WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.430 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.430 --> 00:00:04.650 align:middle line:84% So that was my attempt at purity at the end there. 00:00:04.650 --> 00:00:08.790 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.790 --> 00:00:11.820 align:middle line:84% Yeah, we were talking about last night, also 00:00:11.820 --> 00:00:15.840 align:middle line:84% about purity in poems and silence. 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:21.180 align:middle line:84% And I think of it as that place where 00:00:21.180 --> 00:00:23.520 align:middle line:90% wisdom and mystery comes from. 00:00:23.520 --> 00:00:25.590 align:middle line:84% And unfortunately, I'm also attracted 00:00:25.590 --> 00:00:28.500 align:middle line:84% to a kind of heavy social pollution, 00:00:28.500 --> 00:00:30.509 align:middle line:84% a kind of heavy social detail because that's 00:00:30.509 --> 00:00:32.009 align:middle line:84% the world that we live in and that's 00:00:32.009 --> 00:00:34.509 align:middle line:84% certainly the world that I live in, and I'm attracted to it. 00:00:34.509 --> 00:00:35.530 align:middle line:90% I like it. 00:00:35.530 --> 00:00:36.030 align:middle line:90% I like it. 00:00:36.030 --> 00:00:37.260 align:middle line:90% I'm an American. 00:00:37.260 --> 00:00:39.390 align:middle line:90% It's crapola. 00:00:39.390 --> 00:00:42.000 align:middle line:90% It's Philip Roth's great term. 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:43.200 align:middle line:90% Like, it's crapola. 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:47.400 align:middle line:90% 00:00:47.400 --> 00:00:52.800 align:middle line:84% So I have this sort of slightly divided sense 00:00:52.800 --> 00:00:54.540 align:middle line:84% about my own poems in relationship 00:00:54.540 --> 00:00:55.650 align:middle line:90% to the purity thing. 00:00:55.650 --> 00:00:59.040 align:middle line:84% On the one hand, I very much like the impure, 00:00:59.040 --> 00:01:01.590 align:middle line:84% and in another way, I'm also really attracted 00:01:01.590 --> 00:01:06.030 align:middle line:84% to these moments that are inexplicable, mysterious. 00:01:06.030 --> 00:01:09.300 align:middle line:84% And I think of them as a kind of source for some kind of wisdom. 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:12.060 align:middle line:84% Maybe they're just silence and I'd 00:01:12.060 --> 00:01:13.680 align:middle line:90% like to believe they're wisdom. 00:01:13.680 --> 00:01:15.003 align:middle line:90% The wisdom is there. 00:01:15.003 --> 00:01:16.170 align:middle line:90% What is it [INAUDIBLE] says? 00:01:16.170 --> 00:01:20.280 align:middle line:90% 00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:22.710 align:middle line:90% Wisdom comes from the darkness. 00:01:22.710 --> 00:01:24.720 align:middle line:84% I'm not going to be able to remember it. 00:01:24.720 --> 00:01:28.390 align:middle line:90% Just thinking of something. 00:01:28.390 --> 00:01:30.850 align:middle line:84% It'll come back later, tonight at about 3 o'clock 00:01:30.850 --> 00:01:33.550 align:middle line:90% in the morning. 00:01:33.550 --> 00:01:37.600 align:middle line:84% All right, so this is a poem that Alison actually referred 00:01:37.600 --> 00:01:39.700 align:middle line:90% to in her introduction. 00:01:39.700 --> 00:01:42.880 align:middle line:84% And it's a poem for the poet Lynda Hull 00:01:42.880 --> 00:01:46.120 align:middle line:84% who was a friend, a friend of other people in this room. 00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:46.990 align:middle line:90% Wonderful poet. 00:01:46.990 --> 00:01:50.600 align:middle line:90% 00:01:50.600 --> 00:01:51.530 align:middle line:90% I keep writing to her. 00:01:51.530 --> 00:01:54.117 align:middle line:90% 00:01:54.117 --> 00:01:56.450 align:middle line:84% I think in-- I can't remember what book it is, but maybe 00:01:56.450 --> 00:01:58.370 align:middle line:90% "Bewitched Playground." 00:01:58.370 --> 00:02:00.140 align:middle line:90% I don't think it's "Sugartown." 00:02:00.140 --> 00:02:01.580 align:middle line:90% I have another poem for-- 00:02:01.580 --> 00:02:03.950 align:middle line:84% so I was thinking about analogies actually, 00:02:03.950 --> 00:02:07.400 align:middle line:84% and the thing about analogy that I realize 00:02:07.400 --> 00:02:09.949 align:middle line:84% is that a good one, the dead person 00:02:09.949 --> 00:02:11.300 align:middle line:90% gets to speak back to you. 00:02:11.300 --> 00:02:15.410 align:middle line:90% 00:02:15.410 --> 00:02:18.530 align:middle line:84% Yeah, so I had written one, but it didn't 00:02:18.530 --> 00:02:21.500 align:middle line:90% allow her to speak back to me. 00:02:21.500 --> 00:02:23.480 align:middle line:90% "To Lynda Hull" 00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:26.900 align:middle line:84% The biographical is boring tho you 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:30.980 align:middle line:84% tried to refute this by charging language with currents 00:02:30.980 --> 00:02:35.610 align:middle line:84% streaming into back-lit gentian-colored chiffon, 00:02:35.610 --> 00:02:40.790 align:middle line:84% seraphically shabby hotel rooms, ruinous taxi rides, Puerto 00:02:40.790 --> 00:02:45.860 align:middle line:84% Rican transvestites, jailhouse conversions, brocades 00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:48.890 align:middle line:90% and mah-jongg tiles. 00:02:48.890 --> 00:02:51.350 align:middle line:84% And even if it sounds heroic, there 00:02:51.350 --> 00:02:56.390 align:middle line:84% was no real drama in the way I carried you over my shoulder 00:02:56.390 --> 00:03:00.530 align:middle line:84% and into the emergency room one September night. 00:03:00.530 --> 00:03:03.800 align:middle line:84% It's a trick called the fireman's hoist, 00:03:03.800 --> 00:03:06.350 align:middle line:84% and was taught by a diligent father 00:03:06.350 --> 00:03:10.040 align:middle line:84% to his two sons in the hope that if necessary 00:03:10.040 --> 00:03:13.820 align:middle line:90% it might be of use one day. 00:03:13.820 --> 00:03:15.740 align:middle line:90% It was. 00:03:15.740 --> 00:03:18.560 align:middle line:84% Before they pumped the drugs from your stomach 00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:22.630 align:middle line:84% with a concoction of emetics and pharmaceutical charcoal, 00:03:22.630 --> 00:03:28.760 align:middle line:84% the on-duty resident asked what meds you might have taken. 00:03:28.760 --> 00:03:31.580 align:middle line:90% Everything, I said. 00:03:31.580 --> 00:03:37.060 align:middle line:84% Reality is sometimes as clear cut as that. 00:03:37.060 --> 00:03:42.100 align:middle line:84% You survived, though I can't claim to have saved you. 00:03:42.100 --> 00:03:45.190 align:middle line:84% You died on a dark road months later 00:03:45.190 --> 00:03:50.280 align:middle line:84% and several weeks after Simone was born. 00:03:50.280 --> 00:03:54.330 align:middle line:84% But there's something I would like to confess. 00:03:54.330 --> 00:03:56.760 align:middle line:84% I was a little afraid your spirit 00:03:56.760 --> 00:03:59.670 align:middle line:90% might enter my daughter then. 00:03:59.670 --> 00:04:02.760 align:middle line:84% There was a square of thrift-store fabric, 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:05.580 align:middle line:84% you'd brought to us a few panels of worn 00:04:05.580 --> 00:04:11.340 align:middle line:84% quilt coverlet, the scrap of disintegrating energies. 00:04:11.340 --> 00:04:15.690 align:middle line:84% Why else would you have given it to mark her birth? 00:04:15.690 --> 00:04:21.220 align:middle line:84% It seemed a remnant of your life wishing to be transferred. 00:04:21.220 --> 00:04:25.650 align:middle line:84% So I put it where it still is, at the bottom of the cedar 00:04:25.650 --> 00:04:30.180 align:middle line:84% chest, a place where it would not be destroyed, 00:04:30.180 --> 00:04:35.440 align:middle line:84% but its energies contained at rest. 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:42.250 align:middle line:84% That, as you would say, was very Rivard, and, yes, silly 00:04:42.250 --> 00:04:44.440 align:middle line:90% and superstitious. 00:04:44.440 --> 00:04:48.370 align:middle line:84% Though cedar is still used for coffins and small boats, 00:04:48.370 --> 00:04:52.290 align:middle line:90% both common means of transport.