WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.750 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.750 --> 00:00:03.850 align:middle line:84% So now I'm moving into a book called The Islands Project-- 00:00:03.850 --> 00:00:04.410 align:middle line:90% whoops-- 00:00:04.410 --> 00:00:05.380 align:middle line:90% Poems for Sappho. 00:00:05.380 --> 00:00:05.880 align:middle line:90% Hold on. 00:00:05.880 --> 00:00:08.580 align:middle line:84% I have to see how much time I have left. 00:00:08.580 --> 00:00:11.472 align:middle line:90% Oh, nothing. 00:00:11.472 --> 00:00:12.910 align:middle line:90% Shhh, yeah, go. 00:00:12.910 --> 00:00:13.410 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:00:13.410 --> 00:00:14.850 align:middle line:90% Go for it. 00:00:14.850 --> 00:00:16.531 align:middle line:90% "The Grackle on the Lawn." 00:00:16.531 --> 00:00:17.493 align:middle line:90% [IMITATES GRACKLE] 00:00:17.493 --> 00:00:21.350 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:21.350 --> 00:00:23.300 align:middle line:90% "She wants the blossom. 00:00:23.300 --> 00:00:26.750 align:middle line:84% She wants the seeds in the grass. 00:00:26.750 --> 00:00:29.120 align:middle line:90% She wants the beautiful thing. 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:31.640 align:middle line:90% She wants to eat. 00:00:31.640 --> 00:00:34.910 align:middle line:84% It's so simple, she's like a person. 00:00:34.910 --> 00:00:36.650 align:middle line:90% She wants the beautiful thing. 00:00:36.650 --> 00:00:38.540 align:middle line:90% She wants to eat. 00:00:38.540 --> 00:00:43.810 align:middle line:84% She flies off with the blossom in her beak." 00:00:43.810 --> 00:00:45.888 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:45.888 --> 00:00:47.214 align:middle line:90% [ALARM CHIMES] 00:00:47.214 --> 00:00:50.210 align:middle line:90% See, I have five minutes left. 00:00:50.210 --> 00:00:51.330 align:middle line:90% OK, that's good. 00:00:51.330 --> 00:00:51.830 align:middle line:90% That's good. 00:00:51.830 --> 00:00:58.140 align:middle line:90% 00:00:58.140 --> 00:01:05.110 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read one that's for my mother. 00:01:05.110 --> 00:01:11.200 align:middle line:90% 00:01:11.200 --> 00:01:17.800 align:middle line:84% My mother had a serious medical condition 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:25.240 align:middle line:84% that was caused by a doctor giving her a medication that's 00:01:25.240 --> 00:01:28.810 align:middle line:84% not really recommended for geriatric use, 00:01:28.810 --> 00:01:33.820 align:middle line:84% and she went into this amazingly horrifying thing. 00:01:33.820 --> 00:01:38.440 align:middle line:84% And they had to flood her with water, 00:01:38.440 --> 00:01:40.900 align:middle line:84% and she was in intensive care for eight days. 00:01:40.900 --> 00:01:43.690 align:middle line:84% And when she came out from that experience, 00:01:43.690 --> 00:01:50.110 align:middle line:84% she was both able to be hallucinating and be completely 00:01:50.110 --> 00:01:53.620 align:middle line:84% lucid at the same time, and it was very bizarre 00:01:53.620 --> 00:01:58.060 align:middle line:84% because it just changed many things. 00:01:58.060 --> 00:02:00.730 align:middle line:84% But she had a good sense of humor about it, 00:02:00.730 --> 00:02:05.080 align:middle line:84% and she would laugh when I told her she was hallucinating. 00:02:05.080 --> 00:02:07.600 align:middle line:90% Not again. 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:10.330 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem that's about that. 00:02:10.330 --> 00:02:12.310 align:middle line:84% It's called "The Living Fragments," 00:02:12.310 --> 00:02:18.040 align:middle line:84% and this hadn't happened yet when I first 00:02:18.040 --> 00:02:20.470 align:middle line:84% started writing this book about Sappho, 00:02:20.470 --> 00:02:22.750 align:middle line:90% who is a poet who's found-- 00:02:22.750 --> 00:02:24.545 align:middle line:84% her work is found mainly in fragments. 00:02:24.545 --> 00:02:26.170 align:middle line:84% There are three or four complete poems, 00:02:26.170 --> 00:02:27.910 align:middle line:84% and the rest of her nine books are just 00:02:27.910 --> 00:02:31.780 align:middle line:90% little shreds of papyrus. 00:02:31.780 --> 00:02:37.930 align:middle line:84% So it was a little bit overly metaphorically true 00:02:37.930 --> 00:02:42.970 align:middle line:84% that my own mother and maybe my mother in poetry 00:02:42.970 --> 00:02:45.100 align:middle line:90% were both in fragments. 00:02:45.100 --> 00:02:48.550 align:middle line:90% 00:02:48.550 --> 00:02:52.390 align:middle line:84% "Her sentences broke verbs into bits, 00:02:52.390 --> 00:02:55.540 align:middle line:84% her syntax shards of a time sequence 00:02:55.540 --> 00:02:57.880 align:middle line:90% shattered in a swallow. 00:02:57.880 --> 00:03:01.660 align:middle line:84% Some foreshock drug had pushed a verbal precipice 00:03:01.660 --> 00:03:06.580 align:middle line:84% to slide and dive to insane depths. 00:03:06.580 --> 00:03:07.990 align:middle line:90% 'When did I go crazy?' 00:03:07.990 --> 00:03:09.580 align:middle line:90% she would ask. 00:03:09.580 --> 00:03:10.780 align:middle line:90% She wasn't crazy. 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:13.000 align:middle line:90% She had many minds. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:21.250 align:middle line:84% They all made sense, just like a word on a fragment of papyrus 00:03:21.250 --> 00:03:26.800 align:middle line:84% means something even when you know the rest are missing. 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:28.480 align:middle line:84% My mother would think I had children, 00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:32.680 align:middle line:84% that we were cooking a roast, that Dad was still alive, 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:37.150 align:middle line:84% so our conversation often ended up like Scrabble 00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:39.610 align:middle line:90% in zero gravity. 00:03:39.610 --> 00:03:41.680 align:middle line:84% It turned out we could talk about the Dodger 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:46.210 align:middle line:84% game, the Laker game, the spring flowers out the window. 00:03:46.210 --> 00:03:50.410 align:middle line:84% Unbelievable that she and I were able to piece together 00:03:50.410 --> 00:03:54.760 align:middle line:90% what she cared about at all. 00:03:54.760 --> 00:04:00.040 align:middle line:84% So I read Sappho's fragments with a trained eye. 00:04:00.040 --> 00:04:03.820 align:middle line:84% She is my other blasted heritage, 00:04:03.820 --> 00:04:08.320 align:middle line:84% beautiful in disarray, the aftermath 00:04:08.320 --> 00:04:12.500 align:middle line:84% I didn't have happen right in front of my eyes." 00:04:12.500 --> 00:04:13.000 align:middle line:90%