WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.360 align:middle line:84% You see there that man's rarity, is 00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:05.670 align:middle line:90% equated with that of the bird. 00:00:05.670 --> 00:00:11.340 align:middle line:84% During the atomic test, I used to pace the floor at night, 00:00:11.340 --> 00:00:13.230 align:middle line:90% thinking of the albatross. 00:00:13.230 --> 00:00:17.250 align:middle line:84% And finally, I sat down and wrote a five page single-spaced 00:00:17.250 --> 00:00:20.760 align:middle line:84% letter to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 00:00:20.760 --> 00:00:24.150 align:middle line:84% on the subject of the albatross and mankind. 00:00:24.150 --> 00:00:28.830 align:middle line:84% I cited to him Bobby, well, Coleridge and I 00:00:28.830 --> 00:00:30.240 align:middle line:90% even cited Moby-Dick. 00:00:30.240 --> 00:00:33.540 align:middle line:84% And I went into long, long symbolic details. 00:00:33.540 --> 00:00:36.660 align:middle line:84% And I received an answer from the president's aide, 00:00:36.660 --> 00:00:39.150 align:middle line:84% that he enjoyed my letter very much. 00:00:39.150 --> 00:00:43.410 align:middle line:84% He was going to take under consideration ceasing the test, 00:00:43.410 --> 00:00:44.580 align:middle line:90% and he did. 00:00:44.580 --> 00:00:46.980 align:middle line:84% But I don't know whether that was the reason, 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:53.850 align:middle line:84% but after all if [INAUDIBLE] left the party, 00:00:53.850 --> 00:00:55.860 align:middle line:90% anything is possible, you see. 00:00:55.860 --> 00:01:00.890 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.890 --> 00:01:03.040 align:middle line:90% Then let me see, this-- 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:07.480 align:middle line:90% 00:01:07.480 --> 00:01:11.590 align:middle line:84% there are many, many little lines here and there, 00:01:11.590 --> 00:01:17.860 align:middle line:84% which you would find are explored in Miss MacIntosh, 00:01:17.860 --> 00:01:21.280 align:middle line:84% because I always worry about writers who tell me, 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:25.240 align:middle line:84% oh, my next book is going to be totally different. 00:01:25.240 --> 00:01:28.240 align:middle line:84% I think, what's the matter with you? 00:01:28.240 --> 00:01:29.620 align:middle line:90% Why should it be different? 00:01:29.620 --> 00:01:34.570 align:middle line:84% Your book should become more and more what they already were, 00:01:34.570 --> 00:01:37.480 align:middle line:90% more and more yourself. 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:42.040 align:middle line:84% Never break with your former self and say, that's over with. 00:01:42.040 --> 00:01:44.530 align:middle line:84% But rather, I'm being very scotch 00:01:44.530 --> 00:01:48.040 align:middle line:84% about this, use what you have and what 00:01:48.040 --> 00:01:51.460 align:middle line:90% you are, and enlarge upon it. 00:01:51.460 --> 00:01:55.810 align:middle line:84% Amplify it, strengthen it, but don't give it up. 00:01:55.810 --> 00:01:59.290 align:middle line:84% Now when I was at the University of Chicago, 00:01:59.290 --> 00:02:05.320 align:middle line:84% I knew a beautiful lady who was an opium addict. 00:02:05.320 --> 00:02:09.100 align:middle line:84% One of the major characters of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. 00:02:09.100 --> 00:02:16.210 align:middle line:84% She was a kind of Elizabeth Barrett Browning recluse, 00:02:16.210 --> 00:02:21.730 align:middle line:84% fabulously beautiful, fabulously brilliant and fabulously rich. 00:02:21.730 --> 00:02:23.950 align:middle line:84% She had to be rich to be beautiful, and still 00:02:23.950 --> 00:02:26.050 align:middle line:84% be an opium addict as she always said. 00:02:26.050 --> 00:02:29.020 align:middle line:84% Had she been poor, she would have been in a flophouse, 00:02:29.020 --> 00:02:32.290 align:middle line:84% but she was in a kind of place that 00:02:32.290 --> 00:02:36.670 align:middle line:84% was like a Chinese Nightingale, that poem by Vachel Lindsay. 00:02:36.670 --> 00:02:40.240 align:middle line:84% And she had dreams, and I was often present 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:43.380 align:middle line:90% during her dreams. 00:02:43.380 --> 00:02:46.070 align:middle line:84% And here I have written one of her dreams. 00:02:46.070 --> 00:02:50.110 align:middle line:84% I wrote a long poem about her, the only person who 00:02:50.110 --> 00:02:54.220 align:middle line:84% ever saw it was Martin Zabel and he is dead, 00:02:54.220 --> 00:02:56.860 align:middle line:90% and I have lost the copy. 00:02:56.860 --> 00:02:58.690 align:middle line:84% So that's a little piece of immortality, 00:02:58.690 --> 00:03:01.900 align:middle line:90% it's gone, gone, gone. 00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:04.030 align:middle line:84% Like the poet James Whitcomb Riley 00:03:04.030 --> 00:03:05.800 align:middle line:84% used to carry little scraps of poems, 00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:08.200 align:middle line:90% I'm now writing his biography. 00:03:08.200 --> 00:03:10.840 align:middle line:84% He carried them around in his high silk hat, 00:03:10.840 --> 00:03:12.490 align:middle line:90% like Lincoln's speeches. 00:03:12.490 --> 00:03:16.450 align:middle line:84% He was very absent minded, and sometimes slightly inebriated. 00:03:16.450 --> 00:03:19.570 align:middle line:84% He would lift his hat, and all the poems would just 00:03:19.570 --> 00:03:21.160 align:middle line:90% shower out like snow. 00:03:21.160 --> 00:03:23.620 align:middle line:84% And the wind would blew them along the street, 00:03:23.620 --> 00:03:27.370 align:middle line:84% and I'm sure his greatest works were lost in that way. 00:03:27.370 --> 00:03:33.070 align:middle line:84% And it's nice to have a few lost words, it really is. 00:03:33.070 --> 00:03:38.080 align:middle line:84% Well, this she dream that she saw, I was very young, 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:40.120 align:middle line:84% then she called me the prosaic sprite, 00:03:40.120 --> 00:03:43.840 align:middle line:84% because I was supposedly the most sensible person she had 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:45.770 align:middle line:90% ever met, can you imagine that? 00:03:45.770 --> 00:03:50.770 align:middle line:84% And she told the prosaic sprite her opium dreams. 00:03:50.770 --> 00:03:58.390 align:middle line:84% She dreamed that she saw Alcibiades' head, 00:03:58.390 --> 00:04:02.680 align:middle line:84% and was caught in a drain pipe in the house. 00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:11.050 align:middle line:84% And that there was a rabbit also in the drain pipe, 00:04:11.050 --> 00:04:15.490 align:middle line:84% and they were looking at each other, staring at each other. 00:04:15.490 --> 00:04:21.760 align:middle line:84% And she told me this dream, and I wrote it. 00:04:21.760 --> 00:04:25.060 align:middle line:90% 00:04:25.060 --> 00:04:29.680 align:middle line:84% It's in Miss MacIntosh too, her dream about Alcibiades. 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:31.780 align:middle line:90% This is what started the book. 00:04:31.780 --> 00:04:35.560 align:middle line:84% I don't think it's a particularly good poem, 00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:41.170 align:middle line:84% but then I have a tendency to reject all my former works 00:04:41.170 --> 00:04:44.740 align:middle line:84% after a while, because I'm so busy writing the new one. 00:04:44.740 --> 00:04:48.920 align:middle line:84% And I always love the one I'm writing, and forget the others. 00:04:48.920 --> 00:04:51.190 align:middle line:84% So I'm having to read this after how many? 00:04:51.190 --> 00:04:54.370 align:middle line:90% 15 years of freedom from it. 00:04:54.370 --> 00:04:56.320 align:middle line:84% I don't think I've looked at it for 20 years, 00:04:56.320 --> 00:04:58.330 align:middle line:90% if you want to know the truth. 00:04:58.330 --> 00:05:03.790 align:middle line:84% It's called Legend in Grass, of Innocence and Evil. 00:05:03.790 --> 00:05:10.270 align:middle line:84% How all space could also frame a face of a drunken general, 00:05:10.270 --> 00:05:16.270 align:middle line:84% leering vastly underground as if he were unburied still. 00:05:16.270 --> 00:05:22.840 align:middle line:84% That Alcibiades I feared, Jochen beneath magenta blossoms, 00:05:22.840 --> 00:05:26.500 align:middle line:84% bled with blood of John the Baptist, 00:05:26.500 --> 00:05:30.160 align:middle line:90% who here is forever headless. 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:35.380 align:middle line:84% That self-same staggered face should be in a drainpipe, 00:05:35.380 --> 00:05:40.390 align:middle line:84% looming suddenly where the trembling rabbit ran 00:05:40.390 --> 00:05:43.900 align:middle line:90% seeing unresurrected man. 00:05:43.900 --> 00:05:47.080 align:middle line:84% The trembling rabbit sees the bared teeth, 00:05:47.080 --> 00:05:53.890 align:middle line:84% who's aged appetite details the wild of soft eared sensation 00:05:53.890 --> 00:05:56.170 align:middle line:90% in the realm of night. 00:05:56.170 --> 00:05:59.380 align:middle line:84% Rabbit who stares unblinking eyed, 00:05:59.380 --> 00:06:05.170 align:middle line:84% at thatched and bearded face of doom, which stares at him 00:06:05.170 --> 00:06:07.560 align:middle line:90% unblinking eye. 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:10.440 align:middle line:84% Believe that John the Baptist rose, 00:06:10.440 --> 00:06:13.920 align:middle line:84% his martyred head upon him still. 00:06:13.920 --> 00:06:17.340 align:middle line:84% That was another star than this, whereby 00:06:17.340 --> 00:06:22.830 align:middle line:84% the sensual and coarse head which will not let him pass, 00:06:22.830 --> 00:06:26.220 align:middle line:84% the innocent creature is detained. 00:06:26.220 --> 00:06:30.360 align:middle line:84% Its fumes, a smoke of Sylvan breath 00:06:30.360 --> 00:06:36.150 align:middle line:84% beneath a darkly, bleeding land and neither one 00:06:36.150 --> 00:06:38.840 align:middle line:90% will suffer death.