WEBVTT

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Now this one is--

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this next poem is a verse poem.

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And it has an uneven
right hand margins.

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I mean, I'm-- and the only
difference, I suppose,

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between the prose poems
in the verse poems really,

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aside from the fact that the
language in them behaves very

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differently, if
you think about it,

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a poem with a justified
right-hand margins,

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which is not a poem, in
fact, at all but is in prose,

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you realize that the energy
of the language is to keep

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on going.

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It's really only a printer's
or book binders convention

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that prose goes back
to the margin at all.

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If it weren't for the
need to bind it in a book,

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a novel would be just one
thin, long ribbon of type,

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stretching as far as it took
if you had to lay out Dombey

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and Son along the ground.

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You could probably go
to Wichita with that.

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But with a verse, the language
starts out across the page

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and then it goes back to
the margin and then back

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out and back.

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And you get this serpentine
motion down the page

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so that in poetry, you not
only have a line that goes out,

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but you also have a
line that moves down

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the page, which is like a
meander in a river or a path

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that a snake leaves in
the dust when it travels.

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Anyway, enough of
aesthetic generalizing

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about the difference between
verse and prose poems.

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This is a verse
poem called "Driving

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Alongside the Housatonic River
Alone on a Rainy April Night."

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I'm fond of titles with
a lot of data in them

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because then the poem starts
right away at the beginning.

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And in this poem, it
starts with the speaker

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remembering a question he asked
adults when he was a child.

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"I remember asking, where
does my shadow go at night?

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I thought it went home.

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It grew so sleek at dusk.

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They said, you just
don't notice it

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the way you don't tell
yourself how to walk or hear

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a noise that doesn't stop.

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But one wrong
wobble in the socket

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and inside the knee, chalk
is falling, school is over.

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As if the ground were a rung,
suddenly gone from a ladder.

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The self, the shoulders bunched
against the roads each bump.

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The penis with its stupid grin,
the whole rank slum of cells

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collapses.

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I feel the steering
wheel tug a little.

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Testing.

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For as long as
that takes, the car

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is a sack of kittens,
weighed down by stones.

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The headlights chase a dark
ripple across some birch trees.

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I know it's there.

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Water hurrying over
the shadow of water."

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