WEBVTT

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"Passing a Saw Mill at Night."

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There's to me anyway a sense
in which when I finally--

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when I finished writing--

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when I finished writing the
poems in my first book, when

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I sorted the poems that
were going to eventually

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be into it out into book form,
when I saw the thing come out

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and print and
everything, I think

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this is maybe generally true of
people I'm pretty sure it is.

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That you kind of get that
little package in your hands

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and you read it first of
all sort of just being

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pleased or disturbed or
whatever your initial responses

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are to seeing your first book.

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Then you begin to read
the thing like very,

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very carefully and with a
more objective eye probably

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than the poems were written
trying to figure out what

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it is you're writing about.

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For me anyway that
kind of thing was true.

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And I found that
among other things

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that most of the
poems in my first book

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were backward looking poems.

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I wasn't disturbed particularly
by that but I was aware of it.

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And as time went by
and I found myself

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writing very different
kinds of poems eventually

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one of the main differences
that you can describe

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technical changes and
all that kind of thing

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as much as you want but
one of the main differences

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is quite simply move them
into the present tense

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and working
gradually to catch up

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to yourself in a funny kind
of way until your writing

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finally about what's
going on exactly then.

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"The road was straight,
a gully braced by stumps

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plunged from the edge.

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Beyond it the fall field
widened through the darkness

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toward a clump of
trees in silhouette

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against the sawmill wall.

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Slowing down, I heard
the bright smokes--

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I watched the bright
smoke's scattered ashes

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dying among stars.

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Years before without a
word spoken my father

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stopped the Jeep as
we hunted his farm.

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Our years together ending,
the stubble behind us

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bright with frost.

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We watched the distant
mill's dark walls pulse

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with swollen squares of fire.

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At night, he had
told me, he still

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move through the smells
of oil and gunpowder,

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night itself reaching
to release the brake.

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We know more than we can
learn of death and life.

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I stopped the car
slowly, my wife

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leaned against my arm asleep.

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Across the road through
the living trees,

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they're taken, burned."

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