WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.810 --> 00:00:03.742 align:middle line:84% From who did you learn when to turn over which cards? 00:00:03.742 --> 00:00:04.242 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:04.242 --> 00:00:05.538 align:middle line:90% Are we missing anything? 00:00:05.538 --> 00:00:06.705 align:middle line:90% Can you repeat the question? 00:00:06.705 --> 00:00:07.440 align:middle line:90% Oh yeah. 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:11.280 align:middle line:84% Who taught me what cards to turn over. 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:12.930 align:middle line:84% Well, this Mississippi gambler did. 00:00:12.930 --> 00:00:14.754 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:14.754 --> 00:00:17.490 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:00:17.490 --> 00:00:21.540 align:middle line:90% I think it was a matter of-- 00:00:21.540 --> 00:00:22.920 align:middle line:90% I'm not sure. 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:24.460 align:middle line:90% It's a good question. 00:00:24.460 --> 00:00:27.360 align:middle line:90% I can't isolate one person. 00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:30.810 align:middle line:84% I think I basically at some point 00:00:30.810 --> 00:00:33.420 align:middle line:84% started to let more of myself into my poems 00:00:33.420 --> 00:00:39.570 align:middle line:84% that I was excluding and censoring. 00:00:39.570 --> 00:00:43.470 align:middle line:84% And I think that's what happens when one grows as a poet. 00:00:43.470 --> 00:00:47.940 align:middle line:84% I don't think you find your voice in some external way. 00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:50.040 align:middle line:84% I think that phrase is very misleading. 00:00:50.040 --> 00:00:52.500 align:middle line:84% It's as if your voice was like car keys or something 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:55.390 align:middle line:84% that you could find your voice in the sofa cushions. 00:00:55.390 --> 00:00:56.340 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:56.340 --> 00:01:01.380 align:middle line:84% I think you find your voice by allowing parts of yourself 00:01:01.380 --> 00:01:04.680 align:middle line:84% that you have excluded unwittingly from your poetry 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:06.700 align:middle line:90% into your poetry. 00:01:06.700 --> 00:01:08.100 align:middle line:84% Because I think when we write, we 00:01:08.100 --> 00:01:12.000 align:middle line:84% tend to kind of put on these poetry goggles. 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:13.890 align:middle line:90% And we sit down-- 00:01:13.890 --> 00:01:15.000 align:middle line:90% many of us-- or I did. 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:16.090 align:middle line:90% This is what I used to do. 00:01:16.090 --> 00:01:17.700 align:middle line:84% I used to put on my poetry goggles. 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:20.590 align:middle line:84% And I would sit down with the idea of committing 00:01:20.590 --> 00:01:21.465 align:middle line:90% an act of literature. 00:01:21.465 --> 00:01:24.060 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:27.708 align:middle line:84% And essentially, it was a humorless enterprise. 00:01:27.708 --> 00:01:29.250 align:middle line:84% And that was one thing that I started 00:01:29.250 --> 00:01:31.010 align:middle line:90% to allow into my poetry-- 00:01:31.010 --> 00:01:31.510 align:middle line:90% humor. 00:01:31.510 --> 00:01:34.440 align:middle line:84% Because I've always-- my father was very humorous. 00:01:34.440 --> 00:01:37.020 align:middle line:84% And I think I got some of his sensibility. 00:01:37.020 --> 00:01:38.610 align:middle line:84% But I always kept that out, because I 00:01:38.610 --> 00:01:40.960 align:middle line:90% thought that's not poetry. 00:01:40.960 --> 00:01:43.140 align:middle line:84% So I'm not talking about dark dirty secrets. 00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:46.177 align:middle line:84% But I think we exclude things like-- 00:01:46.177 --> 00:01:49.170 align:middle line:84% there might be a music that you like. 00:01:49.170 --> 00:01:53.160 align:middle line:84% Or you might-- or many people don't talk about their reading. 00:01:53.160 --> 00:01:55.110 align:middle line:84% I mean, poets generally tend to read a lot. 00:01:55.110 --> 00:01:58.500 align:middle line:84% And many of them would never talk about reading a book. 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:01.110 align:middle line:84% Or things like that you can kind of allow in. 00:02:01.110 --> 00:02:03.660 align:middle line:84% And that doesn't exactly address itself to your question. 00:02:03.660 --> 00:02:08.100 align:middle line:84% But I think it was probably mixed in with allowing things 00:02:08.100 --> 00:02:11.700 align:middle line:84% into my poems that I had been excluding from my poems that 00:02:11.700 --> 00:02:14.880 align:middle line:90% made me relax. 00:02:14.880 --> 00:02:17.255 align:middle line:84% Did you learn that from anyone, or was that something-- 00:02:17.255 --> 00:02:17.755 align:middle line:90% 00:02:17.755 --> 00:02:21.230 align:middle line:90% Well, probably Coleridge. 00:02:21.230 --> 00:02:23.870 align:middle line:84% Not in the Mystery Poems, but in what are called 00:02:23.870 --> 00:02:26.690 align:middle line:84% the Conversation Poems: "This lime tree 00:02:26.690 --> 00:02:33.350 align:middle line:84% bower my prison," "The Aeolian Harp," and "Frosted Midnight." 00:02:33.350 --> 00:02:39.050 align:middle line:84% And the conversation poems begin very casually. 00:02:39.050 --> 00:02:41.300 align:middle line:84% "This lime tree bower my prison," begins with the word 00:02:41.300 --> 00:02:42.550 align:middle line:90% well. 00:02:42.550 --> 00:02:44.720 align:middle line:84% Well, they are gone, and here I must remain. 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:46.580 align:middle line:90% This lime tree bower my prison." 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:48.300 align:middle line:84% You don't begin a poem with well! 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:48.800 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:49.880 align:middle line:90% You know? 00:02:49.880 --> 00:02:52.910 align:middle line:84% It's like, Elvis starts his songs with, you know, "well". 00:02:52.910 --> 00:02:55.700 align:middle line:84% But you can't start a poem with well. 00:02:55.700 --> 00:03:00.048 align:middle line:84% Well, he starts by saying, "Well, you know, they are gone, 00:03:00.048 --> 00:03:00.840 align:middle line:90% here I must remain. 00:03:00.840 --> 00:03:02.600 align:middle line:90% This lime tree bower my prison". 00:03:02.600 --> 00:03:04.880 align:middle line:84% 25 or so lines later, the poem is 00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:09.770 align:middle line:84% lifted to a level of such intense speculation 00:03:09.770 --> 00:03:12.860 align:middle line:84% about the nature of friendship, about the nature of nature, 00:03:12.860 --> 00:03:14.930 align:middle line:90% and love, and landscape. 00:03:14.930 --> 00:03:17.330 align:middle line:90% But it starts casually. 00:03:17.330 --> 00:03:19.790 align:middle line:84% And most of the conversation-- they're called conversation 00:03:19.790 --> 00:03:21.530 align:middle line:90% poems belatedly-- 00:03:21.530 --> 00:03:25.970 align:middle line:84% because they start with this rather kind of colloquial 00:03:25.970 --> 00:03:30.920 align:middle line:84% relaxed thing, a kind of blue jeans or a kind of casualness 00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:31.490 align:middle line:90% about them. 00:03:31.490 --> 00:03:32.540 align:middle line:90% And then they lift. 00:03:32.540 --> 00:03:37.520 align:middle line:84% They begin to inflate with speculation, 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:43.050 align:middle line:84% and imaginative thinking, and meditation, and whatnot. 00:03:43.050 --> 00:03:45.590 align:middle line:84% So probably the model, I'd say, would be -- 00:03:45.590 --> 00:03:48.850 align:middle line:84% would be Coleridge and the conversation poems. 00:03:48.850 --> 00:03:51.000 align:middle line:90%