WEBVTT

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I've taught so little that
the experience is still

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very fresh for me.

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And when I taught
in a high school--

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I did a one week workshop
in Portland in November,

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I had a student who
timidly handed me

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four lines about the
ocean, and for once, I

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had nothing good to say.

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And he never showed
me another thing.

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During the entire workshop,
I gave him some poems

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by other people about
the ocean, but it didn't

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seem to cheer him up at all.

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And wrote this poem about that--

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"Sonnet for Joe."

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"When I tell you I would
rather you describe

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a clock, than time, that
the essence of your ocean

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sentiments is not the
ocean, I'm wondering

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if you would live if your
feet got tangled in seaweed.

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Write me the
superstructure of water,

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and now you drop your face.

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I see my mistake, you
did not write to contend.

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So it was the ocean in
four dry lines like seaweed

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from Japanese groceries
that thickens and plumps

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when ladled in water.

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Look, you don't even
like it when I give you

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some copies of ocean
poems, you detest the sea,

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and it's marketable herring.

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It's common tuna and starfish
always losing their legs.

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Think of the man who fell off
his fishing boat in the fog

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off Alaska.

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He heard the motor
slowly dropping away,

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its cargo a vain
fish under its wing.

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Think of his widow who detests
the sea, who lives beside it,

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who writes now to her friend."

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