WEBVTT

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OK, there's one more poem
I'd like to read here.

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It's about three pages, but I
should ask a vote of confidence

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from the floor.

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Are you up to three pages?

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[APPLAUSE]

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It's kind of fragmentary.

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And at certain
points other voices

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come in, especially
near the end.

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So it may be hard
to put together.

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There's a Greek word on the
first page called Theotokos,

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which is a word the Byzantines
used for the God Bearer, which

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is the name they use for
the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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The name of the poem
is "The Anesthesia."

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And it's not in fact directly
related to anesthesia with me.

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But it was a kind of
prophetic poem in that sense.

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I was under anesthesia
within a year of writing it.

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"All those right angles, the
intestines of a horse, block,

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and the stomach.

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You have to shoot him.

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Yellow sweater mother,
Mary, holding him,

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the tiny god on
her knees, erect,

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hands reaching out to touch us.

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Theotokos, her eyes huge,
parallel divinities,

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the calmness there.

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I can feel the
muscles in my throat

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swell and ache in the
small of the back,

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the way an adolescent boy
spending the summer in France

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might see them.

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The women of Toulouse,
the woman in Danny's bar,

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the gold stomach
curved, glistening.

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Scissors, where
are the scissors?

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He knew how to fake a dive.

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His feet not wanting to
let go the warm concrete.

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Concrete, shimmer of light,
the smell of paint suffocating.

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He stood, blue paint, moving the
brush and circles around him.

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Canada, his 13th new year,
fresh blood and day-old Coke.

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The tables in the bar
sticky, like his hands

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after he touched himself.

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Then stripped to
the waist, skiing,

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with his dark-chinned friend
whose father owned gold mines.

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Three-inch bars, St. Joseph Lead
Company stamped on the faces.

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The whiskey-voiced man
leaning over the desk

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to hand him the bars,
his very own now.

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The smell reminding
him of the Grenadier

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Guards, the way the small
figures toppled on the rug.

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Nights at the garden,
the indoor track meets.

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He looked down on the
world champion, jumpers,

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pole vaulters, each one
leaving the small circle

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to stand awhile, eyes on
the bar, clouds of cigar

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smoke between them.

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The ball came back
each time he hurled it

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against the yellow plaster.

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A wall, like his
childhood, demolished,

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smoke billowing from his bed.

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The woman in black
satin staring at him

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from the well-thumbed mirror.

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Himself he saw, the other half
deep in the bruised shadows,

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lip sticking nervously
to the cigarette paper.

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Does that you in there?

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The accordion-- the accordion
bobbing up and down,

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at their feet almost, a half
mile from the beach club.

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Fishing rods, the water stopped.

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We'd better get you
to the hospital.

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But I was sure that
was you singing, mom.

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You're going to be all right.

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Ask your father.

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I still like the thing
of, you use a wheelchair.

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So anyway, I don't know
how embarrassed she was.

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She came back with something
like, maybe you should say,

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he has a certain
degree of crippling.

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She said it in a
funnier way than that.

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The sense of your
using the wheelchair

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gave it the kind of impression
that should be given.

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I didn't go through some
sort of women's lib thing.

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When she's introducing me
in terms of you, my husband.

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It's so disconcerting to be
in my field, my own field

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as a teacher, then to be
introduced by one teacher

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to another, as the wife of.

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When my husband's being
described as a poet,

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I can take that.

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But then when she describes
him as an invalid,

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I just had to, you
know, stop her.

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The other guy picked
up on that right away.

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The invalid, he said."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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[INAUDIBLE]

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