralds on their fingers
or opals on white bosoms.

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I live with a still life of
grapes whose skins frost over

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with the sugar forming
inside, hard apples,

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and delicate pears; cheeses,
from the sharp fontina,

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to icy bleu.

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The aromatic chévres,
boursault, boursin,

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a litany of thick bread, dark
wines, pasta with garlic,

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soups full of potato and
onion; and butter and cream,

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like the skins of beautiful
women, are on my sideboard.

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These words are to say
thank you to Walter's Aunt

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Libby for her wonderful olives;
oily green knobs in lemon

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that I add to the feast when
they get here from Lebanon.

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Where men are fighting,
as her sisters

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have been fighting for years,
over whose house the company

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stays in and whose recipes
for kibbe or dolmas or houmas

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are passed along.

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I often wonder, had I
been born beautiful,

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a Venus on the
California seashore,

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if I'd have learned to
eat and drink so well?

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For, with hummingbirds
outside my kitchen window

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to remind of small
elegance, and mourning doves

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in the pines and cedar,
speaking with grace,

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and the beautiful bodies
of lean blond surfers,

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dancing on terraces.

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Surely had I a beautiful
face or elegant body,

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surely I would not have
found such pleasure in food?

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I often wonder why
a poem to me is

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so much more like a
piece of bread and butter

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than like a sapphire?

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But with mockets flying in
and out of orange groves,

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and brown pelicans dipping
into the Pacific, looking

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at camellias and fuchsia,
and abundance of rose,

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and the brilliant
purple ice plant which

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lined the cliffs to the beach,
life was a 'Still Life' for me.

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And a feast.

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I wish I'd known then the
paintings of Rubens or David,

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where beauty was not only
thin, tan, California girls,

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but included all abundance.

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As some women love jewels,
I love the jewels of life.

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And were you, the man I love to
cover me naked with diamonds,

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I would accept them too.

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Beauty is everywhere, in
contrasts and unities.

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But to you, I could not offer
the thin tan fashionable body

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of a California beach girl.

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Instead, I could
give the richness

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of burgundy, dark brown
gravies, gleaming onions,

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the gold of lemons, and some
of Walter's Aunt Libby's

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wonderful olives from Lebanon.

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Thank you, Aunt Libby,
from a failed beach girl,

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out of the West."

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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