WEBVTT

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Here's a tiny poem.

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I'll show you the
size of that one.

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Philip Larkin said he disliked
going to poetry readings

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because he could never tell
when the poem was going to end.

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And when you have a poem on the
page, you know you can see it,

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the ending coming up, and
you can prepare for it.

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But Larkin, I think
felt that every poem was

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kind of, potentially,
like, an hour or two long.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And he could not bear
down for the long haul.

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And I've always had this fantasy
about a poetry reading being

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held in the Italian Middle Ages.

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And there's an open
microphone afterward,

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and this guy comes up he
says, "My name is Dante."

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And he says, "I'm just
going to read three poems."

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[LAUGHTER]

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But you see, this is quite--

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and the little poem
is called, "No Time."

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"No Time."

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"In a rush this
weekday morning, I

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tap the horn as I
speed past the cemetery

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where my parents are
buried, side by side,

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under a smooth slab of granite.

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Then, all day long, I
think of him rising up

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to give me that look
of knowing disapproval,

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while my mother calmly
tells him to lie back down."

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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