WEBVTT

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What time is it, Lois?

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Oh, there's the clock.

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OK.

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I'll try and read a few
lighter things here.

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This is all new stuff now from
the new book, which started out

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to be called New Shoes.

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But I decided.

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Although I like that, it sounds
like a real lightweight book.

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And there's lots of
stuff in the book that

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is much more complicated
than that title.

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So that's why I started
trying to change it.

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My editor, however,
loved that title.

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OK.

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This poem is called New Shoes
or Why I Cross Out Words.

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I'll tell you that.

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A friend of mine who
used to be my student.

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Friend named Laura Wiesner.

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And I started at my
instigation last year.

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An exchange of poems.

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Because I have a hard time
writing during the year

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when I'm teaching because I'm
busy reading everybody else's

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poems.

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So I have to trap myself.

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And Laura was busy getting ready
for her preparing her thesis

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and getting ready
for her, I don't

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know if you have to take oral
exams here, but do it state.

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And so she was
really hassled too.

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So luckily, one
of the assignments

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that I had piled up
on my bed of things,

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I had to do one I was to
read Laura's master's thesis.

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And I happen to love her poetry.

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It's quite different from mine.

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And she has a way of seeing
that makes me refocus, look

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at things when I'm
going into a blur state.

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So I wrote her a poem, which
all this isn't the one.

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But I'll read later.

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And I sent it to her and
I said see what happened?

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I want you to write me back
a poem and send it to me.

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And within five days.

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And it has to have something
to do with this poem.

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It can be working just
with three words from it,

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or a response to an idea,
or some minimal connection

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to start the dialogue.

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And then I'll do
the same for you.

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And let's see how long
we can keep it going.

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So a lot of the poems in two
of the sections of this book

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come out of that exchange.

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And this is one of the ones
in which I sent her a poem,

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and it had a number
of things crossed out.

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And in her poem to me, she asked
me why I crossed that word.

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So she made an observation
has she noticed this.

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And so this is in
response to that.

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Those shoes you bought with
the platforms and shiny leather

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in steps and holes cut
out, which I admired so.

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Well, you bought them.

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Not because it was
snowing, but probably

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because there was
some hole or run down

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heel on your other pair, and
you didn't want it to show.

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Or else you got bored
with your good old shoes.

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So well constructed
and always there

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to take you where
you needed to go.

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But one day, you
looked out the window

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and you wanted to take off to
a place you couldn't think of,

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where those shoes wouldn't do,
wouldn't dance enough and lift

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you into the new arrangement.

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Well, that's why
I cross out words.

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So thoroughly, as though, I
never said them when I did.

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And felt I did and
knew what I'd said.

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And felt it to be
so well constructed.

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That it would keep
saying itself.

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That way, automatically
moving ahead

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when I no longer wanted to.

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