WEBVTT

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The first poem
that I want to read

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is a poem called
"Shall We Dance?"

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And it's actually a letter
that I wrote to a friend

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sometime back.

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Shall we dance?

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Shall Yul Brynner
approach your town

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and sling his Winchester
Model 94 over his shoulder

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and laugh Stroman's
laugh and erupt

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into gunfire and catcalling,
while his hands rub

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against each other
with precision.

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He always says
that with precision

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and then he grins and
shoots a town in effigy.

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On his estate, we used to watch
him make papier mache animals

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for days, adjusting the
horns of the water buffaloes

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to look startlingly authentic
in the hot midday Texas sun.

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Then, we would gather
at the Bay window

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and watch you shoot those paper
animal effigies to smithereens,

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while he laughed and laughed
until he would fall down.

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Watching the shreds and bits
of animal paper falling away

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into the room, getting
swept along into the fields

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where real animals grazed goats.

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Yul always had goats,
so that he had something

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to eat up all the
paper that he would

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shoot all over his fields.

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It made sense to us, all
of us except young Jesus

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who never showed up.

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I can't say where he
was at those times,

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maybe moseying around the
village square bumping

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into people saying excuse me,
if my mother is looking for me,

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would you please, tell her
I'm in my father's house.

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But of course, most of
the people he bumped into

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were little children
being led by their mothers

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and their mothers would usually
pull the children away and look

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back nervously on Jesus.

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Wondering what child would have
such bloodshot eyes and why

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on Earth would be wearing
a weird loin cloth

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with tahini stains on his seat.

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[LAUGHTER]

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That was a really good friend.

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This one is called
"America Is One Dog"

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and it begins with a quote by
Wallace Stevens from the poem

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For an Old Woman in a Wig.

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Are you then fonder
of the circumference

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of Earth's impounding than
of some sphere on which

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the mind might blunder?

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If you, with irrepressible
will abounding

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in wish for revelation
sought out the unknown new

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in your surrounding.

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We're thinking about
what it would be like

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if our country with all
its people and animals

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became a dog.

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If all beings in our
geographical region

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became one single dog.

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What dog?

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German shepherd, Jack Russell.

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And what traits would
we run, bite, snooze?

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In our decision,
we'll have to account

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for the Painted Desert's
rattlesnakes, various types

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of salamanders from the forests
and bogs of Maine and New

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Hampshire.

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All the dogs themselves
and their personalities

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in a strange move they're
given by those who own them.

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Also the computer programmers
from Stanford and Columbia

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Universities plus the
flapjack and Burger flippers

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and all the Waffle
Houses in Tennessee.

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The little mites
and fleas living

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in the dreadlocks of
itinerant post Grateful Dead

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heads and the most
elderly and close

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to death members of
Alaskan carrion birds.

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And the guy who
did the camerawork

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for the scene in
Reservoir Dogs or hyper--

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or Harvey Keitel suddenly,
horrifically, tragically

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finds out that Tim
Roth is in fact a cop.

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All living relatives of Jimi
Hendrix and all the girls

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kept as pets by the children.

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The ones that have
wheels to run on.

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The bears will be shot this year
by tobacco chewing Virginians.

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The migrant Mexican-Americans
of North Carolina

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who picked the tobacco
and the answer Nantucket.

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I've got one that is a--

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What I did, was I
took one of Rilke's--

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Rainer Maria Rilke, the
German poet's sonnets

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and I broke it all apart.

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And I took all the different
parts of the speech

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and made them into stanzas
that way, so you'll see.

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So most of the transitional
words are in the first stanza

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then I have nouns and
adjectives in another stanza,

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you'll see what I mean.

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And a who from this almost--

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and of her through the--

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and of that inside had now--

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and then her in that where and
that this her your out before

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almost to me herself my.

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It girl, harmony, song, liar,
form, bed, fear, meat, sleep,

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everything trees
distances heart,

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I want bears, I never
meadows, spring.

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She world God sleep,
she desired, she death

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sing new song itself,
she grew up the-- and so

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could that ever my.

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Single diaphanous, awesome,
deeply all first perfect.

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The-- so no effort to see
and stepping appear made

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was touched, seized, slept,
felt singing, slept, was had,

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weak, a room slept,
is discovered

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consumes, his vanishing.

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Ah, will.

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And I have one more, which
is actually a little mini

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experiment that I did with Tim
Peterson, who was a member of--

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for a long time in Boston.

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And he and I wrote this
together just alternating lines.

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And it's really
short, it's called

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You're Going Out to
Fight Crime in That?

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The poor bedraggled
men outside the window

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crawling in the snow,
hide wires, and rifles

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quickly below frail shattering
torsos, winches in corridors,

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some kind of trance
contraption, and wishing dogs

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hunt you down like
a cursed animal.

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The reluctant hero
appears draped with cues

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from a theatrical revue: a
trusty but shivering servant

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girl.

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[APPLAUSE]

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