WEBVTT

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And you know what the sound
is if you see the picture even

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in the New York Times.

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It's a one long,
unbearable vowel

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and there's a name
for it, ululation.

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But that vowel, which is
saying, I've lost everything,

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the world is not real, I don't
want it, I don't want myself,

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I don't want the world, I don't
want anything to do with this.

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I mean, the only answer
to losing is to say,

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I want to lose it, you know?

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I want it gone.

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I don't want to have
anything to do with it.

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And the destructive and
angry aspects of grief

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are all there in that terrible
sound of pain and the attempts

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to break it, the
attempts even to breathe,

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the attempts to stop
it, to control it,

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to make something out of it are
the beginnings of consonants.

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I think that's how
language begins

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with a expressively powerful
feeling, through which there's

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no one has no way
of dealing with it.

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And I think that's
how poetry begins.

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I think that's why poetry is
different from the other arts

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because it uses the same thing
that is original language

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itself and poetry is always
going back to original

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language, to that moment where
you're dealing with what cannot

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be said.

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Why do people turn back
to poetry in wartime

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or in times of great crisis
or when they lose a loved one

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or when they fall in love or
when they're profoundly angry

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and just don't want to
do the obvious thing?

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Which is that's the the rarest
of them, but it does happen.

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It's because poetry is
about what cannot be said.

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Prose is about what can be said.

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Prose is about subject and what
can be communicated about it

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but poetry is
something-- it comes

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to being that too but it
is something else first

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and it remains something
else all the way through.

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Shakespeare, the Groundlings
stood for five hours,

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many of them couldn't
read and write

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and they stood and
listened to Hamlet.

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What were they hearing?

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They weren't hearing
the denotative value

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of the words, which the scholars
are still scrabbling about.

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They were hearing this--

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some current that was underneath
the words, which communicated

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directly in which they
were getting through five

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hours of show of Hamlet.

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And if you play back
a great recording,

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I mean a great
performance of Hamlet,

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you can just listen
to that aspect of it,

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apart from the glory
of the language itself.

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I'm jumping ahead deliberately
because the connection

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with the natural
world, so-called,

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as a child, which
was such a relief.

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Later on, it seemed to me
again that the writing,

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that language, the poetry--

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as soon as I was
five years old, I

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wanted to write poems
because I wanted

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to write the things that we
sang in church, you know?

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That was a different
kind of use of language

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and I like that use of language.

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I like words like the
spacious firmament on high,

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you didn't know what they meant
but they sounded wonderful.

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And it never occurred to
me that there was again

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a distinction between that
feeling and the feeling

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of elation at seeing the grass
growing between the flagstone

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and it's never occurred
to me that literature

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and the writing, the poetry,
literature all together.

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Imaginative literature
was alien and at odds

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with a love of the
green world, of growing

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things that the rest of life.

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I couldn't figure that
one out and as I grew up,

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I loved them both.

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I loved poetry, I
loved literature

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and I loved any chance
to get out into the woods

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and into hike and
beyond the lake and then

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to paddle a canoe and any
chance to be part of that.

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The first time I--

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I mean I can remember an
unbelievable experience

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of coming over a hill on
a farm in Pennsylvania

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and seeing this great
swale of meadows and woods

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behind it and in
the afternoon light

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and thinking and not
thinking and just to me,

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it was the most beautiful
thing I'd ever seen in my life.

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I just couldn't express it.

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And it was not until 20 years
ago that the group of people

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were asked to a conference
in Missoula, Montana

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who were writers and writers
and writers on the environment,

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and I remember saying at
that conference, most of us

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grew up feeling that we
were freaks because we

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like both of these things.

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We cared passionately for
both of these things and we

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didn't feel--

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we didn't feel there was a
distinction between them.

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Well, I want you to imagine.

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I want you to think
about reading poetry,

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reading imaginative prose.

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With that assumption in mind,
rather than the other way

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around, I mean do
you like you know,

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trees and flowers
and butterflies

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or do you like literature?

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I mean the-- we've been on
enough probably university

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campuses, where the
literati and the botanists,

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I mean there's not a bus
service between them.

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The botanists don't read
anything except botany

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and this is really
depressing sometimes.

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They never read anything.

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And the literary people
don't have any time

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to pay attention
to these things,

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and they still think somehow
they're above it all.

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It's just ridiculous
because there's not

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a matter-- there's no should
or duty in the whole thing.

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I think in spite of
what's happening,

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in spite of what we're doing,
the recognition of the fact

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that when we were fetuses
in our mothers' wombs,

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we went through all of the
forms of life before us.

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We have been an insect.

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We have been a lizard.

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We have been all
of these creatures.

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We didn't stay there
very long maybe,

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but it wasn't very
long ago either.

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And somewhere, we
remember all that.

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We are connected with it all.

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We know it.

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It's not a matter of
anthropomorphizing,

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that sort of silly 19th century
way of sort of belittling

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an attitude, which suggests
that our feelings, including

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pain and joy may have something
to do with that of the animals.

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I mean it's taking the
ornithologists a very long time

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and rather reluctantly to
admit that birdsong probably

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has a lot to do with pleasure.

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Oh, dear.

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That might be anthro--
more of anthropomorphizing.

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I mean, when the thrush never
bothers to repeat itself

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and the thrush never
does repeat itself.

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However many times
you hear, it's

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like Schubert doing variations.

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He'll come up with
a new variation.

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And if the others were
imitating him to get it wrong,

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he'll come back and
correct them and say, no,

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don't do it that way.

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But I've got a better
way of doing it

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and he'll do it the next
way and do you think

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this has to do with territory?

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And do you think it
has to do with mating?

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Yeah, sure.

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But they've known about
that for a long time.

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They're onto something else.

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Why shouldn't it be pleasure?

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Why shouldn't that pleasure
go all the way back

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to the amoebas?

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Why shouldn't there
be a difference

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between pain and pleasure
and what you avoid

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and what you don't avoid?

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That expresses itself
in ways that they

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all equally understand.

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Isn't it a great joy to
think of being part of that?

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Rather than being
somehow superior to it

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and utilizing it and
making, you know,

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turning it into a commodity?

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Goodness.

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What do we do to ourselves when
we turn that into a commodity?

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That we become
commodities ourselves.

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I mean, we think of ourselves--
and you know, we say it,

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time is money.

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Time isn't money.

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We may say that and
we're warping our minds

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and saying it and cheapening
our minds and saying it,

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but how can we talk
about these things

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without seeming to
preach about them?

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And it's you know, the time
is running out on us too

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and I don't mean the money--

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I don't mean money's
running out of us

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but I mean time is running out.

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