WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.510 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:03.870 align:middle line:84% Maxine Kumin is a poet, novelist, 00:00:03.870 --> 00:00:08.350 align:middle line:84% writer of children's books, essayist, and teacher. 00:00:08.350 --> 00:00:12.300 align:middle line:84% She's the consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress. 00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:17.310 align:middle line:84% Her books of poems are, The Retrieval System, House, 00:00:17.310 --> 00:00:21.040 align:middle line:84% Bridge, Fountain, Gate, Up Country-- 00:00:21.040 --> 00:00:24.420 align:middle line:84% which was the 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner-- 00:00:24.420 --> 00:00:30.210 align:middle line:84% The Nightmare Factory, The privilege and Halfway. 00:00:30.210 --> 00:00:34.680 align:middle line:84% The most recent of her four novels is the Designated Heir. 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:37.340 align:middle line:84% She has taught at the Bread Loaf writers conference 00:00:37.340 --> 00:00:42.050 align:middle line:84% at Columbia University, Brandeis University, and Princeton 00:00:42.050 --> 00:00:44.000 align:middle line:90% University. 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:46.820 align:middle line:84% Her other honors include an American Academy 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:49.610 align:middle line:84% in Institute of Arts and Letters Award, 00:00:49.610 --> 00:00:53.510 align:middle line:84% First prize in the 1976 Boston Mountain awards, 00:00:53.510 --> 00:00:56.240 align:middle line:84% and a National Council on the Arts Fellowship. 00:00:56.240 --> 00:00:57.350 align:middle line:90% Maxine Kumin. 00:00:57.350 --> 00:01:00.640 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.640 --> 00:01:03.760 align:middle line:84% "Shaking her chignon, suck you must not 00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:05.980 align:middle line:90% or the tailor will chop. 00:01:05.980 --> 00:01:10.060 align:middle line:84% And here is smart Robert, the flying boy, bad one. 00:01:10.060 --> 00:01:13.980 align:middle line:84% We have a storm blows and coughs in the treetops. 00:01:13.980 --> 00:01:17.410 align:middle line:84% Mama has told him today he must stay in. 00:01:17.410 --> 00:01:21.820 align:middle line:84% But Robert slips out with umbrella and rain cap. 00:01:21.820 --> 00:01:23.680 align:middle line:90% Now he is flying. 00:01:23.680 --> 00:01:26.140 align:middle line:90% The wind sucks and pulls him. 00:01:26.140 --> 00:01:30.370 align:middle line:84% See he is carried up smaller and smaller. 00:01:30.370 --> 00:01:32.440 align:middle line:90% His cap flies ahead of him. 00:01:32.440 --> 00:01:35.080 align:middle line:90% No one can help him. 00:01:35.080 --> 00:01:39.070 align:middle line:84% Therefore, says Fraulein, smoothing her collar, 00:01:39.070 --> 00:01:44.170 align:middle line:84% "Mind me," says Fraulein, "God stands up in heaven. 00:01:44.170 --> 00:01:45.970 align:middle line:90% See how he watches? 00:01:45.970 --> 00:01:49.494 align:middle line:90% He snatches the bad ones." 00:01:49.494 --> 00:01:52.326 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:01:52.326 --> 00:01:57.060 align:middle line:90% 00:01:57.060 --> 00:02:00.030 align:middle line:84% Well, thus emboldened, I'd like to read 00:02:00.030 --> 00:02:01.590 align:middle line:90% another very early poem. 00:02:01.590 --> 00:02:06.420 align:middle line:84% That poem is from my first book, Halfway, 00:02:06.420 --> 00:02:10.199 align:middle line:84% which Holt, Rinehart, and Winston published in 1961. 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:14.820 align:middle line:84% And in the way of first commercial poetry books, 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:20.250 align:middle line:84% printed 1,000 copies, sold 300, shredded the other 700, 00:02:20.250 --> 00:02:23.250 align:middle line:90% and we then moved on. 00:02:23.250 --> 00:02:25.680 align:middle line:90% But here's another early poem. 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:30.670 align:middle line:84% This is, I guess, my World War II love poem. 00:02:30.670 --> 00:02:32.250 align:middle line:90% It's called Casablanca. 00:02:32.250 --> 00:02:35.490 align:middle line:84% It's of course based on the film of the same name. 00:02:35.490 --> 00:02:39.750 align:middle line:84% But if you missed Casablanca on The Late Late Show, 00:02:39.750 --> 00:02:42.660 align:middle line:84% maybe you have seen Play It Again, Sam so 00:02:42.660 --> 00:02:46.900 align:middle line:84% that you pretty much know the plot of the old movie. 00:02:46.900 --> 00:02:48.820 align:middle line:90% Casablanca. 00:02:48.820 --> 00:02:54.310 align:middle line:84% "As years unwind, now reels unwind, gray springs out 00:02:54.310 --> 00:02:58.960 align:middle line:84% of the hair, cheeks refill and eyelids lighten, 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:03.970 align:middle line:84% Bogie, beautifully indifferent, seduces a cigarette 00:03:03.970 --> 00:03:06.250 align:middle line:90% and womankind. 00:03:06.250 --> 00:03:11.440 align:middle line:84% Ingrid in perilous rain, intensified by angle shots 00:03:11.440 --> 00:03:14.860 align:middle line:90% is Juno, fair and fair. 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:18.460 align:middle line:84% When France falls and gates clang shut, 00:03:18.460 --> 00:03:22.300 align:middle line:84% she faithfully misses the final train. 00:03:22.300 --> 00:03:27.550 align:middle line:84% Now, Vichy is dead, and Peter Lorre less cowardly. 00:03:27.550 --> 00:03:31.120 align:middle line:84% And Greenstreet has gone with the parrot. 00:03:31.120 --> 00:03:34.060 align:middle line:84% And I knew a boy with sandy hair, 00:03:34.060 --> 00:03:38.920 align:middle line:84% could do the dialogue all blurry, cigarette dangling, 00:03:38.920 --> 00:03:43.180 align:middle line:84% cheeks sucked hollow, hands in his jacket pockets, 00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:47.560 align:middle line:84% could do the dialogue for drinks at any party. 00:03:47.560 --> 00:03:51.940 align:middle line:84% Went down with his destroyer, swallowed and the other half 00:03:51.940 --> 00:03:54.280 align:middle line:90% of that real war. 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:58.690 align:middle line:84% The tough guy lately dead of cancer holds the girl, 00:03:58.690 --> 00:04:01.660 align:middle line:84% and then they kiss for the last time. 00:04:01.660 --> 00:04:06.970 align:middle line:84% And time goes West, and we come back to where we really are." 00:04:06.970 --> 00:04:10.480 align:middle line:90% 00:04:10.480 --> 00:04:14.500 align:middle line:84% Now I thought maybe I would just sort of skip around 00:04:14.500 --> 00:04:17.800 align:middle line:84% thematically because it is said-- 00:04:17.800 --> 00:04:20.890 align:middle line:84% and I think with some truth-- that the poet has one song 00:04:20.890 --> 00:04:22.330 align:middle line:90% and sings it over and over. 00:04:22.330 --> 00:04:27.220 align:middle line:90% 00:04:27.220 --> 00:04:29.470 align:middle line:84% With that in mind, I thought I might read the title 00:04:29.470 --> 00:04:34.510 align:middle line:84% poem from the retrieval system and then jump off from that 00:04:34.510 --> 00:04:36.550 align:middle line:90% into some other poems. 00:04:36.550 --> 00:04:42.850 align:middle line:84% And you'll see what the linkage is with the Casablanca poem. 00:04:42.850 --> 00:04:43.870 align:middle line:90% The Wethered Goat. 00:04:43.870 --> 00:04:48.700 align:middle line:84% This is W-E-T-H-E-R-E-D. It's a castrated goat. 00:04:48.700 --> 00:04:52.870 align:middle line:84% Goats are very commonly kept as pasture, pets for horses. 00:04:52.870 --> 00:04:56.740 align:middle line:84% They get on very well together the two species. 00:04:56.740 --> 00:05:01.810 align:middle line:84% And this particular goat used to run 00:05:01.810 --> 00:05:06.040 align:middle line:84% under the belly of a large Palomino gelding I had. 00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:09.100 align:middle line:84% Large meaning fat, Palomino gelding I had once. 00:05:09.100 --> 00:05:12.850 align:middle line:84% And I used to wince every time I saw him do it because he 00:05:12.850 --> 00:05:15.430 align:middle line:90% had elaborate horns and I-- 00:05:15.430 --> 00:05:19.240 align:middle line:84% and he-- and the clearance was extremely tight. 00:05:19.240 --> 00:05:24.280 align:middle line:84% But somehow or other, he never did manage to scrape Jupiter. 00:05:24.280 --> 00:05:26.050 align:middle line:90% The Retrieval System. 00:05:26.050 --> 00:05:27.940 align:middle line:90% "It begins with my dog-- 00:05:27.940 --> 00:05:32.560 align:middle line:84% now dead-- who all his long life carried about in his head 00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:37.900 align:middle line:84% the brown eyes of my father, keen, loving, accepting, 00:05:37.900 --> 00:05:40.090 align:middle line:90% sorrowful, whatever. 00:05:40.090 --> 00:05:43.660 align:middle line:84% They were daddy's all right hand it on except 00:05:43.660 --> 00:05:46.660 align:middle line:84% for their phosphorescent gleam tunneling 00:05:46.660 --> 00:05:51.870 align:middle line:84% the night, which I have to concede was a separate gift. 00:05:51.870 --> 00:05:55.200 align:middle line:84% Uncannily when I'm alone, these features 00:05:55.200 --> 00:05:59.580 align:middle line:84% come up to link my lost people with the patient domestic 00:05:59.580 --> 00:06:01.690 align:middle line:90% beasts of my life. 00:06:01.690 --> 00:06:06.210 align:middle line:84% For example, the weathered goat who runs free in pasture 00:06:06.210 --> 00:06:09.120 align:middle line:84% and stable with his flecked agate 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:13.200 align:middle line:84% eyes and his minus-sign pupils blats 00:06:13.200 --> 00:06:16.890 align:middle line:84% in the tiny voice of my former piano teacher 00:06:16.890 --> 00:06:19.950 align:middle line:84% whose bones beat time and my dreams, 00:06:19.950 --> 00:06:23.970 align:middle line:84% and whose terrible breath soured country gardens. 00:06:23.970 --> 00:06:26.700 align:middle line:90% Humorous and unplayable bar. 00:06:26.700 --> 00:06:28.080 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:28.080 --> 00:06:30.840 align:middle line:84% My elderly aunts wearing the heads 00:06:30.840 --> 00:06:33.990 align:middle line:84% of willful intelligent ponies stand 00:06:33.990 --> 00:06:36.420 align:middle line:90% at the fence begging apples. 00:06:36.420 --> 00:06:41.340 align:middle line:84% The sister who died at three has my cats faint chin. 00:06:41.340 --> 00:06:46.920 align:middle line:84% My cat's inscrutable squint and cried cat like in pain. 00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:49.200 align:middle line:90% I remember the funeral. 00:06:49.200 --> 00:06:50.880 align:middle line:90% "The Lord is my shepherd." 00:06:50.880 --> 00:06:52.140 align:middle line:90% We said. 00:06:52.140 --> 00:06:54.270 align:middle line:90% I don't want to brood. 00:06:54.270 --> 00:07:00.360 align:middle line:84% Fact, it is people who fade, it is animals that retrieve them. 00:07:00.360 --> 00:07:03.630 align:middle line:84% A boy I loved once keeps coming back 00:07:03.630 --> 00:07:08.040 align:middle line:84% as my yearling coat, cocksure at the gallop racing 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:10.230 align:middle line:90% his shadow for the hell of it. 00:07:10.230 --> 00:07:13.710 align:middle line:84% He runs merely to be a boy who was 00:07:13.710 --> 00:07:18.900 align:middle line:84% lost in the war 30 years ago, and buried at sea. 00:07:18.900 --> 00:07:22.140 align:middle line:84% Here it's 40 degrees and raining. 00:07:22.140 --> 00:07:26.700 align:middle line:84% The weather man who looks like my resident owl, the one who 00:07:26.700 --> 00:07:30.120 align:middle line:84% goes out and in by the open hey now, 00:07:30.120 --> 00:07:34.710 align:middle line:84% appears on the TV screen with his heart shaped face. 00:07:34.710 --> 00:07:40.140 align:middle line:84% He is also my late dentist's double, donnish, bifocaled, 00:07:40.140 --> 00:07:45.270 align:middle line:84% kind, going a little gray, advising this wisdom tooth will 00:07:45.270 --> 00:07:47.220 align:middle line:90% have to come out someday. 00:07:47.220 --> 00:07:50.280 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, filling it as a favor. 00:07:50.280 --> 00:07:51.750 align:middle line:90% Another save. 00:07:51.750 --> 00:07:53.910 align:middle line:90% It outlasted him. 00:07:53.910 --> 00:07:56.850 align:middle line:84% The forecast is nothing but trouble, 00:07:56.850 --> 00:08:02.550 align:middle line:84% it will snow fiercely enough to fill all these open graves." 00:08:02.550 --> 00:08:05.520 align:middle line:90% 00:08:05.520 --> 00:08:08.680 align:middle line:84% Now I'm going to do sort of what I said and go back. 00:08:08.680 --> 00:08:10.245 align:middle line:84% We may as well start with the dog. 00:08:10.245 --> 00:08:13.570 align:middle line:90% 00:08:13.570 --> 00:08:18.040 align:middle line:84% The upcountry book opens with a series of it's-- 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:19.000 align:middle line:90% the hermit palms. 00:08:19.000 --> 00:08:22.810 align:middle line:84% And there are eight of them all written 00:08:22.810 --> 00:08:25.030 align:middle line:90% in the same male persona. 00:08:25.030 --> 00:08:29.470 align:middle line:84% And I must say now from this vantage point of some years 00:08:29.470 --> 00:08:31.930 align:middle line:84% after, that really the only reason 00:08:31.930 --> 00:08:34.510 align:middle line:84% I think I wrote them in a male persona 00:08:34.510 --> 00:08:37.240 align:middle line:84% was that I didn't think the world was ready to take 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:40.659 align:middle line:90% a female hermit seriously. 00:08:40.659 --> 00:08:43.059 align:middle line:90% The hermit in each case is me. 00:08:43.059 --> 00:08:45.977 align:middle line:84% Or should I say to Herman in these cases I? 00:08:45.977 --> 00:08:47.260 align:middle line:90% [CLEARS THROAT] 00:08:47.260 --> 00:08:52.540 align:middle line:84% And this one is called The Hermit Meets The Skunk. 00:08:52.540 --> 00:08:57.610 align:middle line:84% "The hermit dog skitters home drunk with it once every fall. 00:08:57.610 --> 00:09:00.820 align:middle line:84% The whites of his eyes marbled from the spray, 00:09:00.820 --> 00:09:04.660 align:middle line:84% and his tail tucked tighter than a clamshell. 00:09:04.660 --> 00:09:10.210 align:middle line:84% He contracts himself to a mouse under the hermits bed. 00:09:10.210 --> 00:09:12.700 align:middle line:84% The hermit on sticks him with a broom 00:09:12.700 --> 00:09:15.880 align:middle line:90% and ties him outside to a tree. 00:09:15.880 --> 00:09:20.290 align:middle line:84% He is a spotted dog, black rampant on white. 00:09:20.290 --> 00:09:23.410 align:middle line:84% And as the hermit scrubs, the white ghost 00:09:23.410 --> 00:09:27.220 align:middle line:84% satiny with love of soap, the black brightens 00:09:27.220 --> 00:09:29.440 align:middle line:90% to a boot black shine. 00:09:29.440 --> 00:09:34.510 align:middle line:84% Next, a dose of tomato juice stains the white like a razor 00:09:34.510 --> 00:09:37.930 align:middle line:84% cut under water and purples the black. 00:09:37.930 --> 00:09:42.130 align:middle line:84% And after that, the whole dog leeches moon colored 00:09:42.130 --> 00:09:45.460 align:middle line:90% under a drench of cornstarch. 00:09:45.460 --> 00:09:47.320 align:middle line:90% The hermit sniffs him. 00:09:47.320 --> 00:09:51.970 align:middle line:84% Skunk is still playing as a train announcement. 00:09:51.970 --> 00:09:56.860 align:middle line:84% So he is to be washed again, rinsed again, powdered again, 00:09:56.860 --> 00:10:01.570 align:middle line:84% until the spots wink out again under the neutral white. 00:10:01.570 --> 00:10:04.510 align:middle line:84% Inside his mouth, the hermit knows-- 00:10:04.510 --> 00:10:08.170 align:middle line:84% and knows from what is visible under the tail-- 00:10:08.170 --> 00:10:10.420 align:middle line:90% dog is equally spotted. 00:10:10.420 --> 00:10:14.770 align:middle line:84% But in the interior, gray on a pink field. 00:10:14.770 --> 00:10:18.550 align:middle line:84% If he were to be pinned down, his four legs held 00:10:18.550 --> 00:10:23.410 align:middle line:84% at four corners and slit open by the enthusiast, 00:10:23.410 --> 00:10:28.750 align:middle line:84% the hermit knows the true nature of dog spotted layer by layer 00:10:28.750 --> 00:10:31.210 align:middle line:90% would be laid bare. 00:10:31.210 --> 00:10:35.830 align:middle line:84% Afterward all night, skunk sleepwalks the house. 00:10:35.830 --> 00:10:41.710 align:middle line:84% Skunk is a pot of copper pennies scorched dry on a high flame. 00:10:41.710 --> 00:10:47.320 align:middle line:84% Skunk is a porridge of dead shrews stewed down to gelatin. 00:10:47.320 --> 00:10:51.100 align:middle line:84% Skunk is the bloat of chicken got left 10 days 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:53.590 align:middle line:90% to sweeten in the sun. 00:10:53.590 --> 00:10:58.720 align:middle line:84% Skunk is the mother bed, the ripe taste of Carrion, 00:10:58.720 --> 00:10:59.935 align:middle line:90% the green kiss." 00:10:59.935 --> 00:11:03.030 align:middle line:90% 00:11:03.030 --> 00:11:08.950 align:middle line:84% Oh, well, there's the dog and in one instance. 00:11:08.950 --> 00:11:12.510 align:middle line:84% Here's a little poem about that same dog. 00:11:12.510 --> 00:11:16.923 align:middle line:84% It's a dream poem called Making The Connection. 00:11:16.923 --> 00:11:20.550 align:middle line:90% 00:11:20.550 --> 00:11:23.070 align:middle line:84% "Looking for good news to skate out 00:11:23.070 --> 00:11:26.520 align:middle line:84% with over the ice pond of sleep, I'm 00:11:26.520 --> 00:11:31.260 align:middle line:84% tricked instead to think I hear them whimpering in the kitchen. 00:11:31.260 --> 00:11:34.740 align:middle line:84% His ghost comes on metal toenails, 00:11:34.740 --> 00:11:39.990 align:middle line:84% scratches himself, the thump of thigh bone on linoleum, 00:11:39.990 --> 00:11:43.530 align:middle line:90% ghost laps, water whines. 00:11:43.530 --> 00:11:47.370 align:middle line:84% Soon he will howl in the prison of his deafness. 00:11:47.370 --> 00:11:52.890 align:middle line:84% That paranoid strangled sound waking the grown children 00:11:52.890 --> 00:11:55.530 align:middle line:90% who all live elsewhere. 00:11:55.530 --> 00:12:01.620 align:middle line:84% I sit up breaking the connection like hanging up on my brother. 00:12:01.620 --> 00:12:03.090 align:middle line:90% I am 10. 00:12:03.090 --> 00:12:09.090 align:middle line:84% I go down terrified past a house full of bubbling breathers, 00:12:09.090 --> 00:12:12.900 align:middle line:84% the cellar door go further down in darkness 00:12:12.900 --> 00:12:18.450 align:middle line:84% to lie on old carpet next to the incontinent puppy. 00:12:18.450 --> 00:12:22.140 align:middle line:84% His heart beat, my heartbeat comfort us. 00:12:22.140 --> 00:12:27.270 align:middle line:84% And the fluttering pulse of the furnace starting up, stopping. 00:12:27.270 --> 00:12:29.940 align:middle line:84% And the vague percussion of pipes 00:12:29.940 --> 00:12:33.030 align:middle line:90% that buzz in the far corner. 00:12:33.030 --> 00:12:37.530 align:middle line:84% Brother, brother dog, is that who you were? 00:12:37.530 --> 00:12:38.955 align:middle line:90% Is that who I was?" 00:12:38.955 --> 00:12:43.650 align:middle line:90% 00:12:43.650 --> 00:12:45.040 align:middle line:90% Well, bear with me. 00:12:45.040 --> 00:12:48.900 align:middle line:84% This is this is a sort of a new experiment. 00:12:48.900 --> 00:12:53.160 align:middle line:84% I even have a goat poem, so I think 00:12:53.160 --> 00:12:56.730 align:middle line:90% maybe I'll try reading that. 00:12:56.730 --> 00:13:01.990 align:middle line:90% 00:13:01.990 --> 00:13:06.730 align:middle line:84% This is a very kind of nostalgic pastoral poem. 00:13:06.730 --> 00:13:09.900 align:middle line:90% 00:13:09.900 --> 00:13:11.835 align:middle line:90% And it's just called Caught. 00:13:11.835 --> 00:13:14.450 align:middle line:90% 00:13:14.450 --> 00:13:19.130 align:middle line:84% "Late August, the goats keep leaving Eden. 00:13:19.130 --> 00:13:23.690 align:middle line:84% Identical twin Toggenburgs, they swim to freedom, 00:13:23.690 --> 00:13:25.550 align:middle line:90% climb tree stumps. 00:13:25.550 --> 00:13:27.680 align:middle line:90% Maybe they fly. 00:13:27.680 --> 00:13:31.580 align:middle line:84% While I boil my hands red skinning beets. 00:13:31.580 --> 00:13:36.500 align:middle line:84% Their color bells sound distant telephones. 00:13:36.500 --> 00:13:39.920 align:middle line:84% Intercepting the call, I go with grain 00:13:39.920 --> 00:13:42.770 align:middle line:90% to rattle in a coffee can. 00:13:42.770 --> 00:13:46.790 align:middle line:84% One has got an ancient pea vine in her mouth, 00:13:46.790 --> 00:13:50.630 align:middle line:84% the other trails are plate sized bloom of squash. 00:13:50.630 --> 00:13:54.200 align:middle line:84% When they circle me wary but gluttonous, 00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:59.060 align:middle line:84% I pounce snaring one which flops like a great warm fish 00:13:59.060 --> 00:14:04.280 align:middle line:84% against my breasts, then stiffens, then goes limp. 00:14:04.280 --> 00:14:08.720 align:middle line:84% I carry her off to her fenced half acre. 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:13.040 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, the other perfectly cloned trots 00:14:13.040 --> 00:14:16.430 align:middle line:84% at my side and interjects staccato 00:14:16.430 --> 00:14:19.670 align:middle line:84% sounds of displeasure at not being 00:14:19.670 --> 00:14:23.390 align:middle line:84% carried at the genetic misfortune of having 00:14:23.390 --> 00:14:26.610 align:middle line:90% to duplicate her sister's act. 00:14:26.610 --> 00:14:29.670 align:middle line:84% They give me a Bronx cheer sendoff, 00:14:29.670 --> 00:14:32.490 align:middle line:84% scoot to the top of the boulder ridge, 00:14:32.490 --> 00:14:36.930 align:middle line:84% long hidden and raspberry cane, now eat and clean, 00:14:36.930 --> 00:14:42.600 align:middle line:84% and forget for a day or two how they came out in the world. 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:46.390 align:middle line:84% Late August, truce this instance-- 00:14:46.390 --> 00:14:46.890 align:middle line:90% no. 00:14:46.890 --> 00:14:50.340 align:middle line:84% Truce this instant with what's to come. 00:14:50.340 --> 00:14:51.990 align:middle line:90% Everything caught. 00:14:51.990 --> 00:14:54.210 align:middle line:90% This moment caught. 00:14:54.210 --> 00:14:59.160 align:middle line:84% My horse at the paddock fence making that soft ingratiating 00:14:59.160 --> 00:15:02.310 align:middle line:90% knicker that asks for supper. 00:15:02.310 --> 00:15:07.710 align:middle line:84% No older and no riper than was planned, the sun staining 00:15:07.710 --> 00:15:10.455 align:middle line:90% the West, my matching hands." 00:15:10.455 --> 00:15:13.330 align:middle line:90% 00:15:13.330 --> 00:15:16.540 align:middle line:84% Oh, we have now covered the dog and the goat. 00:15:16.540 --> 00:15:17.500 align:middle line:90% And 00:15:17.500 --> 00:15:19.510 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:19.510 --> 00:15:22.150 align:middle line:84% I guess the next thing we have to cover are the ants. 00:15:22.150 --> 00:15:24.970 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:24.970 --> 00:15:28.030 align:middle line:84% House bridge fountain gate has a series 00:15:28.030 --> 00:15:31.810 align:middle line:84% of Amanda poems, which are horse poems. 00:15:31.810 --> 00:15:33.588 align:middle line:90% And I'll read a couple of those. 00:15:33.588 --> 00:15:35.380 align:middle line:84% And the first one I'll read will be the one 00:15:35.380 --> 00:15:39.653 align:middle line:90% that refers to the maiden ants. 00:15:39.653 --> 00:15:43.820 align:middle line:90% 00:15:43.820 --> 00:15:46.430 align:middle line:90% It's called Brushing The Ants. 00:15:46.430 --> 00:15:48.230 align:middle line:90% In New England, they say ant. 00:15:48.230 --> 00:15:50.360 align:middle line:84% It may sound very strange to you here. 00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:54.035 align:middle line:90% But an ant is a little insect. 00:15:54.035 --> 00:15:58.130 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:58.130 --> 00:16:02.660 align:middle line:84% "Consider Amanda, my sensible strawberry roan. 00:16:02.660 --> 00:16:05.360 align:middle line:84% Her face with its broad white blaze, 00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:08.360 align:middle line:84% lending an air of constant surprise. 00:16:08.360 --> 00:16:13.100 align:middle line:84% Homely Amanda, colossal, and mild, she 00:16:13.100 --> 00:16:16.520 align:middle line:84% evokes those good ghosts of my childhood 00:16:16.520 --> 00:16:21.740 align:middle line:84% brillo-haired and big boned, the freckled maiden aunts. 00:16:21.740 --> 00:16:25.730 align:middle line:84% Though barren like her, they were not petulant. 00:16:25.730 --> 00:16:28.910 align:middle line:84% Peaceable dears, they lay down alone. 00:16:28.910 --> 00:16:32.390 align:middle line:84% Mutant giraffes in my mother's house, 00:16:32.390 --> 00:16:36.500 align:middle line:84% fed tramps on the back porch after the crash. 00:16:36.500 --> 00:16:39.380 align:middle line:84% Pantomimed the Charleston summer nights 00:16:39.380 --> 00:16:43.700 align:middle line:84% in the upstairs back bedroom and dropped apple peels 00:16:43.700 --> 00:16:48.590 align:middle line:84% over their shoulders to spell the name of a marrying man. 00:16:48.590 --> 00:16:55.250 align:middle line:84% Remembering this, I bring Amanda windfalls that season again. 00:16:55.250 --> 00:16:58.520 align:middle line:84% The power of the leaf runs the human brain, 00:16:58.520 --> 00:17:02.840 align:middle line:84% raising the dead like lamb clouds in the sky. 00:17:02.840 --> 00:17:07.069 align:middle line:84% The power of the thorn holds the birds late nests, now 00:17:07.069 --> 00:17:11.300 align:middle line:84% strung like laundry from the blackberry cadence where 00:17:11.300 --> 00:17:14.210 align:middle line:90% parts of Amanda recur. 00:17:14.210 --> 00:17:19.220 align:middle line:84% Her body fuzz is stickered in the oreo cups. 00:17:19.220 --> 00:17:24.020 align:middle line:84% Copper hairs from her tail hang the packages up. 00:17:24.020 --> 00:17:27.740 align:middle line:84% All fall as I drop to the scalp of sleep, 00:17:27.740 --> 00:17:31.460 align:middle line:84% while the raccoons whistle, and the geese cough, 00:17:31.460 --> 00:17:34.790 align:middle line:84% and Amanda grows small in my head. 00:17:34.790 --> 00:17:40.280 align:middle line:84% The powder streak of her face, a blur 70 passengers off. 00:17:40.280 --> 00:17:44.210 align:middle line:84% The ants return letting down their hair. 00:17:44.210 --> 00:17:47.360 align:middle line:84% It hangs to the custard of Harriet's lap. 00:17:47.360 --> 00:17:50.660 align:middle line:84% It tickles the spine of Alma's girdle. 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:54.170 align:middle line:84% And the dream unwinds like a top. 00:17:54.170 --> 00:17:57.740 align:middle line:84% In four-four time, the way it was once, 00:17:57.740 --> 00:18:01.580 align:middle line:84% I am brushing the carrot frizz gone gray. 00:18:01.580 --> 00:18:04.700 align:middle line:90% 100 ritual strokes one way. 00:18:04.700 --> 00:18:08.450 align:middle line:90% 100 ritual strokes the other. 00:18:08.450 --> 00:18:11.240 align:middle line:84% We dance the old back bedroom dance 00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:14.640 align:middle line:84% that rattles the shakes of my mother's house, 00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:18.050 align:middle line:84% till Amanda jitters, yanking her tether, 00:18:18.050 --> 00:18:20.780 align:middle line:84% her eyes green holes in the dark, 00:18:20.780 --> 00:18:25.010 align:middle line:84% her blaze a slice of moon looming at the gate, 00:18:25.010 --> 00:18:27.591 align:middle line:84% and the latch flies up on another night." 00:18:27.591 --> 00:18:30.340 align:middle line:90% 00:18:30.340 --> 00:18:35.380 align:middle line:84% Now I understand that there was a request for "The Agnostic 00:18:35.380 --> 00:18:37.030 align:middle line:90% Speaks To Her Horse's Hoof." 00:18:37.030 --> 00:18:39.340 align:middle line:90% So I will read that. 00:18:39.340 --> 00:18:43.570 align:middle line:84% And I'll just gloss the word frog in the first line in case 00:18:43.570 --> 00:18:45.550 align:middle line:90% horses are not your thing. 00:18:45.550 --> 00:18:47.530 align:middle line:84% You might not know that it refers 00:18:47.530 --> 00:18:51.780 align:middle line:84% to the soft under portion of the hoof 00:18:51.780 --> 00:18:56.500 align:middle line:84% and not to inhabitants of the pond. 00:18:56.500 --> 00:19:00.240 align:middle line:84% "The Agnostic Speaks To Her Horse's Hoof". 00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:04.470 align:middle line:84% Come frog reveal yourself, surface out 00:19:04.470 --> 00:19:07.950 align:middle line:84% of the poultice, the muck, and manure pack. 00:19:07.950 --> 00:19:11.430 align:middle line:84% Make your miraculous V to stand up. 00:19:11.430 --> 00:19:16.770 align:middle line:84% Show me as well the tickle place that cleft between. 00:19:16.770 --> 00:19:21.030 align:middle line:84% The good book says, a man's life is as grass the wind 00:19:21.030 --> 00:19:23.970 align:middle line:90% passes over and is gone. 00:19:23.970 --> 00:19:26.670 align:middle line:84% According to the National Geographic 00:19:26.670 --> 00:19:32.770 align:middle line:84% the oceans will lie down dead as cesspools in 60 years. 00:19:32.770 --> 00:19:35.490 align:middle line:90% Let us ripen in our own way. 00:19:35.490 --> 00:19:38.850 align:middle line:84% I with my back to the trunk of a butternut that 00:19:38.850 --> 00:19:42.910 align:middle line:84% has caught the fatal red canker, and on my knee 00:19:42.910 --> 00:19:46.550 align:middle line:90% this skillet of your old foot. 00:19:46.550 --> 00:19:50.030 align:middle line:84% The hook pick is God's instrument as much 00:19:50.030 --> 00:19:51.860 align:middle line:90% as I know of him. 00:19:51.860 --> 00:19:57.440 align:middle line:84% In my hands let it raise your moon, Amanda, your nerve bone. 00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:01.970 align:middle line:84% Let us come to the apocalypse complete without splinter 00:20:01.970 --> 00:20:03.470 align:middle line:90% or stone. 00:20:03.470 --> 00:20:07.250 align:middle line:84% Let us ride out on four iron feet. 00:20:07.250 --> 00:20:10.100 align:middle line:90% 00:20:10.100 --> 00:20:13.330 align:middle line:84% And I have to look and see what else turns up in that. 00:20:13.330 --> 00:20:17.820 align:middle line:90% 00:20:17.820 --> 00:20:20.635 align:middle line:90% Oh, yes, here is the owl. 00:20:20.635 --> 00:20:25.670 align:middle line:90% 00:20:25.670 --> 00:20:29.360 align:middle line:84% The owl poem is called "Insomnia". 00:20:29.360 --> 00:20:31.690 align:middle line:90% Sort of fitting. 00:20:31.690 --> 00:20:34.780 align:middle line:84% And it has a little epigraph, "To hear the owl 00:20:34.780 --> 00:20:36.760 align:middle line:90% is the poet's prerogative." 00:20:36.760 --> 00:20:39.490 align:middle line:84% That little provocative statement 00:20:39.490 --> 00:20:43.300 align:middle line:84% was said to me by a young man who was visiting 00:20:43.300 --> 00:20:45.160 align:middle line:90% a daughter at the farm. 00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:47.350 align:middle line:84% And I remember coming down for breakfast 00:20:47.350 --> 00:20:50.800 align:middle line:84% and saying that I hadn't slept all night because the owls had 00:20:50.800 --> 00:20:56.620 align:middle line:84% been relentlessly hunting and hooting as they killed. 00:20:56.620 --> 00:20:59.260 align:middle line:84% And it had kept me awake all night in this 00:20:59.260 --> 00:21:01.097 align:middle line:84% and he very respectfully said, and I 00:21:01.097 --> 00:21:02.680 align:middle line:84% thought it was a wonderful line, well, 00:21:02.680 --> 00:21:05.350 align:middle line:84% to hear the owl is the poet's prerogative. 00:21:05.350 --> 00:21:11.650 align:middle line:84% And so that's how the poem came to be "Insomnia". 00:21:11.650 --> 00:21:14.650 align:middle line:84% In the hand me down of dead hours 00:21:14.650 --> 00:21:17.560 align:middle line:84% I hear him moving up the mountain tree 00:21:17.560 --> 00:21:23.380 align:middle line:84% by tree insistent as a paranoid calling out his one verse, 00:21:23.380 --> 00:21:27.940 align:middle line:84% raising the brake bone alarm like those quaint East 00:21:27.940 --> 00:21:33.280 align:middle line:84% European churches that told their non-Sunday bells to usher 00:21:33.280 --> 00:21:35.440 align:middle line:90% in the pogrom. 00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:38.620 align:middle line:84% Finally, he settles in my basswood. 00:21:38.620 --> 00:21:43.720 align:middle line:84% We both doze listening for each other going out 00:21:43.720 --> 00:21:46.750 align:middle line:84% to help my horse up in the first light. 00:21:46.750 --> 00:21:49.720 align:middle line:84% I see him hurry into the hey now, 00:21:49.720 --> 00:21:54.160 align:middle line:84% furtive as an old border flapping along the corridor 00:21:54.160 --> 00:21:58.120 align:middle line:84% to tell his secret to the toilet. 00:21:58.120 --> 00:22:02.560 align:middle line:84% Oh red eye sit tight up in the rafters, 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:08.650 align:middle line:84% hang on safe as a puff ball, tonight another chapter 00:22:08.650 --> 00:22:10.625 align:middle line:90% the promise of hatchets. 00:22:10.625 --> 00:22:13.820 align:middle line:90% 00:22:13.820 --> 00:22:18.980 align:middle line:84% OK, I think that sort of explores 00:22:18.980 --> 00:22:21.380 align:middle line:90% what I was trying to say. 00:22:21.380 --> 00:22:23.660 align:middle line:84% The retrieval system has a whole section 00:22:23.660 --> 00:22:26.300 align:middle line:84% of poems that are built on dreams, 00:22:26.300 --> 00:22:30.170 align:middle line:84% and this is something I've been playing with a whole lot more 00:22:30.170 --> 00:22:36.110 align:middle line:84% in recent years and commanding it to my students 00:22:36.110 --> 00:22:40.910 align:middle line:84% to keep track of, write down dream material, 00:22:40.910 --> 00:22:44.090 align:middle line:90% and then try to use it in poems. 00:22:44.090 --> 00:22:45.590 align:middle line:84% I don't think it works unless you're 00:22:45.590 --> 00:22:49.610 align:middle line:84% able to solve the dream in the process of writing 00:22:49.610 --> 00:22:51.890 align:middle line:84% the poem, which is to say you have 00:22:51.890 --> 00:22:57.260 align:middle line:84% to solve the puzzle that the dream proposes. 00:22:57.260 --> 00:23:01.070 align:middle line:84% So maybe every dream is clearly not 00:23:01.070 --> 00:23:03.020 align:middle line:84% going to give rise to a poem, but from time 00:23:03.020 --> 00:23:06.470 align:middle line:90% to time you get them. 00:23:06.470 --> 00:23:10.220 align:middle line:84% And this is one that was astonishing to me 00:23:10.220 --> 00:23:14.540 align:middle line:84% because as I wrote the poem it became very clear what 00:23:14.540 --> 00:23:16.940 align:middle line:84% the dream content had been saying. 00:23:16.940 --> 00:23:21.170 align:middle line:84% Unfortunately when I wrote this poem it was long before Iran. 00:23:21.170 --> 00:23:25.880 align:middle line:84% And as an example of a tacky unfamiliar town I use Tehran. 00:23:25.880 --> 00:23:29.030 align:middle line:84% I guess I'm going to have to find a replacement for that, 00:23:29.030 --> 00:23:31.400 align:middle line:84% but I'll read it the way it was originally written. 00:23:31.400 --> 00:23:35.700 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "My Father's Neckties". 00:23:35.700 --> 00:23:39.990 align:middle line:84% Last night my colorblind chain-smoking father 00:23:39.990 --> 00:23:43.950 align:middle line:84% who has been dead for 14 years stepped up out 00:23:43.950 --> 00:23:49.500 align:middle line:84% of a basement Thai shop downtown and did not recognize me. 00:23:49.500 --> 00:23:53.040 align:middle line:84% The number he was wearing was as terrible as any 00:23:53.040 --> 00:23:56.400 align:middle line:84% from my girlhood, a time of ugly ties 00:23:56.400 --> 00:24:00.390 align:middle line:84% and acrimony, six or seven blue lightning 00:24:00.390 --> 00:24:03.840 align:middle line:90% bolts outlined in yellow. 00:24:03.840 --> 00:24:08.550 align:middle line:84% Although this was my hometown it was tacky and unfamiliar. 00:24:08.550 --> 00:24:11.370 align:middle line:90% It was Tehran or Gibraltar. 00:24:11.370 --> 00:24:14.430 align:middle line:84% Daddy smoking his habitual square 00:24:14.430 --> 00:24:17.640 align:middle line:84% in the mouth of cigarette and coughing ashes 00:24:17.640 --> 00:24:19.770 align:middle line:90% down the lightning jags. 00:24:19.770 --> 00:24:22.350 align:middle line:90% He was my age exactly. 00:24:22.350 --> 00:24:25.410 align:middle line:84% It was wordless, a window opening 00:24:25.410 --> 00:24:29.190 align:middle line:84% on an interior we both knew where we had loved 00:24:29.190 --> 00:24:32.340 align:middle line:90% each other, keeping it quiet. 00:24:32.340 --> 00:24:37.230 align:middle line:84% Why do I wait years and years to dream this outcome? 00:24:37.230 --> 00:24:41.640 align:middle line:84% My brothers in whose dreams he must as surely turn up 00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:46.380 align:middle line:84% wearing rep ties or polka dots clumsily knotted 00:24:46.380 --> 00:24:49.350 align:middle line:84% do not speak of their encounters. 00:24:49.350 --> 00:24:53.760 align:middle line:84% When we die all four of us in whatever sequence 00:24:53.760 --> 00:24:57.450 align:middle line:84% the designs will fall off like face masks, 00:24:57.450 --> 00:25:02.640 align:middle line:84% and the ray unravel from this hazy version of a man who 00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:08.610 align:middle line:84% wore hard colors recklessly and hid out in the foreign bargain 00:25:08.610 --> 00:25:12.572 align:middle line:90% basement of his feelings. 00:25:12.572 --> 00:25:14.008 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:25:14.008 --> 00:25:14.508 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:25:14.508 --> 00:25:21.300 align:middle line:90% 00:25:21.300 --> 00:25:25.070 align:middle line:84% Another poem which uses a dream, uses 00:25:25.070 --> 00:25:30.900 align:middle line:84% some green material is an elegy I wrote 1974 00:25:30.900 --> 00:25:35.970 align:middle line:84% when my very close friend Anne Sexton killed herself. 00:25:35.970 --> 00:25:39.450 align:middle line:84% Actually, I've written a series of poems over the years 00:25:39.450 --> 00:25:42.960 align:middle line:84% about her and even a recent one to her. 00:25:42.960 --> 00:25:46.950 align:middle line:84% This one is called "Splitting Wood At Six Above". 00:25:46.950 --> 00:25:51.840 align:middle line:84% And it contains a whole there's wishful dreams you have 00:25:51.840 --> 00:25:55.200 align:middle line:84% after you lose someone dear to you. 00:25:55.200 --> 00:25:58.620 align:middle line:84% It was a very simplistic dream I dreamed she had called me 00:25:58.620 --> 00:26:00.607 align:middle line:84% on the phone, but couldn't reveal 00:26:00.607 --> 00:26:02.190 align:middle line:84% where she was calling from because she 00:26:02.190 --> 00:26:05.380 align:middle line:84% was calling from the other side as she said. 00:26:05.380 --> 00:26:09.180 align:middle line:84% It was a wonderful childish dream I thought. 00:26:09.180 --> 00:26:13.260 align:middle line:84% And then the poem kind of came after. 00:26:13.260 --> 00:26:17.240 align:middle line:90% "Splitting Wood At Six Above". 00:26:17.240 --> 00:26:22.960 align:middle line:84% I open a tree in the stupefying cold ice on bare flesh 00:26:22.960 --> 00:26:28.660 align:middle line:84% or scald I seek the metal wedge with a few left handed swipes. 00:26:28.660 --> 00:26:34.360 align:middle line:84% Then with a change of grips lean into the eight pound sledge. 00:26:34.360 --> 00:26:39.970 align:middle line:84% It's muslin overhead snow falls as heavy as salt. 00:26:39.970 --> 00:26:42.610 align:middle line:90% You are four months dead. 00:26:42.610 --> 00:26:46.570 align:middle line:84% The beach log comes apart like a chocolate nugget. 00:26:46.570 --> 00:26:50.050 align:middle line:84% The wood speaks first in the tiny voice 00:26:50.050 --> 00:26:55.090 align:middle line:84% of a bird cry, a puppet squeak, and then all in a rush, 00:26:55.090 --> 00:26:58.960 align:middle line:84% all in a passionate stammer, the papery soul 00:26:58.960 --> 00:27:06.240 align:middle line:84% of the beach released by wedge and hammer flies back into air. 00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:10.320 align:middle line:84% Time will do this as fair to Hickory birch 00:27:10.320 --> 00:27:14.370 align:middle line:84% black oak, easing the insects into a rot 00:27:14.370 --> 00:27:19.260 align:middle line:84% and freeze combine to raise out of wormwood cracks 00:27:19.260 --> 00:27:22.500 align:middle line:90% blue and dainty the soles. 00:27:22.500 --> 00:27:25.440 align:middle line:90% They are thin as an eyelash. 00:27:25.440 --> 00:27:28.990 align:middle line:90% They flap once going up. 00:27:28.990 --> 00:27:31.660 align:middle line:90% The air rings like a bell. 00:27:31.660 --> 00:27:35.680 align:middle line:84% I breathe out drops cold morning ghost puffs 00:27:35.680 --> 00:27:38.350 align:middle line:90% like your old cigarette cough. 00:27:38.350 --> 00:27:40.930 align:middle line:90% See you tomorrow, you said. 00:27:40.930 --> 00:27:43.930 align:middle line:84% You lied, we're far from finished. 00:27:43.930 --> 00:27:47.590 align:middle line:84% I'm still talking to you, last night's dream. 00:27:47.590 --> 00:27:50.560 align:middle line:84% We'll split the phone bill it's expensive 00:27:50.560 --> 00:27:56.530 align:middle line:84% calling from the other side even waking it seems logical. 00:27:56.530 --> 00:28:00.070 align:middle line:84% You're a small, round, stubbornly airborne 00:28:00.070 --> 00:28:04.690 align:middle line:84% so that sun yellow daisy heart slipping the noose 00:28:04.690 --> 00:28:08.080 align:middle line:84% off its pod scooting over the tightrope none 00:28:08.080 --> 00:28:12.850 align:middle line:84% the worse for its trip to arrive at the other side. 00:28:12.850 --> 00:28:17.800 align:middle line:84% It is the sound of your going, I drive into heartwood. 00:28:17.800 --> 00:28:24.130 align:middle line:84% I stack my quartered cuts, bark down open yellow face up. 00:28:24.130 --> 00:28:26.750 align:middle line:90% 00:28:26.750 --> 00:28:29.120 align:middle line:84% Well there are about six others of these poems. 00:28:29.120 --> 00:28:36.870 align:middle line:84% But recently I had the occasion to talk with the woman who 00:28:36.870 --> 00:28:41.000 align:middle line:84% Houghton Mifflin has signed a contract with 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:44.990 align:middle line:84% to do a biography of Anne Sexton. 00:28:44.990 --> 00:28:48.440 align:middle line:84% And she was someone I liked immediately upon meeting her, 00:28:48.440 --> 00:28:51.050 align:middle line:84% and I think she's very bright and very honorable 00:28:51.050 --> 00:28:54.710 align:middle line:84% and she'll do a very sort of non sensational and good job 00:28:54.710 --> 00:28:56.610 align:middle line:90% of the biography. 00:28:56.610 --> 00:28:59.630 align:middle line:84% And after she left so many things had 00:28:59.630 --> 00:29:03.470 align:middle line:84% been raised in my head that this poem started 00:29:03.470 --> 00:29:08.510 align:middle line:84% itself and it's called "Apostrophe To A Dead Friend On 00:29:08.510 --> 00:29:13.570 align:middle line:84% Being Interviewed By Her Biographer". 00:29:13.570 --> 00:29:17.240 align:middle line:84% Little by little my gender drifts away, 00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:21.490 align:middle line:84% leaving the bones of this person whose shoe size was 00:29:21.490 --> 00:29:26.770 align:middle line:84% your size, who traded dresses in our pool of public occasion 00:29:26.770 --> 00:29:30.850 align:middle line:84% costumes, yours the formal length Jersey, 00:29:30.850 --> 00:29:35.860 align:middle line:84% mine the cocktail wool, and your dead mother's mink coat 00:29:35.860 --> 00:29:40.340 align:middle line:84% that I always said looked like muskrat. 00:29:40.340 --> 00:29:44.900 align:middle line:84% It fades the glint of those afternoons we lay in the sun 00:29:44.900 --> 00:29:50.000 align:middle line:84% by the pond, paler the intimate confidences. 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:53.030 align:middle line:84% Even the distances we lapped in poems 00:29:53.030 --> 00:29:56.600 align:middle line:90% have shrunk no more parapets. 00:29:56.600 --> 00:30:02.330 align:middle line:84% The men have grown smaller, drier, easier to refuse. 00:30:02.330 --> 00:30:06.260 align:middle line:84% Passion subsides like a sunset urgency 00:30:06.260 --> 00:30:09.910 align:middle line:84% has been rung from the rendezvous. 00:30:09.910 --> 00:30:12.010 align:middle line:84% Now that the children have changed 00:30:12.010 --> 00:30:15.160 align:middle line:84% into exacting adults the warmth we 00:30:15.160 --> 00:30:19.390 align:middle line:84% felt for each other young takes on the skin tone 00:30:19.390 --> 00:30:21.640 align:middle line:90% of plain daylight. 00:30:21.640 --> 00:30:28.600 align:middle line:84% However well-fed and rosy they are no kinder or wiser than we. 00:30:28.600 --> 00:30:31.150 align:middle line:90% Soon I will be 60. 00:30:31.150 --> 00:30:34.630 align:middle line:84% How it was with you now hardly more vivid than 00:30:34.630 --> 00:30:37.390 align:middle line:90% how it was without you. 00:30:37.390 --> 00:30:42.100 align:middle line:84% I carry the sheer weight of the telling like a large infant 00:30:42.100 --> 00:30:43.840 align:middle line:90% on one hip. 00:30:43.840 --> 00:30:49.090 align:middle line:84% I who am remaindered in the conspiracy doom, 00:30:49.090 --> 00:30:52.600 align:middle line:90% doom on my lips. 00:30:52.600 --> 00:30:55.140 align:middle line:84% It's the first time I've read that to an audience. 00:30:55.140 --> 00:30:55.640 align:middle line:90% It's-- 00:30:55.640 --> 00:30:56.825 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:30:56.825 --> 00:30:57.325 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:30:57.325 --> 00:31:00.115 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:31:00.115 --> 00:31:01.520 align:middle line:90% 00:31:01.520 --> 00:31:03.620 align:middle line:84% I said to a friend before this reading 00:31:03.620 --> 00:31:06.620 align:middle line:84% that one good thing about being far from home 00:31:06.620 --> 00:31:10.790 align:middle line:84% is that it gives you the courage to try out new poems. 00:31:10.790 --> 00:31:14.480 align:middle line:84% Somehow it's like I guess like taking a new show on the road 00:31:14.480 --> 00:31:17.810 align:middle line:84% you open in New Haven or Philadelphia or whatever 00:31:17.810 --> 00:31:22.920 align:middle line:84% before you go to Broadway so that's one. 00:31:22.920 --> 00:31:30.890 align:middle line:84% Well I guess I should back up a little and maybe read 00:31:30.890 --> 00:31:34.070 align:middle line:90% something else from upcountry. 00:31:34.070 --> 00:31:40.170 align:middle line:84% There's a little lyric I'm still fond of-- a little country 00:31:40.170 --> 00:31:47.230 align:middle line:84% lyric called "Watering Trough" that I'll read. 00:31:47.230 --> 00:31:50.660 align:middle line:84% Let the end of all bathtubs be this putting out 00:31:50.660 --> 00:31:57.110 align:middle line:84% to pasture of four Victorian bow legs anchored in grasses. 00:31:57.110 --> 00:32:01.370 align:middle line:84% Let all long-necked browsers come drink from the shallows 00:32:01.370 --> 00:32:06.140 align:middle line:84% while faucets grow rusty and porcelain yellows. 00:32:06.140 --> 00:32:10.670 align:middle line:84% Where once are nude forebears soaked up in this vessel. 00:32:10.670 --> 00:32:16.100 align:middle line:84% Come cows and come horses bring burdock and thistle. 00:32:16.100 --> 00:32:21.710 align:middle line:84% Come slobber the scum of Timothy and clover on the cast iron lip 00:32:21.710 --> 00:32:24.650 align:middle line:84% that are grand sires climbed over. 00:32:24.650 --> 00:32:27.770 align:middle line:84% And let there be always green water 00:32:27.770 --> 00:32:31.880 align:middle line:84% for sipping that muzzles may enter thoughtful 00:32:31.880 --> 00:32:34.636 align:middle line:90% and rise dripping. 00:32:34.636 --> 00:32:37.504 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:32:37.504 --> 00:32:40.850 align:middle line:90% 00:32:40.850 --> 00:32:44.000 align:middle line:90% And here's a very watery poem. 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:47.750 align:middle line:84% This is an early poem of mine written in rhyming couplets 00:32:47.750 --> 00:32:49.520 align:middle line:84% and goes back to a time in my life 00:32:49.520 --> 00:32:53.045 align:middle line:84% when I had ambitions about being a professional swimmer. 00:32:53.045 --> 00:32:55.640 align:middle line:90% 00:32:55.640 --> 00:32:59.120 align:middle line:84% And worked at summer camp and used to get up at reveille 00:32:59.120 --> 00:33:04.640 align:middle line:84% and swim a mile before breakfast, gone are the days. 00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:07.700 align:middle line:84% And it's just called "Morning Swim". 00:33:07.700 --> 00:33:11.540 align:middle line:84% Into my empty head there come a cotton beach, 00:33:11.540 --> 00:33:17.210 align:middle line:84% a dock where from I set out oily and nude through mist 00:33:17.210 --> 00:33:19.700 align:middle line:90% in chilly solitude. 00:33:19.700 --> 00:33:22.490 align:middle line:84% There was no line, no roof, or floor 00:33:22.490 --> 00:33:25.250 align:middle line:90% to tell the water from the air. 00:33:25.250 --> 00:33:30.680 align:middle line:84% Night fog thick as terry cloth closed me in its fuzzy growth. 00:33:30.680 --> 00:33:33.830 align:middle line:90% I hung my bathrobe on two pegs. 00:33:33.830 --> 00:33:39.050 align:middle line:84% I took the lake between my legs invaded and invader I 00:33:39.050 --> 00:33:42.980 align:middle line:90% went overhand on that flat sky. 00:33:42.980 --> 00:33:48.470 align:middle line:84% Fish twitched beneath me, quick and tame in their green zone 00:33:48.470 --> 00:33:50.150 align:middle line:90% they sang my name. 00:33:50.150 --> 00:33:54.350 align:middle line:84% And in the rhythm of the swim I hummed a two-four time 00:33:54.350 --> 00:33:55.730 align:middle line:90% slow hymn. 00:33:55.730 --> 00:33:58.610 align:middle line:90% I hummed abide with me. 00:33:58.610 --> 00:34:03.740 align:middle line:84% The beat rose in the fine thrash of my feet, rose in the bubbles 00:34:03.740 --> 00:34:08.090 align:middle line:84% I put out slant wise trailing through my mouth. 00:34:08.090 --> 00:34:09.949 align:middle line:90% My bones drank water. 00:34:09.949 --> 00:34:12.949 align:middle line:90% Water fell through all my doors. 00:34:12.949 --> 00:34:18.110 align:middle line:84% I was the well that fed the lake that met my sea in which I 00:34:18.110 --> 00:34:22.460 align:middle line:90% sang, abide with me. 00:34:22.460 --> 00:34:27.860 align:middle line:84% And then I might read another wet one. 00:34:27.860 --> 00:34:32.179 align:middle line:84% I spent about six weeks in 1973 as poet 00:34:32.179 --> 00:34:35.120 align:middle line:84% in residence in Danville, Kentucky. 00:34:35.120 --> 00:34:37.670 align:middle line:84% And out of that experience came a whole series 00:34:37.670 --> 00:34:41.299 align:middle line:90% of Kentucky poems. 00:34:41.299 --> 00:34:44.389 align:middle line:90% 00:34:44.389 --> 00:34:49.810 align:middle line:84% I'll just read I think probably just that one. 00:34:49.810 --> 00:34:52.000 align:middle line:84% At Center College in Danville, Kentucky, 00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:53.469 align:middle line:90% they don't have a swimming pool. 00:34:53.469 --> 00:34:56.889 align:middle line:84% They have something called the Boles Natatorium. 00:34:56.889 --> 00:34:58.300 align:middle line:90% It's quite splendid. 00:34:58.300 --> 00:35:03.730 align:middle line:84% And it was sort of a dreary lonely time for me. 00:35:03.730 --> 00:35:05.500 align:middle line:84% I got a lot of writing done, which is what 00:35:05.500 --> 00:35:07.630 align:middle line:90% happens when you isolate poets. 00:35:07.630 --> 00:35:11.110 align:middle line:84% And every day I went and swam a mile in this beautiful pool. 00:35:11.110 --> 00:35:14.980 align:middle line:84% And whenever I came if the team was practicing the coach 00:35:14.980 --> 00:35:18.040 align:middle line:84% would blow his whistle and say clear lane 6 for the poet, 00:35:18.040 --> 00:35:20.260 align:middle line:90% and they would all move over. 00:35:20.260 --> 00:35:21.400 align:middle line:90% It was really wonderful. 00:35:21.400 --> 00:35:24.520 align:middle line:90% 00:35:24.520 --> 00:35:28.150 align:middle line:84% The most striking thing about being in Danville Kentucky 00:35:28.150 --> 00:35:33.310 align:middle line:84% was being in hard shell Baptist country, 00:35:33.310 --> 00:35:42.070 align:middle line:84% being in the heart of the Pentecostal evangelical faiths. 00:35:42.070 --> 00:35:46.870 align:middle line:84% And I wrote a whole lot of Jesus poems about this experience. 00:35:46.870 --> 00:35:49.690 align:middle line:84% This is only very slightly, well, 00:35:49.690 --> 00:35:54.070 align:middle line:84% it is elusive but it's not a real personal Jesus poem. 00:35:54.070 --> 00:35:56.270 align:middle line:90% Some of the others really are. 00:35:56.270 --> 00:35:59.670 align:middle line:84% It's called "To Swim To Believe." 00:35:59.670 --> 00:36:03.090 align:middle line:84% "The beautiful excess of Jesus on the waters 00:36:03.090 --> 00:36:06.570 align:middle line:84% is with me now in the Boles Natatorium. 00:36:06.570 --> 00:36:10.350 align:middle line:84% This bud of me exults giving witness. 00:36:10.350 --> 00:36:13.890 align:middle line:84% These flippers that rose up to be arms. 00:36:13.890 --> 00:36:17.070 align:middle line:84% These strings drawn to be fingers, 00:36:17.070 --> 00:36:20.880 align:middle line:84% legs plumped to make my useful for. 00:36:20.880 --> 00:36:24.630 align:middle line:84% Each time I tear this seam to enter all 00:36:24.630 --> 00:36:28.170 align:middle line:84% that I carry is taken from me shoved 00:36:28.170 --> 00:36:33.360 align:middle line:84% in the dive, lovers, children, even words go under. 00:36:33.360 --> 00:36:37.620 align:middle line:84% Matters of dogma spin off in the freestyle earning 00:36:37.620 --> 00:36:41.130 align:middle line:90% that mid-pool spurt like faith. 00:36:41.130 --> 00:36:42.780 align:middle line:90% Where have I come from? 00:36:42.780 --> 00:36:44.340 align:middle line:90% Where am I going? 00:36:44.340 --> 00:36:49.860 align:middle line:84% What do I translate gliding back and forth erasing my own stitch 00:36:49.860 --> 00:36:52.560 align:middle line:90% marks in this lane? 00:36:52.560 --> 00:36:54.810 align:middle line:84% Christ on the lake was not thinking 00:36:54.810 --> 00:36:57.300 align:middle line:90% where the next heel toe went. 00:36:57.300 --> 00:37:03.530 align:middle line:84% God did him a dangerous favor whereas Peter the thinker sang. 00:37:03.530 --> 00:37:07.250 align:middle line:84% The secret is in the relenting, the partnership. 00:37:07.250 --> 00:37:12.590 align:middle line:84% I let my body work accepting the dangerous favor from this king 00:37:12.590 --> 00:37:14.750 align:middle line:90% sized pool of waters. 00:37:14.750 --> 00:37:18.055 align:middle line:84% Together I am supplicant, I am bride." 00:37:18.055 --> 00:37:20.730 align:middle line:90% 00:37:20.730 --> 00:37:23.250 align:middle line:84% And now that we're sort of into body poems 00:37:23.250 --> 00:37:27.630 align:middle line:84% I thought since this we're well past the midpoint 00:37:27.630 --> 00:37:30.660 align:middle line:84% of this reading I thought I might read an audience 00:37:30.660 --> 00:37:33.360 align:middle line:84% participation poem, which is called "Song 00:37:33.360 --> 00:37:37.290 align:middle line:90% For Seven Parts Of The Body". 00:37:37.290 --> 00:37:38.970 align:middle line:84% It's a riddle poem and you're supposed 00:37:38.970 --> 00:37:43.440 align:middle line:84% to guess the answers to the riddles. 00:37:43.440 --> 00:37:45.690 align:middle line:84% "Song For Seven Parts Of The Body." 00:37:45.690 --> 00:37:49.020 align:middle line:84% I have not planted the answer to the first riddle, which 00:37:49.020 --> 00:37:52.397 align:middle line:84% I usually do, because I'm nervous that everyone 00:37:52.397 --> 00:37:52.980 align:middle line:90% will be quiet. 00:37:52.980 --> 00:37:54.540 align:middle line:84% But this audience is so responsive, 00:37:54.540 --> 00:37:56.430 align:middle line:90% I don't think I have to worry. 00:37:56.430 --> 00:37:57.630 align:middle line:90% One. 00:37:57.630 --> 00:38:04.020 align:middle line:84% "This one, a common type, turns in was once attached fed me 00:38:04.020 --> 00:38:07.290 align:middle line:90% as sweetly as an opium pipe. 00:38:07.290 --> 00:38:13.860 align:middle line:84% Oh, birthdays on limber us, eyes sit back ears go indoors, 00:38:13.860 --> 00:38:16.150 align:middle line:90% but here nothing changes. 00:38:16.150 --> 00:38:20.360 align:middle line:90% This was, this is." 00:38:20.360 --> 00:38:23.630 align:middle line:90% Very good belly button. 00:38:23.630 --> 00:38:26.390 align:middle line:84% Stanley Kunitz said to me, that one is hard 00:38:26.390 --> 00:38:28.235 align:middle line:90% because mine turns out. 00:38:28.235 --> 00:38:30.274 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:38:30.274 --> 00:38:32.060 align:middle line:90% 00:38:32.060 --> 00:38:34.010 align:middle line:90% So you see, all right. 00:38:34.010 --> 00:38:35.660 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:38:35.660 --> 00:38:40.250 align:middle line:84% "Mostly, they lie low, put up shells, sprout hairs, 00:38:40.250 --> 00:38:44.240 align:middle line:84% and if they sing they know only leather cares. 00:38:44.240 --> 00:38:47.570 align:middle line:84% Blind marchers five abreast left, 00:38:47.570 --> 00:38:51.590 align:middle line:84% right silent as mushrooms or puff paste 00:38:51.590 --> 00:38:55.100 align:middle line:90% they rise up free at night." 00:38:55.100 --> 00:38:55.600 align:middle line:90% Toes. 00:38:55.600 --> 00:38:56.350 align:middle line:90% Toes. 00:38:56.350 --> 00:38:58.300 align:middle line:90% Very good, toes. 00:38:58.300 --> 00:39:01.270 align:middle line:90% OK, three. 00:39:01.270 --> 00:39:04.120 align:middle line:84% "I have a life of my own, he says. 00:39:04.120 --> 00:39:08.230 align:middle line:84% He is transformed without benefit of bone. 00:39:08.230 --> 00:39:11.680 align:middle line:84% I will burrow, he says and enters. 00:39:11.680 --> 00:39:15.430 align:middle line:84% Afterwards he goes slack as a slug, 00:39:15.430 --> 00:39:19.510 align:middle line:84% he remembers little the Prince is again a frog." 00:39:19.510 --> 00:39:22.270 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:39:22.270 --> 00:39:27.555 align:middle line:90% 00:39:27.555 --> 00:39:28.055 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:39:28.055 --> 00:39:33.370 align:middle line:90% 00:39:33.370 --> 00:39:35.800 align:middle line:84% That seems to be self-explanatory. 00:39:35.800 --> 00:39:37.270 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:39:37.270 --> 00:39:40.780 align:middle line:84% "Here is a field that never lies fallow sweat 00:39:40.780 --> 00:39:43.930 align:middle line:90% waters it nails hoe the roots. 00:39:43.930 --> 00:39:47.080 align:middle line:84% Every day death comes in with the winner. 00:39:47.080 --> 00:39:51.340 align:middle line:84% Every day newborns crop up like asparagus. 00:39:51.340 --> 00:39:53.620 align:middle line:84% At night, all night on the pillow 00:39:53.620 --> 00:39:56.350 align:middle line:84% you can hear the narrow sprouts crackle 00:39:56.350 --> 00:40:01.090 align:middle line:84% rubbing against each other lying closer than lemmings. 00:40:01.090 --> 00:40:04.480 align:middle line:84% They speak to their outposts in armpits. 00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:08.080 align:middle line:84% They speak to their settlers and crotches. 00:40:08.080 --> 00:40:12.520 align:middle line:90% Neighbor, neighbor they murmur. 00:40:12.520 --> 00:40:14.690 align:middle line:90% Hair, that's right. 00:40:14.690 --> 00:40:16.360 align:middle line:90% OK, five. 00:40:16.360 --> 00:40:18.820 align:middle line:90% They have eyes that see not. 00:40:18.820 --> 00:40:21.790 align:middle line:84% They straddle the valley of wishes. 00:40:21.790 --> 00:40:24.760 align:middle line:84% Their hills make their own rules. 00:40:24.760 --> 00:40:31.600 align:middle line:84% Among them are barbers, melons, fishes, doorknobs and spools. 00:40:31.600 --> 00:40:35.431 align:middle line:90% At times they whisper touch me." 00:40:35.431 --> 00:40:38.040 align:middle line:90% Yeah, breasts. 00:40:38.040 --> 00:40:39.630 align:middle line:90% Six. 00:40:39.630 --> 00:40:42.720 align:middle line:84% "Imagine a mouth without you pink men, 00:40:42.720 --> 00:40:46.290 align:middle line:84% good fellow, a house without a kitchen, 00:40:46.290 --> 00:40:51.366 align:middle line:84% a fishless ocean, no way to swallow." 00:40:51.366 --> 00:40:52.750 align:middle line:90% Tongue, yeah. 00:40:52.750 --> 00:40:55.030 align:middle line:90% And seven, the last one. 00:40:55.030 --> 00:40:59.290 align:middle line:84% These nubbins, these hangers on here not. 00:40:59.290 --> 00:41:02.920 align:middle line:84% Wise men tugged them and thought lovers 00:41:02.920 --> 00:41:07.810 align:middle line:84% may nibble each others, maidens, gypsies, and peasants 00:41:07.810 --> 00:41:12.430 align:middle line:84% make holes in theirs to hang presents. 00:41:12.430 --> 00:41:13.930 align:middle line:90% Yeah, earlobes. 00:41:13.930 --> 00:41:15.970 align:middle line:84% Yeah, very good, you were very good. 00:41:15.970 --> 00:41:18.380 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:18.380 --> 00:41:21.754 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:41:21.754 --> 00:41:24.660 align:middle line:90% 00:41:24.660 --> 00:41:27.930 align:middle line:84% And this will be a very different point 00:41:27.930 --> 00:41:31.290 align:middle line:90% this is a political poem. 00:41:31.290 --> 00:41:33.150 align:middle line:84% When I wrote this poem I was teaching 00:41:33.150 --> 00:41:37.650 align:middle line:84% at a small liberal arts college, a little Catholic college 00:41:37.650 --> 00:41:38.590 align:middle line:90% for women. 00:41:38.590 --> 00:41:40.050 align:middle line:84% And I remember one of my students 00:41:40.050 --> 00:41:44.250 align:middle line:84% came up to me with tears in her eyes and said after I read it, 00:41:44.250 --> 00:41:47.225 align:middle line:84% poor God everybody puts everything on to him. 00:41:47.225 --> 00:41:48.930 align:middle line:90% Oh, I suppose that's true. 00:41:48.930 --> 00:41:51.180 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Heaven As Anus". 00:41:51.180 --> 00:41:53.495 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:53.495 --> 00:41:55.350 align:middle line:90% 00:41:55.350 --> 00:41:57.870 align:middle line:90% Wait till you hear it. 00:41:57.870 --> 00:41:59.910 align:middle line:84% "In the Defense Department, there 00:41:59.910 --> 00:42:03.720 align:middle line:84% is a shop where scientists sow the eyelids of rabbits 00:42:03.720 --> 00:42:08.370 align:middle line:84% open lest they blink in the scourge of a nuclear drop. 00:42:08.370 --> 00:42:13.020 align:middle line:84% And elsewhere, Dolphins are being taught to defuse bombs 00:42:13.020 --> 00:42:16.080 align:middle line:84% in the mock-up of a harbor and monkeys 00:42:16.080 --> 00:42:20.700 align:middle line:84% learned to perform the simple tasks of draftees. 00:42:20.700 --> 00:42:23.040 align:middle line:90% It is done with electric shocks. 00:42:23.040 --> 00:42:27.300 align:middle line:84% Some mice who have failed their time tests in the maze 00:42:27.300 --> 00:42:31.700 align:middle line:84% now go to the wire unbidden for their job. 00:42:31.700 --> 00:42:35.360 align:middle line:84% Implanting electrodes yields rich results. 00:42:35.360 --> 00:42:40.760 align:middle line:84% Alley cats turn from predators into prey, show them a sparrow 00:42:40.760 --> 00:42:42.260 align:middle line:90% and they cower. 00:42:42.260 --> 00:42:44.870 align:middle line:84% While the white wall labs fill up 00:42:44.870 --> 00:42:48.680 align:middle line:84% with the feces of fear where calves whose hearts 00:42:48.680 --> 00:42:53.600 align:middle line:84% have been done away with walk and bleat on plastic pumps. 00:42:53.600 --> 00:42:56.630 align:middle line:84% And what does any of this to the Godhead 00:42:56.630 --> 00:43:02.930 align:middle line:84% these squeals, whines, risings, unexpected jumps whose children 00:43:02.930 --> 00:43:08.240 align:middle line:84% burn alive, booby trapped the dead, lop ears and testicles, 00:43:08.240 --> 00:43:11.330 align:middle line:90% core and disembowel. 00:43:11.330 --> 00:43:13.580 align:middle line:90% It all ends at the hole. 00:43:13.580 --> 00:43:17.150 align:middle line:84% No words may enter the house of excrement. 00:43:17.150 --> 00:43:21.230 align:middle line:84% We will meet there as the sphincter of the good Lord 00:43:21.230 --> 00:43:27.230 align:middle line:84% opens wide and he takes us all inside." 00:43:27.230 --> 00:43:30.110 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:43:30.110 --> 00:43:32.510 align:middle line:90% 00:43:32.510 --> 00:43:37.520 align:middle line:84% All right, I'm going to read a semi-occasional poem. 00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:41.150 align:middle line:84% This I suppose is also slightly political. 00:43:41.150 --> 00:43:44.330 align:middle line:84% It's interesting to let one poem just reverberate in your head 00:43:44.330 --> 00:43:48.890 align:middle line:84% and make you think of another, and here's a later poem called 00:43:48.890 --> 00:43:53.600 align:middle line:84% "Remembering Pearl Harbor At The Tutankhamun Exhibit". 00:43:53.600 --> 00:43:56.270 align:middle line:84% I don't know how many of you got to see that Egyptian, 00:43:56.270 --> 00:44:00.470 align:middle line:84% the Tutankhamun exhibit, but this is the one time 00:44:00.470 --> 00:44:08.810 align:middle line:84% that being on a committee had a perk that went with it. 00:44:08.810 --> 00:44:12.830 align:middle line:84% I was on the National Endowment literature panel for a while 00:44:12.830 --> 00:44:16.610 align:middle line:84% and because we work so honorably and hard 00:44:16.610 --> 00:44:20.150 align:middle line:84% and without reward they put us in at the front of the line 00:44:20.150 --> 00:44:25.030 align:middle line:84% and we got to see the whole Tutankhamun Exhibit. 00:44:25.030 --> 00:44:26.800 align:middle line:84% And it was a very strange experience 00:44:26.800 --> 00:44:28.300 align:middle line:90% as you will now hear. 00:44:28.300 --> 00:44:32.380 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Remembering Pearl Harbor At The Tutankhamun 00:44:32.380 --> 00:44:34.190 align:middle line:90% Exhibit". 00:44:34.190 --> 00:44:37.610 align:middle line:84% "Wearing the beard of divinity King Tut 00:44:37.610 --> 00:44:40.190 align:middle line:90% hunts the hippopotamus of evil. 00:44:40.190 --> 00:44:45.140 align:middle line:84% He cruises the netherworld on the back of a black leopard. 00:44:45.140 --> 00:44:49.310 align:middle line:84% And here he has put on his special pectoral, the one 00:44:49.310 --> 00:44:52.130 align:middle line:90% painted with granulated gold. 00:44:52.130 --> 00:44:56.300 align:middle line:84% This will adorn him as he crosses over. 00:44:56.300 --> 00:45:02.180 align:middle line:84% I shuffle in line on December 7 to see how that royal departure 00:45:02.180 --> 00:45:03.590 align:middle line:90% took place. 00:45:03.590 --> 00:45:07.670 align:middle line:84% A cast of thousands is passing this way. 00:45:07.670 --> 00:45:10.400 align:middle line:84% No one looks up from the alabaster 00:45:10.400 --> 00:45:13.640 align:middle line:90% as jets criss-cross overhead. 00:45:13.640 --> 00:45:18.890 align:middle line:84% Our breath cloud bookcases that lock in the gold and lapis 00:45:18.890 --> 00:45:20.780 align:middle line:90% lazuli. 00:45:20.780 --> 00:45:24.110 align:middle line:84% The day of infamy Roosevelt called it. 00:45:24.110 --> 00:45:28.100 align:middle line:84% I was a young girl listening to the radio 00:45:28.100 --> 00:45:31.760 align:middle line:84% on a Sunday of hard weather, probably 00:45:31.760 --> 00:45:37.880 align:middle line:84% not one in seven packed in these rooms goes back there with me. 00:45:37.880 --> 00:45:42.980 align:middle line:84% Implicit throughout this exhibit arranged by Nixon and Sadat 00:45:42.980 --> 00:45:46.760 align:middle line:84% as heads of state is an adamantine faith 00:45:46.760 --> 00:45:47.990 align:middle line:90% in [AUDIO OUT]. 00:45:47.990 --> 00:45:53.620 align:middle line:90% 00:45:53.620 --> 00:45:58.720 align:middle line:84% This exhibit, arranged by Nixon and Sadat as heads of state, 00:45:58.720 --> 00:46:03.190 align:middle line:84% is an adamantine faith in total resurrection. 00:46:03.190 --> 00:46:05.800 align:middle line:84% Therefore, the King is conveyed with a case 00:46:05.800 --> 00:46:10.600 align:middle line:84% for his heart and another magnificent hinged apparatus 00:46:10.600 --> 00:46:13.870 align:middle line:84% far too small for his intestines. 00:46:13.870 --> 00:46:18.100 align:middle line:84% All in place, all considered retrievable. 00:46:18.100 --> 00:46:23.470 align:middle line:84% Whereas if one is to be blown apart over land or water 00:46:23.470 --> 00:46:27.490 align:middle line:84% back into the nothingness that precedes light, 00:46:27.490 --> 00:46:34.150 align:middle line:84% it is better to go with the simplest detail across a dog 00:46:34.150 --> 00:46:36.220 align:middle line:90% tag, a clamshell." 00:46:36.220 --> 00:46:45.740 align:middle line:90% 00:46:45.740 --> 00:46:49.550 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm going to read a vegetable poem 00:46:49.550 --> 00:46:55.410 align:middle line:84% and it's called "The Survival Poem". 00:46:55.410 --> 00:46:59.160 align:middle line:84% And it has an epigraph from a Canadian novelist named 00:46:59.160 --> 00:47:01.935 align:middle line:84% Mavis Gallant, maybe you know her work. 00:47:01.935 --> 00:47:04.380 align:middle line:84% She lives in France but she is Canadian. 00:47:04.380 --> 00:47:08.400 align:middle line:84% And she says in a novel called a Fairly Good Time, 00:47:08.400 --> 00:47:11.970 align:middle line:84% I saw a picture of a market stall in the morning paper 00:47:11.970 --> 00:47:15.480 align:middle line:84% and under the picture was written the dreaded rutabaga 00:47:15.480 --> 00:47:18.840 align:middle line:90% has again made its appearance. 00:47:18.840 --> 00:47:22.410 align:middle line:84% When people talk to me about the occupation of Paris 00:47:22.410 --> 00:47:26.640 align:middle line:84% they mention the dreaded rutabaga. 00:47:26.640 --> 00:47:28.710 align:middle line:84% I guess I should say in case you don't know this, 00:47:28.710 --> 00:47:33.120 align:middle line:84% and you probably wouldn't know this living in a climate 00:47:33.120 --> 00:47:35.640 align:middle line:84% where you grow crops year around. 00:47:35.640 --> 00:47:42.840 align:middle line:84% The rutabaga it's-- a sort of an enormous smelly turnip. 00:47:42.840 --> 00:47:44.700 align:middle line:84% And they're grown in the Midwest, 00:47:44.700 --> 00:47:46.740 align:middle line:90% they're grown in the Northeast. 00:47:46.740 --> 00:47:48.540 align:middle line:84% In the Midwest, they're called Swedes 00:47:48.540 --> 00:47:53.040 align:middle line:84% because in Minnesota it was the Swedes who introduced them. 00:47:53.040 --> 00:47:55.530 align:middle line:84% And in England, they simply call them roots. 00:47:55.530 --> 00:47:57.810 align:middle line:84% I don't know why, but they were always 00:47:57.810 --> 00:48:01.350 align:middle line:84% talking about how roots are good for you to eat. 00:48:01.350 --> 00:48:03.690 align:middle line:90% "The Survival Poem." 00:48:03.690 --> 00:48:07.260 align:middle line:84% "Welcome, old Swede, old baggy root, 00:48:07.260 --> 00:48:11.580 align:middle line:84% old bind rag as well of Bonaparte's troops. 00:48:11.580 --> 00:48:15.240 align:middle line:84% When the horse's nostrils are webbed with ice and out 00:48:15.240 --> 00:48:19.170 align:middle line:84% of the hay for torpid mice, and calves go stiff 00:48:19.170 --> 00:48:22.410 align:middle line:84% in their mother's wombs and the apple corer 00:48:22.410 --> 00:48:24.750 align:middle line:90% cloaks the tunnel worm. 00:48:24.750 --> 00:48:28.110 align:middle line:84% When the soldiers bandages hung out to dry, 00:48:28.110 --> 00:48:32.700 align:middle line:84% clatter like boards in the 4 o'clock sky and the last blood 00:48:32.700 --> 00:48:35.040 align:middle line:84% runs from the bulbs of the beets. 00:48:35.040 --> 00:48:40.560 align:middle line:84% And the cabbages shed their 100 sheets, welcome old Swede 00:48:40.560 --> 00:48:43.080 align:middle line:90% strong smelling bigfoot. 00:48:43.080 --> 00:48:47.490 align:middle line:84% In the camps, all ate from the same rank pot. 00:48:47.490 --> 00:48:50.400 align:middle line:84% Let me dine with praise on you alone. 00:48:50.400 --> 00:48:54.630 align:middle line:84% Pray the Lord lay me down one more time like a stone. 00:48:54.630 --> 00:48:58.440 align:middle line:84% One winter more from my musty bed pray 00:48:58.440 --> 00:49:04.095 align:middle line:84% the Lord raise me up in the morning like bread." 00:49:04.095 --> 00:49:06.150 align:middle line:84% You know, I'll just read a couple more 00:49:06.150 --> 00:49:09.345 align:middle line:84% and I'd like to read a couple of new things. 00:49:09.345 --> 00:49:17.550 align:middle line:90% 00:49:17.550 --> 00:49:21.360 align:middle line:84% Here's a little tiny vegetable poem in a different voice. 00:49:21.360 --> 00:49:22.905 align:middle line:90% It's called "In the Pea Patch." 00:49:22.905 --> 00:49:25.700 align:middle line:90% 00:49:25.700 --> 00:49:29.960 align:middle line:84% "These, as they clack in the wind saying castanets, saying 00:49:29.960 --> 00:49:35.100 align:middle line:84% dance with me, saying do me dangle their intricate nugget 00:49:35.100 --> 00:49:36.410 align:middle line:90% scrotum. 00:49:36.410 --> 00:49:39.050 align:middle line:84% And these with the light shining through 00:49:39.050 --> 00:49:44.150 align:middle line:84% call up a woman in a gauzy dress young with tendrils of hair 00:49:44.150 --> 00:49:48.270 align:middle line:84% at her neck leaning in a summer doorway. 00:49:48.270 --> 00:49:51.470 align:middle line:84% And as the bloom of the lime green pod rubs 00:49:51.470 --> 00:49:54.500 align:middle line:90% away under the polishing farm. 00:49:54.500 --> 00:49:57.710 align:middle line:84% In the interior suite for the taking 00:49:57.710 --> 00:50:01.865 align:middle line:84% nine little fetuses nod their cloned heads." 00:50:01.865 --> 00:50:05.084 align:middle line:90% 00:50:05.084 --> 00:50:10.855 align:middle line:84% And I'm going in the wrong direction. 00:50:10.855 --> 00:50:17.980 align:middle line:90% 00:50:17.980 --> 00:50:23.190 align:middle line:90% Here's one more horse poem. 00:50:23.190 --> 00:50:24.660 align:middle line:90% This is a poem about jumping. 00:50:24.660 --> 00:50:26.370 align:middle line:90% It's called "Never." 00:50:26.370 --> 00:50:28.200 align:middle line:84% It's really a metaphor, it's not-- 00:50:28.200 --> 00:50:31.170 align:middle line:90% I mean it can be anything. 00:50:31.170 --> 00:50:33.630 align:middle line:84% "Good for you, he calls beside me 00:50:33.630 --> 00:50:36.600 align:middle line:84% as I take the chicken coop, the in and out, 00:50:36.600 --> 00:50:41.340 align:middle line:84% the double oxer all without sucking back, springing off 00:50:41.340 --> 00:50:45.420 align:middle line:84% my hocks as if at Ledyard, an Olympic champ. 00:50:45.420 --> 00:50:49.470 align:middle line:84% Down the mudslide I whirl, clearing the drop jump, 00:50:49.470 --> 00:50:54.180 align:middle line:84% the one my heart lurches over clinging to my soft palate 00:50:54.180 --> 00:50:57.270 align:middle line:84% where it sounds like a snared rabbit. 00:50:57.270 --> 00:51:01.050 align:middle line:84% Oh, heart, we are a pair of good girls hurtling 00:51:01.050 --> 00:51:04.620 align:middle line:84% the ditch at the bottom of the chute, and up the other side 00:51:04.620 --> 00:51:11.450 align:middle line:84% good for you victorious not over fear my lifelong border morose 00:51:11.450 --> 00:51:15.270 align:middle line:84% sculpture about the house but over time. 00:51:15.270 --> 00:51:20.130 align:middle line:84% The large child inside leaps up for daddy's loud kiss, 00:51:20.130 --> 00:51:22.740 align:middle line:90% for daddy's lollipop. 00:51:22.740 --> 00:51:26.700 align:middle line:84% Body on body riding hard, good for you 00:51:26.700 --> 00:51:31.170 align:middle line:84% I play to spin this game out to the end never coming 00:51:31.170 --> 00:51:34.590 align:middle line:84% to the part where we stop, where the jumps are 00:51:34.590 --> 00:51:37.785 align:middle line:90% set to high and darkness wins." 00:51:37.785 --> 00:51:41.279 align:middle line:90% 00:51:41.279 --> 00:51:44.213 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:51:44.213 --> 00:51:45.645 align:middle line:90% 00:51:45.645 --> 00:51:47.270 align:middle line:84% You may have noticed that the poems get 00:51:47.270 --> 00:51:50.405 align:middle line:84% darker and darker as the poets get older and older. 00:51:50.405 --> 00:51:53.990 align:middle line:90% 00:51:53.990 --> 00:51:57.050 align:middle line:84% Here's a poem called "The Poets Observe The Absence Of God 00:51:57.050 --> 00:51:59.990 align:middle line:90% From The Saint Louis Zoo." 00:51:59.990 --> 00:52:02.630 align:middle line:84% I wrote it for my friend Howard Nemeroff. 00:52:02.630 --> 00:52:07.520 align:middle line:84% I was at Washington University in St. Louis for a while 00:52:07.520 --> 00:52:09.620 align:middle line:90% and we did go to the zoo. 00:52:09.620 --> 00:52:13.370 align:middle line:90% And it seemed to suggest this. 00:52:13.370 --> 00:52:16.980 align:middle line:84% I wrote it about a year after the fact, 00:52:16.980 --> 00:52:18.500 align:middle line:84% that's what Wordsworth said, emotion 00:52:18.500 --> 00:52:22.230 align:middle line:90% recollected in tranquility. 00:52:22.230 --> 00:52:26.900 align:middle line:84% "The Poets Observe The Absence of God From The St Louis Zoo." 00:52:26.900 --> 00:52:31.610 align:middle line:84% "November, that time of year the Lord created and forgot. 00:52:31.610 --> 00:52:36.080 align:middle line:84% The big cats lurked diminished in the mouths of their made 00:52:36.080 --> 00:52:37.220 align:middle line:90% caves. 00:52:37.220 --> 00:52:39.350 align:middle line:84% Most of the pink has been bleached 00:52:39.350 --> 00:52:41.450 align:middle line:90% from the huddled flamingos. 00:52:41.450 --> 00:52:46.340 align:middle line:84% The camel squat over the nest of their folded legs. 00:52:46.340 --> 00:52:50.330 align:middle line:84% To this place, the aging poet's old friends 00:52:50.330 --> 00:52:54.470 align:middle line:84% neither quite dressed for the morning chill come flailing 00:52:54.470 --> 00:52:57.500 align:middle line:90% their arms in thin sunlight. 00:52:57.500 --> 00:53:01.280 align:middle line:84% They stroll through the kingdom of roars and smells. 00:53:01.280 --> 00:53:04.430 align:middle line:84% They shelter in the murk of the aquarium. 00:53:04.430 --> 00:53:07.820 align:middle line:84% Peer into the mouths of ancient sea turtles. 00:53:07.820 --> 00:53:11.990 align:middle line:84% Follow the bursts of minute tropical fish, but do not 00:53:11.990 --> 00:53:14.570 align:middle line:90% raise the eternal questions. 00:53:14.570 --> 00:53:19.130 align:middle line:84% Is utility the one criterion for creation? 00:53:19.130 --> 00:53:21.470 align:middle line:90% Does form follow function? 00:53:21.470 --> 00:53:25.190 align:middle line:84% Neither chooses to cite the neck of the giraffe, 00:53:25.190 --> 00:53:27.740 align:middle line:90% the rhinoceros horn. 00:53:27.740 --> 00:53:32.300 align:middle line:84% Nothing is said of the opposable thumb by means of which 00:53:32.300 --> 00:53:35.420 align:middle line:84% in the next pen, a muscular attendant 00:53:35.420 --> 00:53:37.580 align:middle line:90% in souwester and boots. 00:53:37.580 --> 00:53:41.390 align:middle line:84% Force feed dead fish to the penguins. 00:53:41.390 --> 00:53:45.890 align:middle line:84% Cramming the smells headfirst like grain being tamped down 00:53:45.890 --> 00:53:49.200 align:middle line:90% the craw of a Strasbourg goose. 00:53:49.200 --> 00:53:54.440 align:middle line:84% Oh, deus absconditus the tamed formal birds 00:53:54.440 --> 00:53:57.170 align:middle line:84% glutted for the day and balancing 00:53:57.170 --> 00:54:01.430 align:middle line:84% without shoulders waddle about their confines. 00:54:01.430 --> 00:54:04.700 align:middle line:84% Each of the poet's notes how helpless 00:54:04.700 --> 00:54:08.450 align:middle line:84% the natty creatures look, how that in itself 00:54:08.450 --> 00:54:11.180 align:middle line:90% is pathetic fallacy. 00:54:11.180 --> 00:54:15.530 align:middle line:84% They move on arms wrapped around each other's backs 00:54:15.530 --> 00:54:18.740 align:middle line:84% both are writing this poem in their heads 00:54:18.740 --> 00:54:22.640 align:middle line:84% in a tight-lipped month between extreme weathers 00:54:22.640 --> 00:54:29.070 align:middle line:84% while their lives speed by like outbound traffic." 00:54:29.070 --> 00:54:32.630 align:middle line:84% And I think maybe it's getting on. 00:54:32.630 --> 00:54:37.370 align:middle line:84% I think I'll just read one little one to close on. 00:54:37.370 --> 00:54:40.320 align:middle line:90% 00:54:40.320 --> 00:54:42.540 align:middle line:84% If you fly a lot, you'll recognize 00:54:42.540 --> 00:54:43.810 align:middle line:90% the title of this poem. 00:54:43.810 --> 00:54:46.845 align:middle line:84% It's called "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief." 00:54:46.845 --> 00:54:50.860 align:middle line:90% 00:54:50.860 --> 00:54:56.220 align:middle line:84% It's going to be the title of an upcoming collection of poems 00:54:56.220 --> 00:55:00.510 align:middle line:90% in late spring of '82. 00:55:00.510 --> 00:55:03.620 align:middle line:84% "Our Ground Time Here Will Be Brief." 00:55:03.620 --> 00:55:07.610 align:middle line:84% "Blue landing lights make nail holes in the dark. 00:55:07.610 --> 00:55:09.890 align:middle line:90% A fine snow falls. 00:55:09.890 --> 00:55:13.540 align:middle line:84% We sit on the tarmac taking on the mail, 00:55:13.540 --> 00:55:18.380 align:middle line:84% a quick freight trays of laboratory mice coffee 00:55:18.380 --> 00:55:21.620 align:middle line:90% and Danish for the passengers. 00:55:21.620 --> 00:55:24.830 align:middle line:84% Wherever we're going is Monday morning. 00:55:24.830 --> 00:55:28.850 align:middle line:84% Wherever we're coming from his mother's lap. 00:55:28.850 --> 00:55:34.310 align:middle line:84% On the cloud park above strewn as loosely as parsnip or celery 00:55:34.310 --> 00:55:38.150 align:middle line:84% seeds lie the souls of the unborn. 00:55:38.150 --> 00:55:42.890 align:middle line:84% My children's children's children and their father. 00:55:42.890 --> 00:55:46.100 align:middle line:84% We gather speed for the last run, 00:55:46.100 --> 00:55:49.790 align:middle line:90% and lift off into the weather." 00:55:49.790 --> 00:55:50.360 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:55:50.360 --> 00:55:53.410 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:55:53.410 --> 00:55:55.000 align:middle line:90%