WEBVTT

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All right.

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The next one I'm
going to read to you

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is called "Sunday Morning Poet."

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And I know that you and your
class put a lot of emphasis

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on social justice and current
events and current issues.

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And I think what you'll see
in these next few poems is

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my kind of struggle with how an
individual person, any of us,

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can deal with these
big social issues.

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And this one isn't
really so much

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about a social issue is
about how you place yourself

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in the spectrum of time.

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So we're here now
in the year 2012.

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What is that going to mean
in the whole, big, universal

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picture?

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It's called "Sunday
Morning Poet."

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"If I were searching
for tradition

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at the turn of
this new century, I

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would walk to the
end of my driveway

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on Sunday morning in my
underwear and sandals,

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wincing at the chill in Winter
or feeling for a still breeze

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in Spring.

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Stretching my calves up
the hill to my doorpost,

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I would tell those looking
for clues to our postmodern

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commonality to observe me
sitting at kitchen table,

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drinking coffee, eating rye
toast, lightly buttered,

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listening to public radio or
folk or jazz or pre-game talk,

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multitasking through
ears never closed

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and eyes not wanting to open.

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I would look up at
my examiner and point

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to my absorption of book
reviews, editorials,

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and the gossip scandal
news, declaring,

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'Do not seek truth in
history and public documents.

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This is who we are.

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This is all you need to know.'"
So we'll come back and talk

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about that.