WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.870 align:middle line:90%


00:00:03.870 --> 00:00:06.150 align:middle line:90%
Then there's a tiny one.

00:00:06.150 --> 00:00:08.880 align:middle line:84%
Lois mentioned Henry
Moore, I wrote about him

00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:10.860 align:middle line:84%
and spent a lot
of time with him.

00:00:10.860 --> 00:00:15.360 align:middle line:84%
And I know that working,
thinking about, writing

00:00:15.360 --> 00:00:16.980 align:middle line:84%
about his sculpture,
living with him

00:00:16.980 --> 00:00:19.680 align:middle line:84%
as he worked on things, made
a tremendous amount to me

00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:24.090 align:middle line:84%
as a poet, both because I
saw a great artist working

00:00:24.090 --> 00:00:25.328 align:middle line:90%
and talked with him.

00:00:25.328 --> 00:00:27.120 align:middle line:84%
But because of the
nature of the sculpture,

00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:34.510 align:middle line:84%
the wonderful, wordless, opaque,
loquacity of the great work,

00:00:34.510 --> 00:00:37.920 align:middle line:84%
I wanted to make poems
as hard as bronze.

00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:41.070 align:middle line:84%
I made a little one
called "Reclining Figure"

00:00:41.070 --> 00:00:44.303 align:middle line:84%
and Henry Moore has made
more than 100, some of them

00:00:44.303 --> 00:00:46.470 align:middle line:84%
are mostly the wooden ones
and some of the lead ones

00:00:46.470 --> 00:00:49.240 align:middle line:84%
are long and
skeletal, root-like.

00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:53.580 align:middle line:84%
But most of them are blocky and
like mountains and landscape

00:00:53.580 --> 00:00:54.810 align:middle line:90%
made out of bronze and stone.

00:00:54.810 --> 00:00:56.610 align:middle line:84%
And this is one of
the latter kind.

00:00:56.610 --> 00:00:59.130 align:middle line:90%
It's very short.

00:00:59.130 --> 00:01:04.349 align:middle line:84%
"Then the knee of the
wave turned to stone.

00:01:04.349 --> 00:01:10.350 align:middle line:84%
By the cliff of her flank
I anchored, in the darkness

00:01:10.350 --> 00:01:12.570 align:middle line:90%
of harbors laid-by."

00:01:12.570 --> 00:01:15.990 align:middle line:90%


00:01:15.990 --> 00:01:18.010 align:middle line:84%
One of the first
times I read this,

00:01:18.010 --> 00:01:20.010 align:middle line:84%
I think perhaps really
the first time I read it,

00:01:20.010 --> 00:01:22.950 align:middle line:84%
was out at the University
of Washington at Seattle.

00:01:22.950 --> 00:01:27.000 align:middle line:84%
Just a few months before
Ted Roethke, great poet,

00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:28.900 align:middle line:90%
who taught there, died.

00:01:28.900 --> 00:01:31.500 align:middle line:84%
It was just two or three
months before he died.

00:01:31.500 --> 00:01:35.070 align:middle line:84%
I don't think my reading had
any connection with it really,

00:01:35.070 --> 00:01:37.620 align:middle line:90%
despite rumors.

00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:40.470 align:middle line:84%
But when I began the
reading, Ted Roethke,

00:01:40.470 --> 00:01:43.535 align:middle line:84%
whom I knew a little bit, wasn't
there and I was really mad.

00:01:43.535 --> 00:01:45.082 align:middle line:90%
I was furious he wasn't there.

00:01:45.082 --> 00:01:46.290 align:middle line:90%
And then he came ambling in--

00:01:46.290 --> 00:01:47.370 align:middle line:90%
[SNARLING]

00:01:47.370 --> 00:01:49.830 align:middle line:84%
--and then I was terrified
because he was there.

00:01:49.830 --> 00:01:52.470 align:middle line:84%
And he sat over in the left-hand
side, where Dick is over there

00:01:52.470 --> 00:01:54.820 align:middle line:84%
and he did something
that very few people do.

00:01:54.820 --> 00:01:57.570 align:middle line:84%
He kept making
noises after a poem.

00:01:57.570 --> 00:02:00.577 align:middle line:84%
I might finish a poem
in Ted would go [WOOFS]..

00:02:00.577 --> 00:02:02.160 align:middle line:84%
But you couldn't
really tell, at least

00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:03.510 align:middle line:84%
I think you couldn't
tell whether he meant

00:02:03.510 --> 00:02:05.773 align:middle line:84%
that's a pukey, horrible
poem, or whether there's

00:02:05.773 --> 00:02:07.815 align:middle line:84%
something good in there
and I hate you, you know?

00:02:07.815 --> 00:02:09.638 align:middle line:90%
I'm mad.

00:02:09.638 --> 00:02:10.680 align:middle line:90%
You couldn't really tell.

00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:13.110 align:middle line:84%
I mean, he had lots of little
jealousies and vanities.

00:02:13.110 --> 00:02:14.580 align:middle line:90%
And he was a terrific man.

00:02:14.580 --> 00:02:16.980 align:middle line:84%
But he liked to talk out
of the corner of his mouth.

00:02:16.980 --> 00:02:18.522 align:middle line:84%
So when I finished
reading this poem,

00:02:18.522 --> 00:02:20.528 align:middle line:90%
he said, read that one again.

00:02:20.528 --> 00:02:21.570 align:middle line:90%
Read it slower this time!

00:02:21.570 --> 00:02:23.140 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:02:23.140 --> 00:02:25.710 align:middle line:84%
So every time I read it, I
have to read it over again.

00:02:25.710 --> 00:02:27.780 align:middle line:84%
It's the Ted Roethke
Memorial rereading.

00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:30.250 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:02:30.250 --> 00:02:36.180 align:middle line:90%


00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:42.360 align:middle line:84%
"Then the knee of the
wave turned to stone.

00:02:42.360 --> 00:02:48.510 align:middle line:84%
By the cliff of her flank
I anchored, in the darkness

00:02:48.510 --> 00:02:52.190 align:middle line:90%
of harbors laid-by."

00:02:52.190 --> 00:02:53.000 align:middle line:90%