WEBVTT

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Maybe I'll read another poem
about the academic world.

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I'm going to start--

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would anybody mind if
I take my coat off?

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It's much hotter at this end
of the room than at that end.

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[INAUDIBLE VOICE FROM AUDIENCE]

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Thank you.

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Well, all right.

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If I promise to sort of stop
at that, is that alright?

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[LAUGHTER] I'm known as the
middle class man's Allen

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Ginsberg.

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I take off my suit coat.

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This is a poem
about the time when

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I was a graduate student at
the State University of Iowa

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in Iowa City.

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And I had just
been there forever.

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I was there so
long that they said

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I was the only graduate
student with tenure.

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This poem is about the year
that my tenure ran out.

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They finally-- they
came to me-- you know,

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I've been there for years
and years doing what graduate

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students-- how everybody else
on January 1st makes long lists

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of resolutions and how they will
stop being mean to their wife

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and they will get to work on--

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and that lasts for a day or so.

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And, well, graduate students
do it on September 1.

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And you make a long list of
books you will read that year.

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Languages you will
learn that year.

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All those pious things and
that, lasts for a day or so.

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And then you get busy
doing something else,

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and all of a sudden
the years gone by.

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And, you know, then you feel
very guilty because you haven't

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read any of those books.

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And so the next year,
you make a longer list.

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And I've done this for about
10 years at Iowa, you know.

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And so that I really was one
of the very finest list makers

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that they had there.

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However, I hadn't
read any books.

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And they came around and said,
look, you know, Snodgrass,

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it isn't that we don't
like having you here.

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But if you're going to stay
this year, take the examination.

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So I packed.

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I mean, in 10 years, I
had learned one thing,

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I wasn't ready for
that examination.

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Now look, no wait, that's no
small thing to have learned.

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I mean, a lot of my friends--

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You know, I mean, I was only--

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I wasn't psychotic,
I was only neurotic.

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I knew I hadn't read the books.

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A lot of my friends went
totally out of their skull

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and went and took
the examination.

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I mean, you know.

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And were surprised that-- they
hadn't read any more books than

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I had, but somehow they
felt they were-- no,

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I knew I wasn't.

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I knew that if they were
going to act that way,

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I just had to leave.

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Well, before leaving,
I sort of had

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to take a sort of personal
inventory of myself

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and my own qualities
to try to avoid--

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to find out where in the
world to go from there.

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And also to try to avoid
making such failures as I had,

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at least in some
sense, made there.

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In some ways, it was a
terribly valuable time to me.

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But I sort of hated to leave
without having done the things

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I at least said I
was going to do,

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even if I should have known
I wasn't going to do them.

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I didn't want to make that
kind of goof up again.

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So, you know, I
wanted to know what

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qualities I had
that were some good

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and what were the
rest of my qualities

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that I had to guard against.

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This is called
"April Inventory."

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And I guess before
reading it, I ought

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to say that it says some
absolutely terrible things

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about scholars.

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I don't mean them.

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I only felt them, I mean.

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And, you know, it isn't
the same thing at all,

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but it's the kind
of thing you have

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to face when you're writing.

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You've got to-- you
feel all kinds of things

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that you don't approve
of for a minute.

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And you got to put them
in the poem or else

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it means you cleaned up
the picture of yourself

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and you tried to
clean up the world

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and make a tidy or neater,
more flattering one

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than the one that's there.

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And the poem all leaks away.

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You just got to put all
those ugly things, like envy.

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I mean, I was mighty envious.

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I mean, guys who could get
doctorates, like Sam, could

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get jobs and I couldn't get
a job, and that made me mad.

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That doesn't mean there's
something wrong with scholars.

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It may very well mean there's
something wrong with me.

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Even worse than that,
I was very mad at them

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because they could be scholars
and I couldn't, you know.

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I could have done
anything to be a scholar,

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except read those books.

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So I was mad at
them, but, you know.

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What I'm trying to
say, really, I guess,

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is some of my best
friends are scholars.

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"April Inventory."

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"The green catalpa tree
has turned all white.

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The cherry blooms once more.

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In one whole year, I haven't
learned a blessed thing

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they pay you for.

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The blossoms snow
down in my hair.

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The trees and I
will soon be bare.

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The trees have more
than I to spare.

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The sleek, expensive
girls I teach,

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younger and pinker every year.

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Bloom gradually out of reach.

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The pear tree lets
its petals drop

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like dandruff on a tabletop.

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The girls have grown
so young by now,

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I have to nudge myself to stare.

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This year they
smile and remind me

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how my teeth are
falling with my hair.

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In 30 years, I may not get
younger, shrewder, or out

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of debt.

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The 10th time just a
year ago, I made myself

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a little list of all the
things I'd ought to know,

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then told my parents, analyst,
and everyone who's trusted,

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me I'd be substantial.

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Presently, I haven't read
one book about a book

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or memorized one plot or
found a mind I did not doubt.

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I learned one date
and then forgot.

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And one by one
the solid scholars

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get the degrees, the jobs,
the dollars, and smile

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above their starchy collars.

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I taught my classes
Whitehead's notions,

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one lovely girl a
song of Mahler's.

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Lacking a source
book or promotions,

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I showed one child the colors
of a luna moth and how to love.

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I taught myself to name
my name, to bark back,

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losing love and crying,
to ease my woman

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so she came to ease an
old man who was dying.

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I have not learned
how often I can win,

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can love, but choose to die.

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I have not learned
there is a lie,

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love shall be blonder,
slimmer, younger.

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That my equivocating eye loves
only by my body's hunger.

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That I have forces true to
feel or that the lovely world

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is real.

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While scholars speak authority
and wear their ulcers

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on their sleeves, my
eyes in spectacles

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shall see these trees procure
and spend their leaves.

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There is a value underneath the
gold and silver in my teeth.

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Though trees turn bare
and girls turn wives,

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we shall afford
our costly seasons.

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There is a gentleness survives
that will out speak and has

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its reasons.

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There is a loveliness
exists, preserves us

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not for specialists."

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