WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.380 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.380 --> 00:00:08.280 align:middle line:84% Portrait with One Eye is about a friend 00:00:08.280 --> 00:00:11.580 align:middle line:84% of mine I grew up with through late adolescence 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:16.790 align:middle line:84% when we were both starting to try to write poems. 00:00:16.790 --> 00:00:20.880 align:middle line:84% It originates with a very bad experience 00:00:20.880 --> 00:00:23.025 align:middle line:90% he had in the early '60s. 00:00:23.025 --> 00:00:26.220 align:middle line:90% 00:00:26.220 --> 00:00:30.690 align:middle line:84% He used up all the money he had, which wasn't all that much, 00:00:30.690 --> 00:00:35.760 align:middle line:84% really, to buy a bus ticket from Iowa to Mexico City on his way 00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:40.050 align:middle line:84% to join a revolution, which even then was going on in Nicaragua, 00:00:40.050 --> 00:00:43.440 align:middle line:84% and didn't have enough money to take him all the way 00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:47.580 align:middle line:84% but figured he could make it the rest of the way on his own. 00:00:47.580 --> 00:00:52.140 align:middle line:84% But there was a stopover in Kansas City on the way, 00:00:52.140 --> 00:00:57.240 align:middle line:84% and he started drinking with the wrong person, who volunteered 00:00:57.240 --> 00:01:00.660 align:middle line:84% to take him around to show him the house where 00:01:00.660 --> 00:01:02.700 align:middle line:90% Charlie Parker's mother lived. 00:01:02.700 --> 00:01:06.060 align:middle line:84% And, being a great jazz fan, he had to go. 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:10.260 align:middle line:84% And the next thing he knew was the next morning 00:01:10.260 --> 00:01:14.100 align:middle line:84% in a charity ward of a local hospital where he woke up 00:01:14.100 --> 00:01:17.640 align:middle line:84% with his skull fractured in seven places, his jaw broken, 00:01:17.640 --> 00:01:20.490 align:middle line:84% and an eye stomped out, and his bus ticket 00:01:20.490 --> 00:01:23.310 align:middle line:84% missing so that he couldn't get to the revolution. 00:01:23.310 --> 00:01:25.930 align:middle line:90% 00:01:25.930 --> 00:01:30.690 align:middle line:84% Then, when the police asked for an accounting of the episode, 00:01:30.690 --> 00:01:34.620 align:middle line:84% they asked, among other things, what his occupation was, 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:36.270 align:middle line:90% and he replied, lyric poet. 00:01:36.270 --> 00:01:40.680 align:middle line:84% This was so exceptional, even for someone in the charity 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:44.730 align:middle line:84% ward, that it made a part of a feature story 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:46.590 align:middle line:84% in the Kansas City Star the next day, which 00:01:46.590 --> 00:01:50.513 align:middle line:84% I was sent a clipping of, otherwise I 00:01:50.513 --> 00:01:51.930 align:middle line:84% might not have believed the story, 00:01:51.930 --> 00:01:53.730 align:middle line:90% even when I saw the eye missing. 00:01:53.730 --> 00:01:56.355 align:middle line:84% I might have thought it happened some other way, because he was 00:01:56.355 --> 00:01:59.451 align:middle line:90% a great and pathological liar. 00:01:59.451 --> 00:02:00.774 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:00.774 --> 00:02:02.540 align:middle line:90% 00:02:02.540 --> 00:02:07.220 align:middle line:84% But everything that happens in the poem 00:02:07.220 --> 00:02:10.160 align:middle line:84% is a reference to something in his legendary life, 00:02:10.160 --> 00:02:15.680 align:middle line:84% and if you knew him as well as I did, then I wouldn't 00:02:15.680 --> 00:02:17.030 align:middle line:90% have to explain, you see. 00:02:17.030 --> 00:02:18.860 align:middle line:84% The poem is not meant to be obscure, 00:02:18.860 --> 00:02:21.680 align:middle line:84% but quite the contrary, but there 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:27.560 align:middle line:84% are only a few people who would see how easy it is, 00:02:27.560 --> 00:02:28.510 align:middle line:90% unfortunately. 00:02:28.510 --> 00:02:30.860 align:middle line:84% He fell into the habit thereafter 00:02:30.860 --> 00:02:33.530 align:middle line:84% of telephoning me fairly often, say once 00:02:33.530 --> 00:02:36.200 align:middle line:84% a month, once every six weeks, from some point 00:02:36.200 --> 00:02:38.330 align:middle line:90% in this hemisphere always. 00:02:38.330 --> 00:02:41.435 align:middle line:84% He never called from farther away than the Yucatan. 00:02:41.435 --> 00:02:44.510 align:middle line:90% 00:02:44.510 --> 00:02:48.050 align:middle line:84% Usually to complain about the way I was living my life. 00:02:48.050 --> 00:02:49.550 align:middle line:84% The first sentence often would be, 00:02:49.550 --> 00:02:51.680 align:middle line:84% Don, you're screwing up your life. 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:55.070 align:middle line:84% And the call would often be late at night 00:02:55.070 --> 00:02:58.520 align:middle line:84% and would always be collect, and I didn't always 00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:04.331 align:middle line:84% like paying to be chewed out, but I did every time. 00:03:04.331 --> 00:03:05.654 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:05.654 --> 00:03:06.282 align:middle line:90% 00:03:06.282 --> 00:03:08.240 align:middle line:84% So that's some of the background for this poem. 00:03:08.240 --> 00:03:09.897 align:middle line:90% Portrait with One Eye. 00:03:09.897 --> 00:03:14.280 align:middle line:90% 00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:16.800 align:middle line:84% They robbed you of your ticket to the revolution. 00:03:16.800 --> 00:03:19.200 align:middle line:84% Oh, and then they stomped you good. 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:21.450 align:middle line:90% But nothing stops you. 00:03:21.450 --> 00:03:24.480 align:middle line:84% You've identified yourself to the police as, quote, "lyric 00:03:24.480 --> 00:03:25.800 align:middle line:90% poet." 00:03:25.800 --> 00:03:29.070 align:middle line:90% What else with fractured jaw? 00:03:29.070 --> 00:03:35.190 align:middle line:84% Orpheus, imperishable liar, your life's a poem still, 00:03:35.190 --> 00:03:37.620 align:middle line:90% broken I ams and all. 00:03:37.620 --> 00:03:42.270 align:middle line:90% Jazz, jails, the complete works. 00:03:42.270 --> 00:03:45.330 align:middle line:84% And one blue silver line beyond the Antilles 00:03:45.330 --> 00:03:50.220 align:middle line:90% vanishing, all fragments. 00:03:50.220 --> 00:03:53.400 align:middle line:84% You, who could scream across the square in Cuernavaca 00:03:53.400 --> 00:03:57.720 align:middle line:84% at a friend you hadn't seen for years, the one word, bitch, 00:03:57.720 --> 00:03:59.220 align:middle line:90% and turn away. 00:03:59.220 --> 00:04:01.146 align:middle line:90% That's style. 00:04:01.146 --> 00:04:03.090 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:04:03.090 --> 00:04:05.970 align:middle line:84% Or this, your other voice, this whisper 00:04:05.970 --> 00:04:10.320 align:middle line:84% along the wires at night, like a dry wind, like conscience, 00:04:10.320 --> 00:04:12.410 align:middle line:90% always collect.