WEBVTT

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This is humbling.

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And I want to make sure that
I begin with two poems that

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come out of that experience of
being a poet in the schools.

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These are my two favorite
all-time love poems.

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And they were written in the
1970s by two seventh graders,

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in Eloy, Arizona--
an unlikely place.

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I don't remember their
names, I am so sorry to say.

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But the poems have
stayed with me,

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and I'm going to
repeat them tonight.

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They're very short.

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You will get the exercise.

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They were writing about
things that mattered to them

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by looking somewhere else.

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Young man in that class--

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he was in love with somebody
who was not in love with him.

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It was an unrequited love.

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She sat somewhere
in his vicinity.

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He could not say her name.

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And in the 1970s, he said the
best thing he could for her.

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This won't cause a
ripple at all today,

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but he called her Ms. X.
Ms. was new to the world,

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and a seventh grader
using that was hot.

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[LAUGHTER]

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He called her Ms. X,
and this was the poem.

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"Ms. X, you are
Central Missouri.

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I was born there, I grew up
there, I had my horse there,

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and I want to go back."

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I want to be somebody's
Central Missouri.

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[LAUGHTER]