WEBVTT

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Now, I read some
of my own poems.

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The first poem I'll read is
called "The Whole Story."

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And there is a story behind
it, not a very long story.

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It's one of the earliest
poems in my second book,

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but that's not the story.

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I was a student at the
University of Iowa briefly

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and I knew a poet who lived in
St. Louis whose work I admired.

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His name was Donald Finkel.

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And I decided I go down
to visit him and bring

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my poems because I
was curious to know

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what he'd think of them.

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And I went down and we
spent most of our time

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in the St Louis zoo.

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He said don't worry
about your poems,

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I'll write you the
letter and you'll

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know what I think in
a couple of weeks.

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And he did write me a letter.

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And he said-- what he said in
essence was that my poems are

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redundant, not that one
repeated the other exactly

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but within a given poem,
I tended to repeat myself.

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And then they drew a little
sketch in the letter.

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He said it was--

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as though I were
traveling by train

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and I was sitting
next to somebody and

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I saw a fire outside
of the window.

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And then this is a quote
from the letter, which

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was the epigraph for the poem.

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Speaking about the person next
to me on the train he said,

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I'd rather you didn't feel
it necessary to tell him

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that's a fire.

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And what's more we can't
do anything about it

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because we're on
this train, see?

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[LAUGHTER]

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That didn't seem like an
adequate response to my work.

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So I decided I'd answer
him by writing a poem

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and calling it
"The Whole Story."

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"The Whole Story."

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"How it should happen this way?

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I am not sure.

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But you are sitting next to
me minding your own business

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when all of a sudden I
see a fire out the window.

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I nudge you and
say, "That's a fire.

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And what's more, we can't
do anything about it,

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because we're on
this train, see?"

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You give me an odd look as
though I had said too much.

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But for all you know, I may
have a passion for fires

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and travel by train to keep
from having to put them out.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It may be that trains can
kindle a love of fire.

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I might even suspect that
you are a fireman in disguise

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and then again I might be wrong.

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Maybe you are the one who
loves the good fire, who knows?

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Perhaps you are
elsewhere, deciding that

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with no place to go.

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You should not take a train.

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And I seeing my own
face in the window

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may have lied about the fire."

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