WEBVTT

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This one-- this is more
like the lyrical absolute.

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That's what--
Charles [INAUDIBLE]

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said that to me once.

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And he helped me a lot.

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He wrote to me-- when
I was still in college,

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I would write to him,
and he helped me.

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He tried to.

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No one could help me.

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I wasn't going to be helped.

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I was going to
help them, but no.

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He said, Franz, you know,
your poems are gorgeous,

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but you try too hard for the
lyrical absolute, he said.

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It's a wonderful phrase.

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And I know now what he meant.

00:00:44.660 --> 00:00:45.620 align:middle line:90%
But I like it.

00:00:45.620 --> 00:00:51.920 align:middle line:84%
And, like, it can work if it
uses sort of concrete images.

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Like Rene Char you don't
know what they mean,

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but the images are made from
concrete things in the world.

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And you feel in
contact with them,

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and you don't care whether
you know what it means.

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It means what it says.

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It's like Dillon
Thomas said somewhere--

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"all I ask is that you
read my poems literally."

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So this one's a
little closer to that,

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although it's not that hard.

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It's called, "Song."

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I was at my mother's house
at one point like a fool.

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And I was looking
at this wisteria

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plant hanging from the roof
in Sacramento, in California.

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And there was a bee.

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And it was raining.

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There was this bee
in the wisteria.

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And I don't know.

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And I wrote this
line in my notebook.

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"Wisteria rain, where
is your child mother?

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This must be the
last bee on Earth.

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So you find no more
grandeur or mystery here.

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Perhaps you neglected
to bring any.

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Heckling sparrows,
vast electron cloud

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of gnats on windless
water, night-blue volume

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in a language no one reads.

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Are we tired yet?

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Are you finished
debating the blind

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who insist that light doesn't
exist and have proof of it?

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Nobody's alone.

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God is alone.

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If you like being born,
you'll love dying."

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