WEBVTT

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So that poem, it's called
"Lifespan Addenda. "

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And it comes after a suite of 12
poems that together are titled

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The History of Ideas, 1973-2012.

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A cheeky title that kind of
refers to, for one thing,

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a five volume reference work
that continues to amaze me

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called The Dictionary
of the History of Ideas.

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In five volumes, so
one of the volumes

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is like Despotism to
Protestantism or something.

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And so there are
12 poems in here,

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all with titles
of abstractions--

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space, casuistry,
alienation, authority.

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And the poems begin with a
statement of fact lifted out

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of that reference work.

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And end, each of them, with a
platitude or an aphorism that's

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kind of snatched from
the intellectual ether

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of the last few years.

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So some of the ending quotes are
by Tyra Banks, Thomas Friedman,

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Malcolm Gladwell,
Temple Grandin.

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A lot of them are sort
of specious or bothersome

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in some way.

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And the poems kind of drift
from the fact to the platitude.

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I want to read one of these.

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This one is called "Symmetry."

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and I ascribe the closing
quote to Chuck Palahniuk

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but I think it belongs to
like Century 21 or some sort

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of realtor instead.

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[LAUGHING]

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"Symmetry."

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"Whenever a form or
unit of life comes

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into being on any
spot of the universe,

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then any such occurrence
taken by itself

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runs counter to
the general trend

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towards an increase
of the entropy.

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By what shade stain was
left, we told aptitude

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and woke him at last.

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Where prior elders may
have swabbed with resin

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and covered properly as he lay
the birthday boy with falcon

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down, we borrow from the annals
only the prior elder prayer.

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Not that he'd remember.

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We couldn't get the
recitation solemn enough.

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Worse, worse the
huddle more worrisome

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when legislative is
men's agreement going in

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to raise temerity from
downcast scrutiny.

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Piteous the metal taste
of smoking and crying.

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Bereft the transactive sacrament
until the lashes flutter.

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Saw him later in the same
puny dyad we'd all had,

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rocking the subdivision
no one in the rumble seat

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'sides his baby.

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Down Alvernon we
dressed the tracking

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shot to dolly with his figure
in the Tyvek home wrap,

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should he turn.

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It's my experience the event
gets less eccentric, not more,

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becoming plainly a circle
by the end, like the soil

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spot you tell ripeness by.

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A tart disclosure asks
that you blush back

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if you're going to stay for the
drop like an illness welling,

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awaiting him.

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It came upon me to
redraw our crest,

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to entwine the filigree, tie
compunction about belief.

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The bird on the cadge
sorting through its bib

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in a final administration
as if undoing the torse.

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Grant, to be born and live
as variously as possible.

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Unless this takes,
whereby togetherness,

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our given and ground, would
lift or even belie the law.

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It intermits the trend:
alone is always alone again.

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Grant, we turn you down.

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If you lived here,
you'd be home by now.

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[LAUGHING]