WEBVTT

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I'm going to do something else.

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What I want to do is read
from a book-length sequence

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that has preoccupied me for
most of the last three or four

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years.

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And I'll explain
some things about it.

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Wouldn't everybody like
to shift to the other side

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and move a little bit?

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This is called "The
Escape into You"

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and it begins as
a love sequence.

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In a sense in which
a love sequence

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can contain love,
hate, sex, marriage,

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divorce, and other good things.

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And it expanded seemingly
at times of its own volition

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into areas of what used to
be called social concern.

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There are a couple of
epigraphs to the book.

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One is from a Shakespeare
sonnet, two lines which

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read, "Love is too young to
know what conscience is yet

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who knows not conscience
is born of love."

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And the other is a line from
a poem by the late Randall

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Jarrell.

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A line which reads,
"If I can think of it,

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it isn't what I want."

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Well and it doesn't
end with a poem

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it ends with an after-graph,
I guess you might call it.

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Two lines from the sayings
of the fathers and the Talmud

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rewrote them slightly.

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So, they come out this way.

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"It is not incumbent upon you to
complete this task neither are

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you free to desist from it."

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The poems are short
with one exception.

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They have their own
titles and they're

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meant to stand alone as well
as finally in some order.

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And I'm not going
to find too much

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to say about most of them, for
which I apologize in advance.

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Also, I think most of
you have figured out

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that I read by line and not
by phrase wherever possible.

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And I'm going to continue
that because the music of them

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is important to me, with
again apologies beforehand

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for any difficulties
that presents.

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OK.

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The first one I can
say something about.

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There are three poems
in the first section,

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a kind of introduction.

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One is called "Homage
to the Runner."

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And it's based on something you
know if you have run perhaps

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and perhaps don't know otherwise
and that is that it hurts.

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The person who can win
races the person who

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wins in long
distance competition

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is a person who can
stand pain the most.

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It was a wonderful
aesthetic credo

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uttered by a former National
Basketball Association

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Player named Johnny Kerr.

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Who set a record for most
consecutive games and he

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had bad legs.

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Basketball is a sport
that's grueling in general,

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but particularly grueling on the
legs and this man had bad legs.

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He played taped up all the time.

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After he set the
record, the reporters

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got a hold of him they
said, how did you do it.

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How do you play night after
night on these bad legs.

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And he said, I
tell my legs lies.

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Come on legs, this
is your last game.

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Come on legs.

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And that's the way
it works, I think.

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If now you're exposed
as a foolish romantic.

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OK.

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"Homage to the Runner."

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The word sport in the first
line is in quotation marks.

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The form of this sport is pain.

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Riding up into it,
he hurts to win.

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These are the moments when
death is really possible.

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When a man can fit into
his enlarged heart,

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all that is known or was or
shall be pumping fulfills.

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The love of form
is a black occasion

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through which some
light must show

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in 100 years of commitment.

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By the time the body aches
to end it, the poem begins.

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At first in darkness, surrounded
by counterfeits of leisure.

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Run away, leave them to ease.

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What does it matter,
you wind up alone.

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There is no finish, you
can stop for no one.

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When your wife cries,
you pass a kiss.

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When your sons worry,
you flash a smile.

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When your women wave,
you ignore them.

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Things which didn't once need to
be explained sometimes do now.

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It's not a male chauvinist poem.

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The commitment it's talking
about is something else.

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