WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.780 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.780 --> 00:00:04.005 align:middle line:90%
I want to read some new poems.

00:00:04.005 --> 00:00:06.090 align:middle line:84%
You publish a book
and it takes so

00:00:06.090 --> 00:00:09.443 align:middle line:84%
long to get the thing done
around, accepted and out.

00:00:09.443 --> 00:00:10.860 align:middle line:84%
And the rest that
you could just--

00:00:10.860 --> 00:00:12.090 align:middle line:90%
poof.

00:00:12.090 --> 00:00:13.860 align:middle line:90%
Funny.

00:00:13.860 --> 00:00:16.900 align:middle line:84%
Because if you're
lucky, if you're lucky,

00:00:16.900 --> 00:00:17.775 align:middle line:90%
things are in motion.

00:00:17.775 --> 00:00:21.240 align:middle line:90%


00:00:21.240 --> 00:00:22.230 align:middle line:90%
So I don't know.

00:00:22.230 --> 00:00:24.730 align:middle line:84%
I don't know what
I'm gonna do here.

00:00:24.730 --> 00:00:27.090 align:middle line:84%
I'm going to read
a few of these.

00:00:27.090 --> 00:00:28.393 align:middle line:90%
There's a real loose.

00:00:28.393 --> 00:00:29.310 align:middle line:90%
There's a loose thing.

00:00:29.310 --> 00:00:30.960 align:middle line:90%
There's a loose narrative poem.

00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:32.787 align:middle line:84%
This is set in
South Philadelphia.

00:00:32.787 --> 00:00:36.370 align:middle line:90%


00:00:36.370 --> 00:00:38.470 align:middle line:84%
People, they ask me
questions about what was it

00:00:38.470 --> 00:00:41.710 align:middle line:84%
like to grow up there, to see
blah blah and these subjects,

00:00:41.710 --> 00:00:42.670 align:middle line:90%
all this stuff.

00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:46.432 align:middle line:84%
And I don't care
about local poems.

00:00:46.432 --> 00:00:47.890 align:middle line:84%
All these poems
that I wrote about,

00:00:47.890 --> 00:00:50.380 align:middle line:84%
people dying in South
Philadelphia and whatnot.

00:00:50.380 --> 00:00:51.880 align:middle line:84%
When I was writing
those poems, I

00:00:51.880 --> 00:00:55.730 align:middle line:84%
felt that I was writing
poems about funerary rites.

00:00:55.730 --> 00:00:56.230 align:middle line:90%
You know?

00:00:56.230 --> 00:00:58.150 align:middle line:84%
And it just so happened
that the material that

00:00:58.150 --> 00:01:00.190 align:middle line:84%
was given to me in
my life to work with

00:01:00.190 --> 00:01:02.530 align:middle line:90%
happened to be these materials.

00:01:02.530 --> 00:01:07.150 align:middle line:84%
But the poems, to me, are as
Greek as they are, located

00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:10.045 align:middle line:90%
in a particular modern place.

00:01:10.045 --> 00:01:12.610 align:middle line:90%


00:01:12.610 --> 00:01:14.920 align:middle line:84%
And this, too,
which has something

00:01:14.920 --> 00:01:17.230 align:middle line:84%
to do with the nature
of transmission

00:01:17.230 --> 00:01:20.290 align:middle line:90%
of stories in a tribe.

00:01:20.290 --> 00:01:22.480 align:middle line:84%
The title is "Christopher
Columbus Park".

00:01:22.480 --> 00:01:26.590 align:middle line:84%
"Checkers, bocce, some
days rummy or hearts,

00:01:26.590 --> 00:01:29.860 align:middle line:90%
early fall under chestnut trees.

00:01:29.860 --> 00:01:33.160 align:middle line:84%
Then winter, inside
the rec center,

00:01:33.160 --> 00:01:37.540 align:middle line:84%
bingo and widows while snow
dazes 8th Street's traffic

00:01:37.540 --> 00:01:39.130 align:middle line:90%
lights.

00:01:39.130 --> 00:01:45.160 align:middle line:84%
Summer, finally, Mikey and Sal
warm themselves in beach chairs

00:01:45.160 --> 00:01:46.960 align:middle line:90%
on the grass.

00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:51.220 align:middle line:84%
Sticky sunshine,
stoagies, Phillies

00:01:51.220 --> 00:01:54.730 align:middle line:84%
games cracking from
transistors, the dago red

00:01:54.730 --> 00:01:59.650 align:middle line:84%
they drink from churchy
cruets going up in smoke.

00:01:59.650 --> 00:02:03.310 align:middle line:84%
Some days, in
pressed T-shirts, Sal

00:02:03.310 --> 00:02:07.030 align:middle line:84%
plays sweet potato,
Mikey the mandolin,

00:02:07.030 --> 00:02:10.750 align:middle line:90%
bald heads nodding like tulips.

00:02:10.750 --> 00:02:14.830 align:middle line:84%
Why wasn't I surprised
by its senselessness,

00:02:14.830 --> 00:02:18.580 align:middle line:84%
the word we use to
justify what happened,

00:02:18.580 --> 00:02:25.090 align:middle line:84%
anything that happens, childhood
friends at odds over money,

00:02:25.090 --> 00:02:30.880 align:middle line:84%
maybe, or baseball stats, the
unions or Democrats, boiling

00:02:30.880 --> 00:02:34.720 align:middle line:84%
over as usual, nose to
nose, blue in the face,

00:02:34.720 --> 00:02:38.650 align:middle line:84%
until, this one time, Mikey
goes home and comes back

00:02:38.650 --> 00:02:40.780 align:middle line:90%
with his old kraut Luger.

00:02:40.780 --> 00:02:44.680 align:middle line:84%
And Sal starts to run,
his crabby legs and arms,

00:02:44.680 --> 00:02:48.460 align:middle line:84%
grabbing for air,
until he drops,

00:02:48.460 --> 00:02:52.750 align:middle line:84%
as if life were one small
breath held and spanked.

00:02:52.750 --> 00:02:56.710 align:middle line:84%
While the pistol rabbits
into the air from slow motion

00:02:56.710 --> 00:03:01.810 align:middle line:84%
Mikey's hand, who can't
think fast enough to feel

00:03:01.810 --> 00:03:04.870 align:middle line:90%
his own heart failing him.

00:03:04.870 --> 00:03:07.870 align:middle line:90%
Their cronies couldn't help.

00:03:07.870 --> 00:03:10.570 align:middle line:90%
What was the fight about?

00:03:10.570 --> 00:03:12.760 align:middle line:90%
He never carried the gun.

00:03:12.760 --> 00:03:16.960 align:middle line:84%
The widows said bad blood,
between old fools too

00:03:16.960 --> 00:03:21.070 align:middle line:90%
old to know bad blood was there.

00:03:21.070 --> 00:03:23.890 align:middle line:84%
One generation kept
the story alive,

00:03:23.890 --> 00:03:26.950 align:middle line:84%
trying to make it
make sense, then

00:03:26.950 --> 00:03:32.530 align:middle line:84%
it dried up and blew
away, sticking to me.

00:03:32.530 --> 00:03:36.850 align:middle line:84%
But there's still no saying
how the angers of a place

00:03:36.850 --> 00:03:44.230 align:middle line:84%
can live in us like love,
thriving, terribly our own.

00:03:44.230 --> 00:03:47.020 align:middle line:90%
Any truth suffices.

00:03:47.020 --> 00:03:49.240 align:middle line:90%
Stories pass.

00:03:49.240 --> 00:03:55.120 align:middle line:84%
What matters is that comic image
saved of two old running man

00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:57.120 align:middle line:90%
about to die."

00:03:57.120 --> 00:03:59.000 align:middle line:90%