WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.810 --> 00:00:04.950 align:middle line:84% When I came back to New Hampshire to live forever, 00:00:04.950 --> 00:00:10.123 align:middle line:84% to live only in a box, I was afraid 00:00:10.123 --> 00:00:11.790 align:middle line:84% that I would not write about it anymore. 00:00:11.790 --> 00:00:14.610 align:middle line:84% I'd written about it all my life, poetry and prose both. 00:00:14.610 --> 00:00:17.490 align:middle line:84% And being there in the center of it, I thought it might go away. 00:00:17.490 --> 00:00:20.730 align:middle line:84% But I was willing to take the chance, and it proved illusory. 00:00:20.730 --> 00:00:22.993 align:middle line:84% I'm writing about it more than ever. 00:00:22.993 --> 00:00:24.660 align:middle line:84% One thing that has happened is that I've 00:00:24.660 --> 00:00:28.980 align:middle line:84% been listening to a lot of the old people, as I always did. 00:00:28.980 --> 00:00:32.040 align:middle line:84% The old people now were the middle aged people back then. 00:00:32.040 --> 00:00:36.060 align:middle line:84% And a cousin of mine told me the story that led to this poem. 00:00:36.060 --> 00:00:38.400 align:middle line:84% The man named Paul Fenton who's in his 70's. 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:39.960 align:middle line:84% He told me that when he was a boy, 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:41.525 align:middle line:84% he'd heard the story from an old man. 00:00:41.525 --> 00:00:42.900 align:middle line:84% And that the old man had told him 00:00:42.900 --> 00:00:45.810 align:middle line:84% that he had heard it when he was a boy from an old man. 00:00:45.810 --> 00:00:48.477 align:middle line:84% So as Paul said, it goes back some. 00:00:48.477 --> 00:00:50.310 align:middle line:84% You would know from the nature of the story, 00:00:50.310 --> 00:00:52.500 align:middle line:84% it had to go back before the railroad anyway, 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:55.200 align:middle line:90% which came through about 1846. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:00:58.170 align:middle line:84% It's a story about how somebody, a farmer, 00:00:58.170 --> 00:01:01.860 align:middle line:84% made his living back before transportation like that. 00:01:01.860 --> 00:01:05.770 align:middle line:90% It's called Oxcart Man. 00:01:05.770 --> 00:01:08.080 align:middle line:84% In October of the year, he counts 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:12.580 align:middle line:84% potatoes dug from the brown field, counting the seed, 00:01:12.580 --> 00:01:16.810 align:middle line:84% counting the seller's portion out, and bags the rest 00:01:16.810 --> 00:01:19.270 align:middle line:90% on the cart's floor. 00:01:19.270 --> 00:01:23.680 align:middle line:84% He packs wool sheared in April, honey and combs, linen, 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:27.940 align:middle line:84% leather tanned from deer hide, and vinegar in a barrel 00:01:27.940 --> 00:01:32.020 align:middle line:84% hooped by hand at the forge's fire. 00:01:32.020 --> 00:01:38.410 align:middle line:84% He walks by his ox's head ten days to Portsmouth market 00:01:38.410 --> 00:01:40.750 align:middle line:90% and sells potatoes. 00:01:40.750 --> 00:01:44.980 align:middle line:84% And a bag that carried potatoes, flax seed, birch brooms, 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:49.150 align:middle line:84% maple sugar, goose feathers, yarn. 00:01:49.150 --> 00:01:53.110 align:middle line:84% When the cart is empty, he sells the cart. 00:01:53.110 --> 00:01:58.450 align:middle line:84% When the cart is sold, he sells the ox, harness, and yoke. 00:01:58.450 --> 00:01:59.980 align:middle line:90% And walks home. 00:01:59.980 --> 00:02:06.010 align:middle line:84% His pockets heavy with the year's coin for salt and taxes. 00:02:06.010 --> 00:02:09.850 align:middle line:84% And at home by fire's light in November cold, 00:02:09.850 --> 00:02:14.680 align:middle line:84% stitches new harness for next year's ox in the barn 00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:20.770 align:middle line:84% and carves the yoke and saws planks building the cart again. 00:02:20.770 --> 00:02:23.950 align:middle line:90% 00:02:23.950 --> 00:02:27.400 align:middle line:84% When I heard the story, I was excited, thrilled, 00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:28.498 align:middle line:90% and I was happy about it. 00:02:28.498 --> 00:02:30.040 align:middle line:84% When I began to write the poem-- when 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:32.500 align:middle line:84% I was writing the poem over a long period, 00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:34.672 align:middle line:84% I always thought of it as a happy poem. 00:02:34.672 --> 00:02:36.130 align:middle line:84% When I began-- when I published it, 00:02:36.130 --> 00:02:37.840 align:middle line:84% and when I began to read it at readings, 00:02:37.840 --> 00:02:40.330 align:middle line:84% I discovered that it depressed lots of people terribly, 00:02:40.330 --> 00:02:40.930 align:middle line:90% you know. 00:02:40.930 --> 00:02:43.120 align:middle line:84% And people just thought, oh god, he 00:02:43.120 --> 00:02:46.330 align:middle line:84% has to do it all over again, and so on. 00:02:46.330 --> 00:02:48.010 align:middle line:84% It was like the myth of Sisyphus. 00:02:48.010 --> 00:02:49.150 align:middle line:90% For me, it was-- 00:02:49.150 --> 00:02:50.500 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:02:50.500 --> 00:02:53.560 align:middle line:84% For me it's like the bottle being half empty and half full, 00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:54.460 align:middle line:90% you know. 00:02:54.460 --> 00:02:57.160 align:middle line:84% For me it was the wonderful regeneration, 00:02:57.160 --> 00:02:58.480 align:middle line:90% the wonderful cycle. 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:01.795 align:middle line:84% The dying to be born again, over and over again. 00:03:01.795 --> 00:03:05.680 align:middle line:84% The human life is like the life of a perennial plant. 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:08.570 align:middle line:84% And when people began to tell me about Sisyphus and so on, 00:03:08.570 --> 00:03:10.450 align:middle line:84% I realized that I'd never dreamed 00:03:10.450 --> 00:03:14.230 align:middle line:84% that a perennial plant might get discouraged every spring. 00:03:14.230 --> 00:03:16.045 align:middle line:84% Having to do it all over again, you 00:03:16.045 --> 00:03:18.940 align:middle line:84% know, the stamen, the pistil, everything-- 00:03:18.940 --> 00:03:21.160 align:middle line:90% oh. 00:03:21.160 --> 00:03:23.200 align:middle line:84% Then somebody at one reading said 00:03:23.200 --> 00:03:25.720 align:middle line:84% it was sort of like finishing one term of freshman English, 00:03:25.720 --> 00:03:27.300 align:middle line:84% and then starting with another group. 00:03:27.300 --> 00:03:31.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:03:31.040 --> 00:03:34.552 align:middle line:84% So I know that's there, you know, now the other side. 00:03:34.552 --> 00:03:36.010 align:middle line:84% But also somebody pointed out to me 00:03:36.010 --> 00:03:38.410 align:middle line:84% that Camus ended the myth of Sisyphus by saying, 00:03:38.410 --> 00:03:41.075 align:middle line:90% and Sisyphus was happy. 00:03:41.075 --> 00:03:42.700 align:middle line:84% I was saying to a few of you last night 00:03:42.700 --> 00:03:44.367 align:middle line:84% about the English sculptor, Henry Moore, 00:03:44.367 --> 00:03:46.300 align:middle line:84% saying that the secret of life was 00:03:46.300 --> 00:03:50.200 align:middle line:84% to be totally committed to a desire and ambition that 00:03:50.200 --> 00:03:53.230 align:middle line:84% was consuming, to which you devoted your entire life. 00:03:53.230 --> 00:03:56.980 align:middle line:84% And that that ambition must be unachievable. 00:03:56.980 --> 00:04:00.260 align:middle line:90% And Sisyphus was happy. 00:04:00.260 --> 00:04:00.940 align:middle line:90% It seems to-- 00:04:00.940 --> 00:04:02.950 align:middle line:90% I think I make-- 00:04:02.950 --> 00:04:05.230 align:middle line:84% say more about the poem than the poem has, probably, 00:04:05.230 --> 00:04:08.010 align:middle line:84% but I've been thinking about it lately.