WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.510 align:middle line:90% Let's see. 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:01.718 align:middle line:90% I'll read one more from this. 00:00:01.718 --> 00:00:03.600 align:middle line:84% And then I'll read from my last one. 00:00:03.600 --> 00:00:11.165 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.165 --> 00:00:12.540 align:middle line:84% Maybe I'll read one more from it. 00:00:12.540 --> 00:00:13.780 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:00:13.780 --> 00:00:15.928 align:middle line:90% No, I'm going to go on. 00:00:15.928 --> 00:00:16.470 align:middle line:90% The next one? 00:00:16.470 --> 00:00:16.970 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:16.970 --> 00:00:20.473 align:middle line:90% 00:00:20.473 --> 00:00:22.890 align:middle line:84% I hadn't read any of those poems in a while-- a long time. 00:00:22.890 --> 00:00:24.570 align:middle line:90% That was fun. 00:00:24.570 --> 00:00:25.870 align:middle line:90% Are you hearing me all right? 00:00:25.870 --> 00:00:26.370 align:middle line:90% Mm-hmm. 00:00:26.370 --> 00:00:26.970 align:middle line:90% OK, good. 00:00:26.970 --> 00:00:30.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:30.920 --> 00:00:33.307 align:middle line:84% As a writer, you often give yourself rules. 00:00:33.307 --> 00:00:35.390 align:middle line:84% Or as a teacher, you're often giving your students 00:00:35.390 --> 00:00:36.440 align:middle line:90% rules, right? 00:00:36.440 --> 00:00:38.910 align:middle line:84% And so in workshop, I had told my students-- 00:00:38.910 --> 00:00:42.560 align:middle line:84% this one student had done this that he'd 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:44.570 align:middle line:90% written a poem about a moth. 00:00:44.570 --> 00:00:47.330 align:middle line:84% And again, continuing the moth, the animal theme, 00:00:47.330 --> 00:00:51.050 align:middle line:84% writing a poem about moths is hard, why? 00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:52.850 align:middle line:84% Because what's it all going to be about? 00:00:52.850 --> 00:00:56.300 align:middle line:84% A moth to the flame, about how their love is so tragic 00:00:56.300 --> 00:00:58.550 align:middle line:84% and, you know, they're 21 years old and-- 00:00:58.550 --> 00:00:59.940 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:01.940 align:middle line:84% They've experienced everything that they're ever 00:01:01.940 --> 00:01:02.773 align:middle line:90% going to experience. 00:01:02.773 --> 00:01:05.900 align:middle line:84% And they've experienced serious misery and heartbreak, 00:01:05.900 --> 00:01:07.227 align:middle line:90% and so on and so forth. 00:01:07.227 --> 00:01:08.810 align:middle line:84% Anyway, this guy had brought in a poem 00:01:08.810 --> 00:01:11.340 align:middle line:84% about the moth to the flame and how he had flown-- 00:01:11.340 --> 00:01:12.750 align:middle line:90% and I guess the flame was love. 00:01:12.750 --> 00:01:13.250 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:13.250 --> 00:01:14.233 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:01:14.233 --> 00:01:16.400 align:middle line:84% Or it was-- I didn't really understand it, actually. 00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:19.880 align:middle line:84% And I think maybe he was the moth and love was the flame. 00:01:19.880 --> 00:01:21.020 align:middle line:90% Or it was his beloved. 00:01:21.020 --> 00:01:23.450 align:middle line:84% And anyway, he'd flown too close to the flame 00:01:23.450 --> 00:01:25.670 align:middle line:90% and he'd been burned. 00:01:25.670 --> 00:01:27.290 align:middle line:90% And it was a sincere poem. 00:01:27.290 --> 00:01:28.798 align:middle line:90% And I felt bad about it. 00:01:28.798 --> 00:01:30.590 align:middle line:84% But it seemed like it's one of those things 00:01:30.590 --> 00:01:33.200 align:middle line:84% that that's an image or a trope that's 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:35.210 align:middle line:90% really hard to rehabilitate. 00:01:35.210 --> 00:01:37.710 align:middle line:84% And so I said, maybe you shouldn't do that. 00:01:37.710 --> 00:01:40.168 align:middle line:84% And so I went home that night and I really felt really bad, 00:01:40.168 --> 00:01:42.497 align:middle line:84% because any time I felt like I'd give myself a role 00:01:42.497 --> 00:01:44.330 align:middle line:84% or I tell myself you shouldn't do something, 00:01:44.330 --> 00:01:47.630 align:middle line:84% it's usually a good time to tell yourself you should probably 00:01:47.630 --> 00:01:49.120 align:middle line:90% try to get away with it. 00:01:49.120 --> 00:01:51.140 align:middle line:90% And so that night, I went home. 00:01:51.140 --> 00:01:53.870 align:middle line:84% And there had been another student 00:01:53.870 --> 00:01:57.317 align:middle line:84% who had mentioned her name in a poem. 00:01:57.317 --> 00:01:59.150 align:middle line:84% And I said, that's really kind of obnoxious. 00:01:59.150 --> 00:02:01.220 align:middle line:84% Don't mention your own name in a poem. 00:02:01.220 --> 00:02:03.680 align:middle line:90% And so I thought, well, no. 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:06.350 align:middle line:84% I wasn't actually going to try to write a moth poem, actually. 00:02:06.350 --> 00:02:08.497 align:middle line:84% I was still not going to go that far. 00:02:08.497 --> 00:02:10.039 align:middle line:84% But I thought, like, I'm going to see 00:02:10.039 --> 00:02:12.860 align:middle line:84% if I can get away with mentioning my name in a poem. 00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:13.970 align:middle line:90% And it's this one. 00:02:13.970 --> 00:02:17.430 align:middle line:90% It's on page 3. 00:02:17.430 --> 00:02:18.750 align:middle line:90% It's also one sentence long. 00:02:18.750 --> 00:02:20.640 align:middle line:90% And it's two pages. 00:02:20.640 --> 00:02:23.850 align:middle line:90% All right, "My Life Among." 00:02:23.850 --> 00:02:26.970 align:middle line:84% "I'm beginning to dream again of my life among the ornamental, 00:02:26.970 --> 00:02:30.210 align:middle line:84% the vaguely functional, the doorsteps and paperweights, 00:02:30.210 --> 00:02:32.760 align:middle line:84% my tenure in the legion of lawn gnomes, 00:02:32.760 --> 00:02:35.250 align:middle line:84% my brotherhood with novelty decanters, 00:02:35.250 --> 00:02:37.650 align:middle line:84% my solidarity with the general useless, 00:02:37.650 --> 00:02:40.860 align:middle line:84% the inscrutably devised, the deformed idea, 00:02:40.860 --> 00:02:44.160 align:middle line:84% the eldest clock, the flea market fantasm, 00:02:44.160 --> 00:02:46.950 align:middle line:84% the broken stapler clicking toothlessly, 00:02:46.950 --> 00:02:49.140 align:middle line:90% the pin caddy unpinned. 00:02:49.140 --> 00:02:52.170 align:middle line:84% I'm driving towards nowhere and listening to the station 00:02:52.170 --> 00:02:56.070 align:middle line:84% broadcasting the weather and forgetting the weather. 00:02:56.070 --> 00:02:59.400 align:middle line:84% I'm shutting my vinyl coat in the car door. 00:02:59.400 --> 00:03:03.330 align:middle line:84% I'm leaving it there in the door like a strange maroon pelt. 00:03:03.330 --> 00:03:05.670 align:middle line:84% I'm dreaming of all the use I could have been but was 00:03:05.670 --> 00:03:11.580 align:middle line:84% not, the clock repairman lost in the Swiss coils of time, 00:03:11.580 --> 00:03:15.690 align:middle line:84% eyes ruined by the hours and the hours, the antiquated milkman 00:03:15.690 --> 00:03:19.740 align:middle line:84% leaving frost-rimmed bottles on the doorstep of a 1950s 00:03:19.740 --> 00:03:23.220 align:middle line:84% educational film, that bird boy at the door, 00:03:23.220 --> 00:03:27.420 align:middle line:84% terrified by the split atom, by Sputnik, by his mother's zombie 00:03:27.420 --> 00:03:28.770 align:middle line:90% absolution. 00:03:28.770 --> 00:03:29.670 align:middle line:90% That was not me. 00:03:29.670 --> 00:03:32.070 align:middle line:90% No, not so specific as that. 00:03:32.070 --> 00:03:35.610 align:middle line:84% Not this morning, which is not the same morning in my dream. 00:03:35.610 --> 00:03:38.070 align:middle line:84% Strange to think now there were two of them, 00:03:38.070 --> 00:03:40.440 align:middle line:84% one in which my name is Paul Guest, 00:03:40.440 --> 00:03:42.870 align:middle line:84% and one in which I can't read the tag pressed 00:03:42.870 --> 00:03:46.240 align:middle line:84% to my chest or the name on my birth certificate. 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:49.830 align:middle line:84% Nothing in this morning speaks any language I know. 00:03:49.830 --> 00:03:52.890 align:middle line:84% Maybe I've fallen into the mind's endless Russia. 00:03:52.890 --> 00:03:55.350 align:middle line:84% Maybe the stream has piled against my mind 00:03:55.350 --> 00:03:59.220 align:middle line:84% like snow and the cold radiates everywhere. 00:03:59.220 --> 00:04:00.690 align:middle line:84% Through the windows and the door it 00:04:00.690 --> 00:04:03.390 align:middle line:84% comes like a battering ram, announcing itself 00:04:03.390 --> 00:04:04.890 align:middle line:90% with splinters. 00:04:04.890 --> 00:04:07.470 align:middle line:84% But no dream ever laughs, not even 00:04:07.470 --> 00:04:11.430 align:middle line:84% the terrified ones, the ones from which all floors have fled 00:04:11.430 --> 00:04:14.430 align:middle line:84% and everything is gravity and velocity, 00:04:14.430 --> 00:04:18.550 align:middle line:84% and at the dream's end is death." 00:04:18.550 --> 00:04:22.270 align:middle line:84% I mentioned shutting a vinyl coat in the car door 00:04:22.270 --> 00:04:23.470 align:middle line:90% in that poem. 00:04:23.470 --> 00:04:29.333 align:middle line:84% And it goes back to when I was in the first grade. 00:04:29.333 --> 00:04:31.750 align:middle line:84% How many of you watched the remake of Battlestar Galactica 00:04:31.750 --> 00:04:33.008 align:middle line:90% recently? 00:04:33.008 --> 00:04:33.550 align:middle line:90% You liked it? 00:04:33.550 --> 00:04:34.990 align:middle line:90% It was awesome, right? 00:04:34.990 --> 00:04:37.480 align:middle line:84% Well, the original show was kind of really cheesy. 00:04:37.480 --> 00:04:39.897 align:middle line:84% But I thought it was awesome because I didn't know better. 00:04:39.897 --> 00:04:46.000 align:middle line:84% And anyway, I had a maroon vinyl Battlestar Galactica raincoat. 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:49.060 align:middle line:84% And I thought I was the baddest guy ever. 00:04:49.060 --> 00:04:52.690 align:middle line:84% And so our family had a station wagon with the wood paneling 00:04:52.690 --> 00:04:53.560 align:middle line:90% down the side. 00:04:53.560 --> 00:04:55.060 align:middle line:84% And one day, my mom had picked me up 00:04:55.060 --> 00:04:58.240 align:middle line:84% and was getting out of the car and go back in the house, 00:04:58.240 --> 00:04:59.650 align:middle line:90% and I was just getting out. 00:04:59.650 --> 00:05:04.630 align:middle line:84% I shut my vinyl Battlestar Galactica coat in the car door. 00:05:04.630 --> 00:05:06.910 align:middle line:90% And it just tore it. 00:05:06.910 --> 00:05:09.610 align:middle line:84% And that was maybe my first heartbreak, 00:05:09.610 --> 00:05:12.160 align:middle line:84% I think, because it would never be the same. 00:05:12.160 --> 00:05:15.232 align:middle line:84% And my mom said, well, I can tape it. 00:05:15.232 --> 00:05:18.090 align:middle line:90% I'm like, no.