WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.615 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.615 --> 00:00:02.115 align:middle line:90% "Fire". 00:00:02.115 --> 00:00:05.670 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.670 --> 00:00:10.680 align:middle line:84% "Clear smoke, a fire in the far-off haze of summer, 00:00:10.680 --> 00:00:12.780 align:middle line:90% burning somewhere. 00:00:12.780 --> 00:00:19.530 align:middle line:84% What is a lonely heart for if not for itself alone. 00:00:19.530 --> 00:00:23.820 align:middle line:84% Do the questions answer themselves, all wonder 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:25.920 align:middle line:90% brought to a reckoning? 00:00:25.920 --> 00:00:28.980 align:middle line:90% When you are done, I am done. 00:00:28.980 --> 00:00:34.680 align:middle line:84% Then it seems that one by one, we can leave it all to go on." 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:37.860 align:middle line:90% 00:00:37.860 --> 00:00:50.560 align:middle line:84% Then the last of-- this is the so-called title "Phone" 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:53.070 align:middle line:90% was the last poem in the-- 00:00:53.070 --> 00:00:58.520 align:middle line:84% and I think I remember the last one I wrote before this book. 00:00:58.520 --> 00:01:00.020 align:middle line:90% This book had a curious effect. 00:01:00.020 --> 00:01:02.540 align:middle line:84% On the one hand, it was the satisfaction 00:01:02.540 --> 00:01:04.819 align:middle line:84% of the wildest possible dreams I'd ever had. 00:01:04.819 --> 00:01:06.770 align:middle line:84% But I remember when the news of it came, 00:01:06.770 --> 00:01:08.720 align:middle line:90% we were living in Guatemala. 00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:14.180 align:middle line:84% And there was no one, really, to impress with this great fact. 00:01:14.180 --> 00:01:16.850 align:middle line:90% 00:01:16.850 --> 00:01:19.880 align:middle line:84% And I remember that when the book finally came out, 00:01:19.880 --> 00:01:21.900 align:middle line:84% I had an awful feeling of summary. 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:24.290 align:middle line:84% I mean, somehow this book made formal or made final 00:01:24.290 --> 00:01:28.082 align:middle line:84% in a way of what the poems had been for me. 00:01:28.082 --> 00:01:29.540 align:middle line:84% It's as though they were curiously, 00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:30.860 align:middle line:84% I think, even taken away from me. 00:01:30.860 --> 00:01:32.485 align:middle line:84% Or they were so summarized by that book 00:01:32.485 --> 00:01:34.840 align:middle line:84% that I had a very mixed feeling about it. 00:01:34.840 --> 00:01:36.590 align:middle line:84% I was very, quote, "proud of it," unquote. 00:01:36.590 --> 00:01:38.390 align:middle line:84% But at the same time, I was very-- 00:01:38.390 --> 00:01:41.970 align:middle line:84% I had a complete bewilderment as to what next was possible. 00:01:41.970 --> 00:01:45.890 align:middle line:84% But this particular poem I'm thinking of now is of-- 00:01:45.890 --> 00:01:51.260 align:middle line:84% Williams had a great influence, again, on me. 00:01:51.260 --> 00:01:55.070 align:middle line:84% And the line, the way I learned one 00:01:55.070 --> 00:01:56.798 align:middle line:84% could say things by reading his work. 00:01:56.798 --> 00:01:59.090 align:middle line:84% Particularly, I remember the poems in that collection-- 00:01:59.090 --> 00:02:01.880 align:middle line:84% the later "Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams," 00:02:01.880 --> 00:02:03.800 align:middle line:90% that things like-- 00:02:03.800 --> 00:02:07.496 align:middle line:90% 00:02:07.496 --> 00:02:10.810 align:middle line:84% "When you say I'm not profound, but where is profundity? 00:02:10.810 --> 00:02:13.590 align:middle line:84% Aigeltinger dragged drunk from some cheap bar 00:02:13.590 --> 00:02:15.140 align:middle line:90% to serve their petty purposes. 00:02:15.140 --> 00:02:16.760 align:middle line:84% You, Aigeltinger, you were profound." 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:18.440 align:middle line:90% And so-- 00:02:18.440 --> 00:02:20.060 align:middle line:90% Poems of that order, or-- 00:02:20.060 --> 00:02:21.500 align:middle line:90% one of his, I remember, very-- 00:02:21.500 --> 00:02:22.700 align:middle line:90% they were called "The Act." 00:02:22.700 --> 00:02:26.000 align:middle line:90% "There were roses in the rain. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:28.730 align:middle line:90% Don't cut them, I pleaded. 00:02:28.730 --> 00:02:31.130 align:middle line:84% We were all young once, she said, and cut them 00:02:31.130 --> 00:02:33.740 align:middle line:90% and gave them to me in my hand." 00:02:33.740 --> 00:02:35.900 align:middle line:90% I remember that one. 00:02:35.900 --> 00:02:39.140 align:middle line:84% So this poem actually is a homage to him 00:02:39.140 --> 00:02:41.170 align:middle line:90% among other things.